Prima Ballerina

By Maria B. Murad

Three stories of the ballet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maria B. Murad
• Release date: Sep 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781311387479

Maria B. Murad

Maria B. Murad is a mother, grandmother, former dancer and a writer. She has published a children's book, short stories, many memoir pieces (online and in anthologies), and has a novel on Kindle called Lighting Out, and a lighthearted mystery, Suzy the Default Detective. She has also collaborated on a book on management called Leading Ladies, How to Manage Like a Star. All are available on Kindle and amazon.com.She invites you to visit her website or email her at [e-mail], and she thanks you for reading her work.

Book preview

PRIMA BALLERINA

Three stories of the ballet by Maria B. Murad

Golden Lasses

The Last Dance

The Ladies who Dance

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Copyright © 2009, Maria B. Murad

This book is offered for free and as such, may be shared freely as long as writing credit and contact information are left intact. These stories are fictional. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Golden Lasses

Every year, when the ballet companies come to our town, I get my balcony seats early. The old chestnuts that the modernists despise beguile me still. Swan Lake, Giselle, the Nutcracker. I sit there with my binoculars and sometimes I think—what if? Could I have done that particular solo? Were my pirouettes that sharp? It’s something I’ll never know. Sometimes my daughter condescends to come with me to my favorites.

Thank god, it’s the shortened version, she’ll say. Or, At least it’s only the pas de deux, that’s not so bad. She’s one of the modernists. They like their dances angular and their music cacophonous. Sometimes I watch her, when the door to her dance class is open, and I think how gloriously she moves, how precise she is, her slim muscled arms and legs doing exactly what she tells them to do. But right now, it’s just technique. She’s too young to have heart yet in her dancing. At times, she reminds me of Zita, not that they look alike. My Alexandra is all pale blondness and fine, faintly pink skin. Zita was dark, like a gypsy princess, with long, heavy brown braids that shone like polished oak. Zita, undeniably, had heart. But no soul, I think. But they both have that inner sureness, that compulsion to succeed that I lacked. They call it the competitive edge. I have heart it called, less euphemistically, the killer instinct. Not that I find that trait in Alexandra, exactly. But the will is there, the extra measure of strength.

I must have been eighteen when I first met Zita. I had started college to please my father, but one semester proved to him my mind wasn’t on my studies. I wanted to dance. That sounds so naïve now, but then, ballet was my whole world. I had long since surpassed the talents of the local ballet school, so I spent Saturdays in New York City studying at one of the best places. It became obvious that I must move there if I were to get the proper advanced training. With great reluctance, my parents consented to this new arrangement.

New York is hardly like a college campus, my father argued when I said what was the difference between going away to college or to ballet school. But they were wonderful about it, and from my sheltered, pampered little world of the only child, I tackled New York City. It was glorious. I practically lived at the studio, in and out of classes all day. Not just ballet classes, but pointe and partnering classes with the young men. And then there were character dances to learn, Russian, Greek