Dewdrop Fairy
Her ribbon snaps and ...
Her ribbon snaps, and in the interval while the director gives a couple of notes she rips off her shoes and dances the rest of the Dewdrop fairy on just the balls of her toes.
Her feet are pink with exertion, and exquisite.
The studio is a barn and it smells like animal piss and there are rat pellets all around the edge of the marley.
Look at the double battements battus, repeated, repeated. The pivot, the arch of her foot.
The rest of her hovers like a dewdrop on a pansy.
At the end of the variation we applaud, three, four, generations of us, all bent on one project, and I think, well, I’ve worked half a lifetime to be in this moment, to be present when the gods just touched one toe to earth —
— and it was gone so fast, and I would work another lifetime for another 6 minutes and 19 seconds like this.
Come, my actors, my dancers, my fiddlers. Raise a glass. You understand.