The Complete Ballet Read online

  ACT TWO

  Giselle

  The full name of this ballet, in French, is Giselle, ou Les Wilis, the Wilis being a sisterhood of once-young girls who died before their wedding day. According to legend they’ve been cursed to rise at night and haunt, not just the men who jilted them, but all men, dancing them to their death. And although any curse, in order to work, requires belief, in the world of Giselle it’s not a question of believing whether the Wilis exist. It’s a question of how to avoid becoming one.

  The curtain rises on a countryside village. A young peasant, dressed in tight pants, walks across the village square, stands in front of a particular cottage and places his open palm over his heart. This is Hilarion, the local gamekeeper, and the gesture is meant to tell us he’s in love. The cottage is the cottage of Giselle, who’s beautiful, and because Hilarion is awkward there’s no possible way she can ever love him, which makes him first of all sad, and then angry. I say awkward, not because he’s not a good dancer but because the gift he leaves at Giselle’s door is a dead pheasant. Then a trumpet sounds, he finds a hiding place behind the village trash cans, and Albrecht appears. Albrecht is a duke, and although he has a castle somewhere, to be close to Giselle he’s rented a cottage in town. He’s calling himself Loys, and with the help of his squire, a dwarf named Wilfrid, he’s adopted the guise of a regular villager. He goes to Giselle’s front door, placing his open palm on his heart, and Wilfrid, who dutifully hides the royal sword and cape, has seen it all before. He’s seen the elaborate seduction that leads, in the end, to some young girl getting hurt, and why the need to be constantly falling in love? Albrecht is already engaged to the daughter of a powerful prince and falling in love with a local dancer can lead to nothing but complication. But because he’s a jester, all Wilfrid can do is make a joke, and when he’s gone Albrecht, kicking aside the pheasant, knocks on Giselle’s front door. He’s been seducing Giselle long enough to know what she likes, that she likes to play games, and when she opens the door she starts dancing. This Loys fellow seems to enjoy her dancing, and she goes en pointe, showing off her technique. But Albrecht, instead of being thrilled, which he is, pretends to be uninterested. That’s his game, and her part of the game is to test his sincerity. She’s half teasing when she runs to a wooden bench by a fence and she’s half testing when she pulls up the yellow flower growing near a fence post. Does he love me or love me not? One by one she peels off the petals, and when it gets down to three petals left Albrecht can tell how it’s going to end, and to preclude that ending he pulls the flower out of her hand, crushing it with his boot. And it’s not that Giselle didn’t know what the flower was going to say, it’s not that hard to see the future. But because she wants to believe him, when he takes her hand and very sincerely professes his love, she’s happy. Part of the game is her capitulation, and when they step away from the fence they’re already dancing, a pas de deux meant to express a surrendering to love, and that’s when Giselle’s mother appears. In Romantic ballet emotions were considered an infection, which is why, although Berthe wants her child to experience love, because she believes in the Wilis she also believes in the danger of love. And she’s worried. They’re all standing in the yard of the cottage and Albrecht, although he may believe in Wilis theoretically, because there’s nothing he can do about it, turns to Berthe and turns on his charm. When he starts dancing with her, in a way he’s wooing her, and by wooing her he’s wooing her daughter. And Berthe enjoys a kiss on the cheek, and Giselle, although she doesn’t admit it, especially to herself, watching the two of them, feels her interest in this Loys fellow intensify. And when eventually Albrecht turns his attention away from the mother and back to her, that’s when she realizes that she’s fallen in love. And that would be the end of the scene except that Hilarion, having watched all this, steps out from behind his trash can. He’s wearing a hat like the one Harpo Marx used to wear, and he’s agitated, using his hat to plead with Giselle, telling her this guy who seems so wonderful is not the person he seems to be. He can never love you as much as I love you. But no one, she says, is who they seem to be. She looks at Albrecht, and if Hilarion was agitated before, now he starts to act a little crazy. He shakes his fist at Albrecht, a gesture of hatred, a hatred arising from the image in his mind of Albrecht and Giselle making love, an image he can’t stand and can’t stop seeing, and when he curses the image, although Giselle dismisses his curse, although she calls him a pathetic little man, when she and Albrecht walk away, she feels a tightening across her chest.

