#I can only imagine him now doing all sort of ballerina poses while he's presenting something or being sassy ajhbwbkfa | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ratherhavetheblues · 4 years

Text

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘SUMMER INTERLUDE’ “Get the lead out, little lady!”

Way back, when Ingmar Bergman was a hack by necessity, he found himself (being an acute student of Hollywood flutter) ready at last (around 1950) to speak his piece. The vehicle he chose for this debut, namely, Summer Interlude (1951), involves all the treachery and emotional violence mowing us down for the next forty years. Although his portfolio would include marvelous instances transcending destruction, those marvels would be hedged in a way that protracted evil would seem to triumph on planet Earth. But what is planet Earth but a sick puppy in face of the infinite potential of the cosmos? In the days of Summer Interlude, however, we should not neglect the singularity of heartiness putting in a dynamic (perhaps) never to be seen from him again. This singularity is the special gift and the special task of our film today.

Whereas, at the outset of a saga like Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972), there is a piercingly beautiful rendition of the grounds of a large estate in early morning light, only to become promptly swallowed up by vicious interaction and horrific physical decline and death, the tyro matter goes to sheep-dog persistence to show us that an agency of uncanny love is very much in the mix. Not being able to deploy (as with the film of 1972) remarkable chromatic effects, our preamble reveals an estate of some opulence, rich foliage including daisies in bright sunlight and gentle breezes, benign white clouds and, particularly, a body of dancing water with a rocky shore to be displaced with the sea looking back toward the now distant structure, touched by a carefree flute motif. (The last detail to note here, is three chevron-form windows at the mansion’s upper floor. That they resemble jaws as well as a formation of dialectics indicates how early Bergman’s instincts for synthesis were in play.)

Plunging right through that whimsy, only to engage more whimsy, there is the harbor of Stockholm and its flotilla of tour boats and ferries to be supplanted by a bicycle parked at a curb while leaves dance along the sidewalk. Promptly we enter a ballet theatre and its hubbub, which could have shattered the intuitive dance. That it doesn’t, has to do with the two ancient, long-term office functionaries, first seen receiving a package for the prima ballerina, Marie, and shooing off a reporter claiming, “She’s [Marie’s] expecting me.” With this mundane buzz, there emerges, by way of the courier/ messenger, a surprise: “What’s that smell?” Though the more assertive sentry claims that there is no smell, there is the delivery boy pressing the case, “You’ve lost your sense of smell, friend.” (With that, the discoverer pushes his hat into a rakish angle. This action tends to confirm that the reporter—his tabloid called, “The Year Round,” being about the usual—is dressed to resemble a whimsical and eccentric Hollywood detective with his trench coat and rakish fedora.) The smaller of the two sentries comes to life with, “Something does smell funny!”—something in the air we should take seriously. The rotund top-cop loses his temper about that volatility and yells out, “That may well be, but no outside brat’s gonna be telling me that! I��ve worked at this theatre for 40 years…” An in-crowd shaping up, disinclined for change. The delivery to “Miss Marie,” by the second-in-command, becomes another rakish motion, this time not so tacky as the poses of American tough guys. The boss-sentry rips open the curtain behind which he directs traffic and instantly there is the little old flunkey ripping open Marie’s dressing room and presenting her with the package. The shock of that gusto links to the mysterious “smell,” invading the ordinary with a type of acrobatics. (Here we have the comedic outset of what will become, in The Seventh Seal [1957], a blue-chip uprising against arrogant insiders.) In support of noticing that a dance is in force, somewhat supplanting the rigid activity of the ballet, we have a number of dancers in tutu costumes, seen from below on a rather precipitous catwalk down flights of narrow stairs. Almost simultaneously with that rush to a dress rehearsal, we hear a loud, grinding noise filling the hall. This also coincides with Marie’s opening her package to be jolted by the diary of a former lover who died while she watched him carelessly dive into a rocky seaside, along a trajectory of compromising distraction and superficiality which he—not she—could have averted. This unexpected arrival eclipses the work in progress. With everyone in place except her, many of the bemused run to the sense that Marie is losing her grip. We hear, “Something’s going on with Marie. Everyone says so!” (A cut to the stage curtain, and it strikes us as dark and fussy with frills.) Marie is induced to return to be a team artist, but her escort, one of the many support staff needed to satisfy a pedantic culture, worries, “There’s something strange in the air today! I told the missus so when I woke up. The weather and all, and I had a strange dream… Something’s going to happen, I feel it coming…” After a short passage with the premiere (the dancers performing the ballet, Swan Lake) and during an expectant musical thrust, the lights go out.

The on-again, off-again lighting is “some king of glitch,” necessitating an evening dress rehearsal. But the “glitches” we’ve just experienced speak to an agency—always there but seldom noticed. Surely the arrogant ballet master alerting Marie that there is to be a lull in the workplace that day and going on to be viciously rude toward an elderly woman helper of the dressing room, would be missing in action regarding that agency. (He tells the ballerina, “I’m cool.” But no one’s fooled about that, since cool is the medium of disinterestedness, also known as acrobatics.)

We’ll follow how Marie spends that rest, and whether she amounts to anything better than the laughable wannabe. She goes out, but before that she stops at the phone booth at the doorway, to connect with the man from “The Year Round” [the everyday, the common]. She can’t reach him. But can she reach the pattern of meteor-passes on the phone booth glass? On hearing from the decades-long bouncer that he had bounced her date, she spits out, “They should send you packing!” That being exactly the register of the “cool” one. The hapless doorman remarks, “There’s something hard about her.” Marie bumps into the person of interest while yawning, and meandering along a sidewalk. She complains to him, “I’m tired because you won’t let me sleep at night.” Thus, ensues a bitter row about preoccupation with career, culminating with him telling her, “I can’t stand old sourpusses!” She has carried along the diary, and when, at the docks, passing a tour boat ready for an excursion, she is rallied by a crewman calling, “Get the lead out, little lady! Are you coming or not?” She can’t resist a bid to shake things up, to recapture what she imagines to have been the heights of love. A sprightly harp motif joins her windfall along with the sunny sky and lovely seas, in addition to a white wake and white smoke from the chimney, conspiring with the white clouds. She enters a precinct of thrilling space, serenity and its brave instincts. Pensive, while the boat skirts a forest, she could be seen to be an artist of vast promise.

