The music from the stage flows gently into the crowded, vintage room. A foggy blue dress of layered tulle mesh fabric placed over a chair, encrusted with gems and pearls. A table covered with makeup and hair supplies. There also lay my white glittery wings, my golden sparkling wand, and a shiny silver tiara. I am gluing on fake eyelashes when in the distant parts of my mind, I recognize a faint, familiar tune: ‘Cinderella sweeping the floor’, ‘Cinderella running around on stage’, ‘Cinderella falling to the floor’, which is right before. . .
Wispy, whimsical music flows into the dressing room. Everyone looks at me, hand in mid air, holding a fake eyelash up to my left eye. The whole room freezes for a long two seconds before the nightmare sets in. I throw the eyelash into the costume pile beneath my feet and rip off the other, throwing it in the same direction and scramble for my fairy godmother costume lying on a chair, clumsily stepping into it, and a nearby friend helps button it up before I reach for my wings and wand on the table and sprint out of the room, hearing a “go Yuna” ringing from the room. Through the empty hall and the echoing stairs, I struggle into my wings with elastics one longer than the other. I have no idea how I am going to get on stage, how the dancer of Cinderella was doing, where the music was at. . . . In the wings, I briefly process that the first section of the Transformation scene is ending before hurriedly couru-ing on stage.
During the rest of Act One, I am standing at the corner of the stage “watching” the four season fairies dance. Thoughts ring in my mind. I am so afraid of my teacher yelling at me, and I feel so bad that I messed it up for the dancer, her first, only, and last time being Cinderella, and I feel like I ruined the whole show but I don’t know how it happened because before I always had enough time to do hair and makeup and costume and pointe shoes and this time only managing half and I don’t remember anything happening differently from before or taking a long time or going wrong. . . But I was late. I didn’t even have time to put on my tiara.
I tried really hard in the last scene of Act 1 to make up for my mistake, but nothing makes up for that missed entrance, not even fairy magic.
The music ends, the curtain comes down, and we all scramble into the wings to get ready for Act 2. I have been debating whether to say something to the dancer for the whole thirty minutes on stage, and when I see her in the halls, I whisper “sorry about. . .” “It’s fine,” she replies immediately.
My voice came out crackly. I didn’t feel the urge to cry until now. I grab for the rails of the staircase, trying to control my tears, which came out anyway. My friends crowded around telling me that “it was okay”, and “it wasn’t noticeable”, and “I did great for what already happened”. I didn’t know why I was crying, I wasn’t feeling the usual sadness that makes me cry.
At that moment, I understood the other people who had broken down backstage. As one in the crowd, you don’t see much importance in the little slip ups with costumes or dances from other people. They were just mistakes that were inevitable. They haven’t even impacted the show that much, usually they go unnoticed. But experiencing it myself brings the guilt and regret of having ruined the entire show, and it felt like the biggest mistake in the whole world because I made it.
In the upstairs hallway, after everyone had disappeared into the dressing rooms, I watched myself in the lone mirror; my eyes a little red, my lower lashes wet and sticking to my face. I blink a lot, trying to get rid of the redness. I tell myself to calm down, brushing the lashes dry. This is a 5 minute intermission and I don’t have time to cry over this. After a few seconds, throwing the thought behind me, I ran back into the chaos, changing costumes and grabbing more to set backstage for the next act.
After the show ended and after we went out to see our family and friends, we started tidying up backstage. Our teacher suddenly appeared at the dressing room door.
I had been avoiding her during the whole show, not that there was time for her to yell at me, but just not wanting to think about the extent of her anger for that long missed entrance: it only felt like 15 seconds upstairs, but at least two minutes had gone by on stage.
“Yuna, you missed your entrance, right?” I braced myself for the anger, feeling empty and hopeless. The talk was going to happen in front of everyone.
“Do you need any help for the next show?”
I paused, the words in my mind not matching up with those in my ears.
“I don’t know if there is anyone up here since everyone is downstairs, but they can come up too if you need help.”
Half-mindedly, I told her that it should be fine and I have made it before and I will make a better plan for tomorrow and she said “okay”, and just left.
That night, I secretly promised the dancer playing Cinderella tomorrow that I would make it on time. Dozens of times I sorted and resorted through every step, and by showtime the next day, I had the best plan I could think of. I would still have to run upstairs since the dressing room downstairs doesn’t have a mirror, and I can’t do my makeup backstage in the dark. I brought everything I needed for hair, costume, and makeup to the dressing room closest to the stairs. In a semi circle in front of the vanity mirror was my hair brush, hair gel, hair net, and hair pins, and lipstick, no lashes, and blush, and its brush, my spacers, and toe pads, and pointe shoes, and costume, tiara, wand, and wings. Hair pins were placed separately one by one in straight, neat rows, and my hair net untangled, lying on the table. Everything organized strategically in their place.
The setup was a masterpiece.
The moment I run off the stage and am lost within the wings, I start sprinting. I pull off the black cloak and scarf for the beggar woman, throwing it below the downstairs clothing rack along the way before taking out the pins pinning up my messy bun. Getting to the stairs, I pull up my black dress that hangs over my feet and scale the steps two at a time. In the dressing room, I toss the used hairpins onto the table, some scattering on the floor, and reach for the brush, hurriedly combing through the tangled, frizzy, long, messy hair. The globs of thick gel didn’t completely help the loose, bumpy ponytail, but good enough for 30 seconds. I separate my hair in two instead of three to wrap in circles, sticking pins in with no clear pattern, and the net clumsily covers over the loose hairs springing off the bun. I grab my pointe shoes, toe pads, and spacers all at the same time and place them on the floor, aiming for the 45 second record I had timed at home. Next, I step into the dress and pull it over myself, having it ready to be buttoned when someone runs by. I pick up my blush and brush, hurriedly tapping the powder and spreading the color onto my cheeks. Then, the bright red lipstick. I grabbed my wand and struggled into my wings, pinning my tiara into my hair while racing out of the room and clomping down the stairs. The music didn’t sound familiar, but I had no trust left in the music.
I ended up being really early backstage. I made sure to stand in a place where the other Cinderella would see me from the stage, so she didn’t have to worry about me.
The rest of the act went well. No major mistakes, graceful, elegant. . .
It wasn’t until after the act ended that I found out that in all my anxiousness of missing the entrance and excitement that I was early, I forgot to tuck in the ribbons on my pointe shoes, and our teacher saw it too, and she had specifically scolded us the day before for the many untucked ribbons. But that is minor, at least to me. No performance, no dance, is ever perfect. There is always something that leaves a little imperfection; wobbling in an arabesque, falling in a pirouette, slipping on pointe shoes. . . Missing rosin. . . Missing costumes. . . Missing entrances. . .