aPLACE4us

Second in the series…

There’s nothing I like more than a day of enchantment and that’s certainly what I experienced Sunday, October 5, in the Big Apple. I knew I would attend the open class and rehearsal for Morphoses at the New York City Center, which has an incredible celebration of dance this autumn.

It was such a delight to watch ballet master Jeffrey Edwards teach company class. He used vocal sounds, and vivid vocabulary and imagery that obviously connected with the dancers. He seemed to give the dancers what they needed to prepare them for performance, something that is decidedly different from teaching dancers and sustaining them in daily class. I noticed something that perhaps only New York City Ballet ballet masters and teachers might address, what I can only call a lack of support for the upper back in the male dancers taking Morphoses’ class. Each of them had trouble on turns, losing the upper back and shoulders and therefore losing the turn.

After this classroom view, came an illuminating talk with Christopher Wheeldon, and then we were able to see Shutters Shut, which I had seen the night before. Set to a Gertrude Stein poem with voice and no music, I could again see the way in which Wheeldon is bringing in choreographers pushing the boundaries of the arts as Diaghilev once did, exploring dance in conjunction with other mediums. The dancers spoke Stein’s language and the language of the husband and wife team of Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon.

After this, I knew I would set off to see what lay at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, a location I had used in a poem about Duo Concertante, in what seemed like a haphazard fashion. Why had that location come to mind? I didn’t know what was there. As I walked east from City Center I saw the number 140. Again in a somewhat wily nily fashion (or was it intuition), I decided to be at that corner at 1:40 p.m. I took pictures along the way as I do, noting how certain themes arose in my head as I walked.

At 1:40 p.m., I noticed the scaffolding on one side of Fifth Avenue. Though I rather blanketly discounted it, it still worked on me from behind the scenes, for scaffolding means something is being built. On the other side of Fifth, however, I began to notice roofs within Central Park. What is this, I wondered. The trees had a mystical, almost faerie-like appearance. My heart sang, Fairyland.

What is this, I asked again. I reached stairs going down and as I began my descent saw to my complete amazement, the actor Russell Crowe talking to a slighter man. I had an internal dialogue with myself that went something like this.

“Shit, it’s Russell Crowe. What do I do?”

I discounted asking for his autograph as being simply moronic and something that someone who’d grown up in Bowling Green, Ohio, would do. Having lived in the New York metro area for some 20 years, I knew I simply would not do it. I flashed to my camera as I had been taking pictures all along.

Do I ask him if I could take his picture? As I stood there, I finally allowed the feeling of the scene to wash over me instead of focusing on some need to act. I knew he would not want his picture taken. I knew somehow not to intrude. I heard his Australian accent. I also felt and would process later the most incredible power coming from him, and without knowing what I was doing consciously, I honored it. I let the two men go ahead, still wondering what this was all about for me. They disappeared in a crowd of people that was like a scene out of Shakespeare or a film version of La Sylphide, which I have been working on in script form.

Again, I began to see England and fairyscapes. Then I turned a corner and went nuts with all that greeted me. I wished I were the best professional photographer in the world, all the while taking pictures. Children swarmed around me.

A little girl in pink came toward me and said, “There’s a slide over there. A slide!”

“I know,” I said, spying it. Of course, I took a picture with my trusty little Kodak. And then I saw them… bridges… bridges everywhere… in silver chain, lined with tree stumps and stones… some narrow… some you could never walk across your self as they bridged space or other dimensions, and the enchanted fairy realms. I had seen the sign that said, Children’s Zoo, but somehow had never been in there.

As I meandered, I came to a bridge with a fence. On one corner sat a crow. I am not making this up. I may be an urban fantasy writer with a vivid imagination, but I did not make this up.

The crow cocked his head at me. Magpie flew into my head. I was stunned that he didn’t fly away as I stood so close to him. His beak seemed a spectacular golden yellow. I took his picture. Still he didn’t fly away. Then as I continued to walk and glanced upward, I saw two pinkish-orange parrots up high that did not move. I knew immediately that they were fake. I kept walking and never looked back. I was now wondering if I really saw the crow, if the crow was real or some paper mache animated thing, and for a brief moment felt as though I were in some incredible dream. But I wouldn’t allow it to be only dream. Russell Crowe had been real, as real as we are as embodiments of energy.