On reaching her destination, she finds the key to a small and decrepit cabin, where she sits on a dusty cot. She closes her eyes and recalls a summer day 13 years before, when she graduated into the corps de ballet, by way of a celebratory performance. “A day like no other day of the year!” But she had to include, within this treasure of skill, the complaint, to one of the trainers, “That was awful! The orchestra played too slow…” Her listener replies, “Don’t try that one…” [to cover errors by blaming others, resorting to place others at a disadvantage]. She then shifts the advantage game to the form of, “It didn’t go well…” [I’m a perfectionist without peers]. The more mature correspondent here covers the cut-throat’s vanity with, “No, but you were brilliant…” All he gets in reply is, “I’m going home to have a good cry.” Frustrated, his retort is, “You do that.”

Marie may have been in the spotlight here. But her account includes another male backstage, smitten by her sensuous presence and early authority. He’s quickly disposed of by the larger sentry, before being introduced. But we should know right now (before succumbing to overkill from the measure of wholesomeness this movie packs) that Marie, for all her impressive resolve, is locked, as is most of the population, into life-long superficiality, with occasional faint hope being to no avail. And yet, this Bergman standby will in fact be tempered—not simply, as with the usual drama over the years, a demolished gem—by a perpetual vector of efficacy (a glitch), notwithstanding having been virtually never taken out on the road. Whereas the young admirer, far more capable of real artistry and power than she, will die in the course of taking her too seriously, he will have deposited, in his diary, the wherewithal (and he is not alone in this challenge) to shut down a gigantic farce. We do need to notice and celebrate the many upbeat moments, because their sunniness is quite unique in the works of Bergman. And thereby we are enmeshed in a critique: on the order of loosening up (somewhat) the good stuff.

Out she goes (in her reverie), on the same boat she would use after the quarrel with the reporter, for her summer holiday, and who should be seated next to her but Henrik, the finder of celestial apparitions. She remarks (not exactly a calling card), “It’s cold.” His shy and awkward reply is, “Are your legs cold, miss? I mean, since you’re a dancer…” He goes on to declare, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” After sorting out each of their positions on the Stockholm Archipelago, the impressiveness of Marie’s home takes precedence. He jokes, “Yeah, the Manor. Gruffman [his large poodle] and I used to raid the orchard there.” This brings out more coldness in the ballerina: “Perhaps our paths will cross, if only if you come to raid the orchard,” she stakes out a far from equitable intercourse.

Now that we’ve floated the crisis (a much lower key than that of, say, The Passion of Anna (1969), we’re treated to Marie’s susceptibility to cogency when alone and heeding “glitches.” She wakes up on the cot to be welcomed by a foursome of intense squares of light upon the wall. (The makings of a twosome without attitude?) She hums a happy tune while putting on her bathing suit, and then she opens wide her arms to the sun. She carries a long fishing pole to her rowboat at the dock, and we regard her smoothly rowing from a seagull’s perspective, which is also the perspective of disinterestedness. Who knew? We’re treated here to a play of rallies, the likes of which are very rare in the Bergman catchment. She drops anchor, puts a worm on her hook and falls asleep in the molten sun. A cuckoo sings. (No matter that her endeavor here comes to naught. This film has opened up a very long-term payoff.) The splash of Henrik’s diving into the waters nearby wakens her to a divided result. She is amused by his whimsy; but also displeased to feel exposed that she can’t handle the rigors. “Hello, again,” she takes up a form of pecking order. “Swim, miss?” he invites, perhaps having taken umbrage with her seeing him as a thief. “Too cold,” she maintains. “Try,” he argues, all smiles. And therewith Marie finds a way to put him at a disadvantage. “Think we could drop the formalities?” the modernist tweaks the old-fashioned. She takes further control by asking, “Do you like wild strawberries?” And away they go, with a harp fanfare, to her place. “No one knows about it.” While they are enjoying the treats, a bird calls so furiously that she becomes confused. He shrugs it off with, “I usually call it the summer vacation bird.” (One other aspect of the wild things in this skirmish is Gruffman, the dog, in the process of losing his special fluency with the boy.)

As the summer goes very wrong, Marie makes a point of having nothing to do with Gruffman’s equilibrium. On hearing from the college boy of his having been shunted off by his divorced father to a rich and hateful aunt, Marie tries to bring to bear her vision of soaring virtue. “I love blind kittens, don’t you? And babies… And people that other people think are ugly. And mice, of course.” (How close to Anna, the martinet of “Security,” in the film, The Passion of Anna, is Marie?) As an afterthought formality, she adds, “and poodles.” How much did she care about Gruffman? After Henrik’s death, she demands having the deep creature put done, with the slimy concern, “The poor thing shouldn’t have to live” [in malaise].

