The Complete Ballet Page 2
The choreography of the original La Sylphide was lost when Filippo Taglioni died. The dance we have now was made by August Bournonville, a Dane, a few years later. It has different music and different dancing but the story takes place in the same grand Adirondack-style lodge, with chairs and tables, a gigantic fireplace, and the bridesmaids have gathered around the bride-to-be. Effie, in her twirling dress, is charming and intelligent, and once she’s received her wedding gifts she joins the corps de ballet in a joyful dance of a girl becoming a woman. During her solo she lifts her arms, extending her leg in a graceful développé that expresses the sense of stepping into the newness of an expanding future. Effie has seen what can happen between a man and a woman, what happened between her mother and father, and she’s determined not to let that happen to her, to live instead a life of love and understanding, and she’s happily dancing with her friends when Madge appears. James, standing at the edge of the party, doesn’t notice the old witch because he’s looking for the Sylph, scanning the air for the image he remembers, and he thinks it’s her sitting beside the fireplace but it’s Madge. And a witch is the opposite of a sylph. Madge has a walking stick, few teeth, knotted gray hair, and in ballet performances she’s often played by a man. And partly what frightens James is her genderlessness. He doesn’t acknowledge his fright because that would be unmanly, and he takes the idea of manliness very seriously. Whatever fear she arouses in him, instead of feeling it, he turns it into anger. He’s heard about the old woman, that she’s basically harmless, probably insane, but he can’t help feeling a repugnance that borders on hate, and he doesn’t ask himself the source of that hate, which is in him, he just attacks her. Verbally at first. You hag, he says. You ugly old hag. You disgusting, ugly … He wants to hurt her feelings but she doesn’t seem to have any feelings, and his friends try to calm him down.
Joseph Cornell was an artist, born in 1903, on Christmas Eve. He was sometimes called a Surrealist but he never attached himself to a school or style. He was a collagist, piecing together old magazine photos and postcards, bits of glass, dime-store jewelry, beads, marbles, fabric, and his most famous objects were the boxes he made. In them he told the story, obliquely, of loss and unrequited love, and he had a fascination with the Romantic ballerinas. Marie Taglioni, Fanny Cerrito, Fanny Elssler, Carlotta Grisi, they all had boxes either dedicated to them or inspired by them. He had a basement studio in a house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York, on a street called Utopia Parkway. His days were spent in Manhattan, selling fabric, and at night he sorted and arranged and tended to his collection of cultural detritus, bits of the world forgotten by the world, and he especially liked mementos of young ballerinas. In some ways he lived like a hermit, holed up in his crowded studio, but he also liked to get out into the world, taking long lunch breaks to walk the streets of Manhattan. He stopped at junk stores and second hand stores, and it’s natural that he felt an affinity with the Romantic ballet, and especially with the ballerinas who danced it. We can’t ever know what happened in his mind but in his art he had a crush on them, on their youth and grace, and their nebulous sexuality made them interesting. Their unattainability made it possible to desire them without having to deal with them, and the series of boxes he made, titled Homages to the Romantic Ballet, is a meditation on ethereality and ephemerality, and however much he lived in this world of nostalgia, he seemed to never lack friends. And through one of these friends he met a ballerina from his own time, Tamara Toumanova. She’d been called a baby ballerina, but by the time Cornell met her, at an art opening, she was already twenty-one years old. Cornell was forty-seven, and I think he probably expected her to view him as what he looked like, a once handsome, now shrunken man, poor, troubled, possibly asexual. But she admired him. She liked to have conversations with him, and possibly the conversations were one-sided, her talking and him listening, but they started spending time together. She invited him to visit her dressing room and he was happy to oblige. He became a regular there, sometimes presenting her with drawings he’d made, or sometimes he’d bring her an intricate box, incorporating the story of the ballet she was dancing. Later, he got the nerve to ask her, if it would be possible, to give him a button from her costume.
