In the spring that Mrs. Albini's marriage went sour, she stopped teaching pliés and let the VHS player do the work. She'd wheel in a TV with gunk in the screen corners, press play on whatever taped performance she had for us that day, and collapse in a folding chair at the back of the studio, a wet washcloth draped over her forehead.

At that time in my life, I was a microwaved tuna-fish sandwich of a girl—lukewarm and unwanted. My mother enrolled me in ballet from a young age to make me less awkward, but it only taught me how to see awkwardness everywhere—my limbs, other girls' limbs, the sag of our tights at the knees.

On the days the TV came out, we did about thirty minutes of half-hearted barre exercises before we all sprawled across the rubberized studio floor. Eleven of us, slightly damp with sweat, limbs ensconced in tights and wrap tops like tubes of pink meat. We liked the videos, because it meant that we skipped center work, the portion of class where Mrs. Albini was particularly fascist. I liked the videos because I liked to watch people who moved with certainty, something sorely missing from my persona.

Sometimes, during a particularly extravagant pas de deux, I could feel a strange pulse between my legs, small and insistent, like a moth beating its wings against glass. It wasn't desire exactly—it was more like my body waking up to its own circuitry, buzzing without permission. The movement on screen made me dizzy: those impossible leaps, the way the dancer's thighs clenched like they were cracking walnuts for God.

The feeling only intensified when the screen was graced with the main object of my desire: Mikhail Baryshnikov. Mikhail in Giselle. Mikhail in Don Quixote. Mikhail in White Nights, which barely had any ballet at all but featured enough sweat and shirtless anguish to sustain me. No one questioned why Mrs. Albini had such a large collection of Mikhail Baryshnikov recordings, but I think we all understood. It was the same reason why her grown up daughter, who was a junior at SUNY-New Paltz, was Mrs. Albini's only guest at every recital.

On the day of my greatest childhood lesson, it was Mikhail in Sleeping Beauty. Prince Désiré, how apt. The camera lingered on tendon, crotch, ass. The cream-colored tights hugged every damp crevice like a second skin. His butt flexed mid-leap—two soft fists clenching and unclenching.

I wasn't the only one entranced. In the tall, smudged mirrors, I could see all of us watching him, eyes glazed. Every angle reflected back our hunger, our open mouths. Someone giggled. Someone else gasped. We all leaned forward when the camera panned lower. The air in the studio thickened, humid with our sweat, our deodorant failing. From behind us, Mrs. Albini sighed, a guttural sound, like air pushing out of a sponge. We were an obscene group, little animals panting at a god.

In the locker room after class, we peeled off our leotards, elastic snapping, tights rolled down like shed skin. The place reeked of sour pads, talc, and whatever fungal thing was growing between our toes.

The talk started small:

"Who knew Mikhail Baryshnikov was so hot."

"I'd tap that."

"Seriously. Did you see his butt?"

We dissolved into giggles.

"And his mouth! He has nice lips. Thank God the cameraman decided to zoom in on his face."

"Do you think the cameraman was gay?"

Janie, who was seventeen and had recently lost her virginity to her boyfriend, upped the ante. "I'd let Mikhail fuck me." She said it with the smugness of someone who'd been there, even though none of us believed she'd enjoyed it. "I'd let him do whatever he wanted."

The other girls squealed and giggled. We looked around at each other conspiratorily. This was what it meant to be girls, the shared electricity of seeing something we weren't supposed to want and wanting it anyway.

I wanted in. I wanted to be louder, dirtier, more convincing. I wanted their eyes on me in admiration, their laughter peeling me open. So I said, "I'd let him rape me."

The silence was instant. Someone's locker slammed shut. Janie raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

Heat crawled up my neck. I hadn't meant it—not really. I couldn't even picture it. Rape, that is. What did I know of such a violent thing?

The moment passed and the conversation mercifully turned to other things—carpooling to class next week, the status of Mrs. Albini's divorce, whether things would ever return to normal.

"That's what marrying a man with wack dick will do to you," Janie said, and the other girls laughed.

I smiled weakly. My armpits were leaking, rancid and humiliated. I wrapped my arms over my chest, suddenly aware of my own body: pimples on my back, tights sticking damp between my thighs, the faint crust of discharge in the crotch seam.

What I wanted was to be inside the circle of their desire. Instead I was outside, standing half-naked under the buzzing fluorescents, my skin crawling with the stink of myself, wanting to disappear down the drain.

That night, I begged my mom to let me transfer to a studio across town—one where I could really "take my craft seriously." She agreed without looking up from the crossword. It cost the same, and I think she'd already accepted that I would never amount to more than a soft-bodied hobbyist.

So I never found out what happened to Mrs. Albini. Whether she got the divorce, whether the washcloth ever cooled, whether the TV finally gave out mid-grand jeté. But sometimes I still think about that mirrored room: the sweaty gaggle of us tittering away. Mrs. Albini dissolving quietly in the corner. Mikhail forever leaping inside his fuzzy VHS purgatory, the tape looping on repeat until the image burns into white.

They were, in their own ways, the best teachers I ever had.

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