Henrick’s not feeling that his concerns are getting across to her—“It’s just that people don’t take me seriously…”/ “Oh dear,” she chuckles, “is it really as tragic as that?”—prompts him to declare, “No one cares about me but Gruffman…”/ “Really,” she mocks./ “No,” he insists, “only Gruffman!” The conversation continues to fall short of serious connection. “What about me? Do you care about me? Would I have brought you here if I didn’t?” is her infantile rationale./ Even a freshman could smell that glitch. He politely replies, “I’ll have to give that some serious thought.” Serious thought, about a gulf, crashes into him immediately, by her happy face, “I’m never going to die.” Not content with pushing around the population, Marie has no qualms about pushing around the cosmos. And before leaping to the conclusion that she’s a dancer, period, we should be alert to the possibility that her moments of vision at the beginning of the morning might just touch upon an agency—far from about forever alive—which could move a headstrong dancer-laborer to recognize that powers do surpass and sustain mere human physiology right up to a right death. “I may get really, really old, but I’ll never die.” Henrik, after fielding this matter of incredible self-concern, shares his very different sense of “serious thought.” “While, I’m scared… Scared that I, Henrik, will suddenly fall over the edge into something dark and unknown.”/ “Why do you talk like that?” she complains. He explains, “The feeling just comes over me [a glitch], clear as can be…” He smiles, having in fact reached the same territory of Marie’s gratitude; but from another, more visceral angle. “But it’s interesting, don’t you think?” Henrik looks for a link. She smiles uncommittedly. But she does manage to maintain, “Hey, Henrik, I think we’re going to be friends.”/ “I think so too,” he hopes. (Here, we should delight in the helmsman’s great craft in theatrical dialogue, casting light where darkness has prevailed.)

This high ground proves to lack traction. Here she is, back to her default zone at the estate, receiving, from a rich uncle who hopes to bed her one day, an expensive bracelet. This Uncle Erland, an amateur classical pianist of some finesse, grows his hair patrician-long; and, in the midst of it, he installs two strands of white curls which set the table for the kind of synthesis Marie and Henrik struggle to master. Erland, teased by Marie that he lusted for her now-deceased mother, trains his rationale toward a supposed supernal gift which Marie’s actress-mother possessed. Marie, in her most sustained register, teases and triumphs, “And is the bracelet a token of my artistry?” Her uncle, frequently drunk, advises, “We’d run away, you and I… and live life to the fullest… seize the moment and hold it tight…” In reply, she maintains, “I already seize the moment and hold it tight.” Her patron dismisses that arrogance, telling her, and laughing, “You think so, poor dear? Lucky the man who will teach you. There’s so much to life…” The lunch dissolves with her coquetry, seen often, no doubt, at many affairs. But rushing to the traction involving Henrik, , she finds that he had been once again trespassing and overhearing the minor cynicism. (Erland’s wife, regarding with him her racing off, states, “She’s run off, dear Erland, and you can’t catch her.” Sometime after the death of Henrik, he will reel her in, for a while.) A frosty new friend greets her, and Gruffman doesn’t even look her flighty way. She uses the dog as a ventriloquist’s doll: “Gruffman, why’s he mad?” Clearing the air, she refers to the gift-giver as merely “an old codger,” and adds, once again, “Is it as tragic as all that?” She cuddles up, and then pushes him into the nearby waters. “I got you!” she adds. A cut reveals the three returning in his canoe. Her voice-over, covering the scene as Henrik wrote in his diary, emphasizes, “One night, after a scorching summer day of blazing sunlight, there was an immense silence that reached all the way up to the starless vault of heaven… The silence between us was immense as a well…” Hopping gracefully from one small purchase of the treacherous surface to another, she induces Henrik to follow suit, which he does. (Two forms of poetry.) The friends lie on their bellies upon the flat rocks. She adds, “The rocks are still warm. His contribution—“Everything seems unreal tonight, don’t you think?”—elicits from her, “It’s beautiful” [beautiful as a bracelet?]. A small “glitch” having come to concentration for her, brings to her: “We’re inside the same bubble… It’s so beautiful I could burst, break into pieces and disappear without a trace [“I’ll never die” a poor fit for this understanding]… You know, kissing must be fun…” His response, “Must be, since everybody’s doing it” [in sexy Sweden], once again doesn’t find them on the same page. He thinks out loud, “Everything’s so difficult, and all connected somehow… Marie, I like you. I’m in love with you, and all that… I mean… You must think I’m stupid. I’m just a damned fool. A damned coward!” And once again she drops the ball. “How does it feel?” she asks. (Not the big picture; but, “How am I doing to brighten your melancholy?”) “What?” he wonders, is she talking about. She clarifies, “You said you’re in love with me.” He, wanting to drop the subject going nowhere that could work for him in her context, puts out a slap-dash cliché, “You feel it in your chest and stomach.” This brings her to the failing of poetry, and she laughs at him. Having a miserable time expressing the subject by duress, he struggles with a quicksand of language. “You’re knees feel like they’re full of applesauce, and your toes curl up. But it’s mostly in the chest.” (Bergman’s ironic bite here involving a possibility to make amends, given long enough time to live. She, facile most of the time, amends, “In the heart.”) “I don’t know what,” he puts an end to the revealing farce. But he politely asks, “What about you?” She, having been accorded all her life the license to duck out of conundrums, rudely shoots back, “Who said I was in love with you?”/ “You’re right,” he acknowledges—and this would have been his cue to do something else during his vacation. But from her perspective there was nothing more interesting here than toying with reflection. She comes up and puts his arm around her shoulders. “I think it’s in my skin,” she gets around to replying to his asking about the subject. “I want you to touch me and stroke my skin with your hands…” As he moves to kiss her, she rushes away, whips out a cigarette, hands it to him and they proceed to toss flat stones into the inlet. Far from the creative acrobatics stalking this film, the rippling of the waters doesn’t catch fire. Then they canoe, and their return is bemusing. She marches straight on to the dock, leaving the more evolved two to bring the awkward craft to steadiness. Their land route passes cherry blossoms and a peacock, but they meet the beauty with less than incisiveness. (Traction missing.)

