The Stardance Trilogy Read Free Page B

one foot the number of grown-up men I’ve ever met. I’m grateful for you. I guess ironic tragedies come in pairs?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Well, now all I have to do is figure out what to do with my life. That should kill the weekend.”
    “Will you continue your classes?”
    “Might as well. It’s never a waste of time to study. Norrey’s teaching me things.”
    All of a sudden my mind started to percolate. Man is a rational animal, right? Right? “What if I had a better idea?”
    “If you’ve got another idea, it’s better. Speak.”
    “Do you have to have an audience? I mean, does it have to be live?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Maybe there’s a back way in. Look, they’re building video facilities into all the TVs nowadays, right? And by now everybody has collected all the old movies and Ernie Kovacs programs and such that they always wanted, and now they’re looking for new stuff. Exotic stuff, too esoteric for network or local broadcast, stuff that—”
    “The independent video companies, you’re talking about.”
    “Right. TDT is thinking of entering the market, and the Graham company already has.”
    “So?”
    “So suppose we go freelance? You and me? You dance it and I’ll tape it: a straight business deal. I’ve got a few connections, and I can get more. I could name you ten acts in the music business right now that never go on tour—just record and record. Why don’t you bypass the structure of the dance companies and take a chance on the public? Maybe word of mouth could—”
    Her face was beginning to light up like a jack-o-lantern. “Charlie, do you think it could work? Do you really think so?”
    “I don’t think it has a snowball’s chance.” I crossed the room, opened up the beer fridge, took out the snowball I keep there in the summer, and tossed it to her. She caught it, but just barely, and when she realized what it was, she burst out laughing. “I’ve got just enough faith in the idea to quit working for TDT and put my time into it. I’ll invest my time, my tape, my equipment and my savings. Ante up.”
    She tried to get sober, but the snowball froze her fingers and she broke up again. “A snowball in July. You madman. Count me in. I’ve got a little money saved. And…and I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”
    “I guess not.”
     
Chapter 2
    The next three years were some of the most exciting years of my life, of both our lives. While I watched and taped, Shara transformed herself from a potentially great dancer into something truly awesome. She did something I’m not sure I can explain.
    She became dance’s analogue of the jazzman.
    Dance was, for Shara, self-expression, pure and simple, first, last, and always. Once she freed herself from the attempt to fit into the world of company dance, she came to regard choreography per se as an obstacle to her self-expression, as a preprogrammed rut, inexorable as a script and as limiting. And so she devalued it.
    A jazzman may blow Night in Tunisia for a dozen consecutive nights, and each evening will be a different experience, as he interprets and reinterprets the melody according to his mood of the moment. Total unity of artist and his art: spontaneous creation. The melodic starting point distinguishes the result from pure anarchy.
    In just this way Shara devalued preperformance choreography to a starting point, a framework on which to build whatever the moment demanded and then jammed around it. She learned in those three busy years to dismantle the interface between herself and her dance. Dancers have always tended to sneer at improv dancing, even while they practiced it, in the studio, for the looseness it gave. They failed to see that planned improv, improv around a theme fully thought out in advance, was the natural next step in dance. Shara took the step. You must be very, very good to get away with that much freedom. She was good enough.
    There’s no point in detailing the professional fortunes of