Until We Break (Formerly Wicked, Wild, Wonderful)

ACT ONE: CHAPTER ONE

Everything breaks—that's what the metal barre was for in the Riverside Dance Academy. Young dancers new to pointe shoes and rubbing Tiger Balm onto their ankles at first use the barre to help keep their balance. But after a few years, when they've broken enough pointe shoes and their bodies have begun to ache, they realize that bones break far too easily, and these horizontal waist-high metallic barres drilled into either wall of the dance studio are really there because dancers often need something to squeeze.

However, on a stage where they need it most, there are no barres. There is only the open floor.

The entire Riverside Dance Academy was holding on to the barres now. For the past four minutes they had been lined off in an unmoving, low plié. Their bodies were still as concrete—hushed. The only sound was that of Valentino's quick, barefooted pacing across the Marley floor. It was his instruction that was keeping them there. Punishment, he called it, after hours of abysmal dancing.

Naomi supposed punishment was the right word. Her legs were burning now and her outstretched arm felt more and more like it was just begging for permission to go limp. But she also knew that from the pain she would emerge a much better dancer. The agony of what a proper low plié felt like would be seared into her muscle memory and she would be that much closer to perfection next time.

The dance studio had one barre bolted into each wall on the right and left sides of the room. Unless Valentino made the decision to rearrange them, the same girls always took the places on the barre that were closest to the front of the room in order to self-correct themselves more accurately in the mirrored wall ahead. The few boys in the academy were scattered between the middle and the back, not because they didn't care for their own correction but because the odds of a girl getting into an academy were three times slimmer than theirs. They would have to wrestle and bicker to secure a spot that close to the front over a girl whose career was already closing in on her. The students watched as their instructor moved individual dancers, slapping and twisting their postures into place. He pulled faces down and snapped gazes into their correct directions. Wherever the eyes look, the body follows was what he often told them.

Naomi's eyes were trained on Valentino from across the room. Each time he adjusted a dancer, Naomi mirrored the correction herself. Wrists higher, but not too high. Back straight, but not stiff. At times like this, Naomi saw clearly her requirements.

Valentino Beaumont had created the Riverside Dance Academy a little under a decade ago, but he couldn't quite afford a building of his own just yet. In fact, his classes currently resided in the basement of the Riverside Performing Arts Theater, so chipped walls and chilly air-conditioning were the norm. None of that, however, stopped the twenty-something dancers from paying the slightly outrageous class fee to receive his instruction. Because in ballet, you pay for art, not facilities, and here in the run-down building sitting awkwardly in Downtown Riverside, the art was taught by Valentino Beaumont who in turn had been taught by George Balanchine. That type of art that was priceless. The dancers knew it too. A man as talented as Valentino deserved better recognition for his craft than what the little Riverside community was able to give him—it was partly the reason all the dancers were holding their breath around him now.

Finished setting them into place, Valentino backed away. With his back flush against the mirrored wall and the dancers arranged in his field of vision, he snapped his fingers at his latest intern and the teenage boy bolted upright. The dancers watched him clumsily shove his phone into his pocket and, from his corner in the studio, set his fingers to the piano. Valentino said, "The routine. Again." Then, over the tune of the music beginning, he counted them off.

Naomi brought to life all the corrections she'd observed. Her head smoothly traveled with her arm, her movements were precise, and she maintained her pointe perfectly throughout. She could feel her body singing with the music, her muscles twisting in harmony. But out of the corner of her eye, she caught Valentino turning to the opposite side of the room. He was still cranking arms to where they belonged and under his breath critiquing the same dancers that he'd shouted at only seconds ago. He spun around to the entire class and loudly said, "If this is how you intend to dance at the Youth America Grand Prix this summer, save yourselves the humiliation and do not bother signing up."