posted by James Reel
Amid all the current nasty rhetoric about race in Arizona, it seems like a good time to revive an essay I wrote long ago about the American idea of community, and it has nothing to do with race. Of course, since I wrote this in the late 1990s, the remark about “fairly current books” is nonsense, but they’re still worth your attention.
A Community Of Dreamers
The American dream causes us much tossing and turning, for we are by nature a restless people, and our dream suffuses our waking hours even more than our sleep. For about a century, Americans have conjured a cultural vision based on conflicting notions of egalitarianism and material prosperity. Egalitarianism, because democracy implies community rather than hierarchy, and universal opportunity for personal success. Materialism, because our economically stable, ostensibly egalitarian society measures success that way.
Yet there is more to our dream. Within this grand vision of a common life lurks a peculiarly American preoccupation with the individual mind and heart. It's a question of uniqueness within community—how can we fit together while setting ourselves apart from one another? Therein lies the dream's inherent tension.
Two fairly current books, when read in tandem, provide a masterly analysis of our cultural ideal and its individual realizations. Each pursues one of the opposing forces in the American Dream to its logical extreme.
The more recent treatment of this subject is the 1996 novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It begins as a Horatio Alger story: boy of humble means makes a name for himself through wit, strength of character and some luck. But by the end it seems to have been hijacked by Jorge Luis Borges; as Martin Dressler's dream expands, it can be conveyed only through fantasy and symbolism.
The tale begins in the 1880s. Martin is a child working in his father's modest Manhattan cigar store. As time passes, Martin finds lowly work in a fine hotel, moves up through the ranks and learns the business, saves his money and gradually builds a chain of restaurants, and finally is able to buy a hotel of his own, a microcosm of the world.
But Martin is restive within the limits of a traditional hotel. He builds bigger and more complex edifices, culminating in the high, wide and deep Grand Cosmo, which integrates living quarters with shops, theaters, amusements, freak shows, wonders and elaborate indoor re-creations of natural settings. It is the whole world in a single city block. One can't help thinking of the latest synthetic pleasure palaces erected in Las Vegas, but Millhauser is writing less about today's America than the genesis of today's America.
The second book under consideration is This Boy's Life, a 1989 memoir by Tobias Wolff. With the unity, detail and grace of a novel, it recounts the second decade of Wolff's life, in the late 1950s and early '60s. He dreams of living in a more stable, affluent household and schemes to create a bigger, more complex Self, integrating a respectable way of life with a dynamic personality. But Jack, as this boy insists on being called, fears that he is unworthy of success, for he is a liar, a vandal and a petty thief contending with a loving but unconventional mother and a self-absorbed, intermittently violent step-father.
Both Martin and Jack are first-class American dreamers, but Martin dreams himself into a world of parable, while Jack dreams himself out of hard reality. Martin is optimism; Jack is, if not pessimism, at least self-doubt. Martin devises building projects of such magnitude that they border on tools of social engineering. Jack's reveries are entirely personal—being adopted by strangers he sees on the street, or running into his estranged, distant-dwelling father. He indulges any fantasy that would offer him better circumstances in which to be a better person:
I was a liar. Even though I lived in a place where everyone knew who I was, I couldn't help but try to introduce new versions of myself as my interests changed, and as other versions failed to persuade.
While Martin strives to reproduce the world in perfect miniature, Jack strives to produce a perfect little self, a combination of privileged lineage and good character traits that would lift him out of his squalid, mean, lower-middle-class circumstances. But the ideal Jack is a creature solely of the imagination; Martin feels confident that he can shape at least a small bit of the world, but Jack finds himself constricted by the world around him:
Unlike my mother I was fiercely conventional. I was tempted by the idea of belonging to a conventional family, and living in a house, and having a big brother and a couple of sisters. ... And in my heart I despised the life I led in Seattle. I was sick of it and had no idea how to change it. I thought that ... away from people who had already made up their minds about me, I could be different. I could introduce myself as a scholar-athlete, a boy of dignity and consequence, and without any reason to doubt me people would believe I was that boy, and thus allow me to be that boy.
