Granny Dan

It was on her fifth day there that Alexei fell ill again, after a small bump he had gotten on his leg while leaving the dinner table, and he was confined to his bed for the next two days. Danina sat with him, telling him stories she remembered from her childhood with her father and brothers, and endless tales of the ballet, the rigorous discipline, and the other dancers. He listened to her for hours, until he fell asleep holding her hand, and she tiptoed slowly away to rejoin the others. She felt so sorry for him, and the cruel limitations his illness imposed on him. He was so unlike her own brothers, or the boys she had trained with at the ballet, who were all so powerful and so healthy.

Alexei was still weak but feeling better when she and Madame Markova left in mid-July, and boarded the Imperial train to return to St. Petersburg. It had been a wonderful vacation, and an unforgettable time in her life that she knew she would remember forever. She would never forget playing with the Imperial family like ordinary friends, and the beauty of the setting, and Alexei trying to teach her to swim, while explaining it to her from a deck chair.

“No, not like that, you silly girl … like this….” He demonstrated the strokes with his arms, while she tried to implement them, and then they both laughed hysterically when she failed and pretended to be drowning.

He wrote to her once at the ballet, a little note, telling her that he missed her. It was obvious that although he was only nine, he had a crush on her. His mother acknowledged it to a friend, with genteel amusement. Alexei was having his first affair with a ballet dancer, at nine, and she was a beauty. But better than that, they knew she was a lovely person. But two weeks after her idyllic stay in Livadia, the entire world was in turmoil, and the sad events in Sarajevo had finally catapulted them into war. And on August first, Germany declared war on Russia. No one thought it would last long, and optimistically assumed the hostilities would end at the Battle of Tannenberg at the end of August, but instead the situation worsened.

Despite the war, Danina danced in Giselle and Coppelia and La Bayadere again that year. Her skill was reaching its peak, and her development and understanding were all that Madame Markova had hoped they would be one day. There was never the slightest element of disappointment in her performance, it was everything it should have been, and more. What she brought to the stage was precisely what Madame Markova had sensed she might, years before. And she had the kind of single-minded dedication and purpose that was essential. Danina allowed for no distractions from what she did. She cared nothing about men, or the world outside the walls of the ballet. She lived and breathed and worked and existed only for dancing. She was the perfect dancer, unlike some of the others, whom Madame Markova viewed with disdain. Despite their impeccable training and whatever talent they had, too often they allowed themselves to be distracted or lured away by men and romance. But to Danina, the ballet was her lifeblood, the force that drove and fed her. It was the very essence of her soul. For Danina, there was nothing else. It was everything she cared about, and lived for. And as a result, her dancing was exquisite.

She gave her best performance that year on Christmas Eve. Her brothers and father were at the front, but the Czar and Czarina were there, and were overwhelmed by the beauty of her dancing. She joined them in their box briefly afterward and asked immediately after Alexei. She gave his mother one of the roses that had been given her, and sent it to him, and Madame Markova noticed that she looked more tired than usual when she returned backstage. It had been a long, exciting evening, and Danina wouldn't have admitted it, but she felt exhausted.

She got up at five the next day, as usual, although it was Christmas Day, and was in the studio warming up by five-thirty. There was no class until noon that day, but she could never bear the idea of missing an entire morning. She was always afraid she would lose some part of her skill, if she wasted half a day, or even let herself be pulled away from it for a minute. Even on Christmas.