The Rhetoric of Death by Judith Rock Read Free Book Online Page A

point, Maître du Luc. Pierre Beauchamps is trying to alter my ballet livret. Mine! Again . Do I change the steps he sets the dancers? No, I do not. In my livret, there is no Time character. Instead, there is a beautiful minuet for the four seasons, wearing simple garlands—flowers, fruit, leaves, bare twigs—to show time’s passage.”
    Charles smiled politely. He and everyone else had seen those same dancing seasons a hundred times. Aside from the technical problems, his artistic sympathies were with Beauchamps.
    â€œYou say Maître Beauchamps has done this before? Tried to change your livret, I mean?”
    Charles knew perfectly well that this duel of wills between professor-librettist and hired dancing master was a fixture of every ballet production in every college, even without formidable personalities like Jouvancy and Beauchamps involved. But the more he knew about the lay of the land here, the better.
    Jouvancy put a trembling hand to his forehead. “He does it every ballet,” he said in a resonant whisper, and became before Charles’s eyes every persecuted, aging monarch in the history of drama. “It is why I am as you see me, a man old before my time.”
    Charles bit his tongue to keep from laughing, thinking that Jouvancy, who was probably in his middle forties, could have made a fine career in Molière’s company. With the sense of delivering his next line, Charles said what he suspected the rhetoric master was waiting to hear.
    â€œWith your permission, mon père . . .” Wickedly, he hesitated, and Jouvancy shot him an impatient look. “Perhaps—if it would be of use— I could convey your judgment to M. Beauchamps and free you for other things?” Charles finished brightly.
    Jouvancy let his hand fall from his face. His large gray eyes were luminous with a finely judged opening of hope.
    â€œYou?”
    â€œYes, mon père ,” Charles said gravely. “I would be honored to be of service.” And just stopped himself from adding, “Your Majesty.”
    â€œVery well.” Jouvancy’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “It is all one to me,” he added mendaciously. “Speak to him—no, inform him—this afternoon. I cannot be bothered, the whole thing is beneath me. The man must be taught that he cannot dictate in this manner to a learned theoretician. Telling him so will be good practice for you.” Jouvancy grinned suddenly and came offstage. “And whether it will or not, none of these boys would be upright at the end of a pirouette with that thing on his head. But don’t tell him that.”
    â€œBut surely he knows?”
    â€œHmph. He thinks he has only to show them, shake his stick at them, yell at them, and they become gods of the dance. No matter if he is demanding that they dance on their hands in a sack. No theory, that’s the trouble with Beauchamps. But he is just a practitioner, so what can one expect? A great one, I grant you that—but a practitioner all the same. The man cares nothing for theory.”
    Charles kept his mouth shut. He was all too familiar with the age-old theoretician vs. practitioner argument, but calling Beauchamps just a practitioner was like calling the pope just a priest.
    â€œA chiming clock!” Jouvancy snorted. “The ancients would never think of anything so absurd!”
    â€œWell, they didn’t have clocks,” Charles said reasonably.
    â€œTrue. But never forget, the arts are for imitating nature, Maître du Luc. ‘The monkeys of nature,’ as our dear Père Menestrier says so well in his learned treatise on ballets. Are there clocks in nature? No, there are not clocks in nature.”
    â€œBut there is time,” Charles murmured, admiring a sketch for the Horizon’s shimmering costume, half black, half white.
    Jouvancy chuckled. “All right, Maître Charles du Luc. I see we will get on together.