Someday Dancer

by Sarah Rubin

  “Sorry,” I say, but I can’t help asking the question again.

  Edith sighs. “I don’t think so. Now hold still.”

  I open my mouth like an O and hold as still as I can manage. I wish Miss Martha was here, but when I remember how she looked when I asked her to let Edith dance her part, I know she won’t come. It would hurt too much.

  “There.” Edith is finished. I leap off the chair. My legs are coiled with spring. I look in the mirror and smile. Edith does my makeup much better than I do.

  Backstage, the air is so thick I could run my fingers through it like water. Everyone is moving and stretching, but no one is talking. It’s like everyone is inside their own little space.

  The clock on the wall says there are still twenty minutes to the show. I feel like my skin has been stripped off and all my nerves are right there on the surface. I tiptoe to the stage door and slip inside. The curtains are closed, but I can hear the audience on the other side like a live animal. A low bubbling sound that makes my insides trill.

  I walk up to the curtain slow and soft. The fabric is thick between my fingers, and heavy, too. I give a little pull and a slice of light falls across my feet. I put my eye up to the gap and peek out. I think maybe I will be able to see Mama and Andrea, but I don’t. All I see are strangers. Hundreds and hundreds of them, and my heart starts to beat hard. I let the curtain fall, and step back into the darkness.

  My head is spinning, and I rest it against the wall and close my eyes. I am scared. What if I fall, or forget my steps, or am just plain no good? What if they don’t like me? What if I let everyone down? The worry worm wraps itself tight around my middle, making me want to curl up into the floor. But I don’t. I stand up straight, because when did I ever let being scared stop me before? Not once, not ever. And I ain’t gonna start letting that happen now.

  I shift my weight from foot to foot because the moving helps somehow. I close my eyes and sway in the darkness. I am home in Warren, dancing on the sidewalk, not caring who sees me, because I am Casey Quinn and I was born to dance.

  “There you are! I told you not to wander off.” Edith has my shoulder in the dark. And because we are in the dark, I am brave enough to tell the truth.

  “I’m scared,” I say.

  “That’s OK, we’re all a little scared. It’s opening night,” she says. “I’d be worried if you weren’t. The important thing is not to let it show.”

  I nod, even though I know she can’t see me.

  “We’re going to start now. Are you ready?”

  I whisper, “Yes.”

  I can hear the rest of the company padding onto the stage and the low, whining sound of the orchestra starting to warm up, like crickets chirping in the night. And I am ready.

  I find my place on the stage and stand in the dark, letting the music fill me to the brim from the other side of the curtain until I am almost overflowing. I can feel the other dancers around me, shimmying and stretching and settling into their skin. I can feel them like they are my fingers and I know exactly where they are. And when I think hard, I can feel my mama somewhere out in the audience, and Andrea, too. And somewhere out there, or maybe somewhere inside of me, I can feel my gran.

  The music swells up and the curtains lift. Lights hit me bright as dawn.

  And we dance.

  Edith starts, moving across the stage like she is a fire. My heart pounds as loud as the drums, but I let go and listen. I have my reason to dance, and when I move I move every part of my body, dancing down to my fingertips. Not just moving my arms as they carve the air on the stage, but moving them with purpose, like I am carving all the air in the whole theater. In the whole world.

  I can feel Edith dancing behind me and we carve the space together, weaving around each other like starlings cartwheeling through the evening sky.

  I leap high, pushing out of the floor and tipping my head back to the ceiling. I am breaking free of gravity. Andrea is in the audience so I leap higher. Higher again for my mama. And even higher because Gran is out there watching, too. And I leap highest of all for me, because I am here. Casey Quinn, dancing on a real New York City stage, shining bright as the footlights. I leap with everything that took me out of South Carolina, high as the clouds above the Empire State Building. And I land without a sound, still and solid and in control. My lungs are burning but I hold statue still, eyes wide open until the music shifts again and I step offstage.

  From backstage in the wings I watch as Edith leaps and falls. And as the other dancers move with her, I do, too. Swinging and swaying and folding at the middle. Edith leaps high, and it makes my heart soar. I feel guilty for thinking it, but she’s amazing. I never saw Miss Martha dance like that. Now I understand why she couldn’t come.

  Then Helen flies fierce across the stage as Joan the Warrior, fighting with gravity to stop holding her down, and it’s my turn again.

  Back onstage, I’m rising and falling to the earth as Joan is martyred. I fold and fall to the floor without a sound, sending my energy out into the theater, and the sorrow makes me think of Miss Martha, who made the dance but cannot bear to watch it. I rise and fall again, harder, wishing I could bring it back to her. Eventually the dance becomes slower and slower until everyone falls for the last time.

