She normally didn’t waste too much time on me, thankfully, and stomped back into the main ballroom, where she could practice again. Although I made mistakes with the others’ schedules as well, everyone else remained quite kind to me, even Estella.

Adrienne managed the business part of the studio while Dominic was its artistic soul. He taught most of the dance sessions for the professionals, except when they’d have a guest coach come in from outside the studio. Adrienne gave coaching sessions as well, but Dominic was the world-famous choreographer. He went through the studio making small adjustments to student and professional alike.

“We are so lucky to be at Adrienne and Dominic’s studio,” Katerina told me once. “They were the reason we came from Russia. Every day, we can be trained by them.”

Whenever I entered the studio, I breathed in the smell of it: air-conditioning, cologne and perfume. No food smells, no garlic oil, no dirty dishes waiting for me. I loved that my clothing no longer smelled like food. I smeared my hands with moisturizer every night and the skin began to knit together, the ridges in my nails filling out.

When a student came in, he or she would report to me, then sit at one of the tables in the ballroom until the teacher was available. When I saw a teacher correcting a student’s body, moving a hip or shoulder back into place, I thought of Ma, and how safe I’d felt when she’d done that for me. I knew I would never be able to afford the lessons, and yet I spent as much time as I could watching at the glass doors to the ballroom, struggling to decipher the mysteries of dance.

Mostly what I learned instead was the rhythm of the studio. Dance session was held daily in the early afternoon for any professional who wasn’t booked, and the sessions were taught by Adrienne, Dominic or an outside coach. I learned many dancers retired in their thirties or early forties. The ones who had won national or international titles became coaches and judges. The bulk of the student lessons were taught in the evenings, after people got off work.

Social dancers came in for a small set of lessons or to reach a goal, like learning how to salsa in time for a party. Wedding couples usually wanted to avoid the “clutch and sway” syndrome for their first dance. Serious students, on the other hand, returned regularly. Some of these were social dancers, people who loved being at the studio every week to dance together. Most were competition students. Mateo’s Japanese student, Okina, booked double lessons several times a week with him. I heard that she had been winning competitions for years. Keith was Simone’s competition student and he was by far the best male student in our studio. Katerina and Viktor trained regularly with their serious students as well.

I also finally figured out that Mateo and Nina weren’t a couple off of the dance floor.

“You see him?” Mateo asked me when a good-looking guy wearing a T-shirt underneath a leather jacket strode into the ballroom. Estella greeted him and they stood chatting near the glass doors.

“Is he one of Estella’s competition students?” I answered.

“Oh yes, and she’s possessive too. Rushes to put on more makeup before he comes. He’s a big television producer, does half of the daytime soap operas. But he just doesn’t know that he’s gay yet. I can tell. If he ever got a chance to try me, he’d leave her skinny butt in a second,” Mateo said. He stood up and walked deliberately toward the pair, swinging his hips. As he passed, I saw him turn his head and catch the guy’s eye, giving the man a long wink that made him flush as red as his T-shirt. Estella’s lips thinned. Mateo glanced back at me through the glass and pretended to fan himself.

My favorite time of day was before the studio opened, when the professionals were rehearsing. I thought to myself that this was when their true selves were revealed. When they were lounging around in the waiting area during the day, they were diminished, as colorless as the rest of us ordinary people. But then they stood up as dancers and started to move, and it was as if a light shone from within them. I held my breath at their swiftness, strength, grace and power. They were dressed in their rehearsal clothing then—sweats or plain T-shirts—but were all the more breathtaking for it.

I realized that the professionals were not physically flawless. Nina really did have a perfectly proportioned face but Simone had bad skin underneath her makeup and her features were oversize. Estella’s nose was very sharp. Viktor had a long awkward face with uneven teeth. Mateo’s head was completely square and Katerina’s features were as full-blown as the rest of her.

Yet when any of them walked into a room, heads turned. Their attractiveness had more to do with how they moved, how they held themselves, than how they looked. Sometimes I would see Viktor on break, slumped in a chair like a puppet without a master, but then later he would flow across the dance floor with the controlled power of a storm. I began to see beauty as something that could be unleashed from within a person rather than a set of physical features like a perfect nose or big eyes. This was true of the students as well. It didn’t seem to matter whether they were tall or short, fat or thin, they all transformed within a few lessons. Something to do with the magic of coordinated movement, the choreography of two people together, the achievement of control over their bodies.

Ma had said to me, “In the west, they believe in separation of body and soul. They think that the soul separated from the body will find enlightenment, but for the Chinese, we strive for unity. If you look at a child, you can see they are still struggling in their bodies, trying to master them. It is when you become one with your body and soul, that is when you will be whole. That is beauty.” I’d never fully understood the truth of that the way I did now.

Later, for lessons, the male dancers would change into shirts and ties that they kept in the teachers’ room and the women would put on skirts or tailored pants, but during their own rehearsals, they were free to be as they were. They weren’t trying to be polite or charming. Viktor and Katerina cursed each other in Russian across the floor when parts of their routine didn’t work.

I said once to Nina, “You and Mateo look different when you’re on the floor together. It’s like you are more.”

She nodded. “When we dance together, we are at the edges of who we are. We have to push our own limits to find out who we can become, together.” Then she’d shaken her head and said, “Now I desperately need some more coffee.”

Sometimes Simone practiced with her professional partner, Pierre, who was from Haiti. They were a breathtaking couple, with her white-blond hair against the ebony of his skin. Most of the time they rehearsed at his studio down in the Village. Simone, Pierre, Nina and Mateo were mainly Latin dancers, while Katerina and Viktor specialized in the smooth dances like waltz or foxtrot.

Every day, I watched the dancers, hungry for something I hadn’t known I wanted, holding my breath for the day I would make a mistake so great I would be asked to leave.

—

As Estella and Simone lounged on the chairs in the reception area, I kept myself busy checking the appointment book. They were whispering to each other. I usually enjoyed it when the dancers hung out in my area but this looked serious. I’d seen Estella called into Adrienne’s office earlier and Dominic had followed them. I wondered what was going on.

The doors to the ballroom opened and Nina stepped in. “I’m going out now. You want me to grab you some pizza, Charlie?” I was surprised by the type of food most of the dancers brought back to the studio: Chinese takeout, burgers and pasta. Nina had told me that the amount of exercise they got burned off the excess calories. Simone and Estella were the only ones who always purchased salads from the deli on the corner.