Effie is good at signaling her desire, and at the party, when she signals her desire for attention, James can read what she wants. And he wants to comply. Inasmuch as he knows what love is, he loves her. He’s heard about what love is supposed to feel like and wishes he felt it more than he did, but when she extends her hand he takes it, dutifully. The guests all gather around, talking or dancing, not necessarily paying attention to Effie and James but James is aware of them, in his peripheral vision, watching him. He tries to assume the look of affection, trying to focus on Effie, and when she presents her cheek to him, a soft part of her but not a private part, he knows what he’s supposed to do, and when his lips touch the skin of her skin, that’s when he thinks he sees, in the corner of his eye, the Sylph. His heart skips a beat, but when he turns it’s only Madge, the ancient and ageless witch. She’s dipping a tea bag into her cup, a tea bag filled with herbs and weeds that probably keep her alive, but just barely, and bitter steam is rising from the lip of the cup. Being a witch, Madge is also a fortune-teller, and when the bridesmaids surround her, although they don’t actually believe she can see into the future, they want to know what the future is. Effie, being the bride, steps forward first. She’s unafraid of what the witch might say because she’s young enough to believe that nothing bad will ever happen. Holding out the palm of her hand she’s almost challenging Madge, and Madge accepts her challenge. Some versions of the story have her shuffling a deck of cards, looking into the cards and then out at the bridesmaids, predicting that some will bear healthy children while others will not. Then, for Effie, she takes a crystal ball from a black sack at her feet. She’s like the carnival character in The Wizard of Oz who later plays the part of the Wizard. It’s the scene in which Dorothy, having run away from home, finds herself in his sideshow trailer getting her fortune read. The carnival man, peering into his crystal ball, tells her to close her eyes, and finding in her basket the photo of a woman, he tells her that someone loves her, and she says, Auntie Em. And he says yes, her name is Emily, and although he can’t actually see her future he can see that the girl loves someone, and is loved. And you can see in him the soothsayer’s sadness, knowing her future is probably sadness, certainly death, and the power of prophecy has probably made Madge a little bitter. She tells Effie that she will have many children. And will they be happy? Yes. And my marriage, that will be happy? Yes. And this gives Effie the confidence to ask if James loves her more than anything else in the world. When she asks the question she looks over at James, sitting on a straight-backed chair, feet planted, hands on knees, knees pointing forward ahead, trying to smile. Effie is looking at James when Madge tells her no, that her future lies with someone else. Pause. But you said I’d be happily married. And Madge tells her she will be happily married. To Gurn. Which is ridiculous. Everyone knows it’s ridiculous. James does too, and the rage that’s sparked in him, starting in his stomach, or just below, works its way up into his chest where it pushes against his ribs and his neck and it’s like a trigger, the feeling, and fueled by that feeling he attacks the old witch, and not just verbally. He knows he’s getting carried away but he’s carried away, carried by something, and standing in front of Madge, close enough to be threatening, when she responds by being unthreatened, he uses his arms to herd her, like a beast, and that’s what she is, and beasts should be kept outside, and he never hits her but when he pushes her out the door there’s a violence that Effie, oddly, finds reassuring. She’s not mad. She believes his anger is an expression of his love, and that’s all she wants, to feel his love, and he really does care for her, and when he looks into her eyes he forgets, at least momentarily, about his visions.
It was raining the night Cornell went to see Tamara dance Giselle. Like La Sylphid
e, Giselle is about impossible love, and although he sat in the balcony, because he’d brought binoculars he could see her body when she danced, her arms stretching out and her toes barely touching the stage. But mainly he watched her face. She was an actor as well as a dancer, and he could see the joy on her face when, as Giselle, she fell in love. After the performance the usherette must have been puzzled by this odd old man with a brown package knocking on the door of the prima ballerina. And Tamara was there, still in costume, her face still glowing with the glow of a sixteen-or fifteen-or seventeen-year-old girl. She was happy to receive him and receive the gift he’d brought. She asked him to sit, untied the brown paper wrapping and what he’d brought was a box, small, velvet lined, with objects from his collection, a piece of crystal, a drawing of a bird in flight, a photograph of a ballerina dressed as a black swan. She liked it, he could tell, and she set it beside her dressing-table mirror. She was in front of the mirror, loosening her hair and removing her makeup, and Cornell wasn’t much of a talker but she didn’t mind. She told him about the performance, about her fouettés and the mistakes she’d made, and when she talked about her mother’s annoying habits, he mentioned his own mother’s way of intruding on his life. While they were talking she stepped behind a folding screen near the door, and as she talked she removed her costume. He stood up to go. He didn’t want to intrude. But no, she said, stay, and when she said it she was standing so that he could see her face, held aloft, or it seemed to him aloft, and her long neck and her bare shoulders, and I think if there was a moment, that was the moment he fell in love with her. Stay, she said, and he wanted to make her happy so he did. Like a lover, he adored her, and like a lover he wanted to know her, and in his imagination he did. In his mind she was his lover, and like his lover, like any lovers in a Romantic ballet, their love was doomed. La Sylphide. Giselle. Swan Lake, La Bayadère. It was always the same. The lovers could never be together because fate had made it impossible, and it was impossible, he knew that. She was spirit, pure and ethereal, and there he was, sitting in the straight-backed chair, feet planted, thin and quiet, and he doesn’t even know how to dance.
