The Complete Ballet Page 10

  The Sleeping Beauty was my daughter’s favorite ballet, and one of the things that makes it great is the way it handles time. The princess Aurora is pricked with a needle, and she would die except for the intercession of a fairy, the Lilac Fairy, and instead of dying she’s given the chance to sleep for a hundred years. The music is by Tchaikovsky, the choreography by Petipa, primarily, and in a good production you can see that when Aurora awakes, the world she wakes up to, including the prince who just kissed her, is a different world than the one she’d fallen asleep in. The king and queen and all the courtiers wake up, and they dance what seems like an old-fashioned dance, as if the sets and costumes and even their attitudes were from another time. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred years or a hundred seconds. I remember being with my wife, and naturally, when we slept together we slept on the same bed. Same bed but opposite sides. She had a digital clock on her bedside table and I had one on the table on my side. Often, in what is called the middle of the night, I would wake up, and I would look up at the clock on my side, and it was usually around three or four in the very early morning. If the time on my clock read 4:00, I assumed it was four o’clock. But when I looked over at her clock the time was slightly different. It was either 4:04 or 4:05, depending on when the numbers turned, and the difference was slight in terms of time but in terms of what I was feeling, the emotional difference between me and the person lying next to me, my so-called partner, and she was a partner, not in crime but in history, and the history had failed and now it couldn’t go on. Her green numbers said one thing, and mine were red, they said something else, or hers were red and mine were green but it was only four minutes, or five, but that was all the time we needed. It was time enough to wedge us apart, or we did it ourselves, but it doesn’t have to end badly. I like to watch the ballerina who plays Aurora at the moment the prince, guided by the Lilac Fairy, kisses her. First a finger moves, then the hand, then the arm lifts, the eyes flutter, and when she comes to life it’s a new life.

  Cornell lived in a time when ballerinas were part of daily life. It was an imagined time and, for Cornell, an enchanted time, and by all accounts, even as he got older, he was charming. The fact that he was older than the girls he dreamed of might have mattered to someone else but it didn’t matter to him. Or more likely, it did matter to him, which is why he sought out younger girls, why Balanchine sought out younger girls, and why ballets portray girls who, like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, are only sixteen years old. In the days of the fables from which the ballets are derived this was a suitable age, a nubile age, but that nubility only makes sense for a seventy-year-old man if the calendar he’s using is different than the calendar used by the rest of the world.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov was young, only twenty-one when he won a gold medal in Russia for dancing the part of Solor. I mention it because Solor is also young, also a bachelor, and now he’s on a date with Gamzatti. They’re supposed to be getting married so they’re trying to get to know each other, or she’s trying, getting him to know her and be attracted to her, and she’s wearing her Salomé outfit, a silk one with jewels. They’re in a club, a dance club with a parquet floor, and when the band starts playing she dances for him, her transparent pants meant to tempt him, and they do. She knows what she has to do because she knows about Nikiya, and because she’s not quite as beautiful as Nikiya she does everything she can to arouse Solor’s affection, to turn it toward her. She’s studied the battles he’s fought and talks to him about weaponry and artillery, and he finds himself enjoying her company. And marrying a rajah’s daughter would be a step up for him. And although images of Nikiya appear in his mind they’re just images, and images can trigger excitement but he doesn’t need images because Gamzatti, a real person, is right in front of him, pulling him to the dance floor. The musicians adjust their music for this couple who, obviously in love, dance like lovers, her head on his chest, and it’s not the kind of dance they dance in ballet. They’re not thinking about their grandes sissonnes or how many fouettés they can execute. And oddly, or not oddly, they’re not thinking about each other. The needs they have exist independently, and she’s getting what she needs, affectionate attention, and he’s getting what he must need, confusion. He can’t deny an attraction to her, but that attraction is battling with his sense of morality, morality meaning not what’s right at this moment but what might be right if he looked at his life from a distance. From a very great distance he would see that he can’t get married to Gamzatti. He loves Nikiya. But he does nothing to see his life from that distance, and does nothing to alter the course of where his life is going.

