Dances: A Novel

by Nicole Cuffy

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A ballerina at the height of her powers becomes consumed with finding her missing brother in this “striking debut” (Oprah Daily).

“A compelling novel about the spiritual and bodily costs of the dogged pursuit of art.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster

At twenty-two years old, Cece Cordell reaches the pinnacle of her career as a ballet dancer when she’s promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. She’s instantly catapulted into celebrity, heralded for her “inspirational” role as the first Black ballerina in the famed company’s history. Even as she celebrates the achievement of a lifelong dream, Cece remains haunted by the feeling that she doesn’t belong. As she waits for some feeling of rightness that doesn’t arrive, she begins to unravel the loose threads of her past—an absent father, a pragmatic mother who dismisses Cece’s ambitions, and a missing older brother who stoked her childhood love of ballet but disappeared to deal with his own demons.

Soon after her promotion, Cece is faced with a choice that has the potential to derail her career and shatter the life she’s cultivated for herself, sending her on a pilgrimage to both find her brother and reclaim the parts of herself lost in the grinding machinery of the traditional ballet world.

Written with spellbinding beauty and ballet’s precise structure, Dances centers around women, art, and power, and how we come to define freedom for ourselves.

Release date: May 16, 2023

Publisher: One World

Print pages: 273

Sample

[barre]

The princess has shed some of her earlier shyness and learned to trust her suitors. Her smile is as confident and bright as a new coin; gone is her earlier hesitation. There is plain, fresh-faced gratitude as she accepts a rose from each of her suitors. The roses are bright, white, scentless. She throws them, not cruelly but joyfully, almost ecstatically. It has been some fresh miracle, learning to trust these four princes, a dawning. No one has hurt her yet. She has not been hurt a day in her life, in fact, never so much as pricked her finger. She suspects that there is no such thing as suffering. She understands suffering in the abstract—it is what made her shy of her suitors at first, but that they have not caused her pain makes its possibility even more remote. No one has let her down yet. She can almost believe there is no such thing.

I am the princess.

My reality is dual: I am Aurora, the white princess, just turned sixteen, who knows no suffering, and I am also Cece, the Black dancer of twenty-two, whose toes are screaming from being en pointe for so long, who is sweating like a slave, and whose ankle is throbbing distantly from a slow-healing sprain. I am counting as I dance—there is little room in my head for much else, though for a flash I do wonder if I feel up to holding that last balance for a couple of extra beats. I step forward, taking my suitor’s hand as I rise en pointe in attitude derrière, ready for the first promenade. I am turned 360 degrees like a figurine, pivoting on the toes of my pointed foot, ankle protesting just outside the gates of my attention. I won’t hold the balance too long, but I’ll make sure to get my leg up nice and high in the arabesque to make up for it.

My second suitor approaches, and I steady myself, signaling the first suitor with a quick squeeze when I am ready for him to let go of my hand. For a brief moment, I am unsupported—or rather, I support myself—balanced on one leg. I bring both arms overhead in fifth position, the space between them an imaginary crown, and then I bring my arm back down, give my hand to the second suitor. Second promenade. I do this four times in total, ending with my high, unsupported arabesque. The music is swelling, the orchestra creating a big inhale. I tease the conductor a little bit by making the last supported pirouette a triple—he controls the music to match me. I smile mischievously at an audience I can’t see beyond the lights. The music thuds to its dramatic conclusion as I flourish my arms in third position. Oh Tchaikovsky, I think.

---

—

At the barre, I drown out the clunky, repetitive accompaniment by playing Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in my mind. Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich—those were Paul’s favorites. Demi-plié and then grand plié, butt low to the ground, knees reaching over the second toes. Tendus, foot caressing the floor and then pointing: front, front, front fifth, front fifth, side, side, side fifth, side fifth, back, back, back fourth, back fourth, temps liés. And then dégagés, slow and fast, the foot caresses and then flies—front, side, back, side, side, back, side, front. Rond de jambe, the foot sweeping graceful half circles into the floor, and fondus and développés, the legs growing long now, delicious bloom in the hips and the inner thighs. Frappes, the legs loose at the knees, the feet playful. And finally, grand battements, lifting high, throwing the leg front, side, back, side. Company class is both repetitive and vital.

