Black and white photo of a woman's upper back showing a small fine line black tattoo of a ballet dancer silhouette beside cursive script, with an inset of the design on white.

Ballet dancer and script on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with her hair up is seen from behind, showing a small black tattoo of a ballet dancer silhouette with cursive script arcing across to the right. The linework is thin and even, with solid black ink and no shading, and the design sits on the upper back below the nape of the neck. The photograph is in black and white, with an inset in the top left showing the design on a plain white background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are nineteen the winter the Carrow Players stop at the Empire in Hallam Bridge, a town where the only thing that moves after dark is the river. The stage door sticks in the cold, and Mrs Pardoe, who keeps the wardrobe, tells you the ballerina has gone home with a chill and the understudy has gone to pieces on the stairs.

Keep reading

You know the dance. You have watched it from the wings every night since September, tracing the arc of the lead's arm with your eyes until you could draw it on the flagstones in chalk. Tonight the manager wants a girl in the swan costume with the feathers pinned at the hip, and you say yes before you have considered the pins or your own feet.

The music starts. Your left foot finds the mark, your arms lift the way the drawing said they should, and for four minutes the Empire is not a damp hall above a chemist's but a clean white page. Somewhere near the back a child says "look", and you hold the arabesque a beat longer than the score allows.

Afterwards Mrs Pardoe pins a note to your coat, written in the lead's looping hand, with the words you have been muttering under your breath all week. You keep it folded in your glove for the rest of your life, and when the tour is only a faded poster in a junk shop, you still know the last line by heart.

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