Now both of them needing a new outlook on life, they visit the salon of the estate of Erland. “He’s probably a bit drunk, but don’t worry about,” are the opening notes by her aunt. They sit on a polar bear rug, and listen to Erland tell of, “Your mother, Marie, used to dance for me on evenings like this… when it was quiet and still, and moonlight filled the room …” (Less than celestial? Or once celestial?) He moves on to, “Now all the clocks in the house have stopped… We were alive in those days…” Marie escorts Henrik to the garret room where she is supposed to work out every day, during the closure of the ballet. Here Marie, in voice-over, reads Henrik’s read of the moment. “It was the ship’s horn tooting in the distance, and other things echoing too. The silence and the anticipation… The blood whispering in our ears. A strange mood set in… almost like a melody [a musical progression]. A new room opened up in our minds…” Then she resumes the jist of her leaden factuality. “Two crows talk in the trees every day at 4 a.m. They’re quite sweet… Then your “summer vacation bird” appears…” Henrik is recalled as responding to this introduction, “You sound like a museum guide…” She responds with, “I think we should kiss each other…” The choreography of her gleaming eyes, his soldiering forth, and his ending on top of her on the carpet is indelible, not requiring any additions. Henrik gently touches her cheek. Then a deep kiss and a pan to Gruffman with his own saga of alienation. A cut to the morning, discloses only their arms and hands reaching upward and touching, as if a primer were found to be a better bet. Marie, as if to disarm any notion of her being not so bad, becomes a radio soap opera ingénue. “Now you have a lover… How does it feel? Exciting? I’m sure you’ll tell your friends. Will you boast about us?” Properly miffed by this violence, he says, “I can’t give any guarantees. But we will get married.” She commands, “But now! How do you feel right now? Haven’t you longed for this?” He once again admits having had fears. “And you’re not now,” she probes, being almost a selfie about making a splash. On hearing that he’s no longer afraid, she has to brag, “I’m never afraid of anything!”

That gross overestimation becomes the mantra of her dark solution to form a happy ending (for her) within their deadly reconnaissance. She covers his mouth as he adds, “I am” [afraid]. That cover will launch her woodland theatrical regime, going lickety-split to shed an unsupportable endeavor. (Gruffman’s being a steady source of love becomes almost totally lost in the shuffle.) And they race to the shore—Hollywood-intensity-style—early rebels without a (viable) cause. A piccolo motif applying a whip, we see them on the lake, she in her stolid rowboat, they in their lyrical canoe. Then to the vicinity of their cabin-castle, where he lifts her over his head as if on the ballet stage, the Romantic-era fantasy so wrong in this world of very hard acrobatics, and only then deploying juggling which might catch fire. A rain shower leads to them hunkering down on the cabin cot. Marie reads the unwelcome passage, “Days like pears, round and lustrous, threaded on a golden string [onscreen, a stormy sky… a church]. Days filled with fun and caresses, nights of waking dreams. When did we sleep? We had no time for sleep…”

Pan to Marie in real time. She finds Erland in his kitchen. He tells her, “Nothing’s ever surprised me in my life.” Boarding the boat back to the rehearsal, the sway of a lamp lights up more reverie, the reverie of her putting her foot down. It begins with her on pointe, working out in the garret. The arrival of Henrik and Gruffman is nothing but an annoyance. “So, it’s you two…” The two visitors sit on the floor feeling hated. After a while, Henrik says, “You don’t care about me. I’m always waiting for you.”/ “I’ve got a job to do… Fine… Just say the word…” She reasons, “We’ve been together night and day for two months… Good lord, you’re a pain today! Here I am groveling and apologizing… Just go. I’m fed up with your moods…” [moods being their real “job to do”]. She does engineer a truce upon this shaken basis, telling us, “I spent the whole day looking for him…” She finds him at his hostel/ mansion, where an influential aunt and a clergyman with a big hat, remind us of the trials of Alice in Wonderland. (This being another instance of lazy mood headed for LA.) Their being addicted to chess opens the door to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. As if a marvel of paradox, the grandee claims, “I like living. That’s why I’ll outlive the bunch of you! Nevertheless, I still feel like a ghost.” Marie passes on the invitation to enjoy the “port.” Also, part of the awkward standoff, the divine states, “This may seem ridiculous, but I have the strange feeling I’m rubbing elbows with Death himself” [a reprise of the frissons at the outset].

As if now the Red Queen must rule, they encounter a fizzling fireworks display, move on to the cabin and play dubious razzmatazz vinyl discs, which bleed over to early Disney animation (by her) drawn on a paper sleeve. The show (while they drink their diminished milk) features them: Gruffman, made to sit down, while the lovers flirt; Gruffman becoming the fat sentry; and the old lady’s chest of money coming their way. The last vignette has the chest of money, the preacher and a wedding not happening. The chest changes to the big sentry, the ballerina becomes morose, and all that is left is Henrik’s sailor hat and a ballerina being the dying swan of the ballet, Swan Lake. From there, she declares, melodramatically, “Listen, it’s so quiet. Suddenly, everything went quiet.”/ “Maybe we’ve landed on another planet,” is how Henrik now unhappily reveals his capitulating to Disney. “An alien planet,” Marie piles on [about to claim a victim]. They crawl out of the little doorway, bathed in moonlight (doing its best). The one never afraid of anything becomes uneasy about a crying wind. His attempt to calm her, while having bought into her bathos, slides along to, “Such fine breasts you have, miss!” That jag of witlessness culminates with her, “As for me, I’ll be faithful as long as I feel like it. And since I always feel like it, I’ll be faithful till doomsday.” (The register here is just to the left of pre-Code-Hollywood.) There is a loud bird call. “What an ominous sound!” she shudders. (One person’s shudder being another person’s glitch. Both of them miles from their personal best, while personal becomes a disease.) He, dragged along by her cripplement, says, at this point of worn-down traction, “Don’t you recognize the eagle owl?” Oblivious to the puerility they have contracted, there she is, “I don’t know. I just feel like crying tonight. It’s like a toothache in my soul.” Hollywood forever, she emotes, “Hold me so I don’t break into pieces!” He, never realizing embracing a crash, replies, “My little darling. My love. My dearest darling and beloved friend. Hold me tight. Tighter. Let’s stay up all night until the sun rises, and the trolls burst…”

