Tentatively she enters the stage…… Softly and in silence she piquées to a low arabesque, fingers delicately searching the empty dark space of her emotions. Tombé into chainée turns, her mind spinning… where are the boundaries? Where does the stage floor end? Where are the set pieces? There is no audience. She is alone on stage. All is darkness. A gliding run with arms outstretched, reaching to find something definite, something solid… Low jetés, chassées chasing – what? Emptiness? With a jeté entrelacé her spirit twists in angst as she feels the vastness of the void all around her… She slows and lengthens herself into a deep lunge, a grand port de bras, searching the space in all directions. Nothing, no one to touch. No breath from another dancer to ease her lonesomeness. The darkness is deep and vast. The uncertainty overwhelming.
The distant sound of a mournful French horn reaches out to her, lifting her into a full arabesque. The cellos lend their loving voices, and she falls across into a liquid grand pas de basque, feeling the invitation of life. With violins and flutes joining the melody, she pirouettes through her thoughts as light gradually devours the pervasive darkness.
In the distance, another dancer’s arms reach longingly through 4th arabesque, and our dancer reaches in return. The energy from their fingertips connects their souls through the space. Chassée saut de basques en manège fill the space of their minds accompanied by full orchestra and briefly the vast emptiness of the universe between their respective galaxies seems to close with swirling stars mingling. It is more than illusion of connection – feeling each other’s gravity even though light years of space remain between. Their movements influence each other’s dance and the dances become one ballet, no matter the separate stages…
We are all soloists in this Pandemic Ballet. Yearning to be a corps de ballet. Swirl with me, let our gravities draw each other, our energies and light mingle. While the distance is vast and the ballet seems never-ending, I will join my arabesque line to yours, our port de bras will fill the space between us, we will become as one…
Photos in this blog courtesy of Fort Collins Public Media
Dancers: Deneice Dyer and Ixchel Levendosky in Space Between performed Feb. 29, 2020 as part of Front Range Contemporary Ballet Company Inner Voices production.
