Summary
Midnight snow swirls around a trembling tsarina of the footlights as she trades imperial splendour for exile, her infant Vasta spirited into the cavernous corridors of the Mariinsky’s shadow-sister school; there, under Marta Antonovitch’s iron tutelage, the child grows into a kinetic poem of sinew and secrecy while her father, Grand Duke Alexis, haunts the wings like a penitent ghost. Years later, impresario Michael Pavloff—equal parts Svengali and spider—arrives to harvest talent for Parisian export, sniffs out the bloodline, and covets the girl as both ornament and hostage. Vasta, rebelling against Marta’s maternal chokehold, shears her hair, dons britches, and boards the westbound train inside a comrade’s skin. In gas-lit Montmartre her fugitive exhilaration collides with Richard Moraino’s bohemian brushstrokes; their courtship unfurls across café tables where champagne flutes catch the gas-flare like liquid topaz. Two seats away sits Lola—once St Petersburg’s incandescent sylph, now a woman whose cheekbones have become geography for every unspoken sorrow—feeling the tug of filial static across the tobacco haze. Pavloff, lusting for lost youth, kidnaps Vasta mid-performance, extinguishing the footlights with a murdered electrician’s blood; mother and daughter converge in a velvet-swathed prison where repressed lullabies finally find voice. One gunshot later, the past detonates into the present: Alexis storms in, misreads the tableau, kneels, and takes the murder on his own noble ledger so that two women may pirouette out of history’s choke-hold toward a future no longer choreographed by men wearing epaulettes or opera cloaks.
Synopsis
The Grand Duke Alexis has been happy with his wife, Lola, formerly the queen of the St. Petersburg ballet, and their baby daughter, Vasta. But the lowering cloud that has always hung over them through the refusal of the Russian Court to recognize their marriage breaks when the Duke learns there is an intrigue against his wife's life. She makes her escape at midnight and, powerless to do anything, Alexis is forced to see his wife pass out of his life. The baby is given to Marta Antonovitch, in charge of the girls at the Imperial Ballet School. Years later Vasta is the most apt pupil at the school. Her father comes to see her often and is deeply affected by her resemblance to her mother. The relationship is kept secret, but when he is ordered to the south for his health he gives last instructions that she be well cared for. Michael Pavloff, the impresario for the Russian Ballet, who has discovered the duke's secret, goes to the school to choose the dancers to be sent by the government to Paris. He takes a liking to Vasta, but Marta refuses to allow the girl to go when he chooses her for deportation. The girl frets over the refusal, disguises herself as a boy and changes places with a youth who had not wanted to go. In Paris Lola, despite the sorrow of the changing years, holds sway over men's hearts. Pavloff is an ardent admirer of hers, but lately he has been thinking more of Vasta. Richard Moraino, a young artist commissioned to paint the portraits of the Russian Ballet, is attracted by Vasta. Their courtship progresses and one afternoon while they are having tea together, Lola and Pavloff are seated at the next table. Both women feel an interest in the other and Lola is startled when Pavloff tells her he has discovered she is the daughter of the Grand Duke Alexis and that he intends to get her for his own. One night during the performance the electrician is killed and the stage darkened. When the lights are turned on again they discover Vasta has disappeared. Pavloff has taken the girl and locks her in his apartment. To divert suspicion he gives a dinner party. During the revelry Lola, who is a member of the party hears a half-smothered cry and, guided by it cornea to the locked door behind which Vasta is concealed. She stays until the last guest has departed and then appeals to the liquor-dazed Pavloff, She secures the key to the room and hurries back, cautioning Vasta to make haste, but Pavloff comes upon them and seizes Vasta in his arms. Lola then shoots him. Then Lola reveals her identity. Alexis, who is passing through Paris, stops to see Pavloff. He discovers Lola and the dead man and accuses her of having been his mistress, but when Vasta comes forward and tells all, Alexis begs her forgiveness. He says he will take the responsibility of the killing knowing he will be vindicated when he says it was to save the honor of his wife. Richard and Vasta are once more brought together and Alexis asks his wife if she is willing to brave the Russian Court with him after all these years. Her happy smile is sufficient answer.
