Paige Carrington’s answering service took my phone call. I didn’t leave a message but looked up the address for the Windy City Balletworks: 5400 N. Clark. I stopped on the way for a sandwich and a Coke.

The Balletworks occupied an old warehouse between a Korean restaurant and a package goods store. The warehouse was dingy on the outside but had been refinished within. An empty hallway with a clapboard box office was lined with pictures of the Windy City ballerinas in various roles. The company did some standard pieces, including a lot of Balanchine, but it also experimented with its own choreography. Paige was on the wall as a cowgirl in Rodeo, as Bianca in Taming of the Shrew, and in her own light comic role in Clark Street Fantasy. I’d seen that piece twice.

The auditorium was to the left. A little sign outside it announced that a rehearsal was in progress. I slipped in quietly and joined a handful of people seated in the house. Onstage someone was clapping her hands and calling for quiet.

“We’ll take it from the scherzo entrance again. Karl, you’re coming in a second behind the beat. And, Paige, you want to stay downstage until the grand jete. Places, please.”

The dancers wore a motley collection of garments, their legs covered with heavy warmers to prevent muscle cramps. Paige had on a bronze leotard with matching leg warmers. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail. She looked about sixteen from where I sat.

Someone operated a fancy tape deck in front of the stage. The music began. The piece was a jarring modern one and the choreography matched it, a dance on the depravity of modern urban life. Karl, entering on time in what was apparently the scherzo movement—hard to tell amidst all the wailing and jangling—seemed to be dying of a heroin overdose. Paige arrived on the scene seconds ahead of the narc squad, watched him die, and departed. I didn’t pick all that up right away, but I got to see the thing six times before the director was satisfied with it.

A little after five the director dismissed the troupe, reminding them that they had a rehearsal at ten in the morning and a performance at eight the next night. I moved up front with the other members of the audience. We followed the dancers backstage; no one questioned our right to be there.

Following the sound of voices, I stuck my head into a dressing room. A young woman pulling a leotard from her freckled body asked me what I wanted. I told her I was looking for Paige.

“Oh, Paige … She’s in the soloists’ dressing-room—three doors down on your left.”