  It was very early in the morning when the poker game ended. Seagulls were squawking out in the harbor but it was still night. The other players had vanished, leaving Cosmo and me, and Rachel was sorry I’d lost so much money. She seemed sad for me, as if my sadness was obvious, and Cosmo had lost money too but he often lost money. That makes it interesting, he used to say, and by interesting he meant risky, and at that point in my life I was willing to be risky. Rachel was putting on her coat, assuming we’d be leaving but now we were led by Freddie, the man with the large hands, into an office where another man behind a large desk seemed to be leading the proceedings. He was called the Commodore, and I say proceedings because it was like the sentencing phase of a trial, a trial in which Cosmo and I were found guilty of having insufficient funds. We sat in a row of chairs, Rachel between us, and the Commodore, behind his desk and behind his bushy eyebrows, was looking at pieces of paper. He asked Cosmo to sign a document, and I was told to sign a paper admitting my guilt and agreeing to repay the Commodore twenty-three thousand dollars. Which couldn’t have been right. There must be a mistake. But the man who’d been the dealer, who now seemed like an accountant, showed me a bill that tallied up my loans and the total of those loans came to twenty-three thousand dollars. And maybe it was possible. Maybe I’d gotten more carried away than I thought. They seemed to have proof, and they owned the club, and Seymour, standing behind the Commodore, was staring at me as if I had no choice. So I signed my name to a contract I barely read, an agreement stipulating when I should pay them back and what might happen if I didn’t pay them back, and it didn’t say they would break my legs but it indicated that not making good on my loan would be bad. For me. And it was almost like a curse, you do this thing or else, and the curse was the or else, what might happen to me, and the funny thing was, once I’d signed the chit, and Cosmo had signed his, almost magically the mood in the room, which had been glum, became lighter, as if air was let out of a big balloon and now we could breathe. Seymour was smiling now, and the other men surrounding us were nodding, in affirmation, and Freddie patted my back and Cosmo shook hands with the various men and I shook hands with the Commodore, his thick knuckles wrapped around my thin knuckles, and it all seemed amiable enough until I thought about what I had signed.

  Before I lived in Los Angeles I lived with a woman in Chicago. We’d met, fallen in love, and I thought love, and specifically my loving another person, would lead to a life I could be happy with. And mostly I was, but the thing that would draw me to Cosmo was in me then, my desire to have a better, and therefore different life, and then we had a child, a girl. The circle of love we had seemed to grow, and it did, and the problem was the expectation it would continue to grow. Victor Hugo, who wrote the poem that inspired Giselle, also wrote a play. Le roi s’amuse. It’s the basis of the opera Rigoletto, about a court jester, a hunchback with a large face who loves his child, an adolescent girl, and my daughter was never an adolescent but I know what he wanted, to protect his daughter, which meant controlling what happened to her, and you can’t control everything. His day job consisted of ridiculing the men whose wives and daughters had been seduced by his boss, and the story is a comedy until one of these men lays a curse on Rigoletto. It’s a father’s curse, and Rigoletto is used to curses but because his love for his daughter is absolutely complete, this curse sticks to him. And I didn’t know if I ever had a curse laid on me but I remember watching my daughter, on her blue scooter, scooting along o
n the sidewalk in front of me, and she was a cautious person but don’t take your eyes off her for an instant, that’s what I told my wife and she told me but all it took was that one time she didn’t stop at the corner, and it was like a curse.

