Prima Donna
Authors: Karen Swan
For Anders You know why. Don’t forget it.
Prologue
She pulled on the black leotard that had been handed to her when she’d enrolled. It was a size too small and it pulled over the bust, but it didn’t matter. She
looked like a proper ballerina. She slipped the satin ballet shoes on her feet – they were still warm from the previous girl’s audition – and tightened the ribbon for a better
fit. It was the first time she’d ever worn ballet shoes and she pointed her toes, admiring how her feet looked in them.
The double doors to the audition room opened and she looked up as another five girls came out. It was like that every ten minutes. Five girls in, five girls out. There were literally thousands
of people milling about; she’d overheard someone saying twenty thousand kids had come to audition for the eighty places. She tried not to panic about it. She could never have imagined that so
many people would come – that she wasn’t the only one looking for a way out to a better life.
Many of the girls were busying themselves with impressive displays of stretching that were intended to psych out their neighbours just as much as to warm their muscles.
She pointed her own toes and admired her feet again. To think – pink satin on her feet! For once, they looked so pretty. They didn’t usually look pretty. They usually looked
bloodied, blistered and dusty as she desensitized them by standing on river rocks and clambering barefoot over mountain scree.
She looked up and saw her brother walking towards her, back in his Sunday Best. The boys’ auditions had been held all morning.
‘How did it go?’ she asked as he dropped his basket on the floor and slid down the wall, tucking his knees up.
He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t turn my legs round.’
‘You mean your turn out?’
He shrugged again.
‘It’s okay. You’re only eight. They wouldn’t expect you to be able to do much technically yet. They’re just looking to see whether you’ve got the right body
type and any musicality,’ she reassured, squeezing him to her.
The boy rested his chin on his knees and sighed. He missed Mamma already. ‘How come you know all these words?’
It was her turn to shrug. ‘It’s our escape ticket. I need to know as much about it as possible.’ She looked around at all the children buzzing up and down the corridor. Anyone
wandering in off the streets would think it was an orphanage.
‘What will happen if we don’t get in?’ he asked her, resting his cheek on his knee and looking up at her.
‘That’s not going to happen. We’ve prepared for this.’ She tried to keep her voice even. She wondered how many others among the children had had only a book illustrating
ballet steps from which to learn. He didn’t know yet they weren’t going back, that if they couldn’t make a home in here, they’d have to make it on the streets.
A door opened and strains of Tchaikovsky filtered through.
‘Hear that?’ she grinned, full of the optimism of youth. ‘Our lives are going to be filled only with music and beauty from now on. We’re on our way.’
His big limpid eyes blinked. She heard her name called.
‘Wish me luck,’ she said, leaning over and kissing the top of his head. She breathed in his scent and held him close for a moment. ‘Stay here and don’t go anywhere. I
won’t be long.’
She ran to the door and it closed with a sigh behind her.
She never saw him again.
‘
Da!
Leave me, I’ll do it,’ she said, her accent thickening with impatience, as the dresser struggled to find the front of the tutu. This one,
whisper-pink with real diamonds sewn into the tulle layers, had a thong attached,
carnivale
style, at her specific behest. She stepped into it, completely oblivious to being half naked in
front of a roomful of strangers.
She slipped her arms through the ribbon straps for the overscaled tulle wings and jiggled her breasts in the balconette bra. She admired her reflection in the mirror. The audience wouldn’t
even notice the pink diamonds on the million-dollar bra. No one worked a tutu like Pia Soto.
‘Miss Soto, if you’re ready . . .’ the dresser said nervously, frightened of upsetting the notoriously temperamental diva. She motioned towards the director, who was standing
at the top of the steps by the stage, a mic wired to his ear and a clipboard in his hand. His face wore a calm smile, but his fingers were twitching against his thigh and she could see the terror
in his eyes. Just ten more feet. Ten more feet, then she’d be on the runway, the finale would be underway and he could run screaming for the Seychelles.
Pia pointed her four-inch stilettoed foot and checked the pink ribbons that were criss-crossed all the way up her thighs, then walked towards the eight-foot-square white glittering box, held
together by a giant pink satin ribbon. She looked sensational.
She stepped into it and the director shut the door behind her, as relieved as a prison warder to have his charge behind bars. He placed his hand to his ear and spoke to the DJ. Expertly,
seamlessly, the familiar tinkling of the Sugar Plum Fairy began to thread into the funk of ‘Superfreak’ as the box was mechanically levered up through the trapdoor in the stage.
Inside the box, Pia placed her foot on the taped square, and assumed the position. As the box reached stage level the footplate began to revolve smoothly. Outside, she could hear the scantily
clad models lining up on each side of the box, hands on each other’s hips as they played tug of war with the ribbon.
