but the memory is piercing -- is that this particular vitrine displayed a selection of dancing shoes, all pre-20th-century, all shaped, frayed, and soiled through use. And among them, feather-light on its transparent shelf, lay a single ballet slipper, clearly from the Romantic era, when the ladies of the ballet first rose to the tips of their toes, to hover for a fleeting moment, as if buoyed by the air itself. Shod in such footwear, ballerinas of that time created their supreme illusion.
They were ethereal beings whose debt to gravity was minimal. Their contact with the cloddish earth, and the flawed folk anchored to it, was evanescent -- yet charged with ecstasy and its twin sister, tragedy. The slipper, caged in glass like an insect in amber now that its day and duties were past, was a flimsy affair of satin anchored to a pliant leather base.
The fabric had been emphatically darned around the sides and front of the toe sheath, such reinforcement being the sole support of yesteryear's artists of the dance. Its exhibition offered some tangible evidence, albeit oblique, of feats that otherwise reach today's dance aficionado only through legend, charmingly improbable etchings, and poetic evocation. ("She floats like a spirit in a transparent mist of white muslin with which she loves to surround herself, and she resembles a contented soul scarcely bending the petals of celestial flowers with the tips of her rosy feet.
" -- Théophile Gautier, on Marie Taglioni, 1837) The slipper was pale, with a faint blush suggesting it might once have been pink. I remember it as being attributed to Taglioni.
Posted by mclennan at April 3, 2005 10:35 PM
Seeing Things began life as my ArtsJournal blog, maintained from 2003 through 2005.
In 2006 it became the viewing site for the writing on dance that I continue to do elsewhere . . .
Tobi Tobias lives in New York City, where she writes about dance and other things worth looking at. My Books I have written "Obsessed by Dress," a meditation on fashion or--more broadly--clothes, and over two dozen books for children. You can find out more about these diversions from journalism by clicking on (what else?
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There is nothing like dancing after all.
I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies.
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Sir William Lucas, to Darcy)
A dancing couple reveals its degree of mutual understanding. The harmonious movements of the Count and Countess d’Orgel showed an accord that only love or habit can give.
(Un couple qui danse révèle son degrée d'entente. L'harmonie des gestes du comte et de la comtesse d'Orgel prouvait un accord que donne seul l'amour ou l'habitude.)
- Raymond Radiguet, Count d’Orgel’s Ball Le Bal du comte d'Orgel)
Dance speaks the hidden language, the language our ancestors have given us, the language that is beyond language.
. . .
that most exposed form of self expression, dancing . . .
When I discovered dancing, I learned to dream.
The body always has the last word. (Le corps a toujours le dernier mot.
)
(The National Museum Association’s Photographic Agency) offers a photographic catalogue of some 200,00 holdings of French museums. It can be searched by artist, country, period, subject, and so on. You can make a personal album of your favorites on the site.
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and D.C.’s National Gallery have similar services, but the French one is the most ambitious and extensive.
Text in English as well as French.
is an ultimate umbrella for finding used and out of print books online. It doesn’t have the atmosphere of Foyle’s, Powell’s, or even the Strand, but it will give you every opportunity to need yet another bookcase.
Learn the italic hand and make yourself legible. Don’t miss the animation.
Color charts of .
If you have to ask, you’ll never know.
Tobi Tobias on dance et al..
. Martha Bayles on Film..
. Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters..
.
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