Viktor waited for the liquor to warm him throughout before he approached the bench. It was the only way he felt just brave enough short of stupid to lift the cover, dance his fingers over the keys. They were still so stiff – his fingers. He’d warmed them and cooled them, made fists and extended them fully, and they still wouldn’t always act on command. A smarter man, with more of a spine, might have blamed his father. He was, after all, the one who put the bottle through Viktor’s hand – no matter what the fever dreams and self-hatred said in the late, or early hours. No, Viktor had fashioned the resentment into an albatross of his own, hanging limp and heavy from his neck.
His fingers ghosted over the keys, soft and hesitant, like meeting a lover after so many months apart. And that’s what this was – wasn’t it? His first love: music, the piano, story through song. A whole world in percussion, the soft tap against taut string. Viktor loved women – and men, when he was feeling bold – but nothing so much as he loved the piano. Carefully, his fingers formed chords over the keys, but he withheld from pressing down. Silence could be many things: dangerous, suffocating. Tonight it was precious, a precipice Viktor stepped towards and curled his toes over. He had not touched a piano in months – more months than the space when his mother died. Nothing scared him more than the thought of sitting here, sheet music opened, unable to even run a scale.
With tender, aching hands, Viktor began to play.
Trigger warnings for: implied suicide, car accidents, violence and drug abuse
Viktor is born at the edge of the world. That is to say, he’s born in the last few breaths of the year, on the eastern most fingertip of the Soviet Union’s outstretched hand. He’s born screaming, and largely stays that way, a fussy child from the early hours onward. He hasn’t yet learned what that means for him, the son of a military man and school teacher. What it means to grow sideways, bent like a houseplant, in a home of strict rules and steady voices.
It’s not all quiet and somber silence, though it often feels that way. In the dark hours, when Viktor is tucked into bed and his door firmly shut, his mother indulges. In music, mostly – operas and concertos, Soviet and Western. Often in these moments she will rifle through her books, read herself to sleep. Viktor, for his part, is lulled near nightly by the gentle whispers of instruments he doesn’t yet know the name for.
He asks one evening, when his father is away and his mother has dusted off the record player in the last few minutes of waning daylight. He peers over her shoulder as she rifles through the records, musing softly to herself. When the music is playing, a glass of something dark and forbidden is in his mother’s hand, Viktor grows brave and asks what the music is. Where it came from, who wrote it, what it means. In the hours of indulgence, Viktor’s mother gives him this, too: music and theater and opera, symphony and art and stories. Very late one night, she cracks open the ancient upright sagging in the corner, brings her son’s small hands to the ivory keys, and neither acknowledge the way Viktor’s father huffs from the smokey kitchen.
When Vitkor is 12, the music cuts short. A car accident, the authorities say on the snowy doorstep, Viktor once again peeking over his father’s broad shoulders. Dangerous conditions, nothing to be done. Later, Viktor will wonder if driving down a road his mother had come through a thousand times could be an accident, if the way she kissed him in the morning, held him a beat too long, could be anything except goodbye. The funeral is a somber, silent affair. The upright gets older, untouched; the records packed away, the player sold.
Viktor pulls his first trigger not four months later, behind the house facing the dense wood. His fingers are shaking of cold and hunger and mostly nerves, but his face is cool and impassive as his father’s. He misses every can, bowl, and bottle, and stays out past dark, until he finally he hears the first, victorious ding.
They strike a silent bargain, the remaining Vasylenkos: Viktor continues his shooting practice, and he may be permitted to learn music in school. The upright goes untouched, the home a memorial to music. But in the daylight, surrounded in cinderblock, Viktor learns to play. His fingers are clumsy and undisciplined – he is, after all, still a terrible shot. The music is not like his mother’s, not beautiful or wonderful; no story to it. Not yet.
You see, it’s a hard thing to shake Viktor from something he’s set his mind to. He is not so married to the military lifestyle, but it is a means to an end. And so as he graduates from minuets and sonatinas, advances towards concertos and preludes, so too does he drag his marksmanship behind him, like cans banging behind his bumper. Like water coming to a boil, Viktor bursts through concerts and competitions. His father remains unconvinced, even in the faces of awards and accomplishments, newspaper articles and photographers at the front door. It’s not an honorable career, the arts, not nearly so much as the military, so much as serving your country.
Viktor comes home late, one evening, smelling of celebration and liquor and women. He forgets, for a moment, how quiet the house is at night, and promptly shatters the silence. His father’s been drinking, too, see – and neither of them can quite keep their words to themselves. Tensions are rising with Japan, his father says, they’ll need new boots and guns in the coming months. Not again, sighs Viktor, haven’t they done this already? He has a real shot at a career, at leaving for Leningrad, making great music, making his mother proud.
He doesn’t quite remember how the bottle went through his hand. Perhaps his hand went through the bottle? He remembers the neck of it his father’s fist, knuckles white, and then the bloody mess on the floor, Viktor’s skin in ribbons, red on the tile.
There’s a finality to the quiet, now; less a blanket and more a death shroud. Viktor’s hand is shattered, and his prospects. Money grows thin in their pockets, food stale and scarce in the cupboards. It’s then, in the hazy hours of the night, sluggish from rage and pain, that Viktor hears the music. Not his own, the jagged unfinished compositions or imitations of others far greater than him. He hears his mother’s music, drifting up and under the cracks of his bedroom door. It’s impossible, of course. The records are gone, the upright salvaged for parts. Still, Viktor falls asleep to the smell of amber drink and the final notes of Winter in Four Seasons.
