Shall We Dance?

(In memory of Steve Barton, and all dance-trained Raouls)

---

All around her masks nodded and wagged grotesquely, and garish costumes mocked at convention: women in clinging breeches, men in exotic robes and peacock-bright motley, capering like animals or feigning the jerky movement of automata, or simply crowding too close as the eddies of the dance caught her up and swirled her away. The Opera Populaire was dizzy with colour and music tonight, but it seemed to Christine in her growing panic that even Monsieur Reyer, conducting the orchestra with his customary meticulous precision, had begun to accelerate his beat until the masquerade took on an almost sinister frenzy from which she could not escape.

“Raoul!” They had been swept apart, and she had lost him. Masked faces leered and laughed; a dark girl whom Christine recognised from the chorus darted past in a dress that showed far too much bosom, pursued by a drunken cavalier whose teeth flashed white beneath the mask that hid his eyes. But Raoul was nowhere to be found.

( Read more... )