by John Haskell
I imagine that in the future it will be possible to know about a number of “definitive” Swan Lakes. But I also suspect that artists will want always to change it, to remake it for themselves. George Balanchine said that during his time in New York City. There, with the support of Lincoln Kirstein, he was given a theater in which to restage dance, and remake it, but before he became famous for transforming classical ballet he made up dances in Hollywood, for theater shows and movies. In Monte Carlo, he was Diaghilev’s choreographer, and when he was young he danced in Russia, for Petipa. Which is why he called Petipa his spiritual father. And it was during his time in St. Petersburg that he met his first wife, Tamara Geva. She had another name, a Russian name, but like Balanchine, who was born Giorgi Balanchivadze, she’d changed it. He was eighteen and she was fifteen, and after a few years he fell in love with Alexandra Danilova. He went to France with her, and then in Hollywood he met Vera Zorina, another ballerina. He married her in 1938, Maria Tallchief in 1946, and Tanaquil LeClercq in 1952 when she was twenty-three and he was forty-eight. He made them all into the stars of his shows. Ballerinas, he famously said, are ballet, and as this succession of girls came into his life he choreographed specific dances for them, each phase of his career corresponding to a different ballerina. And I won’t say they were under his spell, but he must have been charming, and his offer to teach them the secrets of dance must have seemed like a dream. And because he was a great choreographer, they were happy to submit to his teaching and his attention, and the relationship worked because all of them got what they wanted. Balanchine got a muse and they got a chance to dance, and to inspire dance, and after a while, after the inspiring quality of each dancer gradually faded, he would find a new dancer. Whether they left him or he left them, the result is the same. The attention you’ve lived your life for, when that gets taken away, or directed toward someone else, I understand how that feels, and the only thing making it bearable is the thing you’ve created, and whether it’s a child or a beautiful dance, the memory of it exists, and will, and that’s the price he agreed to pay. The ballet school had a waiting list, and Allegra Kent was twenty, and Diana Adams was twenty-four, and Suzanne Farrell, also born with a different name, was eighteen when he turned her into a star. He never married her, and probably never had sex with her, but their love affair was mythic. In 1965 he restaged Don Quixote, originally choreographed by Petipa, giving himself the part of the leading man, the old Don, opposite Farrell’s Dulcinea. My interest in Don Quixote has always been the hero’s finding something to live for and sacrifice and serve. Every man wants an inspiration. For the Don, it was Dulcinea. I myself think that the same is true in life, that everything a man does he does for his ideal woman. Balanchine was sixty-one at the time, with a bad knee, an incipient heart condition, but he was in love, and the difference in age was irrelevant. Or it should have been. Like Filippo Taglioni teaching his daughter the steps that would make her a legend, it wasn’t the steps that mattered as much as the spirit animating the steps. And that spirit doesn’t just appear. You have to work to make it appear, to find it and nourish it, and everyone does that in a different way. Taglioni père might have been strict with his daughter, holding a stick in his hand as he told her to extend more, to elevate more, to hold her leg in attitude until it hurt. Some people are hot, Balanchine said, some cold. Which is better? I prefer cold. Either way, Balanchine must have been an amazing teacher, and sometimes a person needs to be shown the cliff and sometimes a person needs to be pushed off, and Farrell probably needed Balanchine as much as he needed her.
The moon is up, nearly full, which is perfect for hunting swans. Benno has seen some near the lake, and now Siegfried is part of an expedition, a swan-hunting expedition. It begins with his friends flushing out the brush leading up to the lake, and Siegfried is the only one without an arrow in his bow. He’s not that interested in hunting. Hunting requires a degree of testosterone he just doesn’t feel, and he leaves the group. He wanders alone through the undergrowth, stepping over puddles and jumping a stone wall, and he’s walking down a fire road, two ruts with grass growing between them, when he sees a flock of swans. He’s seen turkeys on the property but these are white, larger than swans but with heads held high on the tops of their necks, and as much as he can he follows them, down a narrow trail to a large pond where the swans are gathering. With his bow in one hand, he reaches behind his back to his quiver of arrows, and under the moonlight, positioning himself behind a rock, he readies the shaft of an arrow and aims his bow. He looks from swan to swan. They’re preening in the shallow water, and he sees, in the middle of their choreographed fluttering, one particular swan. Except she’s not a swan, she’s a woman. She’s wearing a feathered shawl, and she’s got a feather pinned to her hair but she’s human, perfect and beautiful. And he’d drawn the bow but now he lets it slacken. He approaches her, slowly. The other swans, like her, are human, and they disperse when he comes to the edge of the pond. He was hoping not to frighten the one, and unlike the others, when she sees him, she keeps her ground. She covers her breasts in a way that makes her look frightened, so he puts down his bow. He lifts his hands in a gesture of peace and sincerity, signaling her not to go, to please don’t go, and he can see the human swan beginning to relax. That’s the first step. He’s willing to stand there all night to show her, not only that he means no harm but that, and this is one of those sudden times in ballet, he’s fallen in love with her. And she must be going through something similar because rather than turning her body away from him, she faces him, exposing