Except, the music never quite stops. It slows and quiets, or hastens and grows louder, but no, it never goes quiet again. Viktor was not one to believe in ghosts, and yet. More than once he’d come downstairs in the night, eyes clouded with sleep, expecting to see – well, not his mother, but the evidence of her. A glass on the end table, stained with lipstick. Her books, long gone, spread out on the floor.
It is certainly a strange type of haunting, one that follows Viktor through the months of painful healing. He doesn’t speak much, almost afraid of what might come out of him if he does. He must be mostly music now, if not half a ghost. With no way to let it out, Viktor has let it fill him up, let it threaten to swallow him whole. He goes mad his last night before he leaves for Leningrad – a position in the concert hall, not particularly glamorous, but promised by a pitying former colleague – turns his whole room on its head. It doesn’t help; nothing seems to.
The first days in Leningrad are filled with cleaning stages and instruments. It’s mindless, thankless work, but it lines his pockets. Practice, in the quiet hours, is slow and unsteady. Viktor’s fingers ache before an hour is through. Ice baths help, and the medicine helps more, but it will be months before he can play a full piece in one go.
It’s a close thing, surrender. Viktor has done it many times in his life – mostly to his father. It’s close again, as his hands fail him and his job cuts at him each day. Victories are small, but precious. A full sonatina. A spare conversation with the first violinist. Slowly, the path begins to right itself. Viktor has spent almost two year in Leningrad before he is once again seated at a piano before a crowd. He’s never had to audition for a job position, not in Vladivostok, and now he feels he might faint under the lights. Pianist, for the Bolshoi? How could he begin to think such a thing, let alone believe it.
The job is his, but not without consequences. He moves to Moscow. There’s constant pain following him like a second unwelcome ghost. The doctors write him prescriptions, more with each week, but it only seems to numb the rest of him, dull him to the simple ache of living but not the failures of his father’s affection – no matter how many Viktor swallows in one go. Beneath the pain, there is a flicker of something new and unfamiliar. Something uncomfortable, strange, but not entirely unwanted.
“This will not be an end,” Alina thinks as she smiles, her teeth bared as she bows to the crowd’s adoring applause. ‘This will not be the end,’ says her heart, thrumming in her chest as blood rushes through her veins and colours her cheeks. “This is not the end.” She says so to herself, glittering in the spotlight of her final bow— her final performance as a principal ballerina.
Rumours dance on the tongues of the other principals and soloists, of the corpse de ballet: she is pregnant, she is to marry, she is injured, she is ill. The words swirl around like a tutu, like silk and crystals, like the waterfall of her night silk tresses as she lets her hair down from her bun. Perhaps one rumour is true. Maybe two. But, of course, it is no one’s business. The beloved Alina Filippova, the Bolshoi’s Nympha has retired at the very pinnacle of her career. The rest of her life would be spent cultivating the talent she found to be as equally, if not more talented than she had been.
When she promptly turns to work as a Ballet Master-Repetiteur, however, some may think it exceptionally cruel. A former principal dancer to train her former rivals, a young woman who might play favourites, a former dancer taking on a position to make others shine brighter than she. But, those who think so have never understood Alina herself. The art of ballet is everything to her. It matters little to her if she can not be the one to dance— she will hone the talents of the ones she believes can.
GENERAL INFO
— Full Name: Alina Vasilievna Filippova
— Nickname(s): Alya or Alenka, Alinushka or Alinochka (familiar, affectionate), Al’ka (familiar), Matushka Nympha and Ma’nympha (formal, affectionate— nickname evolved from her being called Nympha when she was a principal dancer, used by Bolshoi dancers)
— Age: 35
— Date of Birth: 2 January, 1926
— Zodiac Sign: Capricorn
— Place of Birth: Petrograd
— Current Residence: Moscow
— Gender: female
— Sexual Orientation: bisexual
— Religion: non-practicing, non-religious
— Occupation: Ballet Master-Repetiteur for the Bolshoi Ballet
— Likes: caviar with her blinis, hosting dinner parties at her family’s hotel, living and breathing the art of ballet, mirrors, cultivating talent, tea
— Dislikes: solyanka without adzhika and lavash, silence, being forgotten/unrecognised, lazy/entitled dancers, sickled feet, not being taken seriously, tangerine pie
— Enneagram: Type 3
— Temperament: Choleric
— Moral Alignment: Tempered good
ABOUT:
(death tw, parental death tw)
BASIC TIMELINE:
1881 — Paternal grandfather becomes a citizen of Russia. Originated from China and worked as the owner of a trading company/merchant.
1894 — Father is born.
1908 — Mother is born. Daughter of a Russian merchant and industrialist who financed and partially owns the Hotel Moska Intercontinental (Based on the Hotel Metropol Moscow).
1925 — October. Father passes away in a rail car accident.
1926 — Born in Petrograd
1930 — Moves to Moscow with her mother, residing in the newly reopened hotel.
1934 — Begins ballet training at the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute (renamed the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in 1957)
1944 — Graduates from the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute and is placed at the Bolshoi Ballet, although is ‘loaned’ to Leningrad State Academic Maly Opera Theatre and The Kirov Ballet throughout her career.
1958 — Retires from role as prima at 32, beginning her work at the Bolshoi Ballet as ballet master-repetiteur for the corps de ballet.
1960 — Promoted to ballet master-repetiteur focusing on primas and soloists, occasionally running evening technique and character classes for those interested (corps de ballet members are welcome) as preparations for Swan Lake begin.
DETAILS:
Her father had passed after an accident months before she was born. And her mother, who had scandalously been pregnant out of wedlock, had found herself returned home— until she and Alina were moved to the family’s new business, a permanent tenant and proprietor’s representative at the Hotel Moska Intercontinental.
