notes.

[waywardious]

Claude Laurent Bérubé (b. 1867), a French ballet dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet.

Claude was born as the youngest child and only son of French citizen Nanette De Sauveterre (formerly a noble family) and Canadian merchant heir, Laurent Bérubé. For the first decade and a half, they lived together in Marseille where Laurent was manager of the French branch of his father's expanding company. However, when his father suddenly died, he felt compelled to return to Canada and take over the business. Nanette, on the other hand, refused to uproot. Completely against conventions and the traditions of the time, she divorced Laurent who travelled alone to Canada where he continued to send Nanette monthly benefits to provide for their children. When he left, Claude was six years old. The following year, he was enrolled at the Paris Opera Ballet School and moved alone to Paris to live in the dormitories at the theatre. Here he would spend the next fifteen years. Claude attended school from age six to fourteen, after which he dedicated himself fully to dance. As a dancer, he started standing out - not only because he was built differently from most of the other French male dancers, long and lean where Claude was much more sturdy, but because the French style wasn't his forte. Claude is a dancer of strength and precision, able to outjump most of the others and balance in difficult positions forever. The French style is much more fast and fluid, aspects he continues to struggle with. When he meets Pavel, he realises that there's an entire school (the Russian) which creates amazing danseur nobles out of the same mould that he himself is cut from. If only they are given ballets that provide choreography for these abilities. As such he comes to value Petipa's ballets more than anything. Not only because they bring Pavel into his life.

Pavel Tsereteli, a Georgian étoile at the Imperial Russian Ballet (Saint Petersburg), engaged to a Georgian daughter of the nobility from his home region, dies at age 29.

Along with a prominent ballerina and one of the teachers at the Imperial Ballet, he came to Paris in 1891 on exchange and over the course of a year would star along with the Paris Opera Ballet in the production of two Petipa ballets that had not previously been on the repertory outside Russia, La Esmeralda and La Bayadère. To win favour with the French public, La Esmeralda was staged first. During the preparations for his own performance as Phoebus, he and Claude (who served as understudy for Frollo and halfway through the run had to take over the role when the originally scheduled dancer suffered an injury) initiate a relatonship - one that they manage to keep hidden until a week before the premiere of La Bayadère in autumn. Their secret disclosed, Pavel receives a telegram from the Tsar, calling him back to Russia where he is ordered to marry his fiancée immediately. When he refuses, the Tsar (as a show of favour towards the girl's family) has him hanged. Due to the absence of Pavel as well as the other Russians on exchange, the Palais Garnier is forced to pull La Bayadère from its roster and put on an impromptu run of Giselle instead. It is a financial disaster. As a consequence, not only must Claude live with the knowledge that he will never see Pavel again, but professionally he is demoted to a corps dancer once more, despite having been a promising soloist until then. Over the next two years, he focuses all his energy and time on trying to regain his status, seeing as dance was what brought Pavel and him together. Fortunately for him, ballet master Jules Saint-Milon has unofficially chosen him as a protégé and does everything in his power to ensure that Claude is still cast in decent roles, so he gets a fair chance to reclaim his rank. Finally, in 1893, the Imperial Russian Ballet once more sends envoys to help the Paris Opera Ballet stage La Bayadère, though this time it is only the ballerina and the teacher. The role of Solor will be performed by Pavel's understudy from last. Claude himself is cast, against all odds and much to the surprise of his peers, as the Bronze Idol once more. Not too long after the premiere of the ballet, he meets Vincent.