In silence, within a waiting pool of light, we stretch until we touch, fingertip to fingertip. We have danced beyond the end of the music. Dmitri and I hit our marks and reach toward each other.

The music slows and our arms unfold to reduce spin. Dissonance grows as we perform dizzying turns. Near the end of the piece, the other four dancers cut a diagonal slash between Dmitri and me. I long to move others through my dancing because then I, too, am moved. I'm a confluence of muscle and sinew and bone made beautiful through my command of the oldest known language. I fling my boundaries to the back of the house I will be bigger than ever before. Other dancers enter and exit, but I don't yield Dmitri designed their movements to augment the tension made by our bodies. We never touch but are connected by intent, instinct, and strands of sound from violins. Soon our limbs compress, then tug at the space between us. Two: A barely perceptible plié to prepare. Mirror images, we raise our arms to the side, the downward arc from each shoulder creating powerful wings that hover on an imagined breeze. Golden light splashes across the stage, and the music begins. I follow small bits of fluorescent tape across the floor to find my place. We are about to premiere Zephyr, Dmitri's first full-evening work. On the other side of the curtain, eleven hundred people, many of them critics and producers, hush. The work light cuts off, plunging me into darkness. With a wet finger, he grazes a tender spot on my neck, for luck, then disappears among the other bodies awaiting him. Merde.' The half-whisper I remember is intimate Dmitri's breath tickles my ear. When the curtain rises, I will be born anew. Moments of suspension, then-ah, sweet release. My muscles seek aspects of motion: that first impulse. I replay each sweep, rise, and dramatic dip of Dmitri's choreography.

In my mind, I replace the flimsy curtain with a stretch of burgundy velour and relax into its weight.

I close my eyes against this new reality: the bed rails, a constant beeping over my shoulder, and the device clamped to my index finger. My eyes look toward the sound, but I am denied even this small diversion a flimsy curtain hides her. Only motion can soothe me only sweat can wash away my fear.įrom somewhere to my right, I hear an old woman's crackling cough. If my focus weakens, I'll fall prey to larger, hungrier questions. This standoff grows more frightening by the moment. Why has someone covered me so haphazardly? Or-could it be?-that in my dreams, I had somehow moved that foot? I will it to move again-now. It ignores me, as do my hands when I tell them to tend to the situation. I'd settle for inching my foot back beneath the covers. All I can do is lie on this bed, wishing for some small twinge to tell me exactly what is wrong. It's been hours since they promised a doctor, but no one has come.

The art of falling kathryn craft