Prima Ballerina

I never thought I would be here. Laying with a prima ballerina. Here I am am though, I thought and sipped the long cold tea from the cup hovering on our nightstand. Lovers, they would say. It seemed a cliche sentiment. I knew her so intimately, more an extension of myself then another. Have we not traveled through completely different worlds over the years? We were just two kids from Brooklyn once. Now were here. Together. And that's the only word I have to describe it . We never discussed it, her and I. It feels like its been countless years and never have we discussed it. I still remember our first night together. Well not first, but in many ways it had been.

We had grown up together, watching each other. Meeting in a large room stinking of wood polish, both victims of parents hoping to set their children apart by clustering them into large rooms together to learn identical forms of motion. Dancing. It was never for me, I stumbled and tripped, and lacked the apparently effortless motion the others found in the tips of their fingers. She shined. Over the years the critics have compared her to every damned star in the sky, raving of her supposed divinity. I do not think it was so far from the truth, watching her dance.

From a young age she had excelled, surpassing all her classmates until she caught the eye of Daria Klimentová who had just made her principle in the English National Ballet and invited the young girl to study with her for the upcoming performance which had catapulted her debut and put her at the top of the lists for the top theatres. I followed her, as she would have it no other way, even then, and continued to capture her beauty in the most timeless method I could. The films and such photographs as I chose, eventually sold for thousands to magazines, marketing ads, printing companies, you name it. She was star and would have no other. Who would-could?- tell her otherwise? To be frank with myself, film was the only way I could bare to capture her, my June Butterfly, and perhaps that is why we never spoke of it. To speak first would be the first to break that strange fragile magic that surrounded us. A life like ours with the never ending workload and travels was hard to completely plan out. And what was there to speak of? We had more chances to drift apart then there was those damned stars in the sky. And we didn't. She could have chosen from the millions who adored her, fawning over her every motion. And she didn't. It could have been to much for me to bear, in her shadow. And but it wasn't. As so we never spoke of it, for to us it had seemed redundant.

I remember we were on a trip to Berlin, she had a performance and I would be there to direct the shoot, and then she would stay at a friends and visit the countryside while I finished working on a project we currently had running in the next city over. She had been worried for a girl in her mentoring class and as her charming voice filled my head with the details, I ran my thumb over the knuckle bones of her fingers intertwined with mine, feeling the rough calluses on her palm rubbing on my smooth one as we walked. I've seen her face on countless ads for lotions and creams but her hands had never been smooth. She was a dancer, and she had neither had soft hands nor feet. It was a hard life, with years of strain on her body, and so many nights of silent whimpers of pain as I helped her unwind the ribbons from her shoes. She must have loved it, for I could never understand her willingness to endure the pain, but she did.

They show her as beautiful, but they do not see her as I do. I know that she is beautiful and in my life I have seen every picture of her there is to be seen. But I have never seen it, as much I have tried to capture it, on film. Even there, I cannot capture her fully, and let a part run free in the wind. It is a beautiful game, this chase, this exquisite torment that is the biggest passion of my life. How her breathe stirs hair falling onto her face as she sleeps illuminated by the moonlight bouncing off the walls, the way her freckles dapple in the light, bouncing between light caramel and dark chocolate. The way she smells, under perfumes, and costumes, masks, and oils, always her. Her face going through a series of motions as she turns, curious then elated as she recognizes me in the crowd. I have given the magazines her image, but never her essence.

Though I was not unsuccessful in my own right, her fame and proximity to myself was without question a significant bonus to me and for that I will always be thankful. I worked freelance for other agencies of course and on independent projects, but she was always the head of my portfolio, and being the personal photographer to one of the current biggest stars internationally didn't exactly leave one a miser; I was free to pick and choose at my own discretion. It was the biggest movement in all things vogue and the style a return to 4th century greek sculpture. The models were in flowing robes on the runways in Paris and Munich and all the girls were in sandals. We decided as our grand finale, as it were, the greatest ballerina of the 20th century, a symbol of elegance and perfection of that era, would release a nude album celebrating the different forms and poses of the ancient muses. It would be raw and unedited. I had a mailbox full of pleas for just one meeting by every journalist and media corporation hearing wind of the gossip of the possibility of the event and salivating at the thought of getting the very first publication.

And as we worked, amid the bustle of directing the crews and navigating the shoot through umbrellas to their spots, I lost myself in it. The lights had to be arranged just so, and all the furniture tilted to an integral angle, I had a million things to do before we could be done and I found myself in the flow of it, the work coming together as my greatest masterpiece. And in this, she lent me her form and image. She had whispered one night as we lay, that it seemed to her such a small gift for all that I had done for her. And it had seemed silly to me, for she would have risen without my help I was sure.

And when it was done I knew it. I remember I  had stood at the front and directed our last portion of shots and lifted my eyes from the screen of the leading camera to her form lounging on a settee to meet hers already waiting. I saw the divine in her eyes as they danced and it was as if Eve had come to perch from her garden on our couch.  She posed and the camera started its rolling click. She smiled like we had a shared secret and I remembered our first night together; the pure, naked beauty. I knew I had finally captured that which they had always raved about.