Critic Cal

There's stuff that you can say in dance that you just can't say with words. 'Course, when I say "you" I mean "humankind as a whole"; I can't speak for you personally, and for myself, there's nothing much that  I can say in dance, full stop. My attempts on that front are best compared with those of a unilingual Brit in a foreign country -- "no hablo español". Although, just as the accent and pronunciation of said Brit act as case-in-point, so a terpsichoreal rendering would doubtless lend my own confession the more conviction. "Je ne ne peux pas parler danser" indeed. Anyways, I digress. Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake , as well as being a beautifully impressive feat of skill and art, was also engagingly emotionally expressive. The story (much as it seems a shame to, after all, translate it into words) is of a young prince floundering under the weight of expectation and obligation accompanying his privileged birthright. He

CARRION COMFORT Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?     Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918. [1] This po