One Night Only
Some time ago, had you been inclined, you could have turned off state route 99 into Lodi, California and witnessed the strangely charming culmination to decades of American-Soviet relations.
The middling farming town is surrounded by the acres of cultivated grape vines and almond trees, then in bloom after an uninspired performance by winter. The pines in the town did not care for the half-hearted cold spell; they shed needles which the wind blew into piles at the landing of an aged concrete set of stairs, above which was a sign for an international school of ballet.
An American Legion Hall, tucked behind this conifer grove and besides a permanent grape festival grounds, was the last place you would expect a ballet school; much less one with walls decorated with Cyrllic broadsides advertising long-forgotten, epic performances which took place in distant lands. The structure was built on the reliable plan: a large banquet mess (complete with missing ceiling tiles); cavernous below-ground bathrooms with the old-style urinals standing four feet tall in porcelain; a distinct smell which exhales either from the aging concrete or the accumulated social functions of three generations of veterans; peeling white paint on stoic, broad, sunlit walls and fogged windows. These structures were built at the beginning of the Cold War and are designed to function reliably until the next one.
For many small to mid-sized towns, these halls are the scene of community fundraisers, graduation parties, receptions, after-funeral luncheons . People have begun new lives and celebrated old ones on the wooden floors of the great hall (recently renovated, courtesy of a church fundraiser). There is something quaintly mid-century American, E Pluribus Unum, about them, which is not a bad expression to describe a corps de ballet, either.
How a Russian ballet school ever got here is part of that unique American secret, the seeming chance with which the nation scatters the germ of other nations' genius across the land. But the massive paper-maché alligator from some forgotten performance is here, guarding the school's interior; a dozen hand-painted decorations are here too, and for final proof, the faint smell of pointe shoes (calamine lotion, shellac, sweat). And he is here, too; an aged ballet master, of harsh Russian mores and excruciating perfection (so the children murmur) who has carried with him distinctions and training, and sat them down here besides his wheelchair and electric breathing equipment which pumps methodically.
"One night only," read some of the yellowed posters on the walls, revue-like. It was difficult to believe, when I looked at the individual inveighing on the natural imprecision and uncontrolled energy of his students before replacing his respirator mask, that he had perhaps danced a thousand and one nights only. The greatest evidence that they occurred was a lingering sense of frustration in his words, or his movements in a body once capable of sublimity before the plunge of old age and unnamed disease.
But these disappointments were not felt that day; it was the school's performance of The Nutcracker. We sat upstairs, on the great hall's newly furbished wooden floor (with repeated thanks to the church fundraiser). Someone noted with concern that it is still slippery from last night's crab feast. This is no Bolshoi Theater, which the Russian would know from experience; it is something humbler, more grand, an American community turning out.
The girls have practiced their pieces for months now, each gesture having that studied accuracy which is the relative of (seemingly) effortless inspired movement. That will come in time; today, they are trying very hard, and very hard is good. Perhaps less obviousis the underlying choreography at work; things a child can do, but would never think to do, movements and motifs told them by the Russian who sat behind stage right, his hand on a volume knob to finesse each song playing from an aged and mostly reliable CD player. Herr Drosselmeyer was played by a father; he had mastered that crafty old bearer of gifts with a delightful, spinning one-legged jump that is repeated a few times, too good to be used only once. A few professional ballerinas from a local company were convinced to come, too, perhaps in exchange for training on other days; in their studied grace, the choreography becomes more fulsome and evident, the difference between a whistled concerto and one with a full accompaniment. One of them daubbed her shoes with a wet paper towel after hearing about the prior evening's crab feast and its effect on the floor.
There was precision, too, in the parents’ careful planning of the event, the coordinated veggie trays and fruit platters which line the bar and the thousand details of a community event which no one else would think of. A few other fathers arrived early to set up and patiently implement terse instructions about the props and staging; mothers arrived in a bluster and shepherded the younger children about in the rear of the theater, where a mixture of excitement and stage fright conspire to drown out subtle last-minute changes to the soundtrack. There was an impending sense that things were going to spin out into chaos and go badly; and yet when the overture began, the waters stilled and a strange magic occured.
The CD skipped to the incorrect song halfway through the show but Herr Drosselmeyer flourished his cape and all was forgotten. The strobe light effect, used strategically during a sequence featuring the Rat King, was delayed and yet we forgot. One of the children, if not several, failed to be present for the final bow. The Christmas tree, the centerpiece of any Nutcracker, was a sheet-and-lights affair; and yet in the heat of the theater, families rapt with attention, we believed it was magic, and that strange things did happen at midnight, as they do. The swift, belle époque grace of the professional ballerinas, belying so much exertion, did not outshine the work of the children but seemed to suggest future things to come, at least for some of them. From behind the curtain, the master watched, hand upon the volume knob, eyes upon movements he himself was once capable of.
Some Nutcrackers last for hours, requiring an intermission for both the relief of audience members and dancers. This performance tried only the patience of only a few dragged-along brothers: a single, concentrated performance that had been the focal point of months of practice. I wondered if the audience knew what they had witnessed, a strange intersection of America's rural interior with a faded yet still brilliant, worldly knowledge.
But then two fathers, after the applause died down for the children, stepped forward and began to pull back a deep blue cloth panel from stage right, then another one upon which a faint shadow was played by the stage lights. The crowd rose, something they did not even do for their children; they applauded a figure that could almost be overlooked save that he was the only one looked at; the Old Man, sitting in a wheelchair, a blanket over his legs and a breathing mask over his mouth. He raised his hands and let them fall. It was a moment Kruschev and Nixon could not have imagined, standing there in the kitchen.
Afterwards, paper plates of fruit and cookies being dutifully passed around, the girl who missed the final bow cried plaintively near the edge of stage. One of the ballerinas, ascendant in her career, stepped softly to the side of the child whose future did not perhaps lie on the wooden floors she dreamt about now.
"It's okay that you didn't bow," she says.
“It's not,” was mouthed between sobs.
"What matters is that you danced. You'll remember that. Your mom will remember that. I'll remember that."
There is a quiet beauty of something having been done, vouchsafed in the permanency of the past, bound up in the one afternoon only when an American community turned out for its Russian ballet master.