At some point during this I began to hear the music from Pirates of the Caribbean. Swashbuckling music. This along with the feelings of ancient England continue to embue me even now.

The next day, I went to one of my favorite haunts, East/West Books, to pick up a crystal or two, and see what else was in store for me there. After picking up Siberian Jet, a light light stone from which I feel such peace, I held some other stones, ocean quartz, rutilated quartz, orange selenite, and others. I could not decide between them. Suddenly, a staff person appeared, and she seemed to know exactly what I needed. She opened a cabinet and procured a small piece of Danburite, a calcium borosilicate crystal. She also asked if I knew about The Book of Stones, which I did not.

She made me a copy of the page on Danburite and for some reason I asked if she’d make me a copy of the one on Moldavite, a stone I’d encountered on my last visit and with which I was working along with Peridot, both green stones. Besides writing and working with the story of La Sylphide, I have been drawn to the tales of King Arthur and Merlin throughout my life and am using this story in other writing.

This is a small part of what The Book of Stones says about Moldavite: “Throughout history, and even into pre-history, Moldavite has been regarded as a spiritual talisman… More recently, Moldavite has been viewed as a relic of the legend of the Holy Grail. In some recountings, the Grail was said to be not a cup, but a stone, an Emerald that fell from the sky. In other stories, the Grail cup was carved from the Emerald. The correspondences of the Stone of the Grail and Moldavite are clear. The ancients called all clear green gemstones ‘Emeralds,’ and Moldavite is the only such stone ever to have fallen from the sky. In history, there was even a physical ‘Grail’ discovered and brought to Napoleon, who was disappointed to find it was green glass. But, of course, Moldavite is green glass. Another chalice, this one made of gold and adorned with Moldavites, was passed down through the centuries and disappeared during the second World War…”

Well, for those with a penchant for the mystical, for history, and for tales of enchantment, such information is thrilling indeed.

What does any of this have to do with Monotones II? Something about sorcery, celestial beings, and the process of discovery. I have seen the piece performed by the Royal Ballet and the Joffrey. If you’re not a ballet dancer, you may not know its difficulty. When I saw it performed by the Morphoses cast on Saturday evening, my first thought was, I would never want to perform this ballet. I believe I’ve had that thought about it before, but couldn’t say now with which company or why. I didn’t know why until the performance of the piece ended and I turned to my friend, also a dancer.

What I noticed was that my focus went to the dancers and not to the choreography. What was lacking for me were the feelings of mystery and sacred something I have experienced when the piece is in sync and when the performance of it is also a mystery, the dancers as flawless technically as they are musical, reverent, and able to be moved deep in themselves.

I noticed ribs protruding, a kind of thinness that hurt. I noticed the largeness of the male dancers’ bodies and the nuances of their musculature. I noticed that the ballerina’s leotard was wrinkled over her solar plexus and seemed almost too large for her. I know that I thought I would never want to perform the ballet because I noted every shift from each of the male dancers that wasn’t part of the piece as choreographed. Otherwise, the dancers were technically perfect, and Wendy Whelan captured a muted kind of reverence. Muted though, not soaring, not quite resonant enough. I wondered if Wheeldon had chosen this piece as much for the dancers’ growth as for it being Ashton.

When the performance ended and I turned to my friend, she said, “They were totally wrong for this. Miscast.” When I discussed what had happened for me, we agreed that somehow that was a sign that the dancers had not been able to overcome their bodies, and whatever else was at play here. I know I felt that the ballerina would need the most ravishing and perfect body ever imagined. I don’t know if that is really true, but it is what I thought. However, when a dancer transports you, and Wendy Whelan often does this, the mind turns off and one simply experiences.

For more of this continuing tale and for the seagull’s message… please stop back.

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