  The curtain drops, but I stay perfectly still like I am under a spell. I feel everything all at once, the floor on my chest and my cheek, the air against my back, the smell of warm greasepaint under the hot theater lights. My heart aches with sadness for Miss Martha and the joy of dancing in New York City for my mama. I feel everything, but I also feel empty, like maybe all of these things are draining out of me, leaving me light as a feather.

  “Get up, Casey!” Edith pulls me to my feet. “Time to take a bow.”

  I let her pull me into line with the other dancers. She nods to someone invisible in the wings and the rich red curtains rise again.

  The lights and the sound wash over me like waves, and Edith has to tug me forward when the company steps one-two-three in front of the curtain. The audience is full of faces and hands clapping like a million leaves fluttering in the wind.

  I look for Mama and Andrea but I still can’t find them in the crowd. I can’t believe how many people came to see us.

  Edith starts the bow and I follow her, bending low from the waist. I smile wide as wide can be. Helen steps forward and there are great cheers, and for Kevin, too. Then it is my turn.

  I step forward and my senses feel all wobbly with fear and joy. For a moment, I worry that they will stop clapping. That they will look at my chicken legs and ask, Who let this awkward girl onstage? But they don’t. They clap loud as ever. And then I see Mama and Andrea standing up and cheering me on. Andrea is holding a bunch of flowers and Mama has her hands high over her head. I bow, pulling myself back up taller than before, the way Miss Martha taught me. I bow so my whole body says thank you better than I could ever say it in words.

  They are clapping for me and I can’t hardly believe it’s true. Not just Mama and Andrea, but the whole audience, clapping and cheering because they liked watching me dance.

  I step back into the line, and Edith moves forward full of power and grace, and the clapping gets even louder, and I clap, too, because we couldn’t have done it without her.

  I look at Edith and then I look at the audience cheering, and I feel very proud, but something else, too. A kind of hungry, I think. I made it all the way to New York City and I danced on a New York City stage. But dreams don’t just come true, not really. They come true, and then they get bigger. I’m not just gonna stop dancing ’cause I got this far. Someday I’ll dance the lead, and then, someday after that, I’ll dance all over America. I’ll keep dancing until my name is up in lights all over the world.

  My name is Casey Quinn and I am a dancer, and I ain’t never gonna stop. You hear me? Nope. Not ever!

  The first time I saw the Martha Graham dancers, I was eighteen. The company had come to give a master class at my college.
Up until then, I’d only had experience with ballet and tap lessons. I was in awe of how different the Graham style of dance was to anything I’d seen before. The movements were sharp, angular, almost painful at times, but they were also full of purpose and meaning. The performances were so powerful that, even though I didn’t go on to become a dancer myself, the memory of that class has remained with me ever since. Imagining what it must have been like to dance for Martha Graham herself is part of what inspired me to write Someday Dancer.

  “Miss Martha,” as Casey calls her, was born in 1894 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She and her two sisters were raised in a strict Presbyterian household. Her father was a psychiatrist who studied how human emotions were manifested in physical movements. He often said that “movement never lies.” Graham believed this as well, and strove to use the outward expression of dance to convey inner human truths.

  Graham realized she wanted to be a dancer as a teenager after watching a performance by Ruth St. Denis (1877–1968). Her parents discouraged her because they did not believe dancing was a suitable career. But, like Casey, Martha’s passion was dancing and she wasn’t going to give it up. She would later say, “People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.”

  In 1916, Graham became a student at the Denishawn studio, a school run by St. Denis and Ted Shawn, the dancers who had first inspired her. At the studio, Graham studied American folk dance and world dance. She had taken few formal lessons before joining Denishawn and, at twenty-two, she was considered quite old to begin training as a dancer. But even then she believed that “great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” She had a natural aptitude for dance and, with hard work, she became a star student.

  In 1923, Graham left the Denishawn School to pursue a career as a soloist with the Greenwich Village Follies, a vaudeville troupe based in the bohemian heart of Manhattan. During her time there she became well known in her own right.

  After two years in the Follies, Graham took a position teaching at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Here, she began to develop her own style of dance. She wanted to use the body’s natural movements to form the basis of her practice. Dance wasn’t about beauty and grace but about expressing an inner emotional experience. She rejected the basic ballet steps in favor of more sharp and percussive movements. Her technique was centered around contracting and releasing the body, and elevating natural movements into stylized steps.

