_edited.png){kind=small}
The Ballerina
- Lady Ronit
- Sep 11, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 18, 2024
The lights flash on stage. Her right hand slowly rises towards the curtain, moving upward towards the beautiful dome, the theatres ceiling. The blue-eyed mosaic reflects Sara’s glittering costume. It is said about Ballerinas that the best ones come under the gaze of Ballet Masters from Eastern Europe. She is dressed as a peacock. She comes from Lviv. She stands alone on stage. Her heart beats like crazy. All the Audience’s eyes are on Her. She is frightened. They do not see Her as an equal, as a Human. To Them, She is a peacock, a spectacle. Beautiful flesh and an animal. Nothing more.
Her costume is magnificent; what a pity it won’t hold up this evening. After the performance, She will receive an Admirer in the wings, a disgusting old man. He will see to that. Her pointe shoes are white, embroidered with silver sequins and silver threads. The moonlit glitter is also on Her tights. This is not a happy, golden bird. Sara is the nighttime version of a peacock. Moonlit and dark. Much more beautiful, though slightly subdued. At the Ballerina’s hips swirls a blue-green tulle, also glittering.
Suddenly from the sky, or rather the ceiling, glitter begins to fall. A rain of silver dust showers the Audience, the stage goes dark. Beams of light enter through a dome made of stained glass. The moonlit glitter shimmers in shades of blue. In the fifth row, a Woman’s hand rises. People begin to reach out for the glitter. Laughter can be heard at the back of the hall.
Unexpectedly, the light returns, accompanied by a solo performance beneath the stage, played on the violin. The melody of young Abram rises like the cry of a drowning man through the waves. The young Musician is twelve years old and has ten young mouths to feed at home. The eleventh mouth is his dying Mother. The violinist, the oldest brother, without any relatives or security. On the street, His Older Sister and Younger Brother have already died. Without the violin, he too would have perished. As is often the case when one is a Little Boy, various madnesses and naive thoughts take shape in the fully imaginative head and sometimes even come to life. Little Abram had only one dream.
To kiss the Ballerina on the cheek.
Abram was an anomaly. A child, still a teenager, working in a world-renowned theatre. Somehow he found himself in this place of opulence and elegance, where he should not have belonged. He was like a rock that had passed through all trials and adversities, unmoved, hard, but absorbing with his gaze all the Ballerinas. And Sara in particular.
The rest of this article is only available to Paid Subscribers.