Her first memories involve her running around the hotel, her unruly curls escaping their braids and as full and lively as she: Alenka filled with boundless energy. It is a happy place, brilliant and sparkling, an unconventional upbringing for a little girl of unconventional circumstances.
While ballet had been an encouraged after-school activity for Alina when she had reached the age to begin training, it seemed to be the only time in the world that she felt she was happy. Dancing was hard work, yet the little girl thrived on it, producing long and clean lines with her movement with her head held high, making the determination and discipline required seem easy. She began her training at the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute when she was eight.
Although she was not the favourite of Agrippina Vaganova, she was a star pupil. Her enduring nature and sweet disposition made for an interesting combination, especially when her intense gaze stared not at others but at her own reflection as she worked on correcting even the smallest movement. If she could not be a favourite, she would strive to become the character assigned to her, would work towards the technical perfection that would leave those watching in awe. And that was precisely what she had done.
As a dancer, Alina charmed the crowds. As a woman, she set her sights on enjoying her life with her fellow dancers, her social life never quite lacking from any invitations. After her graduation from the ballet academy, Alina returned to her family’s hotel, taking up a permanent residence there while she danced for the Bolshoi where she earned the nickname Nympha as she rose through the ranks.
Despite the suitors that have proposed, Alina swears that her first and only love is the art of ballet, perhaps holds it closer now to her heart as a ‘keeper’ of the art with her position of the Bolshoi. There have been lovers, there might have been a chance once. But the ballet had always come first, and always would.
The worsening of her hip injuries in her early 30’s had hailed the end of her career as a dancer. Alina took her final bow dancing her favourite role as Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty at the age of thirty-two. If she is still bitter about it (read: she’s still bitter about it), she will not let it show. However, Alina had wanted to do more, wanted to be a part of the ballet and achieve the coveted Prima Ballerina Assoluta title as the Bolshoi Ballet’s Nympha. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that she was promptly invited to begin serving as a Master-Repetiteur for the Corps de Ballet at the Bolshoi. In some cruel way, though, it does taunt her.
Promoted in 1960, the woman works as the Ballet Master-Repetiteur focusing on the primas and soloists. Nothing escapes the keen eyes of the Master-Repetiteur, not one who had built a reputation such as she as former principal dancer and renowned prima ballerina— living and embodying the characters, dancing with almost terrifying precision with every role she took on. She is determined, above all else, to protect and nurture the sacred art of ballet, and her strict yet maternal nature wins her the respectfully affectionate nicknames: Matushka Nympha and Mat’nympha from her Bolshoi dancers.
𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: principal dancer at the bolshoi ballet
𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓: here.
—a delicate nose tucked into a fur collar, the flashing of camera bulbs white-cold and relentless as the snow, perfume no one can identify, a knife hanging from the ceiling; thread fraying, the slow undoing of a velvet bow, walking into the sea in an evening dress, the bargains made in folktales, smiling without showing teeth, heat from a spotlight, a striking figure in a black dress, blood in pointe shoes, unopened gifts, kissing a cold statue, balancing atop the balcony railing, straining muscles, lying naked atop the bedspread, a rose pushed to bowing under the weight of snowdrift, a crown that mysteriously fits, swans on the morning lake, lipstick stains, pulling death from the tarot deck, the gaze of a room sweeping in one direction, a glass throne, flowers being thrown on stage, grainy black and white footage of far-away figures, the cold draft through a window purposefully left open, the scent of perfume lingering in an empty room, perfect posture, the shot that puts down a lame horse.
𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘, 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐀 & 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐔𝐓 !
trigger warnings for: implied sex work, sexual assault, drowning, suicide, & attempted suicide.
𝘏𝘐𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘙𝘠 !
i swear this is abbreviated compared to her app... i swear...
𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈: 𝐀 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐒.
she’s raised by her mother in an apartment with red walls, a colour she remembers not as blood-red or rose-red but heart-red. her mother is beautiful in the way no single individual should be and charming in a way that borders on symptomatic of terror. as a woman she excels, captivating hearts around her without intention and outright pilfering those she aims for, but as a mother she knows little. it is never a secret to little zinaida that she was an unplanned child — the absence of a father is evidence enough.
her childhood is blurred and full of a great deal of whirring colour; the red walls, the churning silhouettes cast by light of a candle, the twirl of her mother’s skirt before she leaves for the night. girlhood is always full of this motion and little stillness — the solid, rectangular parts of life such as school and full meals are of little importance to zinaida’s mother, and sometimes forgotten altogether. she learns to be a quiet, undisruptive girl who does not whine when her stomach grumbles or the scent of smoke stains her clothes; she is educated on the value of trading rations for pure silk stockings when the war comes in place of the missed lessons. there is no time beauty is required more, mother says, than in duress. always, it prevails.
at night she sits on the edge of mother’s bed and watches as she applies makeup at the vanity, setting her face with rouge and powder in flaking gilt packages. it’s like magic those hours, watching her mother transform into a proud creature even more beautiful and untouchable than the one in the beginning, and how it is that extraordinary demi-being that returns home with beautiful trinkets or thick handfuls of paper bills. each morning she comes home, until the one she does not.
the man in the dark suit arrives at her front door and tells little zinaida, whose height only reaches his hip, one thing she knows to be a half-truth and one thing that she does not know of at all: that her mother is a prostitute, and a traitor to the soviet union. these things are explained to her as both independent facts and contingent clauses, like the two angular pieces of a door hinge.
her mother is accused, she is told, of blackmailing one of the state council. young zinaida blinks, still gripping the doorknob. it is not news to her that her mother associates with rich and powerful men, but it is news to hear that this is a crime. blackmailing? she asks. yes, he says. it means to threaten with a piece of information. only, in this case, the information is false. she is lying, and she has been arrested. oh. the girl says. it seems very odd to her that her mother, who so often lessoned zinaida on the truths of the world as she saw them (for instance, that men were only afraid of the two things they could not control: beauty, and death), would be caught lying. what is the information? the man looks down at her from under his hat. it begins to rain behind him. you. she says you are his daughter. everyone has a father. she answers. why is this so bad? for the first time, the stranger in the doorway looks uncomfortable, lifting a hand to scratch the midday shadow along his jaw. she claims it is by force.
𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈𝐈: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐆𝐄.
driven out from stalingrad into the surrounding country by the man in the dark hat, zinaida is taken to an estate with wrought iron gate, overrun with weeds and the sensation of time passed and left embittered for it. there she finds a half-dozen other girls, all bastards of important and high-sat men. she and the other girls call it the birdcage: for their imposed home gleamed like one, and because it housed a half-dozen little sparrows of young women, each of them trapped, fluttering at windows, waiting to get out and touch the world.
despite its size, the estate has few staff, and those who do cook and clean within the walls keep their silence like a photograph tucked in their pocket. uncle vanya, as they are told to call him, is the only one who speaks to the girls — though his speech is always stunted and harsh as a candle burned halfway down. he stands as both the head of household and, as zinaida would learn, the ballet master. dance, he says, is how they will occupy their days — ballet the medium which would instill discipline and self-control into their lives, things they will then carry into life as young women released back into the city.
the war feels so distant in the countryside, wrapped as they are in their strange, repetitious daily life. dance occupies both the time & intention of each day; if they are not practicing they are stretching, and if they are not stretching all that there is schoolwork, sleep, or chores.
zinaida, tall for her age and with a body made lean by intermittent poverty, is objectively made for the stage in ways she has no control over — but her skill, too, is preternatural. already accustomed to suffering, she has no wide eyes when uncle vanya chastises her, nor wobbling lip when her pointe shoes graft sections of skin from her toes and heels. she merely persists. more than that, she begins to exist. she has found what her mother told her about all that time ago: a beauty that survives even dread. even the end of the world.
her skill over the others — and perhaps even moreso, her desire to dance — is quickly noticed by the uncle and the girls both. her peers grow cold, irritated by what makes her different — what makes her special in a world where all must be communal. uncle vanya, however, pays closer attention. after dinner on her eighth birthday, he bends to one knee and looks zinaida in the eye, one hand on her shoulder. you can go to leningrad to dance, if you wish. they will teach you, and I can arrange it. will you go? she, with her raven-hair and bright, solemn little eyes looks back with a very simple answer: what else would I do?
( and she thinks, she thinks: if only i am good enough, perhaps they will take me to mother again. perhaps i will not be alone. )
𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈𝐈𝐈: 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐃.
she comes of age in the breeding grounds of race and rivalry. zinaida is found, as uncle vanya has expected, a prodigal dancer with bodily proportions meant for the stage. her peers resent or flock to her, hoping to find a queen to please or a star to hitch to. so long without true companions, she is desperate for the affection of those around her — for friends, for lovers — but the demand of ballet, the pull of a future with the bolshoi, usurps the ability to make connection. still, she dreams. she imagines loving every individual who shows her kindness.
innessa anisimova is another vaganova pupil with great promise, and perhaps zinaida’s singular dearest friend. both seventeen and dark-haired, they are often mistaken for sisters, and take their places next to one another at the barre. though the academy and its tutors were brutal to all who entered, innessa is picked on by the school’s faculty, often critiqued by comparison to zinaida. they accuse her of having a leaden body, criticizing her footwork by saying it looked as though she had bricks tied to her feet. the stress of the training coupled with increasingly personal attacks, innessa’s mental health suffers until reaching a point of no return. on a cold november night, innessa looks to the verbal attacks of her instructors and takes her own life, lashing cinderblocks to her shoes and jumping into the nearby lake.
several months later, zinaida makes an attempt on her own life before a handful of instructors in a fit of mania. the knife is wrenched from her hand, but the motion leaves a 2-inch scar across her delicate neck. zinaida is given a brief reprieve from lessons, and the academy, unwilling to release their star, covers up the incident. still, rumours persist.
at eighteen, after graduation from vaganova and weeks prior to her debut with the bolshoi, zinaida goes the ‘60s version of viral after her measurements are taken in several national newspapers, put out as proof that she has the “perfect” ballet body printed along with interviews & articles. the image of her at 18, extended in fourth position while a journalist holds a measuring tape down her leg, along with subsequent video footage, has been widely circulated.
𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈𝐕: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐉𝐄𝐖𝐄𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐖.
her debut is remarkable, her place as a celebrated figure quickly evolving into celebrity as she rises from the corpse to soloist and principal in a thin handful of years, two meteoric ascents. but the fame is not wholly naturally: instead, it is in part carefully cultivated. having sought an effigy for the general populace to rally behind and support — a face more personal than authority figures, and less frivolous than america’s movie stars — the soviet government decide on zinaida. she, with her generation-defining talent, exemplified a human excellence that could be strained into a narrative of natural soviet supremacy — a thing so potent, they want you to believe, that it manifested in the body itself.
she attends high profile events; she’s dressed in foreign clothes; her personal life is gossip; she’s seen on the arms of extremely important men. the glamour is muted but still there, meant to showcase what any soviet could attain through hard work and excellence; she is a celebrity, but of a different kind. much like her skeleton title, her reputation is carefully cultivated to be exactly that — sacred. the brand of her image is one meant to mark a certain exclusivity, a sanctity that cannot be broached by things unworthy. her absences are as important as her attendances, as it’s within these blank spaces that the general public can imagine what the government desires them to: that she resists parties for practice, dismisses romance for work. of all she has, all that zinaida knows as earned in truth is her position at the bolshoi — but even this remains at the discretion of the soviet government, as everything in her life does.
