Part 4

I cannot say that our lives continued at the intensity of those first few weeks. My rugby and dance seemed to develop in tandem and the rugby coaches began to chat to Madame Fabre about my experiences with dance in rugby training in England, but nothing had come of it yet.

Madame brought a male dance teacher she knew in from Carcassonne to help me develop the skills I needed to do the lifts of Laurence. He was rather non-plussed by my small height but we worked together over a number of weeks. I found the lifts easier after his help. He didn't feel that I would ever be able to lift a 'full size' ballerina; but as I only intended to lift Laurence it didn't matter.

With athletics, homework, rugby, homework, dance and more homework you can imagine that there was little time to keep one's pulse on the heartbeat of the school. Laurence and I were just too busy, but as the rugby season finished and athletics started in earnest, we were building up to the dance production a few days before the end of the school year. Laurence and I had fully choreographed two pieces of a little over 3 minutes each. They had taken many hours of very hard work in front of the gimlet eye of Madame Fabre to hone them to the perfection needed.

Usually the sale of dance tickets was rather sluggish and the bulk of the tickets were sold to parents or friends of the dancers. It was with some amazement that all the 60 available tickets in the dance studio were sold within the first day. A delighted Madame Fabre moved the performance to the sports hall that would take an audience of several hundred, even with the empty space in the middle for the dancers.

It seemed as if the whole school were there, but obviously they weren't. Even at this late stage Laurence and I were happily oblivious of the reasons for the influx of fee paying visitors to the dance production. It was only when Madame Fabre introduced her colleague who had helped me, and the artistic directors of both very well known theatres in neighbouring cities that the penny began to drop. I looked at Laurence and she looked at me. They had come to see us!

It was perhaps fortuitous that the younger performers took the stage first. We had a chance to savour the anticipation of the performance. What could go wrong. Laurence looked ravishing in her skintight multi-hue dance outfit that matched my own. Make up enhanced the effect. Polite applause followed the performances of the younger girls and it was our turn to end the first half.

Laurence's hair shone, her eyes reflected the stage lights that lit the auditorium. This was her element, her raison d'être. I was her foil. Tuned by empathy and practice. Science and Mathematics meant nothing now. Spoken languages and literature sank into insignificance. The familiar music introducing Sofia Mestari's song found us balanced; anticipating eagerly like falcons poised for the stoop. Just a slight draft moved the hem of Laurence's gauze skirt, which enhanced the body suit that revealed nothing and revealed everything.

But then we were away. The audience faded. The hall faded. The music was all, and the gamine shed the last of her down and took flight. She seemed to float effortlessly like dandylion seeds in a zephyr of a breeze. We were as one, yet apart, a synergy in motion. Was it three minutes or three hours? It could have been any length of time, but the heaving of tired lungs, of fatigue in limb and emotional overload brought us back to reality. As the music faded away we held hands in the silence, bowing and curtsying together in the silence.

After two heartbeats of silence, pregnant with meaning, the hall erupted. Applause, cheers, whistles and stamping continued for too long. Way too long. We didn't deserve this. Our main piece came at the end of the second act. How could we better this? Incroyable!

As planned, the glare of the lighting faded somewhat, and we were able to escape to the relative anonymity of the dance studio, which was being used as a collection area for all the dancers. The younger dancers had not seen our performance, but had heard the noise. They enquired politely about our dance and were satisfied that all had gone well. We just sat in the glow of success with a glass of Evian, carrying out our warm down in the comfort of routine.

What now, was the unspoken question? An extended embrace, intense with shared emotion then a gentle physical reminder from a mother that we needed a shower and clean dance suits for the second half. Laurence disappeared with a shower cap, and her bag to try not to undo the two hours work it have taken the coiffeuse to set her hair, and I just got the shower after removing my makeup.