the open front of her body. Her head, which had been resting on her shoulder, turns and she holds out her hand, inviting him to what, to dance? Then she wades out of the water, moving her feet through the dark water and her body, from her thighs down, is wet. She’s wearing what looks like a white feathered bathing costume. In a clearing by the pond she brushes the water off her arms and legs, and this is the movement that precipitates the dance they dance, a dance of acquaintance and trust, and it starts with their slow circling each other, not touching at first, but that happens, and once they realize they love each other, after their dance, they sit on a smooth rock by the pond and talk. He listens to her story, about a princess named Odette, and about a sorcerer who put a spell on her. At night she can be who she is, a woman, but during daylight hours she’s been cursed to take the body of a swan. I say cursed, but it’s the deal she made with Rothbart, the sorcerer, or sometimes he’s called von Rothbart, and either way, when the sun rises, feathers sprout into wings on her back, and all the girls are cursed like that. Swans in the day, and at night they all become women again. Siegfried thinks there must be something he can do to help, and that’s when she tells him about the antidote, if curses have antidotes. The sorcerer’s spell can be broken, she says, if someone vows to love me forever, and faithfully. And he’s about to swear his love when Rothbart appears. He’d been watching them from the trees, and now he steps over some lichen-covered rocks and moves to Odette. He’s got a large silver belt buckle and he moves to her in a way that implies owner ship, as if you can own someone. She pulls herself away from him and, that’s enough, Siegfried tells him. Leave us alone. And Siegfried doesn’t feel himself under a spell but even as the words leave his mouth they sound impotent. And he feels impotent. If the sorcerer is actually a sorcerer then there’s nothing he can do but stand there, his feet on the damp earth, not quite catatonic but unable to perform the act. That will save Odette. All he has to do is promise his faithfulness, and that’s easy, and he’s about to do it when Odette reminds him that if, for any reason, he proves unfaithful, then the spell will require that she die. I understand, he says, and even if he doesn’t understand, he swears to her that he loves her and will honor her, and then Rothbart laughs. He has a full beard, half red, half gray, and because his laugh is a laugh of derision Siegfried impulsively steps forward, and I know the feeling he has, of wanting to hurt Rothbart, to bash his skull in. And when Odette steps between them, her arms
extended, her palms facing each of them, that’s when Siegfried ought to forget about Rothbart, turn to Odette, and realize his love is right in front of him.
At the coffee shop no one, apparently, had an appetite. The Commodore sat across from me and although I would’ve loved a cup of coffee, no one was offering. No one was offering because no one was talking. The ceiling was low and the walls were yellow, and I found myself watching a painting on the wall, of a ship’s porthole. A local artist had put up some paintings, and I say watching because I could see the sky on the other side of the porthole but I couldn’t see below the sky to the ocean. The ocean, if you look at it from outer space, is calm and blue, but if you’re on the ocean, or standing on the rocks next to the ocean, it’s deadly. And that’s what it felt like in this café, the air blowing out of the air conditioner, not like an ocean breeze which is neutral, but like life, and what matters in life is how you deal with the events of life, but there was no decent way to deal with this café. Except to get out. And I couldn’t get out because Freddie was sitting next to me. Plus the matter of the twenty-three thousand dollars. That’s what I owed these men. I won’t call them gangsters, and it doesn’t matter what I call them. I didn’t have twenty-three thousand dollars, had nowhere to get it, no rich uncle. Cosmo would’ve been my rich uncle, but once he’d paid his own debt he was broke, or so he let me know. And yes, I was stupid. I’d let myself get carried away. But that was the past. The question now was, what do I do, or what could I possibly do except hope. But hope, I realized, was the stupid thought that got me here, and now I had to move forward. Take one step forward. This is where I am, and what I am is how I live, starting now. It isn’t a life I ever wanted or expected or dreamed of, but this is me, and it always looks worse, at the moment, than it will in a week or a month or years from now. When I’m older, I thought, I’ll look back on this and ha-ha, what an experience I had. When I owed a group of criminals, who might possibly be murderers, that money. Twenty-three thousand dollars. Unless they’re going to forgive my loan. People do that. Twenty-three thousand dollars to them is probably a pittance. Never let this happen again, they’ll say, or the Commodore will say it and I’ll say, no sir, and he’ll tell me to go. Or maybe he’d tell me to do something else. I was like his doll. When Freddie elbowed me on the banquet seat I was like a stuffed animal, and the Commodore’s hair was gray, his face tan, and he must have had a skin disease when he was younger. And I didn’t speak because I was waiting for someone else to speak. I was still hopeful. Not full of hope, but I had some, and then the Commodore, as if waiting for the hum of the air conditioner to quiet down, when it didn’t quiet down, looked up. And I pretty much knew what he was going to say. Pay us or we’ll hurt you. That’s how they did business. And when he did finally speak there was no preliminary chitchat. You owe us a lot of money, he said, and I said yes, I know. And I’m sorry. I sincerely intend … but he cut me off. They’d already taken my credit cards. There wasn’t anything else. Whatever you want, I said. I’ll pay you back. One time I ate at a restaurant without having money to pay for my meal, in Reno, Nevada, a lavish meal, with steak and wine and when the waiter brought