“His face,”I mouthed back, pointing at Senan as he moved across the stage.
She turned to look, and my focus returned to Brian.
“No,”he gasped, turning to look at me, covering his mouth for a second, scared he’d made a noise, before whispering,“No. This can’t be happening.”
I squinted at him.
“You don’t think that—”
“I do think.”
“Holy shit,”he rasped, the sound strangled, gesturing at Senan with both hands.“They got a principal without a face?”
Well, he had a face; he just didn’t havetheface. He didn’t have a face that made people look at him. He was handsome, if you were into animatronics or plastic, and his form was something, but it was imperative when you were onstage that all your expressions and feelings were telegraphed to the audience. Because yes, ballet was about the dancing, but it was also as much about acting. Spectators, from the front row and all the way up to the rafters, had to see the emotion as well as the extension of arms and legs, hands and feet. We wore makeup that accentuated our features for that exact reason. The audience had to be in awe of the dancing, the execution, but also moved to laughter or tears by that same artist. So yes, flawless technique was vital, but to be able to convey feelings—passion, pain, grief, and especially love—while onstage was what made people bond with the characters, adore them, and more importantly, the individual dancers.
In Senan’s case, “He had the expressiveness,” the critic for theChicago Tribunesaid after attendingThe Prodigal Son, “of a doorstop.” The critic from theSun-Timessaid that “Mannequins in store windows show more depth of emotion than Senan Weaver.” His Romeo, both papers proclaimed after that show, “was duller than dirt.”
Ptolemy Wright, the reporter forDance Magazine, summed it up as: “Between the grimacing and scrunched expressions Senan Weaver shows us onstage, one can only conclude he’s constipated.”
The constipated part didn’t make it into the magazine, but Ptolemy sent me his original copy because we were friends. He knew I wouldn’t show it around, but the fact that it existed at all made me wildly happy. And what did make the article wasn’t much better.Constipatedwould’ve summed things up, but what appeared in print were the wordssoullessandlifeless. That was not good.
I’d contemplated cutting the reviews out and putting them on the main bulletin board that was supposed to be for things like if you needed a roommate or someone to carpool with, but I decided that was unnecessary. I took screenshots on my phone instead and then mentioned the articles to a couple of guys in the corps. They were up on Twitter within the hour.
Several more reviews fromRomeo and Julietdescribed Senan as “a robot that missed not one step, ever” and as someone who “could be counted on to execute choreography and movement flawlessly without even a sliver, a modicum of emotion.” He was devoid of sentiment. His face conveyed nothing but a Stepford wife quality that in the end, Marie Powell, the reporter fromPointe Magazine, said, “reminded me of the shambling husks of people in theWalking Dead.” She went on to say that if one had an idea for a zombie ballet, Senan Weaver was your man.
I’d heard that Lincoln Palmer called her editor, who told him, in the nicest way possible, to go straight to hell. I knew this because she’d told Marc Sanchez, whom she slept with whenever she was in town, and he recounted the story to me the following morning. He laughed at the end.
At dinner with Eli the next evening, I read him more reviews, and I couldn’t stop cackling in between bites of my vegan cassoulet.
“You’re being evil,”he assured me as he ate his kosher beef bourguignon. For some reason, we always ended up going for French food the night after my performances.
I didn’t care. Senan Weaver was an asshole, and a few days later, when I found out that both the reporter forPointe Magazineand the one forDance Magazinehad changed the focus of their articles from him to me, I called to tell Eli.
“You’re never going to learn humility this way,”he teased me.
I was beaming on the other end. It turned out that I would be gracing the cover of one of the magazines in May and the other in June. I’d already graciously thanked them and promised them tickets forSwan Lake Deconstructed.
InRomeo and Juliet, I’d danced the part of Mercutio and received a standing ovation from the crowd. Only the beginning of the next selection had quieted my fans. The reporter for theTribunesaid, “Celso Harrington as Mercutio stole the show with his intelligent, emotional portrayal of Romeo’s doomed friend. His charisma not only inspired those of us fortunate enough to see him, but clearly all the other dancers—save one—who shared the stage with him.”
“I wonder who ‘save one’is?”Maven had cackled as she read the review that Monday in the rehearsal studio.“God, I’d almost feel bad for him if he wasn’t such a prick.”
For the entirety of my career, I’d been praised for my seamless, effortless musicality, the diversity of my roles, the way I made my body appear longer even though I was just over five- eight, my flawless technique, and above all, my breathtaking expressions.
No one could take their eyes off me when I was onstage. My face, everyone said, was perfectly animated, able to convey even the smallest emotion. A lifted eyebrow, a sexy smirk, a quivering lip, or pain. “So much agony,” a reporter from theNew York Timesarts section had said, “in Celso Harrington’s icy blue eyes that he could bring you to tears.” That was my power. I could be heartbreaking one moment and ecstatic the next. I moved people, and the reviewers, all of them, from coast to coast, on every continent, waxed poetic about how the inflections I brought to all my roles were astounding. I was, everyone agreed, a treasure, and the Chicago Ballet Company, and wherever I danced in the off-season, were blessed to have me.
I graciously received all the praise, and yes, I was proud of what I could do and what I’d accomplished. But now, according to Senan, Lincoln Palmer didn’t think I could do his choreography. And not just me, all of us. It was ridiculous. I was going to have to ask questions.
“I’ll be right back,” I announced to Senan and spun around, heading for the door.
Was I surprised that he ran to get out of the room first? Not at all.
“Oh my fucking God,” Luna gasped. “Is he seriously racing you to Lincoln’s office?”
“Whatever you tell them, Cel,” Maven called out, “we’re all with you. I’m so fuckin’ done with this shit, I could puke.”
“Tell Lincoln to fuck all the way off!” Brian thundered after me.
It had been nearly seven months of this now, and we were all at our breaking point. I’d never met anyone, any other dancer, who created the tension Senan did. But worse, in this moment, was the betrayal by Delon Mitchener, our artistic director. How could he allow a visiting choreographer to treat his dancers like this? I was both hurt and furious as I climbed the stairs, and not just for myself. For everyone.