Both characters learn that, if the customer is not always right, at least the customer is easily manipulated. Martin Dressler quickly grasps the value of advertising and marketing, with help from a marketing genius named Harwinton. Martin insists that every venture combine convenience, comforting familiarity and exciting innovation in a balance that will intrigue rather than overwhelm the customer. (His downfall is forgetting the part about not overwhelming people.) Jack Wolff learns how to adopt a persona for every occasion, an approach that will get him through encounters with tough kids, kind teachers, do-gooders and ill-wishers. In lieu of finding anything interesting to say about his true self, he learns the value of a well-crafted lie, going so far as to plagiarize his first confession.
Martin is diligent; Jack is negligent. But something about both boys—their looks? their manner?—attracts people who can help them. Martin realizes this vaguely but never analyzes it; Jack fails to recognize this at all, being certain instead that intelligent or sensitive people will instantly perceive his fraudulent nature.
Still, Jack aspires to be—or at least to appear to be—the ultimate homo sapiens, the thinking man, the man of wisdom, someone respected for the intangibles of mind and character. Martin, on the other hand, is the classic homo faber, the man who builds, someone whose sense of worth lies in his tangible accomplishments. Neither is firmly grounded in reality. Images of sleep and dreaming permeate both books.
In Martin Dressler, New York City is described as "a fever patient in a hospital, thrashing in its sleep, erupting in modern dreams." Martin's success hinges on the breadth of his imagination: "It seemed to Martin that if only he could imagine something else, something great, something greater, something as great as the whole world, then he might rest awhile." And toward the end, he begins to wonder if he "dreamed the wrong dream."
In This Boy's Life, the dream images are more subtle: "Most afternoons I wandered around in the trance that habitual solitude induces." This is when Jack imagines better parents—strangers—snatching him away.
And yet what ultimately saves both Martin and Jack is an awakening to reality. Reflecting on the imminent failure of his magnum opus, the Grand Cosmo, and why he so deeply cares about it, Martin contrasts himself with the advertising whiz Harwinton:
As an advertising man he saw the world as a great blankness, a collection of meaningless signs into which he breathed meaning. Then you might say that Harwinton was God. ... But of course God could not believe in the Grand Cosmo, just as He could not believe in the universe, a blankness without meaning, except as it streamed from Him. For only human creatures believed in things: that much was clear.
Then there is Jack, unmoved by a priest's attempt to talk some sense into him: "He believed in God, and I believed in the world." Accepting the world, just as it is, turns out to be the most courageous act. For although it teaches us that the grander notions bound up with the American Dream are impossible, perhaps undesirable, to realize, it gives us a firm platform on which we may, ever so tentatively, remake ourselves.
Martin's version of the American Dream—to co-opt, to synthesize the whole world into a compact, controlled "Grand Cosmo"—must fail, because however morbidly fascinating and excessive the dream may be, people will ultimately sense its synthetic nature and reject it. Even Martin Dressler acquiesces to its failure, and reconciles himself to the real world.
Young Jack Wolff's version of the American Dream will succeed only when he learns to reconcile individuality with social exigency. After trying to create himself from scratch to escape an unpleasant situation, he realizes much later that such situations are only transitory:
Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.
Such knowledge comes to us slowly, individually, through diverse momentary setbacks and petty victories. This is the knowledge that enables 260 million sometime dreamers to coexist as a practical community of Americans.
quodlibet,
May 10th 2010 at 7:48 —
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posted by James Reel
Here are two reviews of dance productions on video I wrote last year for Fanfare. I recommend both, but they will appeal to different tastes.
