Live from Saturday Afternoon!

Emily Gordon: It’s going to be a bit easier to blog many-venued events like this when New York becomes (surely it will?) an all-WiFi-city, like the pleasingly cutting-edge Salem, Mass., or, soon if controversially, Philly. Anyway, I’m in Bryant Park, having just heard an intriguingly academic, consciously nonpolitical, occasionally contentious dialogue between Mikhail Baryshnikov and New Yorker dance critic (and occasional writer of book reviews) Joan Acocella. She pelted him with questions about his switch to modern dance and his relationship to classical ballet, and he was firm in declaring his devotion to Downtown, his indignation that young artists can’t afford to see any art (when he moved to the city, he said, he saw dance, Broadway shows, theater, or some other performence every night), and his hope that he’ll be able to make a difference with his new West 37th St. performance space. Which we were all sitting in; nice acoustics!

We also saw a nine-minute archival film of Baryshnikov dancing a somber, poignant modern piece (I didn’t catch the whole name, so if someone else knows it, please write in). I’ve never been witness to a more moving spectacle of mortality. Watching the great dancer sit on a stage with his fists clenched or one hand in his hair, the other covering his thigh protectively, and willing his head to turn toward the screen, where his younger self is holding himself on one leg in a mastery of time, space, muscle, and feeling—how could you not tear up at the ridiculous shortness of our lifetimes and the frailty of the human body? The whole thing made me want to be, and want all of us to be, worthy of Baryshnikov’s passion for saving and bolstering an arts community that has allowed him to take so many mighty risks. There are quotes, lots of ’em, so I’ll post presently.

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |