Chapter 13: Backstage at the Ballet

One day I received an engraved invitation at our agency's office. It indicated that I was invited, as a "World Class Patron" of the National Ballet Company of Capitallia, to a special ballet event for patrons only. It was to be an "Un-Dress Rehearsal" of the company's upcoming performance of "La Fille Mal Gardee" (The Girl Who Is Not Well Guarded). Well of course I knew what a "dress rehearsal" was but I had never heard of an undress rehearsal, so I read on. It seemed that during this very special rehearsal, open to patrons, that all the dancers would dance naked. This was in part to condition the dancers to performing nude since the company was working on another ballet where they would actually perform naked before the general public. It was also intended as a special treat for patrons to show the company's appreciation for our financial support.

It was an evening rehearsal. On the day of the event I arrived an hour early, as I wanted to go backstage and meet some of the dancers. At the stage door Zeke, the doorman, recognized me immediately.

"Good evening, Mr. Steelforth!" he exclaimed as he waived me past the stage door checkpoint. "If you came to see the dancers I can tell you most of them are up in the second floor rehearsal room doing their warm-ups."

As I entered I heard the cacophony of excited voices and other sounds one can always hear backstage at any theater before a performance. I also smelled the familiar aroma of greasepaint from the nearby makeup room where some of the dancers were getting their faces done. I wondered if they would apply some sort of greasepaint to their whole bodies since they would be performing nude. I passed the open rear door to the stage and saw briefly that scenery was being moved into position and a couple of technicians were checking out the focus on lighting instruments. I could see the full depth of the stage from the rear and beyond that into the lighted empty auditorium, as neither the Act Curtain nor the fire curtain was down as yet.

I headed up the stairs to the second floor rehearsal room. Most of the dancers were here as Zeke had said. They were not naked but attired in the leotards and tights they would normally wear for classes and rehearsals. The room was setup like dance studios everywhere — mirrored walls and the inevitable barre running most of the way around the room. The barre resembled a handrail attached to the mirrored walls and was set at a height that dancers could use it as both a hand rest and a leg rest in their warm up exercises. As I moved about the room dancers would greet me warmly.

"Mr. Steelforth" they would say "we are so glad you could make it to this special performance! We appreciate so much your generous support for our company!"

Many of these dancers knew me well from earlier visits I had made to their rehearsals. Those who had not met me personally before had evidently been briefed about my support for the company. They all regarded me as their sugar daddy.

I looked for Vivian Morentzy — the accomplished young lead dancer slave I had rescued from degrading pole dance work in a bar six months earlier. She was nowhere to be seen. Since she would be playing the lead in today's rehearsal I assumed she had a private dressing room and was preparing there.

I did see one naked dancer at the other end of the room and recognized her right away as Jennifer Maisten, the slave I had seen unconsciously masturbating at the SlendaBond training facility in the cylinder room. I walked right up to her, introduced myself and began fondling her breasts and nipples. Jennifer seemed to regard it as purely routine that I should do this. She was well trained. The Artistic Director of the company had told me that I might do this with any of the enslaved dancers.

I stood and watched Jennifer and the others go through their warm up routines. They were so elegant as they assumed all the classical ballet positions. Although Jennifer was otherwise naked, she did have on her toe shoes and leg warmers and was standing in fourth position 'en pointe'. As she raised first one leg and then the other to the barre, I could not help myself from caressing her long slender legs and buttocks. I asked her if this was her full time job now. She replied that this was her second job and that her day job was at Masterson Automotive as a psychological consultant.

"Oh, then perhaps you know Stephanie Glenn?" I asked.

"Yes indeed. Steph and I work on the same project team at Masterson and she also works here at the theater evenings. The lighting designer needed an all around assistant and gopher so he arranged with Masterson for her to work here evenings. You can probably find her somewhere backstage now if you wanted to talk to her."

I decided to check out what was going on down on the stage and perhaps look for Stephanie. I had only a short while before the performance. As I was coming back down the stairs from the second floor rehearsal room I ran into the choreographer of today's performance. He seemed to know who I was and introduced himself as Leonard Morrison. We shook hands.

"I have been quite curious, Mr. Morrison, about one thing. What is it like to work with enslaved dancers? How is that different than working with your free dancers?"

"There are a number of interesting differences" he replied. "For one thing we can keep an enslaved dancer in a state of sexual tension most of the time. We find this most advantageous when dealing with the female dancers. The sexual tension seems to add an extra dimension to their performances. Then too, we can also use sexual relief as a kind of reward for a job well done. With our male dancers we find it advantageous to almost always give them sexual relief just before a performance."

"What about corporal punishment?" I asked.

"We can do that too within certain limits prescribed by law. Generally if I am very disappointed in a dancer and feel he or she is not performing up to the level I require I can use the quirt I carry at all times to administer a sharp reprimand to the naked buttocks of an enslaved dancer. Naturally we cannot do this with our free dancers."

"Another thing would be the freedom I have to position a slave dancer the way I want her to stand. I can put my hands on any part of her body to guide her into the exact position I seek. With the free dancers I have to spend a lot of time talking them into the position I want."

"Thank you Mr. Morrison. I know you have much on your mind and won't take up any more of your time."

As I entered the door to the back of the stage a red light was blinking and a technician shouted a heads up warning. I heard the purr of electric motors and looked above me. I could see that the huge wrap around cyclorama, or 'cyc' as it was known, was being gradually lowered from way above stage level down to ground level position. This would form the sky backdrop for most scenes. As soon as it touched the stage floor I made my way around the far end of it toward stage right. From here I could see that the fire curtain was down and could hear a murmur of audience voices on the other side. Evidently they had opened the house while I had been upstairs. It was apparent that a rather elaborate set had also been rolled into position.

Just then I saw a strange sight. All of the hundreds of lighting instruments overhead were being tested in some pattern or sequence. Sharply defined beams of light punched through the darkness to illuminate every point on the stage from every possible overhead position or angle. Even as I watched I could see that many of these instruments were being re-directed or refocused or having their tints changed — all by some form of remote control. I looked around and could not see anyone doing this. Things had certainly changed since I took a technical theater course in college. Back in the day lighting instruments were bulky and hot and adjusting them meant someone having to climb a tall ladder. I asked the technician about this and also where I might find Stephanie Glenn. He said that Frank Matters, the lighting designer was doing all this pre-rehearsal checkout of the lights from his studio office and that Stephanie, his assistant, was with him. He pointed me toward a door in one rear corner of the stage.

I found myself in an office with an elaborate miniature mockup of the real set and hundreds of extremely tiny lighting instruments that seemed to echo all the real lighting instruments out on the stage. There was Frank Matters at his desk at a lighting control console and a very naked Stephanie next to him taking notes. One of his hands was resting affectionately on her naked thigh.

"Ah, Mr. Steelforth!" He spun around in his chair when he heard me enter. Stephanie looked startled and amazed to see me here of all places. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you. We have heard so much about your generous contributions that have kept this company afloat. If there is anything we can do to make your visit more pleasurable, just name it!"

"Actually I had been wanting to say hello to Stephanie since I had a little time before curtain and she and I go back a ways, don't we Miss Glenn?"

"Yes, Mr. Steelforth, we certainly do!" she said. I could see her face starting to flush and noted increased muscular tension in her neck and shoulders.

"I understand you are Frank's assistant now, Stephanie. How did that come about? I thought accounting was your field?"

"Jennifer Maisten and I work together" Stephanie replied. "We work days over at Masterson Automotive. One night she persuaded me to come watch one of her evening rehearsals and my master agreed. Mr. Matters had been looking for a lighting operator and gopher and decided he would like to have me. So he called Masterson and they agreed to send me over here every evening to assist him in any way that he might desire."

"So what do you do here exactly?" I asked.

"Stephanie is my lighting operator." Frank quickly interjected. "She sits at a control console on an elevated open platform just inside the back wall of the auditorium. From there she can see everything."

"Does she work naked in full view of the audience?"

"No. I decided that might be too distracting. So I usually issue her a cutoff t-shirt and a pair of short shorts when she is working in the auditorium. When she is back here with me I like to keep her naked."

"Frank, I had a little exposure to lighting when I was in college. Just enough to be dangerous. We learned about lighting for plays. Would you say that lighting for dance is different?"

"Very much so" he replied. "With dance performances we are concerned with what we call 'plasticity'. That means we must use light to bring out the three dimensional qualities of each dancer's body, so that the audience can experience each dancer as a kind of living sculpture. Now that we are starting to have naked performances we have even more of a challenge. The patrons now want to see every detail clearly, the line of a leg, the voluptuousness of a bared buttock or breast, the form of muscles, tendons, bone structures. They even want to see clearly the details of each dancer's genitalia. With the technology we have today we can use computer software to insure that lighting accents move around to follow the dancers, and that the most interesting parts are always accented, no matter what position or pose the dancer strikes."