  In 1926, Graham founded the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, where she continued to dance and choreograph, producing some of her most iconic pieces, including Heretic (1929), Primitive Mysteries (1931), Frontier (1935), and arguably her most famous work, Appalachian Spring (1944), as well as Seraphic Dialogue (1955), the piece about the life of Joan of Arc that Casey dances. Initially, the public did not appreciate Graham’s avant-garde choreography. It was very different from the popular form of classical ballet, in both style and substance. However, Graham soon established herself as an important new voice in the world of contemporary dance. “No artist is ahead of his time,” she said. “He is his time; it is just that others are behind the time.”

  Graham danced with her company for more than four decades. During these years, she traveled the world, touring across America and Europe. In 1938, she became the first dancer to perform at the White House, dancing American Document for President Franklin Roosevelt. She danced for seven more presidents over the course of her career.

  Martha Graham danced her final role in 1969. Although she was in her mid-seventies, she still found it incredibly difficult to give up being a dancer, and could not watch performances of her work in which another dancer had taken her place. Her choreography was designed to reveal inner truths, and the pieces were deeply personal. After she stopped dancing, Martha Graham left her own company. She struggled with depression and alcoholism until she suffered a collapse. After recovering from a coma, she realized that, even if she was no longer able to perform as a dancer, she still needed dance in her life. She gave up drinking and returned to the Martha Graham Dance Company as a choreographer in 1972. Four years later, in 1976, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a civilian can receive. Her last piece, Maple Leaf Rag, was first performed in 1990. She continued to teach until her death in 1991.

  Today, Martha Graham’s legacy is carried on by the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance (www.marthagraham.org), the oldest continuously running dance school in America. Dancers from around the world come to study her method, and her original choreography is still performed. She is widely recognized as one of the most important figures in contemporary modern dance.

  — Sarah Rubin, 2012

  “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

  — Martha Graham, 1943

  Sarah Rubin grew up on an island off the coast of Maine, where she spent most of her childhood playing dress up, reading books, and wandering in the pine forests. She earned her BA in Creative Writing and History from Skidmore College, and after teaching dance and drama for a year, she left New England for Old England, moving overseas to Winchester, where she now lives. Someday Dancer is her debut novel.

  First I would like to thank my tutors and fellow students on the 2005/06 MA program Writing for Children at the University of Winchester. Specifically, Andrew Melrose and Judy Waite for their guidance while I was working on the early drafts of the manuscript. Thanks also to fellow student Pien Wensing, the best beta reader a writer could ask for!

  Big thanks to my agent, Lindsey Fraser, not only for working tirelessly on finding a home for this book, but also for her advice on the manuscript and on being a writer in general. I would not be here without her.

  I’ve been very lucky to work with the great team at Chicken House and want to thank them all for their enthusiasm for my book through countless rewrites and rereads. I’d especially like to thank Imogen Cooper, Nicki Marshall, and Rachel Hickman for understanding Casey and how far she could go.

  Last, but certainly not least, I couldn’t have written this book without the love and support of my family. To my four amazing parents for teaching me that I can do anything I put my mind to. To my siblings Hava, Bayla, Ben, and Schuyler for filling my life with stories that I constantly steal for writing purposes. And to my husband, Chris, for always taking such good care of me. I will never be able to say how much I love you.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Sarah Rubin

  All rights reserved. Published by Chicken House, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. CHICKEN HOUSE, SCHOLASTIC, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  www.scholastic.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2011 as Dreamer Ballerina by Chicken House, 2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS.

  www.doublecluck.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously, and any real personalities included in the book and interactions with such real personalities are the result of the author’s imagination and purely fictional. Such real personalities or their representatives did not authorize this book and are not otherwise involved with this book in any way.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rubin, Sarah, 1982 —

  [Dreamer ballerina]


  Someday dancer / Sarah Rubin. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In South Carolina in 1959 Casey Quinn dreams of being a ballerina, and though she has never had the money for lessons, she follows her dream to New York City and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance.

  ISBN 978-0-545-39378-2 — ISBN 978-0-545-39379-9

  1. Ballet — Juvenile fiction. 2. Ballerinas — Juvenile fiction. 3. Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance — Juvenile fiction. 4. South Carolina — Juvenile fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.) — Juvenile fiction. [1. Ballet — Fiction. 2. Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance — Fiction. 3. South Carolina — Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.) — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R831322Som 2012

  813.6 — dc23

  2012008617

  e-ISBN: 978-0-545-49194-5

  First American edition, August 2012

  The display type was set in Swingdancer.

  Cover design by Whitney Lyle

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.