“Dear Melba Cortez:
“I was seven years old when my parents enrolled me in your school. I was nine when we moved to the suburbs. It was then that I made my final (and finest) leap across the stage ...”
The Melba Cortez School of Dance nestled comfortably in an unremarkable office building in downtown Chicago. Although it must have had an elevator, I only remember a staircase from the ballet classes on the fourth floor, which I loved, to the tap dance studio on the fifth floor, which I hated. Tap was taught by a handsome, haggard middle-aged man who was not haggard until I got there. I was not his favorite student.
When I and the other aspiring Princess Auroras were between classes, we sat on the steps in the stairwell landing. It had a window, always opened, that looked out on a rusty fire escape. The stairs, window, and fire escape make up as big a part of my memories of those dance lessons as does Melba Cortez herself.
She was a stout, graceless woman, except when she was teaching us a new step, a new position, a new way to curve our arms or hold our hands. Then, even though she did not become less stout or more attractive, she somehow became a perfect conduit for “essence of dance.”
Melba Cortez, the polished wood floor of her studio, the tiny set of bleachers on which parents sat when they waited for their children, the wide windows overlooking Lake Michigan, the length of bars at which we practiced our extensions…all are part of my memories of the school. But none are as vivid as the dressing room, because only there were little girls like me allowed to intermingle with the older dancers – exotic creatures 14, 15, sometimes even 16 years old, who were tall and slim and who danced like angels. They wore their hair pulled back into dramatic buns, and their passion, dedication, and love for their art made them as exquisitely diaphanous as a pastel pink fairytale dream.
I would devour them with my eyes.
They sat on benches opposite open lockers; their bodies casually balanced on one hip as they lifted an opposite leg and held out a delicate slipper to insert a foot.
That was when I first saw the battered toes on the feet of these luminous creatures. The toes. Oh, the toes! Blistered. Calloused. Sometimes bleeding.
In contrast, my toes were perfect ... my level of commitment reflected by those dull pristine little stubs on my feet.
I envied the older dancers their battle scars. I was jealous of the bruises. Jealous of the blood.
