I just read another review in the New York Times by him, and he expresses so well a quality that I so admire and try to embody every day in my dancing.
"...here and elsewhere," he writes, "the Farrell dancers are unsurpassed at arriving with (actually, a hair’s breadth ahead of) the beat, so that they reveal the music by embodying it rather than following it."
This sort of explains a point I tried to make in a previous post: Ballet and the Whole Self. I said that a dancer must have such an intense understanding and relationship with their music that it must seem that they themselves are creating the music as an illustration to their dancing. Macaulay puts it so much better by saying that the dancers of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet reveal rather than follow the music.
I wish I was as fantastic as he is, and I suppose, as musically gifted as Suzanne Farrell's dancers are.
Yar, that kinda relationship with the music would be quite awesome indeed. That stage of understanding is probably the mastery of the art, which comes so rarely in dance, music, and almost every facet of life!
ReplyDeleteI think it was Obama who said that people generally aim for understanding, most aim for proficiency, but only a very select few aim for mastery.