Rebecca Nemser

“It’s as if they were tak­ing a jour­ney through a land­scape and their eyes were caught by some­thing — a mem­o­ry, or the frag­ment of a mem­o­ry, or the mem­o­ry of a past life — and that pulls them into the move­ment,” says PAULA JOSA-JONES of her new dance, GHOSTDANCE. 

Boston Ballet’s new Nut­crack­er sets are the work of a design­ing cou­ple, Helen Pond and Her­bert Senn, who live in a Goth­ic house in Yarmouth­port which they have ful­ly restored with Goth­ic carv­ing, paint­ed ceil­ings and “lots and lots of quadrifoils,” says Her­bert. “We designed the house and the Nut­crack­er at the same time. Nut­crack­er is my life.”

Bal­let is all arti­fice; but she makes even the Snow Queen’s daz­zling, del­i­cate swirls seem easy and nat­ur­al. From a dis­tance, she seems frag­ile, ethe­re­al. But up close, you can see the mus­cles in her limbs, her grace­ful neck, her flex­i­ble spine. The years of ded­i­ca­tion and dis­ci­pline are sculpt­ed onto her slen­der frame.

Dancer Beth Soll and Com­pos­er Richard Cor­nell are work­ing togeth­er on a dance inspired by a book by West African poet Amadou Ham­pate Ba. “It’s a long tale, an ini­tia­to­ry alle­go­ry, a tri­umph of knowl­edge over for­tune and pow­er,” says Cor­nell. “A quest for God and wis­dom,” says Soll. 

“It begins with a fune­re­al cho­rus in the antique style, with cor­net­to and trom­bones. And then Orpheus comes in, lament­ing his lost love, and sings one sin­gle word. Eury­dice. He sings it three times. He does­n’t say much, but he says every­thing he needs to say, and the third time he sings it, it sends chills up your spine.””

LOUIS CARTIER used pre­cious met­als and jew­els in a high­ly pol­ished, sparkling, and yet almost casu­al way way — the way Fred Astaire and Gin­ger Rogers danced. The shim­mer of dozens of tiny dia­monds on a cool plat­inum sur­face is the essence of sophis­ti­ca­tion –- like a Cole Porter song. 

GENE KELLY was a great dancer because his danc­ing seemed to be an over­flow of his superb vital­i­ty — a nat­ur­al exten­sion of his per­son­al­i­ty. In all his movies, the tran­si­tions to dance are incred­i­bly smooth, because even when he’s not danc­ing he’s think­ing about dancing–his ath­let­ic body is flexed and lim­ber– and he’s ready to roll, even on an emp­ty set with 500,000 kilo­watts of elec­tric light mim­ic­k­ing star­dust and a giant fan cre­at­ing the sen­sa­tion of a moon­light breeze.