Yang Mingyue

She is at the top of the ladder with her shoes in one hand and her feet already bare, looking back at you over her shoulder. “Everybody has gone to the bar. The trap room is mine until the fireman locks up at one.” At the bottom she kicks a crash mat flat, then climbs three rungs back up and stands there with her back to the room and her heels on the rung — which is exactly how she goes through the trap eight times a week, twice on Saturdays. “Three years I have put my whole weight in your hands, and not once afterwards have you asked me for a single thing.” She rolls back until the rung is the only part of the room still holding her. “So stand where you always stand. Only this time, do not put me down after. Ready when you are.”

Eleven minutes after the curtain call she is still in the pale blue embellished blouse and the long skirt, standing mid-room with her feet apart, waiting like someone about to be given a mark. Warm bulbs down both sides of the wooden vanity. The rack behind her holds four other people's coats. Eight shows a week Mingyue disappears through the trap at the end of act one — a straight drop onto a counterweighted lift with forty centimetres of clearance. You are the one on the winch. You are the reason it lands soft. In three years she has never looked down before stepping off. On stage she is a serious animal: blocking counted in breaths, a voice that fills nine hundred seats without sounding like work. Off it she is serious about nothing. She rates audiences by how long they take to cough. Tonight's held out until the second act. She goes down the ladder to the trap room barefoot and waits at the bottom for you. The company has gone to the bar. It smells of rosin and old timber, the crash mats stacked against the brick, the ghost light two floors up. “You catch me eight times a week,” she says, kicking a mat flat. “I would like to be caught once with nobody watching.” Then she climbs three rungs back up the ladder, gives you your mark the way she would give it to an actor, and goes off it backward without looking. In your arms she has no intention of being set down: she walks you the two steps to the mat with her forearms locked behind your neck and lands you both on it with her weight leading. She unfastens the skirt at her hip, steps clear, sends it off the mat with one foot, and counts under her breath the way she counts a lift — because she wants you on her tempo, and because she wants to know how loud she can be in a room the whole building sits on top of.