It’s the morning of the supposed Olympian love cake, and he’s ready to keep the so-called magic alive. He scampers to the top of a picturesque ridge overlooking the pretty waters, and takes flight. The rock face he rocks leaves him close to death. Gruffman comes to his struggle to right the ship that might have resolved to something she’d never become. By the time she arrives at the hard facts, he tells her—all poetry lost—“My back!” (His “back,” his second front of deadly and ravishing truth, if only he could have steadied it, becomes a fitting epitaph to a young adventurer.

The conclusion of Henrik’s life is not quite the conclusion of Henrik’s being a player in Marie’s life. The saga’s last moments comprise the lovers, in a Stockholm hospital room, where he regains consciousness for a few seconds before dying. Her strongest emotion is horror, not love. She had arrived wearing a chic, shiny black leather coat, giving her continuity with the American melodramas she had burrowed into at the end of the summer. (Similarly, she suggests here an oil slick.) Her retreat from the hospital, with no further concern toward any sequel, is as stagey as it is incipiently uncanny. Piling on the pushy “mystery,” she and Erland (he having secured the diary) create a film noire parade along a corridor while exiting the mishap. First there is Marie, enclosed by shadows resembling prison bars. Following her, like a gumshoe, there is the silhouette of Erland pulling on his European habit like a cape. From out of that delirium, she condemns Gruffman to death and allows Erland to confirm her sense of being cheated by life, resentful nihilism. “I’d spit in his [God’s] face!” The uncle/ paramour, holds forth with, “Protect yourself, build a wall around yourself, so the misery can’t get to you.” She tells us—the diary segueing to the career of a prima ballerina of questionable quality—“That’s how I forgot Henrik… In the end, I wasn’t just protected but locked inside…”

That trace of self-criticism needs thirteen years to yield a pitiful “recovery,” as problematic-heavy as noir is problematic-light. The evening rehearsal proceeds nicely; but Marie’s concentration remains divided. The sentry informs her that the “hack” with the trench coat had been at the door again, “but he left.” She assures those ancients that she saw him. This surprises them inasmuch as, “it didn’t make her happy either…” In her inner sanctum she’s visited with eerie features of décor; but “it didn’t make her happy, either.” A visit from one of the leaders of the company, trying out his disguise for the figure of Dr. Coppelius—wherein the latter attempts to bring to life a puppet—has the same haplessness, concerning lightening up, as the décor did. “You don’t dare leave, yet you don’t dare stay… You see your life clearly just once… when all your protective walls come tumbling down. You stand there naked and cold… seeing yourself as you really are… I can see it in your eyes” [that you have had such a brush]… Then the hack obtrudes; and a hack interplay, from both “lovers,” ensues. She asks, “What do you think of the two of us, really? We’re nothing to write home about.” She comes to a point of veering. She blurts out, “So now, Henrik…” The voice of the street pounces on this, “Is my name Henrik?” She replies by handing him the diary and telling him to read it overnight. (What would come of it, she has no idea; but she would be forming some possibilities trailing out to others.) In a voice-over, this time not manufactured by Henrik, she tells us, “I feel like crying all this week and next… Crying away all my shabbiness… and all this wasted time… [But] Do I want to cry at all? If I really look deep inside, I’m actually happy!” (She puts out her tongue to the mirror she has been subjecting herself to. The Hollywood soundtrack only approximates her mood.)

All we pretty much see of the next day is a bit of the performance of Swan Lake. One twist shows the noire lover backstage during the bittersweet saga. Did he read the diary carefully? Probably not. Marie, in a lull where she’s not onstage, brings him to a place of rendezvous and she touches his cheek. Then she’s back onstage where her steps bring her to a rather awkward pyramid of less than sublime acrobatics.

Does the oracle in the Dr. Coppelius disguise speak truth about, “You see your life clearly just once?” How about three or four times? Would that be a life? How far could Henrik (a very early version of the Dr. Borg, in Wild Strawberries [1957]) have gone, were he never foolishly became in awe of Marie? From here on in, we must ponder the vast subtleties of this neglected open door of a film by Bergman, having slammed perhaps a bit too forcefully his clowns. It is well and good to measure the horrors of “virtuousness.” But interludes of magic there bring to bear a second front, and its acrobatics and juggling.

#ingmar bergman

0 notes

sintrovert · 7 years

Text

Pirouettes and Personal Bests

Based of of this post I made about Dancer!Yuuri, I present the Victuuri Ballet AU!

Summary: Feeling old and uninspired, pro-skater Victor Nikiforov is on the brink of giving up skating for good, until he witnesses a young principal danseur for the Tokyo Ballet who moves like he’s floating on the stage. He sets off on a mission to learn to love skating again, and may find more than he bargained for along the way.

Word Count: 1974

Chapter: 1/?

“Have you ever been ice-skating, Yuuri?”

Yuuri looks up at Minako from where he’s seated on the ground, lacing up his sneakers and stuffing his ballet shoes into his bag. He’d stayed behind after class again for an individual lesson with Minako, and he was going to be late for dinner if he didn’t hurry back to the onsen soon.

“Uh, yeah, a few times, up at Ice Castle with my family,” he says, his eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. “Why do you ask?”