my bill I pleaded ignorance, asked if I could wash the dishes. I’d heard of that being done but it wasn’t done at that particular restaurant, and the manager called the police, and only because it was a busy restaurant was I able to escape. But twenty-three thousand dollars. That was serious money, but yes, I said, I can pay it back. No problem. And in my mind there was no problem because this was what I had to deal with, at this moment, and the next thing that happened, I’d deal with that when it happened, and yes, I told the Commodore, and he said, yes what? He sat, his hands on the table, and the other men were either looking at him or looking at me, smiling beneficently, or maybe the word is benevolently, and I kept saying yes, affirming the Commodore’s words, and affirming their power over me, and affirming my acceptance of the role I’d been given, a role I didn’t want but couldn’t fight because first of all I was outnumbered, and second, I really did owe them money. And when the other men joined the conversation, asking about my life, about my family and my love life, they seemed especially interested in my experience in Vietnam. You were in the war, right? I wasn’t, but yes, I told them I was, and I was surprised how quickly the answer came out of my mouth. Did I see much action? Action? You know, Seymour said, and I knew what the term action referred to, combat, and I was about to respond when Seymour elaborated. Ever kill anyone? And yes, I told them, I killed a few people. How can you not? And they understood. Not that I’m not proud of it, and of course not, they said. There was a line they’d drawn, not on the floor but in their minds, clear as chalk, and now I seemed to be crossing the line, from my side to their side, and it was almost friendly again. I was sitting on the bench seat against the wall, Seymour in a chair to my right, Freddie on my left, the crew-cut guy and the dealer at a different table and I was facing the Commodore. I was aware of my so-called sitting bones on the cushion of the bench, my femur bones extending out of my hip sockets, my legs connecting to my feet on the floor, and rising up from the floor I could feel a current of energy, spiraling up into my pelvis, up my ribs and spine and by thinking about the structure of the body I was trying to be relaxed, relaxed and nonchalant. They wanted to know what gun I’d used in ’Nam, the name of the gun, and I nodded as if nodding was an answer. And it must have been a kind of answer because the talk, swirling from the general topic of killing people in war, began to eddy around the specific topic of killing Asian people. It turned out they had an associate, a Chinese guy, not really an associate, they called him a punk at first and then a bookie, a bookie down in Chinatown who was into them for mucho dinero. Seymour was doing the talking now, and you can help us, he said. He pulled the hairs of his mustache away from his nose, and as I listened to him I knew, even before he finished, where this was going. I may have been dumb but I wasn’t a fool, and looking at Seymour and the Commodore and then Seymour again I said, if you want me to kill this guy for you … and I waved my hands in the air as if I was swatting away an insect. Not swatting, but if a bee would come buzzing around my head, instead of antagonizing it, I would steer it away, as gently as possible, to let it know that this is not the time or the place, and I think my gesture was pretty clear but maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe it was, but it wasn’t the gesture they wanted.
Siegfried can see the sky in the east turning pink, and he knows he doesn’t have much time. He wants Odette to stay a girl but he can already see the downy feathers appearing on her neck and shoulders, and at this point Rothbart is gone. A harp is playing in the distance, in B minor, not very loud but it’s enough to get the lovers, that’s what they are now, to dance. Siegfried gestures with his hand, come join me, and when she takes his hand he leads her in a dance that was probably choreographed by Lev Ivanov. Swan Lake had existed as a ballet before 1895 when Petipa, seventy-six years old at the time, remade it for Pierina Legnani, the prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Ballet. Although he doesn’t get the credit, Ivanov, who was Petipa’s assistant, is the one who understood the complexity of Tchaikovsky’s music, and the dances he made express the somber mood of the minor key by sometimes subverting it. The interesting part of the dance for me is when Odette starts spinning, when Siegfried cradles her without touching her, his arms forming a circle around her spinning body, letting her spin like a top until like a top she can’t spin anymore, balanced on the points of her toes, her arms raised, a vertical line for as long as she can and then when she falls, at the bottom of her fall, he catches her. They do this several times, and what Ivanov shows us is her trust. She’s tentative at first because she’s testing him, and every time he catches her he’s proving his love and the strength of his love, and the trust she feels is liberating. But now the pond and the sky and the mountains surrounding the valley are getting light. She sees the light, or feels it, and says, I have to go. She’s under a spell. But Siegfried doesn’t believe in spells, he doesn’t want her
to go, and Balanchine didn’t either. When Odette turns to join her sister swans, Siegfried takes her wrist, like Balanchine when Suzanne Farrell decided to marry someone else. He couldn’t stand it. He had to stop her. The idea of her leaving him, even for an instant, he couldn’t believe it, but because the curse was in front of his eyes Siegfried had to believe it, and they stand like that, their bodies pulling in opposite directions until, because her wrist is wet, he loses his grip, and almost like walking on water, Odette wades back into the mist of the pond and disappears behind some reeds. When Benno, the friend, walks into the glade, Siegfried wants to know if what he saw, the person he saw, the person he held in his arms, but of course she was real.