5. The Cracker of Nut: A Spell and A Review by Madame Sesostris
A Spell:
I’m sitting in my storefront window – there are now
Many empty storefronts on our fabled Avenues –
But mine is central, prominently situated despite
Damned zoning, mine the Belladonna of situations,
Hard by the Cathedral of Our Many Scandals,
South of the Tower of Trump, and as I watch
Through Xmas-windowed dusk on Fifth Avenue,
One of few remaining East Side spirit portals,
My royal mummy case in conspicuity, but with
Shoppers in their transit regardless of our Presence,
Up drives a chrome yellow limousine, parks
And emits four gentlemen in suits -- although
Somewhat “dressed down”, I thought – to enter slow
My incensed parlor in abject awe and supplication
And as though I would not know them! Me! –
Sesostris -- swarthy spirit guide, clairvoyante, and dog handler.
Of course, I knew them! They were expected!
The tie-less four beseeched a fortune told:
Could The Cracker of Nut play all year round?
Or as G.M. would ask, Will such ploy make for success?
You should have seen the eight depths of avid eyes!
Humbled before consistence of fate, I cut the cards.
My German shepherd Fido barked at them, good dog –
Swift explosive scent-pursuit hound! -- but they did not
Seem suicide-pacted, yet. (You never know on Fifth.)
I calmed him down, there boy, good boy.
“This is The Tower,” I spoke, turning the Tarot.
Trembled they. All four swayed in unison and
Quaked they had so long besought a leader --
But, please, not that One. Would I select Another?
Emissaries sent they far and wide for candidates,
But not one showed enow the stuff for steward.
Best not to involve W.H. just yet. Eftsoons?
I pitied, to the extent I may commiserate, but
Even in my firm demurral, four fell upon eight knees
Toward full prostration. At first their stark intent
I did not grasp, but then came vision clear:
They hied here to beg Me, the Great Sesostris,
To toss my jeweled turban in the ring!
I, who knew but slight about the Ballet Art.
But does that matter in Eternal Rounds?
Must I deny such foursome’s deep distress?
(Note SOS within the very middle of our name.)
Pressing comp into ensorcelled palm – mine! --
They begged me to review the cow of cash, Cracker,
At the Center of Our Scandals Lincoln,
To see if it had legs to run year-round,
In a fiscal pinch? Fido barked them out.
O keep the actuarial dog far hence! they cried,
Unused to things that will go bump at night.
Below, you’ll find my prose critique bespoke,
A Sibylline prescription from the House of K___.
The Review:
Note: Full Disclosure. Now and again some mischievous spirit from another astral plane’s dimensional domains may interrupt and speak through me, the Great Sesostris, prosaically, of the Dance Art. I am told she (it is a female) was a one-time fervent Judson Church exponent, familiarly called “Lupe” in theoretical performance-space name. (Be assured, I have formerly encountered no such specter in all my many lives and half-lives, during my sometime lucrative séances, or especially among my presumptive relatives in Queens.) I mention because I have now been to the ballet and am sworn to prophesy, and also because I, Sesostris, am unique in spectral branding and a stand up sayer of sooth. Accept no substitute.
But should you note a certain drop in altitude within my lambent critical prose, it is not because I am damned tired of writing this way but because a certain darkling “Guatemalan Guadalupe” may now and then take the astral floor in paranormal performance art. I apologize in advance for any confusion or ambiguity such research may cause. I am distrait but dedicate to compass all esoteric proceedings in our psychic latitudes. In other words, I confess I sometimes lose control during the insidious interventions of a movement-mad poltergeist. Humbly, I am only one individual talent within our vast phantasmal tradition. An anxious A.D. Selection Committee may perchance be rightly grateful: Two for the price of One.
Or Three. Because I am in touch (thanks to my special trademarked powers) with past leaders of ballet enterprise, I held mystic dialogue late last night with a Russo-entrepreneurial spirit (there are now many and more to come), one called Serge Diaghliev, and he assured me from the non-corporeal realm that Cracker of Nut is exactly what he would have prescribed and played without respite did he persist. Serge approves its combination of Legend (“pre-Fokine”, so described) and Choreographic Process (“spell-spinning Tschaikovsky-Balanchine”). It’s mostly Story in the ballet’s first act and highly self-conscious Dance in Act Two. Thank you, Serge.
But what hit the great Sesostris square last eve was a Hoffmannesqe (E.T.A.) element throughout the work, something I would be sensitive to, no doubt? Just as the viewer thinks she knows where the story goeth, its dream logic takes her somewhere untoward, since a sophisticated and theoretical “Process” (as Judsonites call it) resides in the narrative form as well as in the dancing. In fact, I would make the Hoffmann tone even more insistent if I were in justified command of a ballet company, especially in the first act. I, Ur-feminist, myself would mime the magus Drosselmeier, with full cape and hoodie or perhaps en travestie!