  We drove Rachel back to her house and Cosmo, being a gentleman, escorted her up the steep concrete steps to her door. He had Rachel on one arm, a bottle of champagne cradled in the other, and he told me to follow him. Which I did. I noticed the sky beginning to lighten up, and Cosmo had told me to lighten up in the car, to let what had happened be over, and it was over, a done deal, but because I had lost a lot of money the adrenaline of what had happened was still inside me. Rachel was tired, I could tell, and when Rachel’s mother, wearing a yellow dress with pink flowers, appeared on the porch she didn’t invite us in but Cosmo didn’t need an invitation. You’re looking beautiful, he said, and everyone wants to be beautiful, and when he kissed her cheek she smiled and suddenly we were inside the house. And this is part of why I wanted to imitate Cosmo. He made people happy. He set the champagne on the kitchen table, and when Rachel went to her room to change clothes, and since he’d had more than a few drinks, he took Betty’s hand. He lifted her arm, and it was more like a representation of dancing, what they did, not really dancing, although music was playing, a Frank Sinatra–type song, and he twirled her like actual dancing and whatever it was gave her pleasure. She was older than Cosmo but not by much, and as Cosmo flirted with her, and she with him, I could almost see her growing younger, her lips full, her eyes sparkling, and because she wasn’t young she probably appreciated the attention, which was Cosmo’s specialty, focusing on a person and bathing that person in the heat of his attention, which is why I was watching him, to learn his technique. Although it was more than technique. The radio song was a song he knew, and he wasn’t singing the words but he was talking them, swirling Betty across the kitchen, his hand on her hip and a smile on his face, a smile meant for her but also for me, a smile of complicity and joy, and the reason for joy is that someone was feeling emotion. And where would that go? In his black tuxedo he was elegant but slightly debauched, elegant because a tuxedo is elegant and debauched because his bow tie was hanging to one side. When he suggested popping the champagne cork Betty was giggling like a girl, or like a woman being swept away from herself. Being the object of his interest felt good, and his heat felt good, and I couldn’t hear what he whispered in her ear, and the words didn’t matter because what mattered was the fact of his breath, brushing past her downy ear hairs, bypassing the brain which would have told her that this man, with his shaven cheeks, his thick hair, his sly smile, was here for her daughter. He found four cocktail glasses, filled them, passed one to me and one to Betty, and then holding his by the stem, spiraled his arms around Betty’s arm. They took sips from the rim and naturally some champagne was spilled, but they didn’t notice because they were laughing. And when Rachel opened her bedroom door, wearing a floral robe tied at the waist, he seamlessly transitioned between mother and daughter, giving Betty a kiss on her cheek as he took Rachel’s hand, kissing her hand like a knight might kiss a lady’s hand, or like a knight-errant, on an errand or in error, and whatever it was I could see the power of Cosmo’s attention. Rachel was smiling, and because his adoration of Rachel implied an adoration of the woman who created Rachel, Betty was smiling too. And it wasn’t just women who received the gift of his focus. I was also included, happy to be pulled into the circle of, I want to say love but it was just a circle of feeling, and mostly Cosmo was at the center but sometimes Rachel, and I felt it too. And I wanted more. Which is why, although the city was lit up outside the picture window, I wasn’t looking out the window. I was watching Cosmo, craving a magnetism I knew was rooted in his need to be loved, like a thirst, and this is what he did to satisfy that thirst.

  Giselle’s mother is charmed by this fellow called Loys because Albrecht, acting the part of Loys, is charming. Berthe makes it easy for him to seduce Giselle. Like any Casanova, Albrecht gets his pleasure from the process of seduction, the figuring out how this particular girl needs to be coaxed and led, and in a way massaged, into a willingness to submit. The first thing Albrecht does is gather information, talking to her friends and her mother, finding out what she likes and dislikes, and he uses her gestures when he talks to her, and her tone of voice, and naturally she trusts someone who, in ways she’s not even aware of, seems to be like her. And for Albrecht, the art of it isn’t just seeming to be like her, he actually, as much as he can, becomes her, and although he doesn’t dance on point, he does dance on the balls of his feet, and in this way, to a certain extent, he becomes more like a woman. And if the dancer who dances Albrecht is good, you can see his center of gravity change, his chest expand, and in Nureyev’s version of Albrecht, when he walks across the town square, his hips swaying like a woman’s hips, or a girl’s, it’s not that he’s dancing in a feminine way because what is that? There is no feminine way. But he’s being something other than what he is, transforming himself, and if he’s good, like Nureyev dancing with Margot Fonteyn, you can’t help watching him. You can’t help following his lead because his dancing expresses a real joy, and the place he’s leading her is where she already wants to go. That was Nureyev’s skill, understanding desire and then making himself the object of desire.

