I studied dance at the Olga Fricker academy but not to be a ballerina.
Desperate to be a princess.
But here in this picture, a year earlier, before the masquerade ball, I was inconsolable, because my lot was to wear what fit me, the only costume left, the little devil. Cinderella had been rented out.
At the academy I studied modern dance, with Tanya, once a student to Martha Graham. But asked mother to stop making me.
I was unappreciative. A prisoner condemned to interminable waiting rooms. The Mogul Ski Club. The after school Tee Pee Club. And I was always the last one to get picked up.
The academy produced pink satin troops of princesses. Pointy toed butterflies in simultaneous orchestrated compliance. I would pretend to be one of them. Holding the bar, plié, straighten, relevé, and down.
Olga Fricker while small in stature was a formidable architect. Once a dancer herself she used her instrument entirely.
Ringmaster to a circus filled to capacity. Barely standing room mothers, awed by the military grace, their daughters, minding. Olga the keeper of time and human metronome, shouted and cajoled, levitating the floor, had the piano doing jumping jacks. And everywhere girls leaping past each other without collision.
At 3:00 Tanya would start our class. Guiding those without skirts and ballet slippers. We modern ragamuffins into a circle of pretend. We took our starting positions. The scratches giving way, and tucked our heads and legs in to our bodies. Not standing in our first position, but on the floor, making ourselves into little uni-pods. Seeds.
Tchaikovsky 33 rpm on the suitcase phonograph gave us a choice to grow and move or not. Some days I would not feeling like rooting even. And I might just listen, feel the floor and my heart.
In the wind and storm of the electric fan. I would raise my limbs, my branches, finding the pull to move within without anyone telling me when or what to do
CICCI 