She moved with confidence and grace, alternating between walking and galloping as she moved. Occasionally, she turned around herself, allowing the skirt to billow beneath her once more. Once back in her original position, she repeated that contrast once more, sharpness followed by more playful leaps.
The last few notes were played by Anisa as the piece finally ended. She didn’t know if she had ever played that intensely ever before. But, she knew that it worth it for both herself and for Zhanna if it had gone well. It felt like her spirit and mind had finally returned into her body after those nearly three long minutes of pure concentration. The only sensations that she had felt were her fingers reaching and pressing down upon the keys. But, the rest of her body’s aches and pains seemed to finally come back to her as if her brain finally reconnected to the rest of her nerves.
While Anisa had felt sensations as her fingers came down upon the piano, the rest of the sensations had seemed to be cut off to her. The aches throughout her bones and muscles came upon her almost suddenly, filling her brain with the idea that maybe she needs to stretch those out now. She could start to feel the sweat all over her skin, coming from between her fingers, uncomfortably beneath her blouse, pants, and hijab, and sweating down from underneath her hijab to gather on her forehead before dripping down to the rest of her face and body.
She didn’t understand how she’s sweating so much when she has only been sitting down for the past ten minutes compared to Zhanna’s frequent movements. But, she guesses that she was frantically moving her upper body around as to match and keep up with the movements of her friend. As the pianist and the main instrumentist for Zhanna’s dancing, she was just as responsible for setting up the pace of Zhanna’s dancing through her use of tempo. The way of the dancer and the musician is one of being mutual towards each other. The movements of one directly affects the music of the other as each tries to match up with their partner. If one goes slow, then the other follows.
While each piece of music has an expected tempo on the sheet, it can be ultimately decided by the pianist and the dancer which tempo they want to choose. And that can be even more true when outside forces don’t try to press atop on and sever the relationship for their own perceived visions of how this type of pair should operate. The relationship is a symbiotic one and when outside, unnatural forces get in the way of that relationship, those forces are their own self-destruction when the people in that relationship respond with seemingly irrational words and feelings towards them.
If you remove all the flowers from a field, why should one be shocked when the honeybees and the rest of the pollinators cause what could only be unnatural chaos for the removal of that staple of their natural order?
When one encourages this relationship, they should be working on strengthening the already-existing bond, as the mutualistic benefits come through to all parties impacted by the dancer and the pianist, one the star on the stage and the other the backbone behind the scenes, even more than the percussion section can be. But somehow, the ones in power seem to disregard these backbones as replaceable pieces as something that is easily replicated by others put upon with the same, required relationship.
Zhanna always speaks on this in those mantras she says to herself, the ones that the Bolshoi Academy has placed in her head. They don’t seem to care about the damage they have brought upon her and if they notice that damage, they will say that she is the truly faulty one when they are the source of her mental pain. They are the source of her anxiety and her soon-to-be-possible depression. The thing that they have, the one that is viewed as replaceable, is born solely because of the mental pain and anguish that the ones around them have wrought on them. Not so much their families as indicated by how happy Zhanna is everytime she gets to call them, or she gets a letter from them.
But, their mental pain and anguish is viewed as a steppingstone to be the ‘greats’ as their teachers or superiors keep reiterating. Why are they the ones who have to keep suffering? They say that they have to suffer to be greats. But, their lives are full of hardships, not just because that’s what life does, but because of who they are.
While Zhanna was in her element when she was learning with people with similar life experiences to her, which doesn’t negate what could be seen as brainwashing, it’s not the same hardships as her life being trained her in Milan. Being trained in a country that is not far from one that turned her now independent country into their own colonial protectorate. The fear of what she has on her head and what that represents to them. All she wants to do is learn, to pursue her passion, to become what she believes to be her best version of herself.
But, she has to not show weakness to people that she should be allowed to because she is the one who is judged more harshly. That sentiment is what her and Zhanna have clasped onto here in Italy as outsiders, as foreigners. If Zhanna ever messed up a step like she did earlier in front of her ballet mistress, she would have been yelled at, somehow the scolding being seem as helpful and not as harmful as it is to her. It’s almost as if they are pushing at them to quit and if they ultimately do, they will fake it as not being their fault, despite everything that is shown to Anisa to have been their fault in that matter.