𝘙𝘜𝘔𝘖𝘜𝘙𝘚 & 𝘗𝘜𝘉𝘓𝘐𝘊 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘊𝘌𝘗𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 !
... ONLY ATTENDS EVENTS FOR A LARGE APPEARANCE FEE / half-true. she occasionally receives payment through the government for attending events they dictate to her, but she doesn’t have much of a choice anyway lol.
... WAS ENGAGED TO A YOUNG COUNCIL MEMBER, HAVING BEEN WON OVER BY HIS PURSUIT: ATTENDING EVERY SHOW OF THE 1960 SEASON / false. the councilman did attend every show, but the romance (and subsequent rumour) was contrived. this was largely done to unite a “people’s” figure with one of authority. zinaida and artyom mikhailov would have a brief and genuine relationship during this time, but it ended prematurely.
... WILL BE NAMED PRIMA BALLERINA AT THE END OF THE SEASON / ?? it’s considered an ill-kept secret and all-but-verified fact by the public, but we’ll see.
... CAUSED THE OVERSEERS OF HER VAGANOVA AUDITION TO CRY WITH HER PERFORMANCE / false. similar things have been said of her bolshoi audition, but it’s untrue.
... IS RELATED TO XYZ. / who knows. not zinaida. there are a handful of random rumours as to her parentage, but largely this is due to the fact that her life before vaganova is unknown. unwilling to have their figurehead linked to a scandalous birth or mother, the soviet gov has scrubbed and hid her records.
𝘛𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘐𝘈 !
to hide the scar on her neck, zinaida constantly wears necklaces and scarves - she’s known for wearing a black velvet choker even during rehearsals.
knows how to read palms and tarot cards by heart, skills remembered from her childhood with an unusual mother who came from a crooked house in the black woods. zin carries that little bit of witchiness quietly with her, between occasional occult practices and the mental ritualizing of her modern habits. superstitious, though she doesn’t like to show it.
frequently after performances, zinaida rushes from the fallen curtain to her dressing room, not stopping to speak to cast or crew. this likely incurs opinions of snobbish or diva behaviour, but it’s emotion rather than apathy that has her take to the private room. the emotions of a role, when not allowed to move and expel through performance, tend to overwhelm her once she stills -- leading to tears, tremors, and other vulnerabilities she doesn’t wish her peers to see.
the media and general populace have several nicknames for her, most prevalently the jewel of moscow (stalingrad? idk) and the tsarina (graduated from the tsarevna, her pre-principal nickname).
obsessive over preventative beauty and bodily measures -- even moreso than the average ballerina. there are lengthy morning and nighttime routines for both, with everything from face creams/serums to stretching, and the ritual of it soothes her.
she has no idea who her father is, but frequently thinks about the fact that any of the old men in authority she poses with for the papers could be Him. her patronymic was assigned to her before debut.
terrified of her own mortality, and subsequently dislikes being around the elderly.
contrary to what was told to her so many years ago, her mother was never arrested for attempting to blackmail a politician. she was, conversely, offered a large sum of money to send her illegitimate child to the estate in the country. though i’m still working through how she discovered this, zinaida is aware of at least part of this truth by now.
has the awfully fatalistic habit of practicing choreography and positions on the edge of a high building, particularly when overcome with guilt, anger, or melancholy. to her, this is a resolute test -- either she is strong and agile enough to uphold herself, to balance with utter perfection, or she is not. and if she is not -- is life not ruined regardless?
applauded for the depth and intensity of her characterizations on stage and the ability to embody a role, removing the audience’s view from one of technical steps to that of a character and a story. her talent, generally speaking, is considered a once-in-a-generation -- along the lines of the anna pavlovas and margot fonteyns; a name that goes down in both russian and ballet history.
27 YEARS OLD. PRINCIPAL DANCER AT THE NEW YORK CITY BALLET.
❛ and that’s no apple but a heart torn out of someone in this myth gone suddenly aztec. this is the possibility of death the snake is offering: death upon death squeezed together, a blood snowball. to devour it is to fall out of the still unending noon to a hard ground with a straight horizon and you are no longer the idea of a body but a body.
❛ this is how you learn prayer. love is choosing, the snake said. the kingdom of god is within you because you ate it. ❜
𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋.
𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄: eva madelena riviere, known professionally as eva miro
𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒: swan queen; the swan
𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄: march 18th 1934 — 27 years old
𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇: arlington, virginia
𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: principal dancer at the new york city ballet
𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓: HERE
𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍.
EXT. ARLINGTON / a midsummer day; old southern gothic; dawn breaking over a horizon; the scent of magnolia and vanilla sweetening the air; homemade iced tea at the height of noon; secrets sealed in closed lockets and closed rooms; sun swept afternoons; the feeling of grass beneath your bare feet; wet blood streaked across palms; picking wildflower bouquets; the skeletons buried in the family closet
if this was a fairytale we would begin not at the beginning, but here, in the still antebellum calm before the storm. here is the amber-glaze veneer of old world nostalgia, curled at the edges like a faded photograph; a moment in time slipped between acts, between prelude and prologue: it begins in a garden.
a girl, half-sunbeam and half-wildness, twirls across the grass barefoot, lighter than a wayward breeze. there’s a woman watching her dance, an exclusive performance for an audience of one. the piece ends and the girl sweeps into an extravagant bow, dipping her head to the imaginary shower of roses raining down upon her impromptu stage of weeds and wildflowers. her solitary spectator bursts into jubilant applause, her laughter incandescent, filling her from throat to limb to toe. the both of them, radiant, the colour of sun swept afternoon, sprawl in the golden hour shade beneath the willow oaks. the girl lays her head in the woman’s lap as she soothes her fingers through the dark tangles of hair so like her own. she closes her eyes, breathing in the tenderness and blooming summersweet in the air.
her name is eva.
