The Dancing Clown

 I went to a concert last night, and I want to tell you about it. It was quite an experience. Music by Aram Khachaturian, Tchaikovsky, and Alexander Glazunov, was performed.

I think classical music was meant to be watched, not listened to. Musicians are dancers, and you miss that when you simply plug your iPod into your car speakers. Granted, they are accidental dancers. Their focus is music, not movement. Each violinist looks, moves the same. Not just their instruments. Every elbow, every ligament -- all parallel with one another in their movement. All dressed in black -- their white hands as contrast, each hand shaking as it presses on the string, up and down, up and down. All of them at the same time.

I couldn't keep my eyes off the director though. During the piccolo solo of the Tchaikovsky piece, his coattails flapped. Here was a wild child leading all of them. His hands going this way and that way. Upwards his right hand points to God, then swoops down like a duck into a lake. Meanwhile his left hand stretches out towards the right -- flat like the horizon. At the climax, he falls, crumpled, his shoulders curled. The music builds, the climax comes, and here he stands up on tip toes, at the edge of his platform, leaning outward as if to look out over a cliff. We all pause, and then silence. Everyone claps in unison.

He lifts his hand, and the orchestra plays a section of Glazunov's Raymonda. It begins like a common waltz. He sways back and forth, dancing with no one. As the tempo moves faster, he bends his knees, tighter and tighter. The cymbals clash, and he jumps straight up into the air. Soft plucking of strings begins, and the drums start as his head swings forward as if to join them. In a circle, his head goes round at the crescendo. The concert hall becomes a ballroom for a few seconds, as if people should be waltzing, and not sitting.

Khachaturian's adagio from Spartacus begins, and he sashays side to side. He slows down, swirls his baton for the piccolo. The plaintive melody elicits stomps in grief at the crescendo. Then, the music lulls, and he curls up as the notes go lower. He turns to the violins as if to provoke them -- his back to the others. His movements are jerky; he moves as is he is convulsing. His arms out before him, moving as if wiping snow off the top of a car. He reaches to the sky and bows to his Audience.

He acted all the emotion out, and I never saw his face. I was astonished.

He was a dancing clown in a room of 500 people. He played the fool, sacrificing his austere, Russian dignity, so that we could hear the beautiful music.

I've discovered that I appreciate classical music much more when it is live...when you can see the movements that cause the music. And the director's passion, his emotion? You lose so much when you can't see his dance!

Here everyone claps in unison as is the Russian style. It means, "Encore!" :)