BSC061 - Jessi and the Awful Secret - Martin, Ann M.

    Chapter 1.

    Mme Noelle looked at me and rapped her stick sharply on the studio floor. She didn't have to say a word. Instantly I raised my leg even higher behind me and pushed my shoulders back. "Much better, Mademoiselle Romsey," she said with a nod. Then she moved along, studying the grand battements of the other students at the bane.

    "You are much too stiff," I heard her tell a blonde girl named Mary Bramstedt. "Relax your shoulders. Breathe!" Maybe I should explain a few things before I go any further. For starters, my name is not Mademoiselle Romsey. That's just how it comes out when my teacher, Mme Noelle, speaks to me in her French accent.

    I'm Jessica Ramsey. All my friends call me Jessi. I'm eleven and (among other things) I take ballet lessons at a school in Stamford.

    Mme Noelle is rather old and very strict, but has a great reputation as a ballet teacher. In fact, the ballet school I go to is considered one of the best on the East Coast. (Not counting the professional schools down in New York City.) I'm really glad to be studying here.

    Right now I attend class every Tuesday and Friday, after school. My dad works in Stamford and picks me up on the way home. It takes us about a half hour to drive from Stamford to our home in Stoneybrook.

    Mme Noelle clapped her hands and I swung my leg out of the grand battement position. A grand battement is a warm-up exercise meant to loosen the hips and hamstring muscles of the legs. (It's pronounced, "grand-bot-a-mont," which is French, the language of ballet.) Class always opens with a series of warm-ups. It's important that a dancer's muscles be warm and stretched so she doesn't hurt herself (or himself - though there are only girls in my class) during the more difficult work that comes later.

    "Before we begin ze center work," Mme Noelle said that day, "I have an announcement to make. Ze Stamford Ballet School will be giving a free six-week donee class to some of Stamford's less privileged children. Ze class will be held every Tuesday at zis time. We need volunteers to help Mme Dupre conduct it." "What about our own work?" Katie Beth Parsons asked.