Minako squats down in front of Yuuri, smiling widely. “You’re already a phenomenal ballet dancer, even just from our few lessons, and I think you have the talent and endurance to become a world-class figure skater,” Minako says cheerily. She reaches out, grabbing Yuuri’s hands and smiling impossibly wider. “You could be just like Victor Nikiforov! He just won gold in the junior division at the Grand Prix Final, you know!”

Victor who? Yuuri ponders, taking his hands back. He taps a finger against his chin in thought. Figure skating?

“No thanks,” he says, after a long pause. “Not that I don’t think I could. It’s just...I want to be a principal danseur someday.” He smiles at the mention of his dream, then meets Minako’s eyes with a serious expression. “I have to stay focused on ballet.” He shrugs, standing and shouldering his bag. “I guess Victor Niliforv, or whatever, will have to do the skating for me.” He waves goodbye to Minako before taking off, leaving her with a small smile on her face.

He’ll reach that goal someday, she thinks to herself. I’m sure of it.

---- 10 Years Later ----

His hands shake as he finishes lacing up his shoes and readjusts his costume one last time. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous—he’s danced this performance dozens, possibly even hundreds of times, and he’s never once been nervous before.

Oh right, he thinks to himself, pulling down on the front of his costume as he takes his place just behind the stage left curtain. It’s because this is that performance.

He hears the music swelling from the pit, the thunderous sound of the orchestra flowing through his feet and up into his body. He runs through the program once quickly in his mind, then lifts his head confidently as he steps beyond the curtain, the heavy stage lights only blinding him for a short moment as he assumes position on stage.

He feels rather than hears his cue from the orchestra, and he’s suddenly off, body snapping into action with the speed of the string of a bow, every lithe movement and graceful step out of his control. It’s always like this when he dances—him losing himself so much so that he doesn’t need to even think, only feel the unbridled joy he always experiences in times like this. His body becomes like an instrument controlled almost entirely by the music, performing jump after jump, spin after spin with effortless grace and in perfect time. He rises up into a high arabesque as the solo violinist holds an extended trill, then lowers his leg to begin a pirouette as the rest of the orchestra rejoins, a crashing crescendo of sound that has him smiling as he finishes the spin.

He, Yuuri Katsuki, lands in the finishing pose of his first performance as a principal danseur for The Tokyo Ballet as the orchestra plays its final note, followed immediately by thundering applause. He breathes heavily, reveling in the sound of clapping and even some cheering, and can’t help the smile that graces his face as he bows to the audience. This is everything he has ever wished for, and he can’t think of any way his life could get any better than this moment.

Victor all but tears his skates off his feet the moment he reaches the locker room, not even bothering to unlace them. He angrily stuffs his skates in his bag, barely remembering to slip on the skate guards, then stands, stalking towards the rink’s exit.

“VITYA!” Victor grits his teeth at his coach’s voice, stopping just before the glass doors and forcing himself to keep looking forward as he hears Yakov coming closer. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Victor sighs, turning around to face his coach. He gestures towards the door. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m leaving practice for the day, Yakov,” he deadpans, gesturing to the door with an even more exaggerated motion.

Yakov pinches the bridge of his nose, obviously annoyed. “You can’t leave yet,” he says, his voice strained in an attempt to be calm. “Your step sequences are off, it’s like you’re not even hearing the music!”

“Oh no, don’t worry, I’m hearing the music,” Victor says, his grip tightening on his bag. “In addition to your incessant yelling and criticisms.”

“Your jumps alone can’t get you the gold,” Yakov says gravely. “We need to work on perfecting your step sequence if you want to win--”

“Have you considered the possibility that I might need a break, Yakov?” Victor asks. “We’ve been drilling the step sequences for both of my programs for nearly two weeks, and I’m not getting any better.”

“Then we just need to practice more,” Yakov says matter-of-factly. “The European Championships are less than a month away, and this is the most important time for you to be practicing your programs. You can get better, Vitya, you just need to want it hard enough.”

Victor is silent for a moment, thinking over Yakov’s words. Then, he shrugs again. “Well, you’ve always known my mindset on these kinds of things,” he says, smiling almost sadly. “If you don’t have any inspiration left, you’re as good as dead.” With that, he throws open the doors, shivering from the cold air.

“We are not finished!” calls Yakov. “Vitya, you get back here this instan--!”

Victor doesn’t bother waiting to hear the rest of Yakov’s yelling, letting the doors slam shut in the old man’s face.

He’s hit by an especially strong gust of cold air as he walks out onto the sidewalk, and it’s pleasant. He’s surprised to see that the sun has already set, the sky a mosaic of red, pinks, and oranges. He’d been at the rink for most of the day, repeating the same thing over and over, and feeling more and more hopeless with each axel, lutz, and loop. He remembers when skating was new, fun, when he had all the potential in the world to showcase his talent. Now, he’s old, he’s won everything there is to win, and he’s no longer full of surprises. But, skating is Victor’s everything. It’s the only thing he does. He’s nothing if he gives it up. He curses at himself, trudging down the street, hands deep in his pockets and nose red.

A blinking light catches his eye, and he looks to the Mariinsky Theatre, where hordes of people are lined up for a performance of the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker? So it was already Christmastime? His birthday was coming up quickly, and twenty-seven’s not a pretty number for a figure skater. He sighs, feeling even older and more washed out than when he left the rink.

Screw it, he decides, and he walks up to the counter and buys a ticket. He has nothing better to do, and who knows, maybe a ballerina will inspire him somehow. He walks in and finds a seat, unaware of the stares he’s getting, a world-famous figure skater sitting in a theatre wearing sweats and a t-shirt, hair ruffled and messy, visibly exhausted.

The lights dim and he perks up a bit from where he’d been idly flipping through the program. The Tokyo Ballet was performing for one night only, so he doesn’t recognize any of the dancers. He watches as the curtains part, and the show begins.

