Paean to the Russian People
After seeing at the Royal Opera House, London, the Kirov Ballet, St
Petersburg, perform 'The Sleeping Beauty' in the original version created at the
Marinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 1890.
Dancing in music, through music, as music,
Dancing with the soul,
Dancing!
No frantic frappes or pirouettes
Circling to applause across an empty space.
A coloured canvas moving
Round each painted figure,
Changing every second
Within a costumed form
Of disciplined delight.
Graced one into the other
Principal and chorus
Glide and soar and stretch
Out to the eternal
From a creator's mind.
Patterned limbs are gentle
Nothing is enforced.
The work is sure and clean
As the brushstrokes of a master
Living through the stage.
Years roll away,
Mine and Russia's.
I see at last the Dance
So many thought they were
Performing every day.
My student hours were spent
Trying to understand
Action without art.
We stepped about the boards
Alone in movement.
Petrouchkas in the flesh
Bought and sold at fairs
Where power and jealousy
Strolled along the lights
Watching young lives lost.
Now across the dark
Features pause and turn,
The dancer is the Dance.