She heard the bow give, and the sides of the box fell down, bringing the audience to their feet as they saw the baddest and most brilliant ballerina in the world
pirouette
before them
like their very own music-box fairy.
Pia rotated four times, letting them absorb the bombshell body that was usually hidden beneath tights and classical costumes and some inappropriate lover. Although, at five foot five, she
wasn’t tall, she had a figure that was rarely seen on
pointe
. For a start, most of her sixty-five inches were in her limbs – long slight arms that, with the tiniest movement of
her wrist and fingers, could phrase a feeling better than any poet; and lithe lean legs she could famously lift and hold at 180 degrees.
But it was her curves, squeezed closely together on a tiny torso, which so scandalized the purists of the ballet world and had
Sports Illustrated
begging her to do their swimwear cover.
Her C cup threatened to spill out of every tutu, something she actively encouraged by insisting on designing her own costumes. And her handspan waist – which the male dancers loved to
encircle when lifting her – sat atop an unashamedly high and rounded butt. ‘My Brazilian heritage,’ she would exclaim, defiantly. ‘What do you want me to do about it? Stop
dancing so that you don’t have to look at it?’
The cheers bounced off the walls as she stepped out of the
pirouette
and stalked ferociously down the Victoria’s Secret runway like a tiger in the grass – chin down,
glass-green eyes glittering, her mane of tawny hair blowing wildly behind her.
Hands on hips, feet apart, she stood at the end, staring past the white-hot lights she was so used to. The slick Manhattan crowd roared with delight as ticker tapes fell from the ceiling and the
other models, as gangly as giraffes by comparison, lined up behind her.
She knew she’d be on every front page tomorrow morning. Just like she knew her artistic director, Monsieur Baudrand, would be on the phone first thing, bawling her out. He’d
specifically vetoed this type of event. ‘Charity or not, it is no good for the image of the company,’ he had shouted, pushed to breaking point by his young star, who acted more like a
pop singer than a principal dancer.
There was no doubt she had done more to raise ballet’s profile and introduce it to a younger audience than anyone since Rudolf Nureyev. She had single-handedly sexed it up. Performances by
the Chicago City Ballet Company (ChiCi) were sold out a year in advance because of her and they were being invited to tour all over the world.
Pia Soto may have been only twenty-four but she was already an international sex symbol, and the face of everything from Chanel Allure Parfum, Chloé and Tod’s to Adidas, Patek
Philippe and Lancôme. Her airtight contract meant she couldn’t endorse anything that undermined ballet’s prim image but, even with that restriction in place, what she earned in
sponsorship deals dwarfed her dancing salary, giving her financial independence from the company and the power to behave like a brat. The tail was well and truly wagging the dog.
Backstage now, the atmosphere was electric. All the tension that had suffocated the room just minutes earlier had released into laughter and expansive spirits. Champagne corks were going off
like party poppers, and boyfriends and journalists trooped backstage for telephone numbers and sound bites.
‘You! Keep them away, will you?’ Pia ordered the dresser, who had – mistakenly – assumed all the hard work was over. The director was nowhere to be seen, but paparazzi
flashbulbs were going off.
Turning her back, Pia untied her shoes’ silken bondage straps and shimmied out of the priceless bra and tutu, quickly pulling on the silky body stocking she’d arrived in. She
smoothed some black leg warmers all the way up her long legs and stuffed her feet into some battered Uggs, as Sophie dashed over, checking her watch.
‘You’ve got nine minutes,’ she said, picking up the diamond-encrusted bra from the floor and handing it to a security guard.
Pia nodded, grabbing a hairbrush and bashing out the backcombing the hairstylist had perfected only ten minutes before. She winced as the brush caught in the tangles.
Sophie took the brush from her, and spritzing some detangler onto her hair she began expertly smoothing the thick, wavy, toffee-coloured mane that seemed to colour-match Pia’s skin. With a
small, straight nose, sparkling light green eyes and pillowy lips that retained an adolescent pinkness, she wasn’t just a precocious talent – she was a notable beauty too. It was little
wonder American
Vogue
had just put her on their cover.
In the mirrors, Sophie could see her own copper ringlets bouncing up and down like Bo Peep’s. She personally bankrolled the John Frieda haircare empire with her mass-volume buys of serum,
trying to keep her frizz under control, and she knew her pale Irish complexion was only ever going to have the ‘interesting’ gig going on. Aged twenty-two, she had been a lanky five
foot eleven since she was twelve, and still had no bum or bust to speak of. It wasn’t that she was unattractive – far from it – but compared to the exotic promise of Pia Soto,
Sophie O’Farrell felt as plain as they came.