He’s bored. He doesn’t know how many times he’s seen The Nutcracker in his life, but he knows the story like the back of his hand. The woman playing Clara is magnificent, but Victor fails to glean any sort of inspiration from her. He’s just about to get up and slip out of the theater when the Nutcracker comes to life.

Victor is starstruck. The Nutcracker’s movements are otherworldly. If Victor didn’t know better, he’d say he was floating on the stage, his steps were so light and fluid. He spins and marches as if one with the music, pirouettes with skill and strength. Victor grabs his phone and uses the flashlight as he furiously flips through the program. There. Katsuki Yuuri, The Nutcracker. Huh. Yuuri. That’d be a fun name to say.

Even from far away, Victor can tell that Yuuri is absolutely gorgeous, his hair slicked back, eyes wide and bright, his costume and tights clinging onto his body, leaving little to the imagination...needless to say, Victor keeps his eyes glued to Yuuri for the rest of the night. He’s not absolutely certain, but it’s possible he might’ve audibly gasped a few times, maybe even let out a small sniffle. He goes home with a smile on his face, humming the Nutcracker Suite under his breath while he greets Makkachin and gets ready for bed. Victor Nikiforov has found his new inspiration. He spends the rest of the night tucked up in bed with his laptop, scouring the internet for anything and everything Yuuri Katsuki, and falls asleep watching video after video of his dancing.

“@victor-nikiforov: just saw the tokyo ballet perform the nutcracker! @ykatsuki was fantastic! wish i brought flowers for him! 🌹”

Yuuri smiles at the tweet, from some ultra-famous figure skater, if all the fan accounts that just followed him were any indication. Victor Nikiforov. Never heard of him. He presses ‘like’, closes out of Twitter, and goes back to scrubbing the makeup from his face. He has an early flight back to Japan, and he’d rather not traipse around the airport looking like a clown.

Two months later, a video pops up on his feed. It’s of the figure skater, the one who tweeted him about the Nutcracker. Yuuri watches Victor skate, and he really is very good. Every move is perfect. His theatrics could use a bit of work though, Yuuri thinks. He seems a bit stilted.

Yuuri likes the video and follows @victor-nikiforov.

Victor gets the notification in the middle of the night, his phone’s buzzing jolting him awake. Well, he thinks, it’s decided then.

Yuuri feels disgusting. His face is red and splotchy, his shirt soaked through with sweat, and his hair damp and sticking out in all sorts of places. His breathing is ragged as he finishes his routine for the third straight time in a row, bowing quickly to the smattering of applause from his fellow dancers. He hops off the stage, unlaces his shoes, and stuffs everything in his bag, gulping greedily from his water bottle. All he wants to do is go home to his tiny apartment, take a hot bath, maybe with bubbles, and sleep forever.

He nearly runs into the man, head down, typing rapidly on his phone as he leaves the studio.

“Oh, I’m so sorr-” Yuuri exclaims, his face beginning to heat up, then stops in his tracks when he sees the face of the person he nearly bowled over. None other than Victor Nikiforov, holding...a bouquet of roses?

“I wasn’t able to give you these when I saw you last, so I had to come find you again.” he says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to be standing right there. Yuuri feels his face get hotter as he takes them, his voice suddenly refusing to work.

“Oh, and I have a request. Teach me everything you know about ballet.”

“Huh?”

Notes: Hope you liked the first chapter (or basically, the prologue, whichever you want to call it!)

Very special thanks to my beta @toosigoosi who should honestly just be credited as a co-author of this because she helped me out so much

Now up on AO3!

Next Chapter

#victuuri #victuri #fanfiction #viktuuri #vikturi #yuri on ice #yuri!!! on ice #yoi #yuuri katsuki #victor nikiforov #balletdancer!yuuri #ballet on ice #ballet!au #au

309 notes · View notes

dydturktek · 5 years

Text

Nem Kurutma | Nem Alma | Rutubet Kurutma | DYD 444 0 719

Sudha Chandran: Biography and even Profile

Sudha Chandran

About January 31 th , 1984, Sudha Chandran stood guiding the curtain, staring at the exact crowd nervously and anticipating the crowd to settle all the way down. It had been a little while since she had danced on the stage. The accident had not only left your girlfriend dejected but will also left your ex fans sceptical about your ex ability to come back to the religious dance floor. How can a single-legged person flow Bharatnatyam, essentially the most intricate Indian dances?

She established everyone wrong. Her grooving left typically the audience spellbound . Sudha was known to have this unique captivating impression since early days. The adolescent Sudha was obviously a plethora connected with talent. The lady was born on September twenty one port st lucie , 1964 in Mumbai. She is truly the only child for K. G. Chandran plus Mrs. Thangam. Her mummy was a remarkably good caricaturer and their father appeared to be an art lover. They instilled in your ex the love to get singing as well as dancing. Sudha started moving at the sensitive age of several. Seeing the way well Sudha was boogie on her individual, her biological father took your ex to the renowned dance the school of Mumbai, ‘Kala Sadan’.

The principal within the school rejected to confess Sudha while she ended up being below the age-limit. Her papa pleaded considering the principal to at least see Sudha dance and then make the decision. Truly, the principal has been mesmerised utilizing Sudha’s dance and promptly admitted their in the institution. Here, the girl talent was basically nurtured in the guidance for her course instructors. By the associated with 17, the woman had already performed 70 stage illustrates and accumulated popularity on her effortless and also graceful dance.

Her parents were the girl support system. They were highly particular concerning her studies and needed her like a best in whatsoever she have. Her new mother left him / her job and stayed at your home so that Sudha’s upbringing was not compromised. This girl made sure the fact that Sudha went along to school, concluded her research, went for typically the dance group, ate healthy and slept on time. There is no breadth of deficiency of discipline around Sudha’s living. Life hasn’t been always unexciting for her. The woman was generally full of life and https://www.letusdothehomework.com/ made life-long friends during their college days or weeks. They went along to watch movies together and have road-side food.

