Visions of Sugar Plum Fairies and Past Lives

I was leaving the theater late, close to 11, the last to descend from our dressing room at the top of a winding staircase backstage. The stage was empty and dark except for the ghost light—the industry name for a single bulb left on center stage. The other lighting fixtures, curtains, and wings had been hoisted up into the flies exposing brick, large set pieces, thick ropes. I paused just behind the ghost light, savoring the uncommon solitude of an empty theater.

I was 20 and dancing in the annual monthlong run of The Nutcracker at the Pennsylvania Ballet. Rare moments of stillness like this one punctuated the constant forward momentum. The young women of the company’s general corps de ballet work the hardest, and the production depended on us. Every night we danced George Balanchine’s iconic steps in the “Waltz of the Snowflakes” and the “Waltz of the Flowers.” Both require the precision of the Rockettes and the stamina of long-distance runners. Onstage, we danced in clouds of pink tulle or leapt into blizzards of fake snow. Backstage, it was acupuncture and physical therapy, antibiotics for infected blisters, and six Advil every two hours.

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