dance me away
“Miriam Gallante is Broadway’s hottest new star. She took acting and dancing at Juliard in New York and is a fresh new face out of college. Her first large part, and first musical in New York’s Broadway, is in the musical Chicago when she was switched to playing the main role the last week before the show because the previous actress had fallen during rehearsals and broke her ankle. Come on out Miriam.”
The crowd cheered adoringly and a thin blond woman came out waving and blowing kisses to the adoring audience.
“Well first off, welcome to the show.”
“Thank you.”
“What got you started on your career? What made you want to be an actress in musicals?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a dancer for as long as I can remember. I used to love to sing, too. My mom said I would always make such a noise in the shower that the neighbors could hear me. Well, she never had the window open when I sang at any rate. I took a couple lessons and got better and eventually started singing and dancing at school musicals and other small auditions around town. I never thought it would get this big. It was just something I liked to do.”
Felicia turned off the TV in disgust and threw the remote back down on the couch. Luck, she thought as she stepped up the small step to her kitchen to pour another cup of coffee. When the coffee didn’t drown out her sorrows, she picked up her violin and started to play, slowly engrossing herself enough to dance to her own music. Her mind flew from being on stage and whirling as the Sugar Plum fairy to playing violin in the humid heat of Cairo. She relived the countless auditions and with particular vigor, the acceptance letter into the Joffrey Ballet. She went on the road trip again with her friends traveling on the band bus across the country on tour. But when the song was finished, she still could not get the dry feeling out of her mouth of not appearing as these stars in interviews. She could not erase the feeling of worthlessness and her thoughts of I’ve done everything newsworthy and unusual from her stomach, even when she resorted to a little wine from the freezer.
She drove down to the studio armed with a boom box and dance shoes and snuck into the back door. The stage was still there with the luscious velvet seats and she put on her shoes and set the boom box on the piano. “Play me anything,” she told it and pressed the search key for a couple seconds. The radio stations were cooperating for once and she danced to every random song that played, switching stations when the other one stopped for commercials. With every spin and jump the anger and guilt melted away and she spun and kicked it around on the stage. Sweat was pouring down her face when she sat down at the piano and played and sung to other songs on the radio. Then, feeling satisfied, she left the studio and drove back to her apartment to start cooking dinner.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Realistic Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.