When it comes to expressing human emotion, the flowing lines of a dancer’s body are perfect for joy. Also hope and longing. Anger on the other hand, and more complicated emotions like disappointment and regret, they’re expressed in ballet with pantomime. When Effie and her fellow ballerinas skip off to prepare for the wedding celebration, James, left alone, can’t really dance what he feels, this knot in his chest. He’s thinking about Effie and thinking about the Sylph, and he would like to believe that he doesn’t need to choose between them. But he does. He knows he can’t have both, and that’s why he’s making a fist. He’s battling within himself, thinking of a path his life could take and fighting the urge to take it. But the urge is there, and whether his imagination calls her into being, or whether it’s just a coincidence, the Sylph appears in the room. Like stepping out of a mist, she glides up to him, and when she points to the tears in her eyes he can see her sadness and he can feel the love he has. For her. And her? She’s sad because their love is impossible. He loves someone else, someone human, and she would like to be human, to experience human emotions, and she’s excited by the idea of love, but her heart is also afraid, thinking of how that idea might realize itself. What would the mechanics of that realization be? She doesn’t know because she’s innocent. But she’s also brave, and she allows herself to confess her love to him, a confession that sounds like truth, and the verbalization of that truth emboldens her. She becomes flirtatious, pulling off his tartan scarf and wrapping it around her delicate neck and delicate shoulders, standing on the very points of her toes, which is amazing to him and he can’t resist. She isn’t just beautiful. She’s beauty itself, and captivated by that beauty he reaches out to hold her, and once he has her in his arms, he kisses her, and there’s no question anymore if she’s real because he knows she’s real because he can taste her. And she tastes him. They don’t even know they’re dancing, intoxicated by the warm metallic taste that seals them together, and they don’t notice Gurn, watching from behind the stairs. They don’t notice him running up the stairs to the room where Effie and her bridesmaids are putting on their wedding clothes. Gurn knocks on the door but he doesn’t wait. He barges in. The girls cover themselves but Gurn is looking at the floor, doing his duty. He believes he’s just stating the facts as he saw them, unaware of the pleasure he feels when he makes his report about James and the girl. What girl? She had wings, he says. Wings? I think she had wings. And of course they don’t believe him. Effie is aware that Gurn has a crush on her, even loves her, and that awareness makes him unbelievable. But he’s insistent, like a salesman, so she agrees to walk down the steep wooden stairs and check for herself. And at different moments in the ballet I identify with different characters, and I’m oddly sympathetic now to what Gurn must be feeling, about his friend, a friend he thought he knew, and did know, and respected, but now it’s his turn. And James, having heard the footsteps on the stairs, has instructed the Sylph to hide in the armchair, under a red plaid blanket. When no mysterious female being is visible in the room, Gurn accuses James of hiding her. He looks behind curtains and behind doors, and there’s someone here, a girl. But there’s no one. But Gurn knows there is someone because he saw someone, and he knows it’s a trick and James is worried. There’s the chair, and beneath the blanket there’s a large lump and Gurn challenges his friend. What’s beneath the blanket? James is about to be found out, and he knows that denial will make it worse but what can he do. There’s no one here, he says. So let’s just take a look, Gurn says, and he goes to the blanket, takes hold of the material and lifts it up to reveal to the world the truth that will change his life but there’s nothing there. Like the sitcom I used to watch, My Favorite Martian. A Martian is stranded on Earth, trying to get home, not revealing what he is because of bigotry and prejudice, and a young man has taken him in but the landlady is suspicious. And it’s always at the moment when she’s just about to reveal him to the world that something happens. And now the chair is empty. The guests assume Gurn made the story up, out of jealousy, and they tease him, and the teasing, which is playful, leads to dancing. Gurn sulks off to a corner, and although James takes the hand of his intended, his partnering is half hearted. The