MORETTI-MONTEVERDI Caravaggio • Paul Connelly, cond; Staatsballet Berlin; Staatskapelle Berlin • ARTHAUS 101 464 (Blu-ray disc: 122:00) Live: Berlin 2008
Artist Caravaggio (real name: Michelangelo Merisi, 1571–1610) is the subject of choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti’s new two-act ballet, but the subject in only a general, even metaphorical sense. If you open the booklet and look at the section titles—things like “Journey to Rome,” “The Tooth Extraction,” “Dispute and Duel”—you’ll expect this to be a story ballet recounting the volatile artist’s sudden rise to celebrity, his various conflicts and disputes, and his sudden, early death, apparently from fever rather than violence. But then you’ll start watching the performance, and become completely lost. Nothing on stage corresponds to the section titles, and it seems that Bigonzetti is indulging in a bit of postmodern misdirection.
The central dancer does seem to correspond to Caravaggio. We first see him, Vladimir Malakhov, alone on stage: a muscular, thick-lipped, shaggy Slavic blond in his underwear, Malakhov looks more like a Spartacus than a Caravaggio. His movements are beautiful, controlled, masculine, motivated by some inner spark, or inner torture. At various times in the course of the ballet, Malakhov will be partnered with two superb female dancers, Polina Semionova and Beatrice Knop, who seem to suggest the contrasts in Caravaggio’s work and life: light and dark, purity and carnality, the private mind (or soul) and the public body. Another important partner in the second act is the commanding, beautiful young Leonard Jakovina, who embodies both tenderness and violence, and brings to the proceedings a bisexual sensuality. The first act also involves other soloists and the corps de ballet in a series of athletic Roman street scenes.
So what are all these figures up to? And what is Bigonzetti up to, for that matter? He seems to be trying to translate the sheer physicality of Caravaggio’s paintings into dance, and he certainly succeeds at this, even if identifiable allusions to actual paintings are few and far between. The lighting design of Carlo Cerri is critical to all this; it defines space and adds texture to the bodies.
Bigonzetti’s choreography is dynamic, fusing some elements of classical ballet to what is essentially modern dance. The duets are arresting and innovative, yet not quite as unusual as some of the dancers seem to think. In the accompanying interview feature, one of the ballerinas exclaims that making a dancer stand on her seated partner’s swiveling knees has never been done before; well, she’s apparently never seen Pilobolus, or acrobats, for that matter. It would have been interesting to see how she managed to slide off those knees and rejoin the floor on pointe, but unfortunately video director Andreas Morell cuts away at that point. Morell is a bit of a problem here; especially in the lively group scenes in the first act, his quick cutting, emulating the dynamics of the movement, makes the action almost unintelligible. Otherwise, though, he seems more sensible, and his choice of medium shots and closeups usually helps illuminate the dancers’ gestures, which is very important in this choreography. He also makes good occasional use of overhead shots.
Bruno Moretti assembled the score from various works by Caravaggio’s close contemporary Claudio Monteverdi. Moretti’s treatment of the originals is initially light and Beechamesque, but gradually becomes darker and always varied in texture. It’s Romanticized Monteverdi, but it fits the stage action perfectly.
The Blu-ray release delivers superb visual detail—you can tell who shaves which body parts and who does not—and two audio options: PCM stereo and dts-HD 7.1 surround. The DVD’s audio formats are PCM stereo, DD 5.1, and DTS 5.1. The DVD apparently is a gateway to some online bonus material, but because it requires a Windows operating system and I’m a Mac user, I couldn’t investigate it; I suspect it’s essentially the same collection of still photos from rehearsal and production that are included on the Blu-ray.
Bigonzetti’s Caravaggio is a puzzling work, but it’s beautifully performed; for both reasons, it invites multiple viewings. James Reel
CHOPIN La Dame aux camélias • Michael Schmidtsdorff, cond; Paris Opera Ballet & O • OPUS ARTE (2 blu-ray discs: 191:00) Live: Paris 2008
Choreographer John Neumeier’s setting of the same story that inspired La Traviata is beginning to take hold in companies beyond Neumeier’s own Hamburg Ballet, and with good reason. The choreography is challenging but graceful, and the entire presentation—at least when under Neumeier’s direct supervision—abounds in natural psychological nuance that’s more sophisticated than what Verdi could muster in his opera. The music, perfectly integrated with the story and stage action, is by Chopin, and the story itself, however familiar it may be, remains touching and has been particularly humanized in Neumeier’s treatment.
