A Klutz at the Ballet
After 50 years of writing
about the budget, I have become bored with the subject, and have been looking
for a more emotionally satisfying interest. It may seem bizarre, but I have
found one such interest in watching ballet at home on my VCR. I call that
bizarre because I cannot dance a step. One of my most anguished memories is of
trying to propel an unfortunate female classmate around the floor at the Mohawk
Country Club during the senior prom of Schenectady High School. I did not
improve much with time, although I did find a more agreeable partner.
Despite
that, or perhaps because of that--psychologists always have two options--I have
long been fascinated by dance. In college I participated in an essay contest
that required entrants to use a nom de plume. I chose "Bojangles," the nickname
of Bill Robinson, the famous movie and stage tap dancer. I mention that partly
to show that my interest did not always and only lie in long-legged girls in
tutus.
Ifirst became aware of ballet at the University of Chicago.
One of my first dates with the young woman who was to be my wife took us to
Les Sylphides downtown in the Loop. For 60 years thereafter, the ballet
remained an occasional diversion. Only recently, when--as I have noted--boredom
with the budget and, indeed, with economic policy in general left a vacuum at
the forefront of my consciousness, did ballet come in to fill it. I am by no
stretch of the imagination an expert. I am writing only to indicate what
pleasure the ballet, now readily available on videotape, has given this klutz,
and to suggest that others like me might also get pleasure from it.
Ballet may
have special appeal these days, because it is a relief from the verbal
communication in which we are all drowning. It is like music in that respect.
Music may have a more transcendental, spiritual quality. But ballet has more
--of scene, of form, and of movement; for many people, ballet offers more by
way of food for the mind than music does.
I am going to focus first on Swan Lake .
It is the most popular ballet of all time and probably the easiest to
appreciate. Also, I happen to have on tape two versions of Swan Lake ,
one featuring Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev (1966) and one with the Kirov
Ballet (1986).
Both
versions are characterized by a complete fusion of the music and the dance. The
music is simple, clear, tuneful, and rhythmic. It seems to compel the dance, as
if the particular steps danced to each note and bar were inevitable and any
other steps would be wrong. Listening, one gets--or, at least, I get--the
(improbable) feeling that the music is so compelling that if I were on stage
and heard it, I, too, would do that dance. Yet, as natural and inevitable as it
seems, the dance is also absolutely incredible. It is unbelievable that anyone
could do what those dancers are doing. That applies not only to the obviously
spectacular leaps and spins, but also to the precise placement of the feet when
walking slowly, and of the body when seated.
Everyone knows the story of Swan Lake . It was summed
up in the comment of a little old lady (why is it always a little old lady and
never a big young man?) who, after seeing it, said: "So, he fell in love with a
duck. So what could come of it?" To amplify just a little: Odette is a
beautiful maiden trapped in the body of a swan. She can be freed only by
someone who will love her forever. Prince Siegfried promises her that love, but
he is seduced into betraying that promise by the beautiful, but not so nice,
Odile. Dire consequences loom.
The two versions I have
differed in the degree to which they emphasized the story. The Kirov version
(at least the one I saw) was a vaudeville in which discrete, and stunning,
dance performances are hung on the thread of the story. It was staged before a
live audience that repeatedly broke into applause to which the stars responded
with bows. That, of course, interrupted the story. It also took the stars out
of their characters--Siegfried out of his soul-sickness, Odette out of her
heartbreak, and Odile out of her seductiveness. Moreover the principals, while
their dancing was brilliant, hadn't really tried to be soul-sickened,
heartbroken, or seductive. The problem was particularly serious for Siegfried,
who in the first act seemed a happy-go-lucky fellow, with no apparent reason to
spurn the beautiful women of the court and go out hunting a mirage.
The
Fonteyn-Nureyev version, on the other hand, emphasized the story, with all its
. The show slimmed the story down considerably, with some of the most
spectacular parts being cut. There was no audience, no applause, no
interruptions, no bows in the middle of the story. Nureyev, who was 28 at the
time, looked the anguished, searching youth that the story requires. Fonteyn
portrayed clearly in her facial expressions and arm movements the contrasting
characters of Odette and Odile.
Both versions are wonderful. In a sense, you
get more ballet for your money in the Kirov version. But you get more emotion
in the Fonteyn-Nureyev version.
My recent
interest in ballet has opened my eyes to a newer style that I used to find
unattractive and incomprehensible. It is less athletic and acrobatic than the
older, more romantic ballets. What there is in the way of stylized leaps,
spins, and balancing on the toes comes out as the natural expression of
exceptionally graceful human beings and not as a demonstration of what some
clever windup toys can do.
The main reaction to the older ballets is, "Wow! How can
anyone do that?" The newer ballets do not elicit that response. At first sight
they look easy, although further observation shows how precise and disciplined
the movements are. The newer ballets aim for more universal and fundamental
emotions than amazement--for a sense of beauty, or joy, or love, or sorrow.
How those emotions are
generated I cannot explain. But I can give two illustrations, both from ballets
by George Balanchine that I have on tape. The Prodigal Son is an old
story. But the performance, by Mikhail Baryshnikov and others, is so vigorous
and stark that it seems new. And at the end, when Baryshnikov throws himself
into the arms of his father, who wraps him in his prayer shawl, one gets a
powerful sense of the goodness of man and God. The other example is
Chaconne , starring Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. If there is a
story there, I don't get it. However, the dancing seems so free and
spontaneous, and yet so precise and with such commitment between the partners,
that one is left with a feeling of joy in life that I cannot associate with any
other form of art.
I realize I am gushing. That
is the way new and naive enthusiasts are. I also realize that ballet may not be
everyone's cup of tea. But if you are sick of watching Clinton and Gingrich
waltz around, you might try Fonteyn and Nureyev, or Farrell and Martins.
