Nevada Writer

Movement

by Melanie on 05/06/09 at 7:35 am

If there’s one thing I wanted to be other than a writer (that is, before I wanted to be a writer) it would have been a ballet dancer. Alas, I started too late. I have the perfect ballet arch. I can stand en pointe (or, at least, I could). But unless you’re Nijinsky or Nureyev, you can’t start ballet at 15 (or 17 in Nureyev’s case) and be any good. In any case, as much as I loved it, there was that icky bit associated with ballet—the anorexic mentality, the fierce infighting, jealously, nastiness, etc., that I loathed. In class, the teacher would often ignore me and dote on little miss 5’1″,  bitchy, petite blonde. We were also paying for lessons.

Nijinsky

Nijinsky

Nijinsky

I was a devotee of Vaslav Nijinsky (even though he was already dead—I read every biography and book I could on him and spent time imagining his legendary leaps and entrechats—where he could jump in the air and appear to float while he  rapidly criss-crossed his ankles more times than anyone else, before an apparently soft and graceful landing. There is no film of Nijinsky, but there are photographs, descriptions, as well as the ballets he choreographed, which have been performed. It’s tragic that he spent the last 30 years of his life trapped in the hell of schizophrenia.

Nureyev

Nureyev

I also adored Rudolph Nureyev and went to see him perform in San  Francisco.  I remember his grand jetés—huge, flying leaps with the legs spread out in splits. He leaped around the stage in a circle, seemingly effortlessly,  with such speed and height and grace that the audience sucked in a collective gasp. I hovered outside the stage door after the ballet—don’t know why I did that, since I knew I wouldn’t actually go up and talk to him. But there he was, wearing his Russian fur hat, giving out autographs to a few stragglers. I just stood there, feeling in the presence of greatness—he has been called the God of Dance—but having a weird ideology that told me I was too “dignified” to beg for an autograph. (I also did not scream at concerts, such as the Beatles at the Cow Palace. Same ”too dignified“ mentality at work.)

I regret not talking to him. He is said to have been a very kind person. I shouldn’t have worried about “bothering” him. My parents thought it was odd that I would insist on hanging out and waiting for him, then back out of the opportunity—there really weren’t more than one or two others with the initiative to find the back door and wait there to get closer to our hero. Oh well. The irrationalities of teen-hood.

Nureyev

Nureyev was not only an astonishingly fantastic dancer, he also had a beautiful face, the bones and nose and lips all structured distinctively. It’s very sad that he died of AIDS.

Here’s a great Rudolph Nureyev site.

Drill Dance

When I was living in L.A., I was on a drill dance team. I wasn’t any good, but you didn’t have to be. It was sort of like cheerleading in a group that lets anyone in. We ended up dancing in Madison Square Garden in 1986. John Kerry came to see us, and therefore I ended up voting for him and going to his rallies. It took guts to as a politician to see the Soka Gakkai’s Culture Festival.

Anyhow, when I was with this team (we did a cape dance and a ”Rock Around the Clock” number) I started going to some ballet lessons with some of the other team members. They couldn’t understand why I was doing it since I sucked, but at the time, I was challenging myself to improve, as if there were hope for me.

Somehow, in the midst of all this, I ended up at the home of some actual dancers. They had invited a principal dancer from the Ballanchine company to the class. I was within five or ten feet from him. He showed us some port de bras—arm movements—and walked/danced a little. Despite the fact that this wasn’t a large room and he didn’t go grand jetéing around the floor, the movement of this man (and by this time I understood about being gay, etc., and he was clearly gay, but like Nijinsky and Nureyev, for me it was never a sexual attraction, just pure delight at their ability to move so gracefully and powerfully) I was dumbstruck. Even though I’d seen Nureyev in person, I had never in my life been this close to someone who could move with such perfection and magnificence. I felt as if I was in the same room with someone who wasn’t human, an angel perhaps, but not a mere mortal. I was so stunned by this man, that I felt I might swoon—or possibly vomit—from the sheer overwhelming astonishment and amazement I felt to be near him. There wasn’t a molecule of his body that wasn’t controlled and graceful, that didn’t move through space as if on powerful wings.

Baryshnikov

Baryshnikov

A discussion of my mini-obsession with ballet wouldn’t be complete without mention of Mikhail Baryshnikov.  If Baryshnikov sliding across the stage and jumping backwards on his toes in the White Nights scene with Helen Mirren doesn’t  put you in a state of awe, then dance may not be your thing. Baryshnikov is stupendous. Phenomenal. Out of this world. There are videos on YouTube, but it’s probably better just to rent the movie.

Gregory Hines ain’t  shabby either, but he doesn’t control every molecule of his body like Baryshnikov does. When they dance side-by-side you can see this. Hines lets his back hunch and his shoulders hang forward. It’s macho, and goes with tap dancing, but look at Baryshnikov—his pinky is a part of the dance, let alone his neck, his shoulders, every vertebra, every hair on his head. Baryshnikov, unlike Nijinsky, is very macho.

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