After that, she would stand up to the evil Vizier, who would have a change of heart and agree to get her out. Nigel had the notion for her to do a “naturalistic” dance portraying Anger and Defiance at that point, in bare feet and legs and a little tunic, as Isadora Duncan did.
Next, she and the chorus dancers would do a nautch dance in the harem. She wasn’t at all sure about this, as she had never actually seen a nautch dance, but she supposed she could adopt one of Aspica’s solos from The Pharoah’s Daughter.
Then back to the Sultan’s court, where, growing weary of her refusal, the Sultan would attempt to force himself on her.
“Finally!” Wolf had exclaimed at that point, making them all laugh.
She would break away and perform a skirt dance with red and yellow lights on her for fire. The Sultan would be frightened, call her an Efrit, and demand that the Vizier do something about her. The Vizier would make her vanish from an open platform.
The last scene she would be in would be where she said farewell on a beach to the Vizier, who would send her away in the custody of a dozen British tars, who would, of course, do a dance with her in the middle of them.
But the last scene would be all the Vizier’s, where he would be dragged up in front of the Sultan for helping her to escape, and he would bring the entire palace down in a barrage of fire and vanish out of the midst of it. Jonathon was quite excited about this, for it meant not only a spectacular illusion, but an escape from chains as well.
In general, in fact, everyone was enthused about the production.
It was at that moment that she had realized there were two things she needed. A choreographer was one. A teacher was another. Try as she might, she was unable to put together sequences of steps that seemed at all interesting. She understood this instinctively; something in her compared, say, the Petipa choreography from one of the Sleeping Beauty variations, which were by no means his most inspired, to what she was doing, and she fell far, far short. And as for a teacher, she understood that she needed correction, and also understood that she was not going to get that correction working on her own.
Finally she broached the subject to Nigel, whose brow furrowed at her request. “I’m not sure I understand correctly,” he said, finally. “I thought it would be no problem for you to put together your little numbers. And aren’t you beyond taking lessons?”
“A dancer is never beyond taking lessons,” she replied solemnly. “There is always something new to learn. It is hard to practice and look for faults at the same time.”
Nigel nodded at that. “Come to think of it, I’m going to require someone to teach all those chorus dancers their parts, and handle them as Arthur handles the orchestra.” He pondered this for a moment. “Let me see if the booking agents have anyone of this sort.”
Not three days later, he turned up again at her rehearsal studio, and with him was a man she did not recognize. “Mademoiselle Tchereslavsky, this is Monsieur Ciccolini. He will be your teacher, he’ll be doing the choreography, and he’ll be keeping the chorus under as much control as possible.”
“That will not be the easiest proposition,” the gentleman said with a smile. He was a tall, lean man, hair once black, now going gray, but continuing to be handsome in that ageless way that only Italians could manage. This was not the “Roman-Italian” whose statues adorned theaters and government buildings everywhere; he definitely had a dancer’s build and a dancer’s way of moving, but she could tell that his knees pained him. “Young ladies being what they are, I can only promise that they will turn up to rehearsals and performances on time, and come up to my standard, or they will find themselves replaced.” He bowed a little. “Mademoiselle, if I may be so bold as to come back with you to your rehearsal hall? I can then get some idea of what lessons you may need.”
She was only too happy to take him there, and was very glad that she was already warmed up. He took over the room as if he had been there all his life, addressing the pianist, and taking charge of it all. He instructed her to warm up anyway, which she did, while he scrutinized her. Then, as he set the tempo of the pianist, he called out steps for her to perform.
This was something she had sorely missed. It was one thing to dance a sequence from one of the many ballets that you had memorized, or a sequence that you tried to make up in your head to try and stretch your abilities and all the while watch yourself in the mirror for any flaws. It was quite another to dance a sequence as it was called out by the teacher, and to rely on the teacher to watch for flaws while you concentrated on the dancing.
He ran her through several such sequences, at varied tempi, his long face growing more and more thoughtful. Finally he waved her to the barre. “Mademoiselle,” he said heavily, “I am only an old man from Milano, with two bad knees and some ability to teach little English chorus girls to stagger about on their toes and not disgrace themselves. You are better than anyone I have ever taught. You are better than anyone I have ever danced with. You may be better than anyone I have ever seen. There is nothing I can teach you.”
Ninette listened to this with growing astonishment. True, in the past several weeks she had completely forgotten about captivating rich old men and had concentrated on her dancing as never before. But surely that had not made that much of an improvement! Surely he was mistaken. Or flattering her. Or—
Perhaps testing her. She raised her head. “Monsieur, whether or not any of that is true, a dancer never stops learning. You have learned at one school, I at another. Another technique is always worth learning. And you choreograph, which is something I have never done. True?”
“True,” he admitted.
She smiled. “Well then, pray help me with this first of my dances for this production, for I confess I can think of nothing to make it particularly interesting.” She fetched the hoop from the corner. “It is to combine ballet with the hoop-exercises of the Swiss girls—”
“Ah yes!” he exclaimed with recognition. “I saw them. Well, then, let us begin.”
By the end of the afternoon, he had turned a rather lackluster little piece into something amusing and interesting. It was true that he was no Petipa, but he had a good eye and a sound instinct. Being able to make clear improvements in her dance raised his spirits as well; by the end of the afternoon, he was issuing orders and tapping out the tempo with his instruction wand, and using it too, to reposition a foot or a knee—
He was one of those teachers who used a long wand, nearly as tall as he was, to point out problems with the feet and legs. She had only had one such teacher, at the Paris Opera, and he had been prone to using it to thwack little ballerinas across the back of the calf when he did not like what they were doing. Perhaps Ciccolini was naturally more gentle than that, or perhaps he simply deemed her too old for such correction—or maybe he feared that in a temper she would snatch his wand and break it over his head! At any rate, he did no such thing to her.
It was a relief to think about something besides magic, to concentrate entirely on her dance. It was very odd to think that a few weeks ago, she would have been perfectly happy to find herself not dancing! This was real, solid, something she had known all her life, something she understood. Magic, she did not understand. How could a cat talk? How could there be little creatures like the Brownie living right under everyone’s noses?
Dancing was better. But—there was something lacking even with her dancing.