—
there is a way of telling this story that makes it bearable, but only just. enduring, in the way of the tide wearing away a thousand years of sand and stone, returning everything to seafoam.
perhaps we start with once upon a time, because it’s familiar and feels handmade. once upon a time, there was a prince. he was handsome and charming — two things too easily mistaken for good — and beloved by all that encountered him. magnetic by nature and flirtatious by disposition, he deflected the rumours and speculation swirling around him about marriage by declaring that he would go down on one knee only when he had met the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. but summers passed and the prince remained inexplicably unmarried. you see, though the kingdom was rife with dainty high-born ladies and heiresses, the most beautiful woman in the kingdom was not a lady or an heiress. she was the daughter of the castle’s steward, kept out of sight and mind by the humble circumstances of her birth. her beauty is fairytale, dreamlike, unrivalled by any woman the prince had ever graced with a smile or a kiss to bare knuckles. he thinks, at last, i’ve found you.
in the story, the prince and the steward’s daughter fall in love. against the king and queen’s wishes, the prince announces his engagement to his newfound love. they are married in the palace gardens, a simple ceremony with only a priest in attendance. nonetheless, their happiness glows with tangible sunlight.
a year later, the steward’s daughter gives birth to a princess. the last thing she sees in the world is the sight of her daughter’s eyes peering up at her, dark and starlit as her own. the prince takes his daughter into his arms as his wife draws her last breath, his greatest joy and most terrible loss coalescing with his daughter’s first cry.
despite the tragedy surrounding her birth, the little princess’ childhood is full of life and laughter and simple pleasures. she is raised by a nursemaid who becomes like a mother to her. what more is flesh and blood, after all, than the woman who cradles you at night and sings you lullabies to sleep, who kisses your scratched knees and teaches you how to dance? she is her world, and her world is everything the nursemaid nurtures within her, stoking the embers of imagination and zeal, courage and fearlessness. the princess learns to dance almost as soon as she learns to walk. she is raised with music and song, the rhythm of hands and feet barely a step from instinct. she dances as she breathes, intrinsically, innately, like the music is another facet of bone or artery. when she is seven years old, she begins classes with a private master. by the next full moon, she is ready to leave the kingdom to dance, to dance forever.
INT. NEW YORK / the cold curling around your skin and through your bones like a well-worn blanket; the loneliness of being inimitable; the becoming of a star; the aching of muscle and sinew; gazing out at the city skyline at 3 in the morning; the whispers trailing in your wake; tongues and nails sharp as razor blades; hunger blooming in the dark
interlude: eva is twelve when she wins a scholarship to the school of american ballet in new york. sixteen, when george balanchine handpicks her to join the new york city ballet. eighteen, when she becomes the first black principal dancer.
she is one of only two dancers in the ballet that is not white, and mariana was at least born and bred in spanish harlem. eva, with her burnished skin and southern lilt, sticks out like an unruly hair from a bun, like a ballet master’s correction. she is good, unrivalled for her age, but not the best, and it doesn’t take long for the muffled whispers and cutting glances to score and scrape away at any last shred of resilience. the isolation and playground tyranny, she can live with, but it is the loneliness, the distance from her aunty celia, the homesickness that festers in her stomach like spoiled milk, that makes her bend until she feels like she could break. she writes dozens of letters home to her beloved nursemaid that she doesn’t send, and resolves to wait out the year until summer when she decides she will quit.
the magnolia trees are in full bloom when she arrives in arlington, and maybe it is the smell of home, or the jetlag, but when she sees aunty celia, she dissolves into a cloudburst of salt and tears. she spends the summer in a daze of blissful relief, tucking ballet from her thoughts like a chest of old dolls in the attic. it isn’t until the second last day before she is to return to new york that aunty summons her to the garden. aunty, who is nothing like an aunty, really, with her petite frame and miles of thick, dark curls framing a painter’s muse of a face. tell me what is wrong, aunty celia says. you haven’t danced a single moment since you came home. eva bites her lip and stares skyward. i’m quitting, aunty. i hate it there. i don’t belong there, it’s cold and i miss home. i miss you, and papa, and being here. aunty arches a picturesque brow. but what about dancing? won’t you miss it? eva clenches her teeth, insistent. i can dance here, too. i can dance anywhere.
listen, little bird, aunty never calls her that anymore, not since she was tiny and still begged for bedtime stories. aunty holds out her hand and eva takes it, reluctant but with a quiet thrill at the easy gentleness of her touch. aunty twirls her slowly in a semi-circle, arm raised elegantly above her head. you will never belong anywhere because you weren’t meant to; you were made to be brilliant. you are a star, and stars only shine brightest in the dark.
so eva returns to new york, carrying a music box — her parting gift from aunty, specially crafted just for her, to play whenever she feels cold and misses home — and an inimitable light inside her that refuses to be tamed for anyone or anything. she is relentless, driven by more than mere ambition and pride. everything she does, she becomes the first. the exception and the exceptional. the trailblazer on an ever-ascending meteoric rise without a summit.
this is her becoming.
