“Ah, excellent job tonight, Colleen,” Kira said, nodding. Then she turned to me with a slight raise of her eyebrows. “Alina. It’s nice to see you again.” No one could make me as aware of my body as she could. But I resisted the urge to tuck my butt under my hips, inch my shoulders back, and lift my chin.

“Hi, Kira,” I said, softly but steadily.

“I heard you’re in your school musical.” She paused. “How nice.” I nodded awkwardly. I couldn’t remember ever talking to Kira about anything other than ballet, and it was clearly weird for both of us.

“We missed you in The Nutcracker,” she went on. “Although Greta Chin made a good showing of Chinese Tea.”

There it was, my opening. “I was actually wondering if I could talk to you about that.”

“About Greta’s performance?”

“About Chinese Tea. Um, have you ever thought about changing it?”

Kira furrowed her brows. “Changing it how?”

I took a breath and shifted my feet. “Well, right now the dance is really insensitive. Some of the movements, like the shuffling and the bowing, are actually racist stereotypes.”

Kira’s eyes flashed with irritation, and I thought she was going to say “How dare you” again. Instead, she lifted her chin. “My job is to preserve and pass down the world’s most cherished ballets. That is what I’m doing. Besides, the dance is memorable and everyone loves it.”

“Everyone doesn’t love it,” I said. Kira’s mouth tightened, like it did when you weren’t dancing up to her standards. I pushed myself to go further. “I think it alienates Asian people—dancers and audience members—and makes them feel like they don’t belong, like they’re being mocked or laughed at.”

“But you did the dance for years,” Kira said, sounding genuinely confused.

“I didn’t always see what was wrong with it. And then when I did see, I didn’t know how to say it. But I do now.”

“Lots of big companies are changing Chinese Tea and Arabian Coffee,” Colleen added. “It’s not actually that difficult.”

“Right, and it’s an interesting way to think about the ballet. Like, how do you preserve the fun of Chinese Tea or the glamour of Arabian Coffee without being insensitive or hurtful?”

Kira’s eyes darted between us. For the first time ever, she was speechless.

“And it’s not just Chinese Tea and Arabian Coffee,” Colleen said. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here.”

That snapped Kira out of it. “What on earth do you mean?”