  Cosmo was pouring champagne, saying fantastic as he ceremoniously lifted his glass. He didn’t specify what was fantastic, or why, but there was always a toast with Cosmo. To love, or sadness. And I assumed that after a drink we’d go back to the car but Cosmo pulled out a kitchen chair for Betty to sit. He was in an expansive mood, and although Rachel wasn’t enjoying it as much as Betty, they both sat at the kitchen table. And I did too, next to Cosmo, who was facing the two of them, and he didn’t just compliment people. He actually was interested in what they thought and felt, and what they didn’t even know they felt. Maybe that’s why we never talked about my daughter. It wasn’t a secret, but secrets make us who we are, that’s what he said one time, and for Cosmo, the conundrum was, once he knew a person’s secrets he got bored. And it wasn’t that what he said was so interesting, but the three of us were all facing him, our eyes and ears directed at him, and attention is a kind of love, and he was taking it in. I’d known Cosmo about a year, about as long as I’d been in L.A., and it wasn’t just charm because charm is easy. Watching him I could see the charm, but below the charm there was intensity, and below that there was heat, and maybe it was a metaphorical heat but it was coming from him, like a fire burning itself, and we could all feel it. Ladies, he said, and turning to me, gentleman, and he pushed back his chair, and then he walked off to find the bathroom. The way he did even that was charming. And when he’d gone the three of us were left looking at each other. I was trying not to think about the money I owed, which for me was an inconceivable amount of money, and because it was inconceivable I was able to push those thoughts from my mind. Or at least I tried. But the conversation we had, the three of us, sitting at the table, always came back to silence because what can you say? Without Cosmo nothing much got said. And because of the metaphorical heat he’d been generating before, not only was the silence noticeable, it was slightly uncomfortable. Betty’s hands were folded on the table and Rachel was looking off to the living room. I would look at her and then look down at the parabolic designs on the table, trying to find the pattern in what first appeared like random shapes, and the same design was on the upholstery of the chair, the empty chair that Cosmo had been sitting on. And it was more an impulse than an actual idea, but I followed the impulse and slid from my chair, across the space between the chairs, to the chair Cosmo had been sitting on. And any time you sit on a chair that’s been occupied by someone, there’s always a little residual heat. And maybe it was my imagination but this seemed hotter than residual heat, and I felt it rising up from the chair into me. I was sitting fairly straight, my sitting bones absorbing my weight, and when I looked over at Rachel, instead of letting her lo
ok away, I said something. I don’t know what, and it doesn’t matter because I just started paying attention. There was Rachel, and Betty was next to her, and I was talking to Rachel, not like Cosmo would talk but I seemed to be engaging both of them, as if not just Cosmo’s heat but his charisma was radiating up from the padded vinyl and radiating into me, as if part of him, the glowing part, was entering me. The physical sensation of my muscles, relaxed and loose, and my bones, supported by my muscles, was enjoyable, and the ability to be the center of a conversation, that was also enjoyable. And if it would have been just enjoyment I would have wanted it to go on forever. But rising up through the padded seat, into the cheeks of my butt and the bones of my butt and up through my organs and into my heart, along with the heat was a feeling of need. Although I could feel my lips smiling, and Rachel was smiling back at me, and Betty was laughing and I was laughing and in a way it was all good, in another way the intensity was making me nervous. Pleasure was on one side, and anxiety was on the same side, and I was experiencing both of them, in my mind and body, and as I did I noticed the heat begin to dissipate. I noticed a few more caesuras, as they say, in the conversation, which was getting less interesting to me and probably to Rachel and Betty, and I was trying not to think about money, trying to imagine a mind that can bear to keep burning when Cosmo stepped up to the table. And when he sat down in the empty chair, the one that had been mine, almost immediately we turned toward him. Like heliotropic plants, except we weren’t plants, we were human, and I did it too, Cosmotropic, turning toward him because that’s where the life was. Our thoughts turned, and our desires turned, and the heat I’d been feeling so intensely was now just a warmth, if that, and it didn’t take long before the champagne bottles were empty, and when Cosmo stood up we all stood up, and down at the bottom of the steep concrete steps, at the curb, the limousine was waiting.