Alison is one of my favorite ballet mistresses at the company. She is perpetually in a good mood, her combinations are thoughtful, her corrections precise and gentle. She is in the middle of the room now, humming to herself and doing a kind of half dancing, sketching. I barely have to listen as she sets the next steps. I have been taking class with Alison since my student days at the School of American Ballet. The New York City Ballet does not hold open auditions; it pulls its dancers from SAB. Every class was a battle raged against imperfection. I remember the desperate thrill of it, the hunger. I stood out because of my Blackness, and I was determined then to obliterate it, to render my Blackness irrelevant with perfection.

Kaz, NYCB’s artistic director, took an interest in me early. He would slip into a class of young dancers, study us with his trademark stare. And he’d stop in front of me, watching me up close, very rarely offering a correction—only looking. To have Kaz’s eye on you was like an anointment, his very gaze material, an investiture. His fascination with me was unnerving, terrifying. His visits to classes were unpredictable. I never knew when he would be watching me, and so I had to constantly be perfect, beautiful. I was the only Black face in a sea of white and tan; I could not be anything but visible.

The pressure was enormous. I couldn’t have a bad turn day, or a fat day, when, no matter which clothes I wore, which mirror I checked, which angle I viewed myself from, all I saw was my body taking up too much space. When my knee started to ache, I couldn’t sit out for the big jumps at the end of class. I was a brick-brown kid from Brooklyn. There were people around me—students and faculty alike—waiting for proof that I couldn’t be graceful, that I was too heavy, too muscular, that my feet were too big, too flat, that I wasn’t classical. Ballet has always been about the body. The white body, specifically. So they watched my Black body, waited for it to confirm their prejudices, grew ever more anxious as it failed to do so, again and again.

I mark the little flourishes, the movement phases with my hands and feet, and then my body knows what to do. This has always been a skill of mine, remembering. I have been doing this routine—or variations thereof—every day for seventeen years. It is as ingrained in me as the movements required for tying my ribbons. I don’t have to think about it. Instead, I return to a favorite daydream of mine: I see the curtains rising, and the violin concerto is inflating, an orchestral bubble, and I can never work out whether it is I who appears first or my brother. Dwelling on Paul is a precious and carefully rationed indulgence. I just want him to see me now.

Préparation

Paul’s arrival in the world came ten years before my own. I remember the bony press of my brother’s lanky thigh against my knobby knee. There was, as there so often was, a record playing—Paganini, I think. In my small lap, I held the book Paul had brought home for me—an illustrated book about a ballerina, which neither of us could read because it was in Italian, but the last page of the book was a large watercolor of a girl in the middle of a grand pirouette en arabesque, pink-satin-clothed foot perfectly pointed. That’ll be you one day, Paul told me. I ran a finger along the dancer’s slender leg, reverent.

I tried to picture myself in the sparkling pink costume from the picture, spinning en pointe. I could almost feel it in my little body—the weight of the sequins and tulle, the weightlessness of the dance, the hard floor underneath my toes.

The dancer in the book had skin the color of a cloud in sunrise and straight yellow hair. My mother straightened my hair with chemicals over our kitchen sink, but given the thick grease she moisturized my scalp with and my utter disinterest in keeping my hair dry at all costs, it did not swing sensuously from my head but rather hung stiffly, like our homemade taffeta curtains. I couldn’t picture that beautiful costume against my dark skin.

On the couch next to me, my brother was working with his charcoals. Over the music, we could both hear our mother speaking sharply into the phone, and then Paganini’s violin stuttered as she walked into the room. It was our mother’s habit to walk around the apartment so heavily that she’d make my brother’s records skip (Paul preferred the sound of vinyl to anything else).

