[48] TOURNELLE DU SOLEIL • SHOWTIME [ii] (Patreon)

Sam and I are crouched halfway up the stairs, hunkered down out of sight, whisper-counting furiously. We can’t peek above the stairline to see where Fiona is at in her act. There’s no clear audio mark to go by. We have to count out 32 bars. Each bar is punctuated with a jabbing finger raising or lowering. I can just make out Sam’s hands, the fan, the lower half of her face through the mesh blinders of my headpiece.

Our count marches on. Twenty-eight… Twenty-nine… Thirty…

I turn away, shifting my weight so I’m ready to launch. Check by feel that the length of the red silk is positioned correctly in front of the mouth of the fan. Grip the tail end of it firmly to the back of my head. GO.

Sam switches the fan on. Its roar is masked by the crescendo in the music that carries me up the steps in view of the gathered crowd for the first time. I straighten, advance out onto the open expanse of the now-empty stage as the fabric shoots up above me in a featherweight eruption. I feel the heat of the audience packed tightly around the edge of the stage, though I can’t see them. My body is all angles, spine curling in on itself, as I count out the few remaining bars until it’s time to let go. The edges of the silk ripple in my blunted vision. Four, three, two one–

The wind catches the cloth, WHHHOOOSH. It rockets away from my upturned face and I sense the audience’s faces turn with it. The rest of the cast flows up the steps behind me and onto the stage. Four pairs of hands grab my arms and drag me backwards–but not before I see the silk stop fifteen feet above the stage as though it hit a concrete wall (NO) and come plummeting abruptly back down to earth (F–)–and then I’m being thrust up into the air.

Keepyourbodytight–keepyourbodytight–keepyourbodytight–keepyourbodytight. I'm held aloft for a forever that lasts all of a moment before I’m being lowered down into a scrum of bodies, guided by a host of unseen hands into the familiar comfort of the Tower. My mind locks in, moving in unison with the rest of the cast as we hit all our beats in the next measures of synchronized choreography until (three…two…one…)

The black cover is dragged over the tower. I hear the CLACK of the bolt being slid free from the lock on the Tower door and turn towards it, squeezing my body out through the slim opening as someone holds the cloth out of my way for just a moment.

Out of sight, I scurry off the back corner of the stage onto a waiting ladderI pull the headpiece half-off so I can squint at the darkened ground beneath my feet, pad quickly and carefully over the dense tapestry of snaking wires to the doorway that leads to–

The costumers. One set of hands plucks the headpiece the rest of the way off as another undoes the long zip at the back of the dress. I half-duck out of the headpiece. Step forward out of the collapsing dress. Accept an extended baby wipe to clean off the soles of my dirty feet. Gratefully steal a sip of water from an extended bottle. Slip back out the doorway to the back corner of the stage where my Tower is waiting.

Not quite time yet. I drop backwards down into a bridge. Sink my hips low, transferring the focus of the stretch forward into my upper spine, my shoulders. Shift my weight back to the balls of my feet, leg muscles squeezing, straighten up again. Drop back. Straighten up. Drop back. Straighten up. Now.

I clamber up the ladder and slink back into the Tower, slowly crouching down in the center. Luke has arrived behind me: I can’t see him, but I hear the bolt slide shut again. A moment later, the volume begins to fill with the cool, thick, slightly choking FX smoke. I arch up onto the ball of one foot, curl my head down until my forehead rests on my knees, wrap my arms tightly around myself like a ball. The fabric is whipped away with a flourish.

Bright lights bounce off the fog that’s now risen high enough to completely obscure me until–BANG– my palms slap out against the glass. I let my body rise with the swirling eddies of smoke shivering out from my strike. Chin down, levelling an unblinking gaze out from beneath my brows at the dense wall of humans just beyond the edge of the stage. I flow through each shape and sequence, never breaking that energetic tie. Send tendrils snaking out into the crowd, seeking an anchor point behind the eyes. Each upturned face glows red, yellow, orange, white, in rippling sequences as the the colours on the digital backdrop behind me contort and shift along with my movements. The whites of each glinting eye sparking back at me in a magnetic galaxy until I’m in my final contortion handstand, being drawn backwards, away, back to my original position on the stage as the other artists spin into their next formations.

Hold- hold– hold– hold– I wait until the black cloth is fully pulled over me again, until there is zero chance anyone in the audience can see me still, and whip to the door that Luke’s unlocking momentarily. QUICKCHANGE. NOW.

That Luke’s unlocking momentarily.

That Luke–

Luke–

THAT LUKE’S UNLOCKING MOMENTARILY?

The seconds drip away, relentlessly, mercilessly.

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST!

Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess