When he'd first introduced this program, he'd had a story in mind. A character, frustrated by love but a slave to it regardless, who moves from reluctance to bitterness to longing to a final calm acceptance: a universal love story, something anyone might understand.

It's different now. Even without the music, he can hear it, humming through his bones, his guts, his lungs, tugging and imperfect. All the more furious for being so hopeless.

Con una spada vorrei tagliare quelle gole che cantano d'amore

With a sword I wish I could cut those throats singing about love

Anger. He lets it seep into his straining muscles, rasp in his quickening breath, fuel his pushing pulse. He's never been an angry person, has spent his life either delighted by the beauty in the world or ignoring the rest. Anger has always seemed like such a waste of an emotion, but he falls into it now with relief. The simplicity of it. The immediacy. Anger the impermanent black and purple mark or bloody slice over a deeper, invisible injury, a cracked and bruised bone that keeps hurting every time he presses it, even after the skin over the top has healed.

Questa storia che senso non ha

This story that has no meaning

No matter how he searches for one in these familiar steps, the sweep of the choreography, the familiarity of pain and burning muscle exhaustion. It's all stopped meaning anything at all, and he hates it, suddenly and with a burning fury, hates this restlessness and uncertainty, this lack of inspiration, the inability to do anything but throw himself into the step sequence like he's throwing himself off a bridge, into a fire.

It's not even a relief when the steps come to an end, and his only thought is that he should do it again.