  Originally there had been just one Crazy Horse, named after the Indian chief who fought at the Little Big Horn. Then a divorce happened and the Crazy Horse got divided into East and West. Cosmo got the West and the original Crazy Horse burned down and now there was just the one. Down the street from the Whiskey A-Go-Go. It was a Tuesday, and I was driving down Sunset, past the prostitutes and neon signs, able to keep my money worries, at least temporarily, out of my mind, and this is Los Angeles, I thought. The sky was blue and I found a parking spot on the hill above the Crazy Horse. Cosmo was usually there around lunchtime, going over the books or stocking the liquor, but because it was a little before lunchtime I stopped at a nearby coffee shop with outdoor tables. The breeze was warm, the palm trees swayed slightly, cigarette smoke wafted like waves, curling up through the currents of air and my waitress had already brought my coffee. I’d seen her before, and seeing her now, standing behind a chair, a red skirt, a white blouse, a pot of coffee in one hand, steam rising out of it, a used ashtray in the other, I realized that the natural world was everywhere. She was part of it, and the fake flowers on the table were part of it, and I was, and I wouldn’t have minded being a bigger part because, nice as it is to look at a flower, I didn’t necessarily want to live and die getting my pleasure by watching a brown stalk with petals on the end.

  I wasn’t ambitious, I didn’t want to be famous, although once I did. Stupidly. Los Angeles has more than the usual number of acting schools, and I had no idea what I was doing, this was before the massage classes, and at the time it made sense to take an acting class. Which I flunked. Or at least I wasn’t promoted to the next level, kind of an insult since everyone was promoted. But I didn’t have the goods. Which is funny. They told me my acting wasn’t real. And of course it wasn’t real. It’s acting. But I was hurt, not so much by them as by my wanting, even when they kicked me out, their approval. And the waitress at this coffee shop was probably an actor, or actress, or wanting to be one, or a model, and I’m not sure why it made me sad, her ambition or my failed ambition, but I left a big tip under my coffee saucer. I walked down the sidewalk to the Crazy Horse, stepped up the few steps from the sidewalk, knocked on the door, waited a while then turned the handle. I stepped into the half-dark room, yelling in to the darker part, Cosmo? I walked in slowly, letting my eyes adjust, not so much to the darkness as the redness. I made my way between tables and the chairs on top of tables, and by the time I got to the bar I could see the outline of the room, illuminated by the red glow illuminating the stage.

