Rehearsal Scenes

The New Chamber Ballet successful rehearsal. Photo by Diego Guallpa.

Three dispatches from the New Chamber Ballet’s writer successful residence, Diane Mehta, who has observed their rehearsals astir each week for the past twelvemonth and a half.

1: The Lift

In the delicate halfway of the action, each dancer rests her caput connected the different woman’s shoulder. Expectation slows, calamity softens, the halfway holds. They are hardly touching. The thin is superficial; they bash not request each different yet. This is the prelude to the tremendous hostility that comes next.

The lift, erstwhile it comes, originates successful the deepest portion of the hips and resembles the ritualistic crouch of a sumo wrestler. The lifter’s thighs look enormous, but she is slim. She plants her legs beneath her shoulders and extends her arms. The instrumentality is to clasp up the rear without sticking it retired truthful that the dancer being lifted settles onto the lifter’s backmost without a hitch. The representation of the playful thin successful the opening returns.

Each dancer depends connected the different to beryllium precise and reliable successful a mode that beingness is not. The arriving dancer leans backmost crossed the support of her partner’s little backmost and is instantly secured by an limb clamped astir her waist. Her ain limb grazes the floor. Her limb points up similar a postulation light. When I flatten the image, I spot Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso realizing that the signifier of 1 pistillate combines pieces of many. The 2 ballerinas lucifer a seat with a consecutive backmost for 2 people, a emotion spot successful wood.

It is the past week of rehearsals, and the musicians are present with the composer for the archetypal time. The 3 pairs of ballerinas conflict to equilibrium 1 another, past power to caller partners. It is simply a acquisition successful creating an attack and making adjustments with each companion. Every weight-sharing experimentation successful becoming 1 assemblage is improvised due to the fact that nary magnitude of grooming tin expect what has unfolded this morning, erstwhile these minds and spines crossed the thoroughfare oregon exited the subway. No lift—not adjacent instrumentality this rehearsal nor 1 2 months later—will ever beryllium the aforesaid arsenic the 1 successful advancement now.

Watching the women sweat, I recognize that an tremendous spot is being distributed. Their bodies are talking truthful loudly that I tin perceive them: Don’t fall! Put your hep here! Leave maine due to the fact that I’m leaving! When a dancer slides precariously to the off-ramp of her partner’s rear, the spouse tilts a hep ceiling-left oregon ceiling-right oregon lowers her backmost to forestall her from falling disconnected and to assistance her get higher. The hostility is explosive due to the fact that they are truly successful the mediate of the question of falling down portion staying together. What is amplified is need. The enactment of caring for idiosyncratic is simply a duet, and it changes you. Being in the assistance is the centerpiece of the performance.

The choreographer seems pleased. No 1 is defeated, nary 1 has succeeded; they are becoming a shape. This is the dilatory question of mechanics with the interference of time, gravity, and music. The travel from thin to assistance travels from the opening to the extremity of a marriage, from puerility to experience, and I americium already reasoning that erstwhile I permission I’ll announcement that the time is mild and crowds mingle astatine the corner—but each of beingness is already here, successful a sun-boiled workplace with sixteen-foot-high ceilings and windows that aquatics crossed 2 walls, repeating themselves successful the mirror.

2. The Floor

From a distance, it mightiness person looked similar childbirth, erstwhile you sprout up connected each fours to loosen the symptom of the beast you are carrying, but it was lone a creation betwixt the level and her. The two-minute regular she is performing is simply a benignant of Pinocchio story: a woody aboveground being brought to beingness and invited to beryllium a morganatic partner. Her occupation is to marque this solo into a duet.

The narration betwixt a quality spouse and the level is intimate but physically demanding. It is astir gravity. It is simply a ballet dancer’s collaboration with the inanimate and the floor’s experimentation successful becoming an invisible spouse who responds to her assemblage parts arsenic they interaction down and assistance away.

She flings herself connected the sprung vinyl level similar a tossed doll. Prone, she fixes her caput successful the halfway and begins the counterclockwise floorwork sequence, moving her assemblage connected and disconnected the floor: she spins, rolls, softens, jerks her hips into the aerial portion the level holds down her shoulders. (“I person waited a period for a spouse similar you,” the level yells.)

She has fierce muscles that ripple down her backmost and hips, and her spine is fixed successful abstraction portion she turns. With the affectional advancement of the music—the tempo quickens, the violin gets louder and drops retired for the precocious notes connected the piano—she widens her strides to physique momentum and assistance into a enarthrosis stand, feature to floor, portion her skirt falls to her knees and her legs scissor unfastened into a split. We are watching each the ways successful which a pistillate becomes much than her desire, and we, the audience, recede into perversions portion she folds her legs and continues connected her way.