Sylph is still in the room. He sees her shadow on the floor, or thinks he does, and in a video of Rudolph Nureyev playing the part, when he catches sight of the girl dancing with the other ballerinas, invisible to them but dancing their steps, swirling under their outstretched arms, his face lights up. You can see his expression and gesture and the dancing itself is excited by emotion. And he’s improvising. He’s finding his way. And I’ve tried to do that, to live fully in that moment when love appears, and allow it to appear, but it’s hard. It means not surrendering to the hopelessness of what will eventually happen. And during the divertissement, when partners are exchanged, as James tries to position himself to be with the object of his desire, he discovers the confusion of not knowing. Is he dancing with the Sylph or with Effie? Every time he thinks it might be her it’s always Effie, and when the dance ends and the Sylph disappears he finds himself holding Effie by the waist. She turns, looks up, and seeing Effie’s eyes, which are loving eyes, although it’s not as exciting as looking into the eyes of a dream, he finds relief, you can feel it, at being with an actual person.
Just as you can only love a limited number of people, there are only a limited number of people you can be in a lifetime. I was still in my twenties then, newly arrived in Los Angeles, not a writer or an artist or anything really, just knowing that what I was had come to nothing, that I had nothing, and unable to live with that I started spending time with Cosmo. I was looking for possible role models, and Cosmo was someone I was attracted to, someone you might have called charismatic, and part of his charisma was his ability, or his need really, to make the world seem like a party. And he always seemed to have the invitation. So I went alon
g with him, and I watched him, and although it’s impossible to be someone else, by imitating a person you can get the characteristics of that person to adhere to you, or in my case, adhere to me, not that I imitated everything Cosmo did. Some of what he did didn’t interest me. The limousine, for instance. Hiring a limousine wasn’t embarrassing for Cosmo because he made riding in a limousine, and drinking champagne in the back of a limousine, part of who he was. And there I was, with him, sitting beside a sealed window, Cosmo at the other window, and Rachel was sitting between us. She was a dancer, tall, dark skinned, and Cosmo, having offered her a job at his club, was showing her the town. He was wooing her, wearing his regular evening costume, a rumpled tuxedo. I had on a sport coat he’d given me and Rachel, shoulder to shoulder with us, had a purple orchid pinned to her chest, a small black purse in her lap, and like a deer she was beautiful, keen and alert, or maybe Cosmo and I were the deer and she was the headlight, her earrings catching the light from the streetlights as we drove. And because Cosmo was trying to make her happy, and because he associated drinking with happiness, he pulled a bottle of champagne from the backseat ice bucket. He handed me a glass, and Rachel wasn’t drinking, and I told him I was fine but he reached out to me with the champagne bottle, reaching over Rachel’s body, and I suppose his idea was to make me happier than I was, but I was happy enough. And Cosmo was handsome, not perfect, with his large nose, more strong than large, and his sly smile, like a fox smiling, although I’ve never seen a fox smile, and his eyes. I have seen stars twinkling, and he had a cigarette in one hand, and although he was the owner of a nightclub, he always seemed like a salesman. He had what salesmen have, persistence, and he was trying to find the mouth of my champagne flute with the mouth of the champagne bottle, but I can be persistent too. And I was, except after a while he wore you down. They call it the force of personality but really it’s just wearing you down, and I didn’t want to drink champagne but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I let him fill my flute, the bubbles rising up from inside the liquid, rising up and breaking the surface, and I’m sure Cosmo ordered the finest, so I drank. Which made Cosmo happy, which made me happy. And the smile he smiled at Rachel triggered in her, and to some extent it triggered in me, not triggered but when Cosmo laughed, although I didn’t know what was supposed to be funny, and although whatever it was had already turned into something else, we felt it, the carelessness of happiness, and we were all in a jovial mood when we arrived at the Ship Ahoy.