That was your father, she told us. She spat the word father out like an accusation, like poison. I could never tell how my mother was going to feel about my father on any given moment. Now, she seemed angry. But the night before, I’d heard her crying in her bath. I’d opened the door and crept in, kneeling beside the tub. Her body was wavy under the water, transformed, her head leaning against the back of the tub, her eyes slightly wary. She’d crossed her arms over her stomach.

What’s wrong, Mama? I’d asked.

She’d splashed water on her face, disguising the tears. Nothing. She’d sounded small. I’d noticed for the first time what a slight woman my mother was.

Now, she glanced down at my ballerina book and shook her head disapprovingly. That what you want to look like? Is that why you like that ballet so much? Trying to dance your way out of being Black?

Christ, Ma, said Paul. Don’t take you and Dad out on her.

Don’t encourage her. Celine, that is not what we Black women look like. And it’s not all we can do, dancing for the white folks.

She can do what she wants. Isn’t that the point? Let her be.

Who are you to reprimand me, boy? Can’t even see straight, can you?

I looked between them, confused. Neither of them was looking at the other anymore. Or me. Or anything.

I think your tummy is pretty, I said to my mother, trying to be helpful.

But she only laughed an unhappy laugh. You’re just like yourfather, the both of you. Only difference is you two still got a chance to grow up.

She left the room, the record punctured with staccato stutters.

She’ll take him back again, Paul said. They always do this.

I looked up at him, not quite knowing what he meant but not wanting to reveal my ignorance. I didn’t want him thinking I was a baby. Mama’s always mad at him, I said.

Paul scoffed. Can’t really blame her. He glanced at me and shook his head. But it’s never enough, is it? She just takes it out on us. He checked that our mother was really gone and then fished something out of his pocket. He turned away from me, first bending all the way forward and then tilting his head back. When he turned back around, his nostrils flared and he smiled at my curious face. You’ll understand when you’re older, he said. Hey, you haven’t drawn me a picture in a while.

Eagerly, I put my book away and got construction paper and crayons from my side of our room. When I came back, it looked like Paul had been crying, his eyes glassy and his hand absently rubbing his nose. I wanted to make something beautiful for him, but I kept stealing glances at him as he worked—the tip of his tongue kept peeking out at the corner of his mouth, there was a little crease between his eyebrows. His hands on the paper moved so beautifully, more graceful by far than my own clunky coloring. I tried to copy him. I saw him smile.

You trying to be like me?

I grinned and nodded.

He made some mistake I couldn’t discern and threw down his charcoal, brought a hand to his forehead, smearing black there. Shit, he said.

My mouth opened in shock.

Sorry, he told me. Whatever you do, Cece, do it pretty. They’re always watching.

I didn’t know what he meant until I fell in love with dance, until I became used to the constant visibility.

[center]

My mother’s birthday was Sunday, but I was busy dancing the matinee for The Sleeping Beauty, and I completely forgot to call her. For four days. We don’t do gifts or cards, but I try to at least call her and wish her a happy birthday if I can’t get out to Brooklyn to visit her. Sheepishly, I call her as I’m laid out on my back in the living room, doing my morning stretches. It’s early, but I know she has her criminal law class at Brooklyn College this morning, so she will be awake. Ryn is boiling eggs, and their sulfuric stink leaks from our kitchen.

My mother takes a long time to answer, and when she does, she sounds slightly out of breath, like she’s had to run to answer her phone.

“Happy belated birthday,” I say.

“Happy birthday!” Ryn calls from the kitchen.

“Well, thank you,” says my mother. “And thank you to Kathryn.”

Kathryn shortened her name to Ryn when we got our apprenticeships with the company to sound more intriguing, but my mother never calls her Ryn.

“How’s it going?” my mother asks. “What are you having for breakfast?”

“Ryn is making eggs,” I say.

My mother and I generally keep our conversations at the surface level, but she is convinced that I must be anorexic because I’m a dancer. Asking about my meals is her way of checking in. It’s not nearly as subtle as she seems to think it is, and I find it irritating. I pull my right knee into my chest, feel the sharp ridge of my patella against my palm. My ribs kiss my thigh as I take a deep breath.