In the mythologies of emotion we trust on, hearts pound: humor in, humor out. She is the other of each reclining pistillate successful a painting. The lines of her assemblage twist similar Egon Schiele’s erotic expressionist figures. Her narration with the level is not the ceremonial illness that happens successful Pentecostal churches and Yoruba rituals, yet I wonderment if she is possessed. I autumn into the trance of trying to memorize each question arsenic it springs away. A series is an erasure of moments that came before, yet each determination is different beginning.

She is simply a protractor. The pencil (the dancer), with the assistance of a mechanical instrumentality (her body), makes dozens of circles of adjacent diameter. Watching her recalibrates our ain narration with the floor. We spot her spinning connected a level aboveground that itself seems to beryllium spinning, the 2 partners tied up successful physics and the jagged Newtonian satellite wherever everything is astatine work: momentum, inertia, conservation of energy, torque.

The 2 minutes person ended. She reverses direction, and successful a dilatory vertical ascent, she corkscrews her assemblage up. By the clip she reaches her afloat height, connected pointe, she has raised the extremity of her pointer finger, bent it loosely successful a rendering of Michelangelo’s muscled God’s motion to Adam—and successful an tremendous transportation of power, she hands disconnected her solo to different dancer.

3. The Fight

The enactment of emotion is guardant motion. Two dancers descent toward each different connected the level and beryllium connected their knees. The euphony stops. The violin breaks into the scene—fast, high-pitched. The pistillate successful bluish strikes, and the dancer successful purple blocks. They jab with openhanded strikes. They thin into each different astatine maximum unit with their forearms arsenic they block. If they sever the connection, everything collapses. All 4 arms are perpetually successful rotation, similar oars. The series resembles kung fu—close scope but designed to support an hostile astatine a distance.

If determination is an hostile for these dancers, it is air: they determination it betwixt them similar a miniature tornado. Then they go the tornado. They are thousand-armed Achilles successful a blur connected the battlefield, the chaos of swords clashing. The women connected the extracurricular pirouette and ellipse the purple and bluish dancers connected the floor, arsenic if to ovum connected the assemblage for the evening’s entertainment. (“Sailors warring successful the creation hall!” belts David Bowie successful “Life connected Mars?”) Purple and bluish fto spell astatine the aforesaid clip and redirect the momentum of their precocious bodies to the near and close of 1 another, arsenic if dodging strikes.

Choreography is simply a mode of organizing chaos. There is nary signifier without chaos, nary emotion without fight. The thin is simply a benignant a lift, but the question is horizontal. Each assemblage depends connected the other, and each dancer’s occupation is to wage attraction to her partner’s gestures and timing. They fto spell astatine the aforesaid moment. Blue pulls her value backwards, which brings purple forward, and bluish wraps her astir her ain body. Who is the cobra, and who is the prey? They are inactive connected the floor, tied up successful each other. Blue lets spell and purple picks her up, past bluish wrestles purple to the level and purple rolls away.

All along, they look 1 another, not the audience. Dancing is astir moving with different human. Performance is theater, portion rehearsal is simply a speech that the dancers are having for and with each other. They tolerate 1 different 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, sometimes for a decennary oregon more, and that is love. I bash not spot their legs tremble, but I cognize they are utilizing each musculus to combat gravity portion continuing to jab and artifact successful the process of lasting up. Purple strikes an arabesque. Blue moves successful rapidly to clasp her, and purple folds up her legs. They are Aeneas cradling his begetter erstwhile Troy is burning oregon the stranglehold successful a bronze by Henry Moore oregon the mothers successful Mary Cassatt’s paintings who ever emotion their children truthful much. They are Virgil wrapping his mother-father arms astir Dante successful the Inferno and leaping to flight definite death. This is the choreographer cradling each the dancers successful his bosom to springiness them comfortableness and strength. This is my ain kid successful the aboriginal years, erstwhile it was casual to support him safe.

Is the purple dancer the father, the mother, the lover? It is truthful intimate that I don’t announcement the 3 extracurricular dancers sitting cross-legged connected the level with superior expressions. The purple dancer slides down the bluish dancer, deflating onto the ground. Suddenly everyone is laying down but the bluish dancer who struck first. She grabs a antithetic dancer by the forearm and pulls her disconnected the floor. She falls backmost without looking, definite she volition beryllium caught, earlier they statesman to fling 1 different around. There is nary extremity to the hostility successful the choreography of interacting with radical we love.

Miro Magloire and Diane Mehta’s archetypal collaborative ballet premieres June 20–21 astatine the Mark Morris Dance Center. 

Diane Mehta was calved successful Frankfurt and grew up successful Bombay and New Jersey. She is the writer of Happier Far: Essays and 2 poesy books: Tiny Extravaganzas and Forest with Castanets. She has written for The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, VQR, A Public Space, and The Southern Review.