The ballet’s many dances have that regularly phantom, dreamy, grotesque aspect. This is what the kids in the audience love. I’m with them.
But, behold, this ballet is also up-to-date politically. In the second act what struck me were two dance diversions that are socially relevant in ways unknown to J. K. Rowling. “Coffee” is a little narrative unto itself, about a freedom-loving Mountain Girl abducted from legendary Arabian hills and forced as a slave to dance for bored old men at their putative and ultra-decadent court! You can see her story in her jumps from crag to crag and her spare, insinuating pointe work. Exploitation in the dock, social critique built in. (Awesome how things don’t change much Eastwards.) All this is suggested in the “Coffee” dance-tale with no signaling of virtue, easy or otherwise. Ashley Laracey was the captive princess, and her stylish wit just might bring the Oriental back in fashion, despite the news from Yemen.
And “Tea” (the characterful Chinese number) is about two fortunate cookies who keep a sex-object boy-toy in a handy container and allow him out to amuse them on occasion, chop-chop. Talk about female empowerment! All this in forty seconds of your Choreographic Process. And so very topical! Some of my wealthy female clients are known to keep a little something on the side. In his split jumps, Ralph Ippolito was indefatigable. As a woman sitting near me put it, “Wrap him up, I’ll take him home!”
To think that all the great Balanchine wanted was a big ballet in the style of a Czarist entertainment, circa 1892! This Cracker’s general mode is indeed deliberately revivalist, certified antique, and sometimes impolitic, like yours truly. It’s confessedly Ballet History, something usually only your Sesostris can access with occult fingertips and ectoplasmic Serge. (No Spielberg P.C. update needed, thank you.) But there’s even more on offer in Cracker, although I don’t want to waste our temporal allotment. Here’s what you essentially get: time-tested fantasy and German Romantic metaphysical kink! For the whole family. Let’s face it -- an ancient art can be disorienting for some on this material plane, despite all your trigger warnings.
Comprendé? So many trigger-happy American types these days. That’s why I keep my Fido close.
At the evening performance I attended at the House of K___ (a great seat in the Observation Room, where I was undoubtedly videoed for the forthcoming E.P.K.), the Sugar Plum Fairy was danced by the principal ballerina Tiler Peck. My nocturnal higher statecraft usually condemns me to insubstantial wraiths and midnight ramblers, but this Peck was an utterly Present Presence in her performance. (Righteous Judson, some hereabouts would say.) Peck is the opposite of Absence. In fact, next to Peck, everyone else’s dance looked ghostly. Surrounded by secret doctrine, arcane dicta, dogs and dogma, your most conscientious Sybil can sometimes question where Identity resides, but when Peck dances, Here It Thrives. (So good to see such realized expertise now and then rather than ever and never. Dance Theory can take one only so far, vaunt though a certain errant Southern spirit will.) Peck’s partner, Joseph Gordon, was strong support, oft self-effacing, a non-Present Presence for his beloved Fairy. Gordon has the classical secret of making a Magical More from a Material Less. Got it? This ballet is so postmodern, it’s Futuristic. I would know. (I hope these pull-quotes will suffice.)
My favorite moment in the ballet dematerializes in the first act when an awakened lone little Marie peers out of her family’s big window into the cold winter night, turns shivering back into the room’s gloom, and discovers that suddenly all walls have flown. The tiny child confronts the vast indifference and stage machinery of the universe. I’ve been there! If Fido had been allowed to see this performance, I’m sure he would have registered that moment, too, along with the many mice, the immense tree, and the flying reindeer. I can hear his ready whimpers.
OK, Boys in the Backroom, for now and the immediate, you are free to run Cracker perpetual. Serge and I give a multiversed thumbs-up. I foresee massive boxoffice, Christmas in July, just when you need it most. What works for Fido works for the young demographic: PHT, Perpetual Holiday Treats! When installed officially, I’ll loan my dearest pet and my imitation ivory dog whistle to the security inspectors at the outer lobby doors. No suspicious type will pass. (Fido prefers Bone-Nibblets, just so you know.)
Enow! No joke, I will not sleep much these nights, enchanted (Me!), hoping to sustain that dance kingdom in the House of K___. Hell, I’m not a ballet critic – I’m a seer! There are presumptuous types out there who have never had a yellow limo parked before their parlor. Who knows these days where ambition could lead the mad intendant hopeful? Avaunt! I bed with my collected Hoffmann beneath a reverent pillow.
And with Fido.
Mme S.
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