Music and the Dance

Fantasy #2 – “Music and the Dance”

Tonight there is a man present with us, and his name is Strauss. He reaches out to you and me from the dust of the year 1830. His essence flows through the corridor of time, powered by the molecules of sound kibitzing and vibrating through space. These are held in place by the structure of clefs and measures, and dance out the barrels of clarinets and French horns. He is with us, ethereal, yet here, a greater and more real force for us tonight than were all those corporeal people we spoke with earlier today. For Strauss is music, and the music is our energy, and the energy flows in dance, and the dance is the waltz, and we are the dancers....

The real Strauss only comes out at night. He thrives when Champagne flows out of bottles and into women’s hearts. He is the greatest of all Casanovas, and all other romantic men owe him the greatest of debts. It is he who whispers into ivory ears, he who kisses the elegant foot in the slipper, it is Strauss who knows the pressure points that act like curare on certain inhibitions. Strauss has no fingers, he has no tongue, he has no guts or bones. But he has power, nonetheless, and he shares his power with other men who know where he lives. I know. When the light is right, when the day is done, when the prosaic stress of the day is ameliorated; that is when he opens his door.

One day soon may be an eventful day for us. I know where Strauss lives, and I will knock on his door, and wait to see what happens. He may open his door wide to us, or he may open only his window. He may say hello, and he may not. He may whistle, or he may sit to his clavichord and play. He may only hum a tune, or he may sing in full voice. Strauss, after all, is fickle, as are many creators. And what are we, but fickle, too. Will we be listening; will our senses be closed to the “beauty of the bird cutting the airy way”, as William Blake says? Will we be great and open, in our not very great way?

The potential of the dance for us is enormous. Within it lies the perfect blend of mind and heart, brain and soul, thinking and feeling, our bodies and our space. Do you know the energy of two hands touching at shoulder level, the man’s left hand and the woman’s right? Do you know the power of direction inherent in a hand at the small of the back; pressure and then no pressure; two fingers of touching and then five fingers; leading laterally, then forward, then backwards; a guiding pressure countered by the release of pressure?

I lean over you at the mark of the orchestral beat, in the middle of the dance floor; my eyes are closed. And then, I have it, I have the music, and with the music, I have you. With the sound of the 34 beat tripping through the air, and with quarter note spirits escalating through the chromatics of composition; then comes the power and essence of Strauss, 173 years after he created the work of art we know as the waltz. We plumb the depths of dance, even this very first time, and we know it is for us.