“You know who I ran into the other day?” my mother asks.

“Who?”

“Señora Sandy.”

Señora Sandy—Señora Ochoa-Famosa y Sandoval—was a small, freckled woman with an unruly halo of unnaturally red hair. She was a defector from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, a fact she was fond of mentioning frequently to her students. Beginning when I was five, I took ballet classes from her in what would have been the living room of her cluttered Fort Greene brownstone, which seemed unbelievably lavish to me compared to the small Bed-Stuy apartment I shared with my mother and my brother and, intermittently, my father. Paul used to walk me to classes. He paid for them himself when my mother decided she didn’t like how invested I was getting in ballet.

“I haven’t seen her in forever,” I say. “How is she?”

“She’s walking with a cane now.”

My mother says this in a faintly moralizing tone, as though this is what you get when you put your body through a career of ballet. I bite the inside of my cheek. I straighten my right leg, grabbing my heel and pushing my toes down somewhere above my head, a supine split. If my mother had ever had any use for dance, I believe her calling would have been African dance or contemporary—the two often bear a striking resemblance. She has the presence for it.

My mother is a latent Garveyite who keeps a framed map of Africa over the dining table, and who, for the past two years, has been enrolled at Brooklyn College majoring in sociology and minoring in criminal justice so she can quit her job as a home-health aide and work for the NAACP. This accounts for at least some of her apathy toward my career. She is heavy in every sense of the word but the physical. She does everything with the full force of herself. It can be unbearable—most of all, I suspect, for her. She would have made a brilliant dancer, a heavy-footed modernist, consuming Katherine Dunham. If she’d had any use for dance.

But I resist heaviness, my presence is soft. It is ballet that chose me. But I chose it back, and I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t, in part, a small act of rebellion. African dance is a pulse. It is thick, wise, and wild. Clamorous and uncanny. African dance says, I am here. Ballet says, I am there.

“She asked about you,” my mother says.

“Oh?” I say, trying to picture what Señora Sandy would look like now, after so many years.

Señora Sandy was the first person to tell me I was a dancer. She was also the first person to tell me I couldn’t dance with the New York City Ballet. The life of a dancer is difficult, she’d said. A classical ballerina—a Balanchine ballerina—must have a certain body type. Long limbs, long neck, a small head, big eyes. Very lean and feminine. You, Cece, are not going to be that. You are athletic—powerful, thick muscles, you understand? Your butt sticks out, your chest is already budding, your mouth is not small like a doll’s. There is a reason there have been very few Black ballerinas.

She’d told me to set my sights on Alvin Ailey or Philadanco instead.

Dreams are for children, mami, she’d said. You are a dancer.

I’d left her studio when I was eleven, and got myself a scholarship to a prestigious school on the Upper East Side, owned by Luca Esposito and Galina Zaretsky. I paid for pointe shoes with my babysitting money. By this time, my brother had lost his scholarship to the School of Visual Arts after only a year. I knew it bothered him, but he tried to pretend it didn’t. He said the teachers didn’t get him, and all his classmates were older than him anyway. He was working as a line cook and producing frightening sketches—full of lines drawn so furiously they tore through the page—in a dark apartment that smelled of liquor and stale sweat. I was on my own.

I wonder what Señora Sandy makes of me now.

“Anyway,” my mother is saying, “I have class in twenty minutes. Tell Kathryn I say hello and have a good time at dance.” A note of condescension.

We hang up and I toss my phone onto the couch and switch legs, pulling my left knee into my chest. I can feel my heartbeat against my quadriceps, faintly, like a whisper. Ryn walks in, chewing something. She is wearing a tank top and dance briefs. Her legs don’t have a scrap of fat on them—all sharply defined muscle and bone. I pull my knee into my chest harder, watch my thigh spread as it is pressed between my calf and my breast.

“Want an egg?” Ryn asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

I get up and follow her into the kitchen. I douse my boiled egg in salt, and shove most of it into my mouth in one vicious bite.

