Veiled Web

Light Arising July 2010 Word came backstage that the king and queen of Spain had taken their places with the President and First Lady in the audience on the south lawn of the White House. Lucia del Mar waited offstage, in the wings, with the other members of the Martelli Dance Theatre. And then the show began. They first performed selections from Manuel de Falla's Ritual Fire Dance. A man's flamenco solo came next, followed by a lyrical Spanish ballet. Then Lucia was alone on the stage, the audience a wash of color before her, the sky a blue arch overhead. In the breezy golden afternoon, wind tickled her skin. Even a few years ago she could never have imagined she would someday dance for presidents and royalty. To the daughter of a small desert town in New Mexico, this stage had been as far off as the stars. Now, alone before the audience, she froze. The opening chords of Lecuona's Malaguena swept up from the orchestra--and she had no memory of the steps. Nothing. But what her mind forgot, her body remembered. Without conscious thought, she spun into an arched-back turn. Her layered skirt swirled out, gold with red lace. Notes shimmered in a waterfall over her body, and her supple arms swayed above her head. As she moved, her fear evaporated. She skimmed across the stage, lost to the music and the pure, blissful joy of the dance. One by one, the other dancers whirled onto the stage. Then Malaguena slowed, melting into long notes while the dancers shifted in tableaus. Lucia spun among them on her pointe shoes, performing a meld of classical ballet and flamenco. The music built and the dancers built with it, through passage after passage, their steps becoming ever faster, until it seemed Malaguena would lose control. Finally it did, its powerful chords soaring while the dancers exploded across the stage. With a crashing crescendo, the dance thundered to its finish. They were done. And the audience was silent. In the stillness following the last note, Lucia stood rigid on the stage. They had given their all for a stratospherically select audience--and the response was utter, complete silence. Then a tidal wave of sound surged up from the audience and swept over the stage. Suddenly people were on their feet clapping, cheering, shouting "Brava!" After that, Lucia's vision blurred. She felt the tears on her cheeks. Someone put roses in her arms, but the rest was a haze. Her friends later told her she had four curtain calls. Although that terrifying instant of silence, what reporters later called "an awed hush," had felt endless, it actually lasted no more than a few seconds. What she remembered most was relief. They had done their best, and the audience appreciated it. As an artist, it was one of her most gratifying moments. She had no idea then that it might be the last performance of her life. Lucia walked out of the bathroom in her apartment, drying her hair with a towel. She picked up the robe on her bed and slid it on, letting the terry cloth soak up excess water on her body. She felt peaceful, pleased the performance had gone well this afternoon. More than well. She still had a few hours before tonight's dinner. Wishing she had someone to share her success, she gazed at the photograph in a silver frame on her bureau. Her parents smiled in the faded picture: her father, a vaquero, a cowboy who worked the ranches in New Mexico, and her mother, a Spanish teacher. Homesickness brushed her heart. She had grown up in Hachita, population seventy-five, where the desert stretched in great open spaces dusted with sagebrush and mesquite, a land that belonged more to the giant tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and bandolero scorpions than to humans. Its silences embraced the sky. If she stood on a hill and gazed out over the vast land, she could hear the grumble of a truck on a rAsaro, Catherine is the author of 'Veiled Web', published 1999 under ISBN 9780553762709 and ISBN 0553762702.