Day 8: New York Ballerina

For the next week, instead of coming up with ideas on the spot, I'm going to take inspiration from images either that I choose, or other people choose. (If anyone is following and has a suggestion for an image, shoot me an email or comment!)

This morning's picture is New York Ballerina, by Natasha Epperson. Found via her deviantART profile.

Character bio and background:
Lucy is a Dancer. But not just any dancer; she's one of an elite cadre who stalk the streets, fates light and dark following in the wake of their tireless performance. Cursed years ago by the Child-God Ihtafebra, they are doomed to dance along the streets forevermore, twisting and turning while their feet bleed and their souls wither. But like any of the Cursed, fate is drawn to them, and is smeared around them as they pass through the streets. In the dystopian city of New York, Dancers are viewed with fear and awe, and treated with the respect such emotions entail, for if you are touched by a Dancer... you are marked forever by fate, which will dog your footsteps until you move no more.

Lucy is a hardened, bitter woman, like many Dancers--but unlike the others, she is not without a heart. She chooses to dance alone in the forgotten alleyways, in the dark, unlit side streets, where the fate which sticks to her like syrup cannot engulf anyone but her.

Emotional undercurrents:
The Dancers are very emotional creatures; once filled with passion, they are now bitter and broken. Lucy is no different; she is filled with sorrow at her predicament, and has a great hatred of the Gods for meddling in the affairs of man. She is at once selfish and selfless; she will do anything to help herself, but she does her best to avoid the crowds of the city centre, where many of the Dancers prey upon the populace.

Synopsis:
This would be a very hard monologue to enact, because you would need to know ballet and contemporary dance. I won't detail the choreography, as having never studied ballet I don't want to write useless crap. The one thing I do want to denote is that her movements have to accentuate her words; when she becomes more fired up, so do her movements, and vice versa.

The scene begins as Lucy dances onto the stage. She warns the audience not to come forward, not to touch her; only sorrow can come from touching a Dancer. She goes on to explain the predicament of the Dancers, and how they came to be, and ends by leaving, saying she cannot stay in one place for too long, or it will be infected with the strands of fate.

Download Day 8: New York Ballerina