INT. VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER / the smell of antiseptic clinging to skin; an expressionless mask; sickly saccharine platitudes; the knife of betrayal sinking into raw flesh; a broken locket; a sea of faceless strangers; the long soundless scream of grief; mourning lace; the suffocating weight of revelation
three days before eva is to dance the defining role of her career at age twenty-three, she receives the call. it’s papa. there’s been an incident; aunty is in the hospital.
in the midst of final rehearsals and preparations, eva leaves. the director threatens to drop her from the show altogether, threatens to blacklist her from all future roles and performances. with her career hanging in the threadbare balance, eva nods, gives her full blessing and best wishes to the cast, and leaves.
she arrives that night at the hospital and finds auntie swathed in the stark white sheets of a hospital bed, smaller than she’s ever seen her. a stroke, papa explains, hemorrhagic bleeding, a rupture in her brain. eva clutches at aunty’s hand, tears blurring her vision even as she scrambles to drink her in, by eyelash and smile line, the last glimpses of her she will ever have. aunty wakes with a small rasping inhale when she sees eva at her side and not in new york, getting ready for her stage.
of course i’m here, eva says, how could i be anywhere else but here? aunty shakes her head, lifts a shaking hand like a marionette extending beyond the life of her puppet strings to brush her fingertips down eva’s cheek. my eva, my beautiful girl. eva swallows, throat thick with love and apologies she doesn’t know how to speak, i’m sorry i did not write you every day, i’m sorry i did not come home last summer. i’m sorry i don’t know how to tell you how much you have made me who i am. worry creases the lines of aunty’s face, sunken deeper than ever before, in the sketches of time through across her features. she asks about the show, and what will happen to her career, and all eva can think is, i only wanted to dance because of you, because so much of me is just you.
you have to go, little bird. aunty smiles, and it reminds eva of endless afternoons in the garden, their very own kingdom, whirling barefoot beneath blue sky. time for you to blaze like the sun.
—
this is the end of the fairytale: the steward’s daughter dies in a hospital bed holding her daughter’s hand. the princess rises to discover she is gone from this world, as if every star and the sun itself has gone out.
this is the truth, which will be brief, because when the truth comes, it comes hard and fast like a knife in an alleyway: eva was born out of wedlock, a wealthy heir’s bastard daughter. when his parents gave him the ultimatum, the girl he loved, or the business empire of his inheritance, he chose empire. the truth of eva’s birth was concealed, obfuscated when her father married an heiress selected for her surname and birthright. they told her that her mother died in childbirth, and allowed celia to care for her as her nursemaid, raising her not as a daughter but a ward.
after celia’s death, eva is given a letter from her father with her mother’s dying wish, and the terrible secret she had taken to her grave, sealed within. in the letter, celia tells eva the one fairytale she had never spun for her as a child. she tells her about how the prince and the daughter of his family’s groundskeeper fell in love, and everything that came after. she tells her that she never regretted a second of it, watching the supposed love of her life marry another woman and build the family he was always meant to have with them. he made his choice, and i made mine, and i would do it all again in a heartbeat because our love gave me you. my daughter, my eva.
tucked inside the envelope is the locket celia used to wear but never allowed eva to open. and inside the locket is a picture of a seven year old eva.
eva packs everything in her suitcase and leaves for new york the next day. she never sees her father again.
INT. NEW YORK CITY BALLET THEATRE / a single silhouette beneath a spotlight; silk sculpted to a perfect body; the headliner that the crowd has been holding its breath for; gilded thread on golden skin; the blaze of a meteor; the coil of anticipation in your gut; adrenaline pounding through your veins; the exhilaration of perfection; the metamorphosis of the swan
the evening of the first show of swan lake by the new york city ballet, eva goes on stage. she dances odette, and it is the defining performance of not only her career, but of american ballet history. she is the first african-american principal dancer of the new york city ballet, and the first to dance odette in swan lake. it is a triumph and a magnum opus of a performance.
she takes her final bow before an endless sea of faces, her heart going cold in her chest knowing the only one that she wanted to see is not there.
𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒.
after her history-making performance as odette, the media and arts society gave her the name swan queen. patrons and friends of the ballet frequently address her as odette or the swan at NYCB galas.
eva’s most prized possession is the music box her mother gave her during the summer she had made up her mind to quit ballet. it plays a version of the lullaby she used to sing to her as a child and features a specially hand-painted black ballerina as the miniature figurine that dances when you wind up the mechanism. she keeps the locket her mother used to wear inside it.
to watch eva dance is an experience — she makes ballet feel alive. while famous for her thirty-two fouette sequence in swan lake, it’s the emotions and tragedy she breathes into each performance that makes her dancing unforgettable. she lives and dies on the stage, dancing as if each show is a swan song.
largely alienated from the rest of the corps throughout her training at SAB and within the NYCB, eva is accustomed to solitude and keeping herself company. a combination of prejudice and envy at her exceptional talent kept her isolated, but rather pushing her to the margins as would have been preferred, it thrust her directly into the spotlight. over the years the whispers and rumours that she has only excelled and outstripped her rivals because of her unique circumstances have shadowed her. she’s proven them to be blatantly and objectively false time and again but it doesn’t stop the insidious nature of the hearsay from spreading. the instinct to brace herself for the worst when she meets new dancers, even those untouched by the poison of the NYCB corps, is deeply ingrained in her. it’s a habit she’s never had reason to break.
there have been a handful of flings and stolen kisses with dancers from the corps, girls and boys alike. her longest and most serious relationship was a brief but volatile affair with a renowned artistic director visiting from paris. it was a passionate but disastrous love, and they ended things as the season came to an end and he returned to france. eva has never had relationships, or even dalliances, with anyone outside of the ballet. in her mind, it’s unlikely anyone that isn’t involved in ballet could ever capture her attention long enough to spark her interest.
she’s well-versed in a variety of dance genres and still enjoys dancing for the simple pleasure of it outside the ballet. she frequently dances without music, on the rooftop of her apartment in the late hours of night, occasionally humming music notes and melodies.
since her debut as a principal dancer, she’s had a number of suitors — mainly wealthy patrons, older men with fortunes to spare — that would send gifts and bouquets. other than wine or champagne, eva tends to give away the lavish gifts of perfume, makeup and jewels to other dancers.
she has a younger half-sister and half-brother from her father’s second marriage. they don’t speak much anymore but she still sends them tickets to NYCB shows.
eva speaks slightly beyond conversational french and is fluent in spanish. other than ballet, languages are the only thing she has ever put her mind to seriously studying and learning. she’s interested in learning russian, particularly while she’s immersed in the culture at the bolshoi theater.
eugene / 34 / journalist for the new york times / the demagogue
( LETTER TO THE TIMES: . . . rewrite rewrite rewrite . . . migrants from the soviet union: a lesson from Budapest, a year later . . . rewrite rewrite rewrite . . . unfortunate loss of life . . . a tragedy, the world is . . . watching )
𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐒𝐀𝐖 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐃𝐎 𝐈𝐓.
INTRODUCTION :
𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 : eugene ye-jun kim
𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 : genie ( disliked )
𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 : august 9, 1927 ( leo )
𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 : cambridge, massachusetts
𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 + 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬 : cis man | he/him
𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : heterosexual
𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : journalist for the new york times
𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞-𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦. : sung hoon
𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬. : fluent english , proficient korean, conversational in russian.
NOTES :
Quite literally, the worst man you will ever meet. He can have tact when he wants to, but more often than not he doesn’t. Why you may ask? Because he has the audacity.
He was #lonely as a child and used writing as an outlet for his anger and isolation. He started to people watch in order to gain a sense of “hmm what do people like best in a personality.” and the he did it. But now he’s kinda a jackass, because he’s felt like he’s been “playing nice for too long — I’m going to show everyone the TRUTH!” But like hmm, maybe the way he’s doing it isn’t that great: he pretends to be altruistic but actually he’s selfish.
He’s very privileged, and knows this, and while he may be kind of an asshole in terms of being tactful, he genuinely cares (to the degree anyone who has been spited can be) about social causes. His methodology may be a little whack, but you know what, “good for her.”
His first breakthrough piece was on the Korean armistice agreement. He interviewed fifty different Koreans and how the war affected them: not pulling any punches for the public.
Also, he was a gossip columnist in high school under the pen name: Mrs. Valentine. He helped predict a lot of high school relationships and was the start for a lot of heartbreak. Oops.
He was more or less sent to go Moscow to report on the partnership. While his editors may want him to speak favorably about the event, his personal mission is to fuck everything over ( if it’s the truth ).
That’s one thing about him that you can 100% know for sure, he may lack the subtly that some news reporters have, but he will never ever publish something that he doesn’t think is the truth.
His hubris will be the downfall of him, and I kind of want to see him crash and burn. Make him a total mess hoho
𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 : agafya bohdanovna tereshchenko .
𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 : agusha ( not commonly used ) .
𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 : december 3 , 1932 ( sagittarius ) .
𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 : kyev , ukrainian soviet socialist republic .
𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 + 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬 : cis woman | she / her .
𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : heterosexual .
𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : stagemaster for the bolshoi theater .
𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞-𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦. : sophie cookson .
𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬. : fluent ukrainian , fluent russian , conversational english .
HISTORY :
born amongst poverty and all but atrocious living conditions, agafya’s childhood in kyev was not a happy one, her right to beautiful things, which she desired above all, denied. the war came to the soviet state as soon as she began her education, and after a few years of drawing with spare coal and mending clothes she was finally able to access good schooling (as well as an extensive patriotic pro-soviet education, which proved very successful).
her artistic talents were soon noticed, and apart from being in charge of seasonal decorations at her school for most of her time there and helping out with most student plays, she caught the eye of her art teacher. elderly, meek professor vinogradov was nearing retirement, but convinced by the girl herself, as well as her mother, he granted her a scholarship to attend art school in the heart of the soviet union itself, moscow.
art school proved to be the best time of agafya’s life so far (not that that was saying much), as she met new friends and honed her skills, developing a somewhat maternal side to her personality due to her and many others being completely detached from their homes while studying - a side that would soon overtake her entire way of being.
towards the end of school, after some struggle as to what direction she was to take in her professional life, agafya became a stagehand for the bolshoi theater, which she’d attended once before with a wealthy colleague and absolutely loved ever since.
she proved to know what she was doing perfectly well, and in the coming years rose to the rank of stagemaster, now in charge of an entire facet of bolshoi’s (and, by extension, the motherland’s) greatness.
PERSONALITY:
agafya is, despite her age, first and foremost the team mom. she’ll make sure you eat your sandwich, get your eight hours (despite her own constant sleep deprivation), and just give you a big ol’ hug or a smack on the head, depending on what is appropriate. she maintains a very upbeat, energetic persona with her red hair dye and yellow clothing to keep others from worrying about her. instead, she spends her time worrying a lot about them.
she likes to maintain a healthy physique - apart from avoiding alcohol, she exercises regularly, running in the warm months and swimming when it gets cold, as well as always attempting to eat plainly and healthily, cutting down on fat.
SKELETON CONNECTIONS ( MORE COMING SOON ):
ONE — agafya caught them in the act of spreading a rumor about her, perhaps it was even a good one, but she caught them nonetheless. what was this rumor, and how was their relationship changed by this fact?
TWO — agafya’s a busy person, more often than not she doesn’t have a lot of time to relax. this person however reminds her to take a break just by their existence. what are her feelings on a person having this much “control” over her, even if they do not know it?
THREE — people tell these two that you bicker like an old married couple, but agafya knows there is something more simmering beneath the surface. is it hatred, jealously, spite? why does this person always rub her the wrong way?