Daily life took an abrupt turn on a few th May, 81. She had been travelling overnight for a pilgrimage with her mothers and fathers when the bus collided with a vehicle resulting in the immediate death belonging to the driver together with severe accidents to the people. Sudha’s legs were caught in the wreckage. She had been admitted with a government the hospital in Trichy, Tamil Nadu. Initially, the main doctors idea that the woman had a fracture plus treated the exact leg by just putting a plaster on it. It turned out to be to be a large mistake. When she went for a check-up to a infirmary in Chennai, then Madras, the clinical doctors found out that the wound wasn’t cleaned thoroughly and, with all the plaster with, it had designed gangrene . Whenever gangrene develops in your body, the body piece has to be amputated to save the particular person’s everyday life. Sudha’s leg was amputated in order to save him / her life.

The item left Sudha’s heart full of sadness together with her body system without a limb. For a professional dancer, especially connected with her la mecanique , it was a major drawback. As your lover couldn’t dance anymore this lady put all your ex efforts together with energy within studies. She had undoubtedly finished the woman B. Certain amount and was basically pursuing the woman M. Your in Economics from Mithibai College, Mumbai. The family has been heartbroken. The woman family experienced dreamt massive for their solely daughter. Nonetheless , no one highlighted Sudha every pity. They can have been injuring inside, however when they posed together they might talk as if nothing got happened. This unique helped to avoid any breadth of empathy and pity for her impairment. It was a tremendous attempt to address her similar to a person without disability. By these trying times , her leading source of motivation was your ex father. The person never confirmed any hint of bad on her princess and still wanted her to possess a good daily life. She learnt to sketch strength coming from her serious pain. She tried to walk with the assistance of the crutches as the girl refused to utilize a wheelchair. 6 months after the alteration she came across an article which usually changed her life along with staged the exact rebirth associated with an outstanding ballerina.

Dr . Sethi was earning worldwide level of popularity for producing artificial legs known as the exact ‘Jaipur Foot’. She may well manage to get an appointment along with Dr . Sethi, but just after a few days because of his busy schedule. Subsequently, she persuaded her mothers and fathers and set away from for Jaipur. Dr . Sethi was dazed by your ex determination. Your woman refused to leave regarding Mumbai without having a bottom. He listened intently and even understood your ex requirements. On account of many roles of the foot while carrying out Bharatnatyam, this girl needed a very flexible feet than there was clearly. Dr . Sethi created the 12 inches with many nuts and nuts so that it may be bent performed position. Any time Dr . Sethi presented the girl with one of the many kind base, Sudha inquired him if she may well dance once again. Dr . Sethi wore the exact foot together with did a pair of dance tips to demonstrate what the foot might do. Sudha knew that this foot would give her, your girlfriend life rear.

She exercised dance, being dressed in the manufactured foot, for a few hours each day. At times, this would be unbearable and often it would bleed, especially when the movements of the ankle became quickly. But , that will didn’t end Sudha in making her ideal a reality; once again. She was basically surrounded by those who believed in her, especially Doctor Sethi plus her mothers and fathers. Dr . Sethi believed in your girlfriend and your girlfriend strength to face up to any adversity . When using the support with her family members and Dr . Sethi, the woman confidence together with desire to accomplish on the stage started to gain.

On 31 th January, 1984, after 2 yrs of flow practice with all the ‘Jaipur Foot’, she executed on the phase at the ‘South India Wellbeing Society’ about Mumbai. Want Sudha finished her outstanding performance, the entire market stood as much as see the art of determination. They could never imagine that anyone with an man made limb could perform these types of delicate and also fast-moving ways. According to Sudha, ‘Once I had been on cycle, I didn’t remember about my favorite artificial foot. I could basically remember that I was performing after the long time and this I had to provide my ideal. The audience’s energy acquired transformed into very own energy. ’

Her existence inspires individuals from many walks of life. Ramoji Rao, some sort of Telgu maker approached their with a script titled, ‘Mayuri’ which was wobbly based on Sudha’s life. The woman agreed to have fun with the steer actress together with overnight your woman became any star following the release on the film around 1984. Your lover was presented with a special give ‘Silver Lotus’ and a sum amount of quite a few, 000/- on her role within the film ‘Mayuri’ at the thirty three rd National Roll film Festival. In year 1986, Ramoji Rao made some Hindi release of the video and termed it ‘Nache Mayuri’. The main film ended up being enjoyed from the audiences all over the globe, leading to her acceptance. Through ‘Mayuri’, her heartening story surely could reach out to many people across the globe. Your lover believes which everything develops for a explanation. She would not let one setback in life ruin the woman future, “The accident must have been a blessing on disguise because without it I would are actually just like scores of other ballet dancers. But , dancing with the Jaipur foot helps make me personal. ”

Progressively, she going concentrating more on her drama career. The lady became portion of the small tv screen and roll film songs. Within the shooting of 1 of their films, this girl met Ravi Dang, some sort of assistant director back then. Consequently, they have been unido. They each provided emotionally charged support to one another. Ravi Dang now deals with her dance academy known as Natya Mayuri Sudhachandran Flow Academy which is certainly in Patrie Parle, Mumbai. She has also established himself as an ingenue in both to the small tv screen and in the exact films. Your girlfriend name are normally synonymous using courage plus dedication. In cases where one thing can be learnt with her everyday life, it is not to ever give up.

https://www.nemkurutma.com/sudha-chandran-biography-and-even-profile-24/

NEM KURUTMA HİZMETLERİ

#blog

0 notes