I watched an interesting documentary of the life of George Balanchine last night. He was a Russian who was the founder and choreographer of the American ballet theater. I had heard of him, of course, but I didn't gnow much about his life and how he came to such dominance on the American ballet scene. Before the program was over I was seeing him as a regular guy who had something to give and offered it to the American people.

Since I was born and raised in just another series of small towns in the American south I didn't have any real experience with ballet. It was just some fancy dancing done by sophisticated people from somewhere else. No blame. It was only after I had gone away and saw the world just like the Navy promised, and returned home to go to college that I became a little more familiar with ballet. The college I attended had a strong drama and dance program. I decided for reasons I don't fully understand to study acting. Part of the required drama major required courses was a couple of course in ballet. These classes didn't really amount to much. They were just general courses in which the movements were demonstrated so that the students were given a basic understanding of what the fundamentals were. We were not required to dance much. But, the little dancing we did brought a response from the teacher that if I had gotten the training early enough I would have made a good ballet dancer. Secretly, I was very pleased with this comment.

I used to go to the ballet practice room to watch the dancers work out at the barre. Hanging around these classes wasn't allowed generally, but since the dance school was part of the drama program and we were in such intimate contact, the acting majors were allowed to watch. To my compadres in the acting classes I pretended to be there just to watch the young girls prance around in the leotards, and I most certainly was there for that reason, but as the semesters passed there was other reasons I hung around. I was amazed by the athleticism of the dancers, and the concentration with which they practiced getting their groove on.

Last night I distinctly heard Balanchine say that reality doesn't happen here on earth as represented by our normal, everyday lives, and the dance imitated the real world that is undescribable in this world. As I watched the stars of American ballet perform, I began to realize he might be right, and that I was extremely familiar with the world the dancers were trying to imitate.

I hadn't realized how focused Balanchine was on the American story. I have experienced the dedication that emigres practice in my own occupation. While working at Fort Bragg as a mechanical engineer that worked under the aspices of the Army Corps of Engineers I could not help but to notice that the engineers that came to America from other places around the world appeared to be more strict about the rules than native born Americans. They seemed much more devoted to seeing to it that the government got the best product for it's money than the native sons. Naturally, I questioned them about this, and they told me that I had no idea what a privilege it was to live in America. I'm sure they are right.

What surprised me while watching the dances that Balanchine orchestrated that most of them used American composers and the dancers danced around themes like the square dance, jitterbug, the black bottom, and other contemporary and western styles. The results fascinated me. I gnew these things. I was familar with them. I recognized those dances my older sisters learned when I was a kid. My father was a square dancer and a very popular caller who called the twists and turns of the American square dance. And here Balanchine was saying that these dances and movements came from an entirely different world to form what we gnow as reality here.

For me, it is the dance that really shows the relationship between male and female in our earthly societies. The women are the real stars, and the men support what they do. The men dance around to women to help them display the strength and flexibility that men are just not built for. True, they have to be able to move gracefully and possess great strength, but they really can't command or solicit the emotion that the great female dancers can. So, if what we experience here in this sensory perceived world is merely an imitation of a more real world than we can portray, in this other world that is more real than this the women are the fancy dancers there too. How disenchanting. LOL