  Cosmo, I assumed, was upstairs in the dressing room so I listened. There were no sounds coming from upstairs, and no sounds coming from behind the stage, and while I was debating with myself whether I should wait for him or try to find him, that’s when Rachel appeared. She parted the backstage curtain, walked to the edge of the stage, moving in my direction, pausing at what they call the lip of the stage and then stepped off the lip. Hi, she said. She was wearing a dark raincoat, black or blue, and I assumed she had a leotard beneath it. Cosmo’s not here, she told me. He stepped out. I’m practicing. And then she said, Vant a drink? She said it like Marlene Dietrich, and before I could tell her I didn’t want a drink she told me about the show, giving me a synopsis that was meant to clarify in her own mind what part she played in the show. Mr. Sophistication, she told me, has been invited to Vienna by a friend, a long
-lost friend, and since he’s new to Vienna, one by one the girls, and she referred to herself as a girl, offer help in finding his friend. I’m supposed to take him up in the Ferris wheel, she said, show him the real Vienna, and when she enunciated real Vienna she arched her back in a way that suggested the multiple meanings of what she was saying. But I don’t know, she said, if I should—and she twirled in front of me—or if I should just say, here’s the real Vienna, and open my coat. And that’s when she opened her coat, for a split second, and the costume she was wearing beneath it was nothing. To help me find my character, she said, would you be willing to watch me? It would be a big help, she said. To give her some pointers. And sure, of course, and so she stepped the few steps between us and took my hand. She led me to a table where, taking the chair off the top of the table she told me to sit. Since I’d never actually told her I didn’t want a drink, she brought me one, a glass with ice and a bottle of scotch, which was Cosmo’s drink, and she poured some whiskey into the glass. A pack of cigarettes was on the table to my right, Cosmo’s brand, and she was grateful, I think, that someone was willing to watch her, and possibly critique her, and she was excited when she ran backstage to turn on the music. I was watching the stage, empty except for the red lights lighting it, and then the music began rising in volume. The bartender made tapes for the shows, and this particular music was familiar but unknown to me, Kurt Weill or Neil Young. It was piano music. And since I was trying not to smoke I pushed the cigarette pack to the far side of the table, crossed my legs, leaned back, and the stage was empty, like a blank canvas, and it stayed blank for a while, which I liked, the idea of possibility, that anything could happen, but when nothing did happen I called out. Are you all right back there? The stage was raised about a foot off the floor, and there was no answer. I didn’t know if this was part of the show or if I ought to do something. And if so, what? My plan was to watch her dance, see if there was room for improvement, and if there was, tell her. But now, because she hadn’t started, my plan couldn’t start, and instead of enjoying the suspense of what might happen, I did what I usually did, feel annoyed not at her but at me. And the muscles tightening along the side of my neck, while I waited for her to appear from behind the curtain, or say something from behind it, got me thinking about the twenty-three thousand dollars. The amount of it wasn’t as much a problem as the fact that they wanted it now, or soon, and the red lights that lit the stage seemed to alter my perception, both of time and dimensionality. Although the table on my right seemed far away, the stage seemed closer than it was, and when I reached for the scotch and she stepped onto the stage my mind, which had been drifting, came into focus. The twenty-three thousand dollars was just a passing piece of ephemera, a passing piece of something out there, out in the world, out in the world outside the club and I didn’t know what time it was out there, or if it was even daylight anymore, and what does she have in mind?