---

—

My brother made it bearable to live with my mother. I adored him. It was he, not my mother, who constantly encouraged my love of ballet, even if it meant he had to do bad things to afford it. On a late fall day as he was walking me to class, I saw for the first time that there was a side of Paul he kept from me. A side I didn’t know. We didn’t exactly walk together—he was tall, and one of his strides could easily fit two of mine. I walked a little behind him, trying to place my feet exactly in his footsteps. In order to accomplish this, I had to do what was nearly a grand jeté, and then that became more fun than finding my brother’s footprints, so I jetéd down Gates Avenue behind him. Paul was in one of his bad moods—he walked without glancing back at me, listening to Vivaldi on his old Discman. I knew it was Vivaldi because he had been playing it so loudly when he came to pick me up that I could feel the manic strings. He was not looking at me. I leapt bigger, hoping to catch his attention, but I was rewarded with not so much as a glance.

“Paul,” I said. “Paul, watch me.” But he couldn’t hear me.

“Paul,” said a much bigger, louder voice. This, my brother did hear.

He took his headphones off and turned. I turned too. There was a very large man coming toward us, one hand raised in a wave. He was dressed entirely in baggy denim, the cuffs of his jeans tucked into the whitest pair of sneakers I’d ever seen.

“What’s good, cuz?” the man said. “I’ve been looking for you—I got twenty.”

Paul scowled at him. “The fuck you want, homeboy? You see I got my little sister with me.”

I frowned at the change in Paul’s voice—it wasn’t that he’d cursed but that his entire voice, his entire accent had changed. Our mother didn’t like us to talk that way; she insisted we speak “proper English.”

The man held up his hands. “My bad, man,” he said. “I ain’t realize she was with you.” He smiled down at me. One of his front teeth was gold. “How you doing?”

My brother cut in before I could say anything. “Holla at me later—I got you then.”

It was a dismissal, and the man seemed to understand it as such. Once he’d walked out of earshot, I asked my brother, “Who was that?”

Paul turned his scowl on me. “Stop playing around back there and keep up. You want to be late?”

He put his headphones back on and began walking again at an even faster pace. I had to just about jog to keep up with him, so that by the time we reached Señora Sandy’s brownstone, I was sweaty under my jacket.

I hesitated at the bottom of the stoop, hoping my brother would come out of his funk and say something nice to me. I thought I must have done something to annoy him, but I couldn’t think what it was and I didn’t know how to fix it. I tried so hard not to be an annoying little sister, but Paul’s bad moods always felt like they were my fault.

“Well?” he snapped. I noticed that he was sweating too—it glimmered subtly at his hairline. And he was fidgeting with his oversized watch, shaking his knee back and forth. I wondered if he had to pee. “You going in or what? Because otherwise, what’d I walk you all the way over here for?”

I didn’t move. I wanted my brother to say something kind, to undo the unpleasant aftertaste his mood had left on the day. But I was sure anything I said would be the wrong thing.

He sighed impatiently, rolled his eyes. He checked his watch, ran a hand over his face. His movements were jerky, like there was something inhuman possessing his body, and it hadn’t yet figured out how to control the muscles smoothly.

“I can’t keep walking you to and from class, you know. I’m busy—I’m working, I’m in college. You need to tell Ma that. You’re big enough now.”

I panicked. If Paul couldn’t walk me to class anymore, then soon he wouldn’t pay for my classes anymore either. And without him paying, I was certain our mother would decide I was done with ballet once and for all. I began to cry.

“Jesus, Cece,” Paul said. He placed one large hand on top of my head, reluctantly comforting. “Come on, stop it. People are going to think I hit you or something.”

“Good,” I cried. “I hope they put you in jail.”

“You do? Why?”

I could hear a little amusement in his voice and it soothed me slightly. He was reemerging, my brother.

“Because you’re mean,” I said.

He nudged at my carefully pinned bun and I ducked my head away from him.

“Look,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about the money, ...