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September 09, 2004

Book Bites #4

I inhaled Toni Bentley’s Winter Season in 24 hours and two sittings. I can’t believe that I, a lover of all things Balanchine, didn’t discover this 150-page piece of near-perfection years ago. Blame a generation gap and unfairly low expectations. I’d heard of Bentley’s 1982 book, of course, and knew it was a journal of her time as a corps member at the New York City Ballet. I’d heard it was “well written”—but I suppose I’d imagined competent sentences bubbling over with the naivete of youth. Little did I realize that “well written,” in this case, meant truly literary. I can almost pluck a passage at random:

“Five years ago, when I was first in the company, when I was first behind the big gold curtain at the New York State Theater, I saw strange things every day. I saw pretty, flirty, ballet girls in pretty, flirty, flimsy ballet clothes talking to Balanchine. I heard things like: ‘. . .and my left toe shoe always gets softer than my right—I just don’t know what to do,’ and ‘They said it would rain, but it hasn’t, has it?’ and ‘Mr. B, how can I improve my hairdo?’ And as if that wasn’t strange enough, he answered them. Not only did he reply, he replied in an altogether shocking way—he was genuinely interested and attentive.

I could not fathom this. It was absurd to me. How could the man who made Serenade and Apollo in the beginning, Union Jack and Vienna Waltzes a few years ago and
Violin Concerto in between talk about the weather? . . .

. . .I attempted to dispel this by talking to him about it. He said, ‘But, dear, why? I’m just like you or any other man.’ Then we talked of Paris and champagne. For a few moments I almost believed he was like me—until I went onstage and watched Concerto Barocco.”

Winter Season is a vivid portrait of the religious dedication of a dancer’s life, but also something much more specific and precious. Bentley does not claim to speak for all ballet dancers at all times: she writes as an apostle of the New York City Ballet at a poignant moment in its history, the years just before Balanchine’s death. The inevitability of his passing shrouds the company in dread and devotion. There are lighter moments of dish, too—Peter Martins behaving lecherously—and hopes for the future as, for instance, a 16-year old Darci Kistler has her first triumphs. But it’s Bentley’s intelligence that makes the book compulsively readable and gives it a kind of existential weight. If only I’d known! It’s been more than two decades since Winter Season’s publication. It’s ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of dance lovers.

Posted by Rachel at September 9, 2004 01:25 PM

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