That story originated with the younger Alexandre Dumas; it’s a fictionalized account of his affair with Marie Duplessis, a consumptive courtesan who died at age 23. Dumas called his lovers Marguerite Gautier and Armand Duval, and he drew parallels between their story and that of the ill-fated Manon Lescaut. The novel, La Dame aux camélias (The Lady of the Camelias, after the heroine’s signature flower), was an instant success and within a week of its publication had been adapted for the stage. Verdi’s simplified operatic treatment, La Traviata, was premiered about five years later, and there ensued a long series of new stage adaptations and film treatments up through our own time.
In many ways, Neumeier’s ballet is the most faithful to Dumas, despite—or perhaps because of—its absolute lack of language. Neumeier employs the author’s flashback structure, opening the story as the late Marguerite’s estate is being sold off. Daringly, he also denies his lovers a grand pas de deux as a finale; their last big moment together, during a very brief interruption in their estrangement, comes a couple of scenes before the ballet’s end. As in the book, Armand reads about Marguerite’s demise in her diary.
On this new Blu-ray and DVD of a recent Paris Opera Ballet production, Neumeier is credited as both choreographer and stage director. Most obviously, that’s because there’s almost no choreography in the opening scene; it’s a presentation of Marguerite’s friends and lovers milling around her apartment as her estate is being liquidated. In other words, the dancers here must perform as silent actors. But, importantly, they continue to do so once the choreography begins. As Marguerite, Agnès Letestu is superb at this; for example, just watch for the variety of her highly nuanced smiles in the early scenes. The rest of the cast is almost as adept at this; Letestu’s interactions with Stéphane Bullion are full of subtleties, as are the gestures and glances among the secondary characters. Video director Thomas Grimm emphasizes that this is much more than an display of bodies in motion with well-chosen, brief reaction shots intercut with the primary action. Not every moment is entirely successful; an early pas de trois that develops when Armand enters the fantasy world of Manon and Des Grieux looks awkward and effortful, but when the dancers are less entangled, the choreography is fluid and psychologically precise.
The music is by Chopin, the original pieces (not Sylphided for orchestra), almost all of them presented intact. The whole of the Piano Concerto No. 2 supports the first act; it’s mostly solo items in the second, and a mixture of solo works and compositions with orchestra in the third. The taxing keyboard duties are traded off with sensitivity and security between Emmanuel Strosser and Frédéric Vaysse-Knitter; in the concerto, support from the Paris Opera Orchestra under Michael Schmidtsdorff could occasionally be more incisive, but it serves its purpose. Jürgen Rose’s costumes are superb, suggesting the authentic garb of 1840s Paris while also lending themselves to movement (except that Letestu often has to pull her long skirts away from Bullion’s face during the lifts), and reinforcing through color and drape the emotions of each scene. Rose also does a fine job of visually distinguishing the fantasy world of Manon from the “real” world of Marguerite in their few but critical scenes together.
The main difference between the Blu-ray and DVD editions is, as usual, the audio choices; on Blu-ray it’s PCM stereo versus PCM 5.0, while on DVD it’s either LPCM stereo or dts surround. Both formats include a nearly hour-long documentary, illustrated synopsis, and cast gallery. The Blu-ray video is sharper and richer, and, in principle, a Blu-ray player really is worth your investment if you have a big enough screen to show it off.
I haven’t seen the competing DVD issued a couple of years ago by DG, derived from a 20-year-old performance at Neumeier’s home base, Hamburg Opera. A consumer review at one retail Web site complains that the transfer was made at a slightly accelerated speed, so there’s reason for caution. But Neumeier was present for this Paris production, and the dancers are models of contemporary French ballet style, so I have no qualms about adopting this as a reference version. Neumeier’s La Dame aux camélias is an exquisite unity of music, motion and emotion. James Reel
Classical Music,
April 20th 2010 at 11:22 —
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