I am a veteran acting in over 20 plays. But for the first time ever this year, I was asked to fill in a role
for Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, put on by Tyler Junior College's Academy of Dance. Ballet, while performed on a stage like a play is, is nevertheless a horse of another color. Completely.
“How so?” You may ask.
Well, let me count some of the ways:
1) Tchaikovsky’s music is sheer genius. I don’t see how one man could possibly come up with so many memorable tunes. It is astounding and stunning. While musicologists, I suppose, would say that Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven are his superiors, nevertheless, there is a magical element in Tchaikovsky's compositions that blow me away. Mozart’s tunes are also so memorable. The only thing I can conclude is that all of these men were somehow such sensitive spirits that they were able to channel music that was coming to them from a higher realm. I just cannot buy that their genius in music was solely the product of some human initiative or intuition.
2) Our cast for the Nutcracker had over 150 people in it.
I’ve never been in a play with that many. Kids were everywhere. Stage moms were running to and fro trying to corral their little darlings, yet they and the two principals that we hired all did a really fantastic job. The coordination, the choreography blows me away. Choreography is my absolute weakest suit with doing anything on stage, and all these dancers poured their hearts out. I would smile as I watched them give their all, knowing that what they were doing, I could never do. I marveled at their art and their singular focus to give the very best. As soon as they came off stage into the wings, some looked like they wanted to collapse, but going out again under the lights, you would never know it. They were once again in character making a valuable part of the story come to life.
3) I never knew how noisy pointe shoes were till I was up close and personal with them on stage. Whoa!
4) While the principals were dancing on stage, people in the wings were shouting paeans of affirmation and applauding their every move. I was astonished to put it mildly. In the theater of which I am accustomed, you would never do that kind of a thing. But in this instance it seemed more like fans rooting for their favorite players out of the boards!
5) When I was conscripted to take the part I did, I was looking for a director who was serious, hard charging, impatient, demanding, somewhat sarcastic, trying to push and motivate her dancers to do better than they had ever done, with zero toleration for any miscues or mistakes. In fact, when I first met Carolyn Hanna , I thought, she can’t possibly be the director. She’s too nice, too pretty, too laid back, too comforting, too empathetic, etc.
Then I read about her.
She studied at Julliard? No way! Those people are too full of themselves, allowing the basic snobbery with which people who inhabit NYC look upon the rest of the world. Not Carolyn Hanna. But it was Carolyn Hanna. I came to understand that she was the bowsprit figurehead who would calm the turbulent waters of anxiety with her experienced insights, her subtle coaching that “You can do this.” Her calm, collected self-defining behavior imparted health and a greater resolve to do even better next time, to the entire cast.
6) Ballet is a wonderful artistic medium
that can stir all sorts of passion not only in the dancer, but also in the individual and collective audience member(s). If you’ve never been to one, put it on your bucket list. I still marvel at how the thighs of the ballerinos
look like football players, yet they are as graceful and energetic as any human being I’ve ever seen.