19 I looked this up later that night, when I might have been watching old episodes of Power Jam or making progress on A Tale of Two Cities, but instead I fell down an especially large rabbit hole about the peculiarities of the French language. W is a nonnative French sound, and the letter wasn’t added to the alphabet until the nineteenth century. The other nonnative letter is k, which joined the alphabet shortly after w.

MASTER CLASS: THE BODY IN MOTION

As a child, Andrew loved to dig.

He destroyed his family’s backyard. Ripped open the roots of the rosebush. Dug holes to the bottom of the sandbox. He asked for a shovel for Christmas. He loved machines that dug, with their brontosaurus necks and their scoops like claws. He loved the feeling of earth in his hands. When Ros came into the picture and the three of them built that world just off school property, before the people who lived in the house boarded up their fence, he was in charge of irrigation and moats. When the visiting director tells them that she wants them all to dig deep in today’s movement exercise, Andrew thinks of a big yellow excavator, scraping through the earth.

Just begin, the director says, by being aware of your body.

Honestly: Andrew’d rather not. He feels, to the extent that he can, his slim calves and his stringy arms. His face, so freckled, even more so in the summer. He leaves his body, remembers seventh-grade chorus, where he was the only boy still singing in the soprano section, how the music teacher wouldn’t stop complimenting him on his lovely voice. Remembers Ros and Celia, in the middle alto section, mouthing the words to the song for the winter concert: S’vivon, sov sov sov.”

Move as you normally do, the director says.

He walks. Heel toe. Heel toe. Celia told him once he had a distinctive gait, and he wonders if it’s possible to have a clownish walk. He doesn’t really want to be a leading man, in spite of what he said to Celia. He likes being the clown, is the thing. Likes making people laugh. He cracks wise. People haven’t always thought of him as funny, but it’s something he sees in himself now and likes.

Be aware of others, the director says. Acknowledge them with your body, with the space your body takes up.

Just below the surface, an undercurrent, always there, like a smell coming up from the floorboards, like crocuses peeking through the snow, is Celia Gilbert. Celia Gilbert, his kindergarten wife, Celia Gilbert, who’s almost forgotten him. Celia Gilbert, who thinks he’s moved on.

Now change the way you’re moving, the director says.