– Who are you married to now? – I asked all of a sudden, wanting to know.
– Let Balanchine be the third in our company today. He patted my right knee lightly. – Don’t get distracted. I will always have plenty of time to answer all your questions.
– Are you trying to reassure me? Beware of getting no answers yourself, – I tried to tease him.
The imperial box was occupied by two ladies in Channel suits and some pompous men, with the former Minister of Culture in the front line. All of them were quite conceited, and one of them was looking around attentively, reminding me of the way the frontiersmen stood on patrol in accordance with military regulations during the Soviet period, protecting the sacred territory and studying each branch and blade of grass. He was not even speaking. All of a sudden he met my eyes and I decided to greet him, just for a joke. He nodded back to me, showing off even in the theatre. I turned back.
In Tunis they nicknamed me Sardine. Sergey reminded me of this now: ‘Get ready for the Art, Sardine, tune in for the music and the ballet’. I did so.
The lights went out. The orchestra began playing. The curtains swept back.… With every minute the performance became more and more intriguing. It was quite another kind of ballet. The dance was depicting the music; it was not quite clear what was accompanying what. Plot was rendered totally unnecessary. It was kind of symbiosis of light and ballet and music. First it seemed a bit weird, as though I was waiting for a prince who was never going to come. The most important thing was that it was not showcasing some kind of artful technique or elegant sequence of movements: it was another vision entirely, the same kind of beauty presented in a different way – the beauty of the human body and of musicality. It soon became clear to me that even costumes and decorations were superfluous. Each ballerina was her own self: young, airy, light, like a morning dream of a better world to come. ‘Ballet is the most innocent, the most ethical of all the arts. If it were not so, why should people always take their children to the theatre?’ This was what Tchaikovsky told his friend Herman Laroche on reading in some newspaper that the ballet exists just to excite the faded desires of old men. I read about it in Passion for Tchaikovsky by Solomon Volkov. A lot was also written about plot in that book, about how Peter Ilyich actually had no serious interest in plot – and indeed, how can anybody take the plot of Lebedinoye Ozero (Swan Lake) seriously? It’s not like Richard III, for example, in which there’s absolutely no need for dance. Dance cannot represent people’s intrigues and fratricide on stage nearly as well as words can. Mood and sense, however, can be depicted by the ballet. Is it really more powerful? When the brilliant union of a composer and a choreographer takes place, then yes, it can be much more powerful. And everybody is free to their own artistic preferences, their own modes of self-expression, according to their soul’s needs at different moments in their lives. The only thing that strikes me as undeniable is that it is very difficult for a person without art – it is almost impossible to develop, to acquire a full knowledge of life, to be kind and loving. Well, the actor just recites phrases learnt by heart, the musician reads the music, the ballet-dancer knows exactly how to move on the stage. And would it have been better if she had not learnt her part? If she hadn’t rehearsed till exhaustion? Plot is not the main thing. When Balanchine toured the USSR at the beginning of sixties, he had been accused of formalism, of dances without a plot. And here I was, watching his chorographical creations in the Bolshoi, performed by the Theatre’s own troop of dancers. I liked it.
During the interval we went out to walk around a bit.
– I have to say, you don’t seem overjoyed to see me, – remarked my elegant companion.
– Sergey Filimonovich, you are too harsh. – Once, we had been in the habit of inventing different patronymics for one another. Quite often ‘Filimonovich’ was the only second name I used for him – it sounded so African in style, as though it were derived from the word lemon… lemon like the one growing near the kitchen window in Tunis, from which we picked gigantic yellow fruit all the year round for salads and, of course, for tea…. – I am very happy to see you after all these years. You look great. I am just waiting for an explanation as to why you’ve decided to rake up all these old ashes and do a thing like this. I’m guessing that our chance meeting in that shop was simply a useful pretext. Yes, somehow I think that’s right. – I looked him straight in the eye.
– You’re talking rubbish, Sofia Pavlovna! You want me to find you a mirror? How very modest you are! – he joked – Or do you think evolution has entirely passed me by? I’ve long since had my fill of long legs and Ukrainian accents.
– Oh, you’ve had enough already? How interesting! It must mean that you have tasted a lot of that sort of thing. You lived in the States for quite long a time, didn’t you? For about ten years? I heard a little but paid no attention to it. It all seemed so far away.
– You would have been better to have paid attention to it.
– Look what beautiful women are here tonight! – I looked in the direction of a beauty standing nearby, wearing long above the knee boots in blue suede.
– She is a real tamer. Sometimes you should listen to what you’re being told, Sofia Pavlovna, and not lash out with some inferiority complex.
– You’re wrong. – I got offended. We went back to our seats. My anonymous acquaintance from the imperial box had not left his seat and was still on the alert. All of a sudden he cried out:
– Hallo, Mihal Mihalich!
Sergey and I, surprised, looked at each other.
– He has done it at last! – grinned Sergey.
– Where there’s a will there’s a way. He’s not wasting his time sitting there! He must be imagining that he is a grand prince, or a marshal or maybe even the Tsar. Perhaps he thought the woman next to him was the tsarina. Should we write him a note – asking not to yell like that and make a fool of himself? – I enquired.
– I would send him flowers. He introduced himself quite spectacularly, – suggested Sergey.
– Some exotic flowers, decorated with a bow, – I agreed. – And a teddy bear as well.
I hadn’t noticed that the lights had gone out. Agon resumed.
– It’s a very powerful performance, Sonia, – Sergey whispered in my ear. – Feel the rhythm. – And he gently kissed me on my cheek. – In America I dreamed of watching it with you. – And he kissed me one more time.
Suzanne Farrell staged Agon in Moscow in 1999. I had seen her film – about her and her relationship with the master. She had been his last love and his Muse. That means that she had been the last Muse, whom he had loved and for whom he had created, and to whom he had devoted his ballets. She had been a very beautiful woman and a ballet-dancer. I remembered that my grandmother had always said: “Women become beauties, they are not born like that”. The film had been produced after his death, but real passion could be felt in it, as well as attachment to him, pride for his selectness. Although she had tried to escape from him by marrying another man and working with Béjart, she had come back. Here in Moscow she described Agon as “a jump from the rock into the water”, intended for those wanting to make that leap and acquire self-confidence. She wanted to do everything in the proper way, and to remain marvelous.
– Do you know that Balanchine also wrote the ballet called Jewels? And I think he actually staged it with Arpels in New York? – We were leaving the theatre. Sergey was holding me by the arm. Then he put my arm into his, which was more convenient. Slight wooden twinges from his perfume reached my senses.
– Yes… It’s rather far away… Are you by any chance suggesting a trip to Saint Petersburg? – I recalled