Posted: December 15

The magic of dance

Saturday night I went to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company perform here in Rome. I have not watched a modern dance company perform in the more than three years I have been in Rome so it was wonderful to watch a world-class company from the United States perform with grace, wit and style. I have seen this company perform before when I lived in St. Louis; Fr. John Craig SJ, who runs the theater program at De Smet Jesuit High School, always had season tickets for the dance series and we would go as often as I was in town. Paul Taylor has formed a company with great roles for the men and a wonderful balance of athleticism and grace. There is a magic in the way dancers seem to be immune to gravity and the forces that slow most of us down and make movement ungainly. Dancers spring and glide, gesture and balance with a beauty that reminds me of what God wanted all of us to be in the Garden before the fall, and what we look forward to in a resurrected body.

Going to the theater also made me think of friends, because I can only remember ever going to a dance performance by myself once—and that was to see an extra performance of the Alvin Ailey Company after I was entranced by what I saw when I went with friends. Saturday Fr. Jim Casciotti and I went to the Teatro Olimpico for the performance; he is the Under-Secretary of the Society of Jesus and we normally talk about database issues; but on Saturday we enjoyed a "spectaculo" together (a great Italian word for performance.) There were only a few solo performances in the three pieces the Taylor Company did on Saturday; mostly his choreography plays one person off another, or forms patterns with whole groups in endless creative permutations. So this is an art that leads one to community, even with the strangers sitting in the 30s-era theater where the show took place. Customs are a bit different in Italy, in the dance as elsewhere. Very few people got up and moved during the intermissions. Back in the United States everyone got up and moved to the lobby so they could watch everyone else watching each other. Here in Rome the management provided free copies of newspapers so patrons could read during the intermissions. At the end, though, the enthusiastic applause made me realize that we all shared an appreciation of what the dancers had given us. The Italian audience clapped on through five encores and then moved into a rhythmic clapping that forced the American dancers on stage to clap back in response. Art creating community.