  I’d forgotten to puff on the cigarette burning in my fingers, and when she stepped into the light she was wearing the same dark coat but under it, on her legs, she had on harem pants, black and sheer. In the show she wore a matching vest under her coat but she covered herself with the coat, holding it closed, her hands near her neck, and she was trying to dance. I say trying because she probably felt awkward, knowing me, and she was trying to warm up to the awkwardness, to work past the awkwardness. And it was funny, and she knew it, and she laughed. Instead of dancing a striptease, which was what I assumed she’d be doing, she began prancing, like a Martha Graham ballerina, running back and forth across the stage, leaping sometimes, her head thrown back, her arms outstretched, and she did some ballet moves, some pirouettes and leg extensions, and the technique dancers use when they spin is to spot the wall, that’s what they call it, spotting some object and focusing on that object so that their spinning won’t make them dizzy. Rachel was doing that, and also kicking and jumping and more running, back and forth, or maybe it’s Isadora Duncan. As she moved across the stage the material of her coat was trailing behind her, like a heavy scarf, and once I got over the fact that she wasn’t doing a striptease show, that she was doing something else, a dance show, a balletic modern dance performance, I began enjoying it. I told her, it’s great, thinking she might need some encouragement, but she wasn’t listening to me. Her eyes were open but she was in her own world, enjoying that world and exploring that world, and I let her continue exploring until, at a certain point, when the music changed, the dance slowed down. The movement became more languid and then she faced me, droplets of sweat on her forehead, her hands above her head, the coat slightly open, and she let her hands slowly fall, her fingers pretending to be like rain, and as she did this she wiggled her shoulders and the coat fell off her body, onto the stage. Then she walked, her feet like the feet of a cat, gripping the floor as she stepped off the stage and walked toward me. I’d started to think she’d forgotten her lines or forgotten what the choreography was, but now, as she stepped onto the carpeted floor of the club she knew exactly what she was doing. Part of being a stripper is being sexy, and she knew that nakedness is irrelevant. A naked person is only sexy in proportion to the amount of desire they inspire, and for desire to exist there needs to be a connection, visual or physical or mostly imagined, and she had her eyes locked on mine, and I must have had mine locked on hers to know that hers were locked on me, and she wasn’t Cosmo’s girlfriend anymore. I wasn’t thinking about Cosmo now, or I was thinking about him less and less as she walked to me, like a ferry boat moving closer to the dock, and as she moved into the dock I uncrossed my legs. I sat up, feeling my blood, not the flowing but the pulsing of it, and my relationship with Rachel had been based on friendship but here she was, the moles on her neck visible to me, and I don’t know what she was seeing but I sat in the chair, stuck like a man who’s stuck in a chair, assuming it was a role she was playing because everyone plays a role, and I was expecting to play the role I always played but now she was giving me this other, different role, a role I didn’t know how to play, didn’t ask to play, but I wanted to play, and that’s when the front door opened. I didn’t notice myself turning back and looking, but I did, and when I did I saw the white daylight past the door, and I saw Cosmo’s body silhouetted against the daylight. His walk was distinctive, like gliding, and he glided into the room, past the end of the bar, and I didn’t know what he could see because his eyes were probably adjusting to the red light, but they must have adjusted quickly because he walked between the upside-down chairs on tables and he was saying something but I’m not sure what, or to who, or whom, and Rachel hadn’t moved, or was just beginning to move, to get up off her knees and she wasn’t speaking but I was speaking. I was telling Cosmo to calm down because I could see he was excited. And because he was, his words were unclear, and he was yelling them, and we’ve done nothing, I said. We’re rehearsing. She’s rehearsing. It’s her job, I said, to practice her part, to get better, and Cosmo walked up to Rachel, and I’d seen his temper, and knowing his temper I grabbed his arm, and I was holding his upraised arms but my grip, it wasn’t strong enough or secure enough and I couldn’t completely stop him from slapping his girlfriend on the head. And whatever Rachel was thinking, she grabbed her coat, ran across the stage and then backstage and then up the stairs and I said to Cosmo, what’s the matter with you? And then he started slapping me, slapping and kicking, and it was halfhearted but it was full of intensity. He didn’t want to hurt me but these were his feelings, and they were real, and I was trying to hold his arm but he was muscular for a guy who smoked and drank and we tussled like that, more wrestling than fighting until eventually we lost our balance and fell together onto the once-blue, now filthy carpeted floor. His breathing was hard, his mouth clenched like a fist, and that’s when I reached up to the table, to the bottle of whiskey, and to calm him down I tried to lodge the mouth of the bottle near enough to his mouth to pour the liquor down his throat. I don’t remember if I told him to open his mouth but I poured as much as I cou
ld, over his lips and teeth and most of it spilled across his cheek and into his eye and the front door slammed shut as Rachel ran out, the silhouette of her black coat, and the music, whatever it was, was still playing.

  Eavesdropping, as I’ve said, is a narrative device in ballet. Gamzatti is eavesdropping when the nightclub owner tells her father that Solor and Nikiya are in love. She hears her father decide to kill Nikiya. And because she’s not a bad person, she summons Nikiya to the palace dressing rooms in an attempt to bribe her into giving up her boyfriend. Nikiya, naturally, is suspicious of this girl who thinks her wealth can buy her anything she wants, and any person she wants, but Gamzatti is friendly, like a salesman, and as they talk they begin to realize they have more in common than a love of Solor. They like the same clothes, go to the same dancing school, and as Nikiya gets to know her new friend she begins to like her, and when she’s given a dazzling gold necklace it’s not clear what it means. Is it supposed to be a bribe? Gamzatti doesn’t tell her to lay off Solor, but that’s the subtext, and Nikiya doesn’t like being told what to do. She has no intention of sharing Solor’s love, doesn’t want half a love, and eventually their discussion comes down to who’s going to get Solor. And watching the ballet, I see these two women as two parts of one person, wanting something but getting in the way of oneself, and because the two women are adamant, the conversation comes to an impasse, then turns into an argument, and the argument turns into a fight in which Nikiya, in a fit of rage, picks up a letter opener, which looks like a dagger, and she lifts it, approaching Gamzatti as if she might hurt her. She doesn’t know if she will or won’t, and that’s when Gamzatti’s maid comes into the room, and Nikiya, as if waking up, sees what she was about to do and runs off.