“Let her be. She knows what she’s doing.” Karo enjoys seeing herself as the master among apprentices, Maeve thinks: the fearless leader, the sage. Now she reaches to fix Justin’s hat for him. “Happy hour down in the hot springs! Okay, yes—” She turns back to Maeve. “So I hope you’re not shy. The heat can make you dizzy. What’s better for balance than that?”

Maeve hits the floor, panting—then rolls away and pushes up, falls again. Pushes up. Pulls in to spin. And spin, and spin. Out of the turn, extending, her quads and calves burning, she’s in the air and then down again, landing too hard, Jesus, Maeve!, arch, lift, pull up straight, wide-turn-step, step-step, ball-change, reach and hold-hold-hold-hold—fall.

The wood floor always rising to meet her, the sound of her own hard breath ruthless over the music.

Where the impulse is to turn in, Maeve opens out. Where the impulse is for small, she wants to make it big, expansive. Powerful. Women’s work tends to explore emotional spaces—from a review she read in The New Yorker on the flight here. Not just women’s work—what’s designed for women, over and over again, by male choreographers.

Maeve intends only the opposite. Athletic, virtuosic. Bold shapes. Aggression.

Fight.

There’s sweat in her eyes. Her hair is tied up in a bun and the bun wrapped in a kerchief to keep strays from distracting her. She pulls up, a doll on a string, and for a moment she’s completely still, staring herself down in the mirror. It takes more strength to hang in the air like this, to appear suspended, than to nail the showy, high jumps. This is where the damage of the C-section lays itself bare: without a solid core, she has less control. Everything she does looks impulsive, skewed.

The light lifts, as though a new spot has been trained on her. She spins back and drops again, hitting the ground hard. Too loose, sloppy in her form. She can feel the shock wave in her hip. Why can’t she be more careful? When she lifts up again, it’s like punishment, hip throbbing, and she’s throwing herself through the room. Why. Can’t. You. Be. More. Careful.

And she comes down, purposely careless, angry, hurtful, her shoulder off the wall. Hard enough to make her cry out. If you hurt yourself, you have to stop.

This time she stops.

The shoulder stings and she’s almost afraid to touch it. If she injures herself now, then what? There are no more grants, no other retreats. She gives it a tiny roll, back and then forward again. A test.

Injury is self-sabotage, Maeve. What are you, stupid? It means you give up. You’re done. You have to go home with nothing. You left your children for nothing, you came here for nothing.