October 1999

Death by Pivots and Pirouettes. Ballet, in common understanding, is an art of graceful posture and dance. In another light, ballet is the expensive non-school activity of bourgeoisie’s female children. We see the bourgeoisie parade themselves in the theater during the recital gala. Their jewels glitter with the bulbs, crystals and capiz of the chandelier. They are usually unduly influenced by the idea that only people like them could really appreciate and have a good grasp of shows like Giselle, Carmen. So much for Marxist convictions and pretensions. So much for me and my pseudo-intellectualism.
What I’m really impelled to say is that I don't have an exact notion of what ballet is as artform. I’ve experienced it while I was on duty, and I’ve frequently saw glimpses of performances by schools and companies such as the Philippine Ballet Theater and Ballet Philippines. While it's not precise, I've somehow I’ve fermented my own uneducated notion. It like a moving language, conveying emotions made more real, literally made physical as toes tipped in the platform. It's art and fiction performed skillfully by bodies. It conveys grace, elegance, magnificence through the most powerful, the most difficult and yet the most frail gestures: from a slight curve of the forearm to legs spread wide apart, one hundred and eighty degrees of human limbs in the air. You hear the bourgeoisie and the culturati applaud the seemingly difficult pivots, pirouettes and poses.
Just a few hours back I’ve seen Giselle, the story of a peasant girl who fell in love with a prince-in-disguise named Albrech. Albrech also falls in love with Giselle. Through Hilarion who had been suspicious of Loys (Alberch in disguise) Giselle finds out that he’s really a prince --- and that he’s engaged to this bigshot princess. Giselle goes daft, dances in a deranged fit, and dies out of depression. That makes up the first part of the play. I thought that was pretty dumb.
The juice is in the second part. There’s a new set after the intermission. We’re in Giselle’s grave within the Irish forests during midnight. The entire stage beams blue, the forest and the full moon looming in the background. Then the Wilis appear. They are fairies who were jilted, who died before their wedding day. They appear in white costumes, with veils then crowned with green flowers. Like ghosts in rhythmic movement they slowly appear. Their veils and their immaculate white outfits, float into the blue stage. The specter’s appearance was spectacular. They remove their veils and dance on the stage, in a large group, in the chorus of the beautiful language of ballet. They freeze in the most graceful and elegant stance, they dance in the most skillful, both the most powerful and frail gestures.
These beautiful Willis enchant souls into a dance-to-the-death marathon. This was the fate of the Hilarion dude. And through some kind of ritual, they claim the soul of Giselle. The ballet performance of this ritual was all too fantastic: the synchronized, difficult ballet movements of the Wilis (noted by the applause of the culturati), their white costumes and their pretty faces, the disconsolateness their characters portray in the beautifully lighted stage that speaks how both somber and magical the scene is.
Albrech visits Giselle’s grave and Giselle’s souls makes an apparition. Albrech was supposed to die through the dance spell of Wilis, but he doesn’t. Their love transcends death and Giselle forgives him. The sun’s golden glow drives the Willis away. The stage changes to brighter hues and Albrech lives. My favorite part is: Giselle and Albrech doesn’t end up together. Giselle's soul has been liberated from becoming one of the Wilis. And Albrech lives on.
I saw Liza Macuja Elizalde, a Filipina prima ballerina, play Giselle. I couldn’t get the second part of the ballet out of my mind. It is as if the Wilis had made me dance on a blue stage, and I will dance, though never with the grace, skill, beauty and elegance of a ballet dancer, I will dance until I die.


Alibis in the absence of something clever to say. I often wonder why I can’t get myself to say anything about the shows and exhibits during the duties at ___. Now I can almost find out that they reduce me to wordlessness, realizing that truth of the awe in Schopenhauer’s aesthetic contemplation.