Martha Graham and my Feet

Not for the first time, an expert raved today about the shape of my feet. They are odd, square-shaped, short, and have caused me no end of travails in finding comfortable shoes. I have searched endlessly for wide shoes, and even resorted to paying exorbitant sums to a Russian cobbler who still remembers how to make shoes. I suffer intolerable pain from corns and squeezes.

Yet connoisseurs adore my feet. I once auditioned as an accompanist for the ballet teacher Carmelita in Los Angeles. She found my reading and transposition skills wanting, but as I left, embarrassed and disappointed, she began raving about my arches.

Today, I visited a podiatrist who, after deciding that I had broken a toe, said that I had the exact foot of the dance genius Martha Graham. Such a foot, she said, didn't come up more than once every three years in her practice. She predicted that if I were to take a jazz dance course I would be the best in the class merely because of my feet.

I adore dance and have taken numerous dance classes, and usually am identified as a "ringer." At the university, I usually opted for dance electives because they were so easy and enjoyable. Dance steps are easy for me, no matter what the ethnic origin. I am always told that I should be dancing, even performing, when I venture into a class.

Regrettably, I chose piano over ballet when I was six years old. How simple my life would have been if I had gone the other way. At 5'4", I would never have made a ballet dancer in the Balanchine era, but if the Ebson School in my hometown Pacific Palisades had only offered jazz, how happy I might have been.

Beauty

The deep laws of morphogenesis result in the emergence of attractor states -- states that draw order and harmony from chaos, says Nicholas Humphrey. His paper, "Beauty's Child," discusses human appreciation of beauty from an evolutionist perspective.

True Happiness

I had a reunion last night with two pianists who studied with my late teacher, Aube Tzerko, some 35 years ago in Los Angeles. Aube wasn't famous, but he is revered by the many pianists who studied with him in his master classes at Aspen and privately in Los Angeles.

I and my guests still love and remember. For us, music is a necessary as breathing. We do it because we need to do it. Aube disliked performing, but he was unsurpassed at breathing music and fire into students.

He was a second father to me, a spiritual anchor in the confusion of the Seventies and on through the present.

My guests played Chopin late into the night. Julie Jordan, who's teaching at Juilliard's evening division, played a nocturne beautifully. Rodney played ballades and nocturnes and waltzes, and took the bass part of the Slavonic Dances with me at the treble in Dvorak's original four-hand arrangement.

Rodney recalled his last lesson with Aube in 1995, the year he died. Rodney was preparing for a concert in Mexico. The session lasted four hours. He recalled Aube putting his hand on the pages of Chopin's Scherzo No. 2, playing the questioning figure and whispering: "Is anybody there?"

The difficulties and frustrations of getting along in the world faded as we reminsced and played. Tonight, I chose a ballade and practiced for the first time in weeks, with Aube a spirit at my shoulder.

Making Sense of Beaumarchais

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais --French and American revolutionary, publisher of the banned works of Voltaire, watchmaker, entrepreneur, musician, fugitive, spy -- wrote a trilogoy of plays satirizing the aristocracy. The first two plays became the basis for two of the most beloved operas ever composed: Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" and Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro."


The plots are sequential. Yet the two operas are typically performed with a separate cast and conductor. This season, the separation of presentation was particularly jarring, as the Met productions of "Barber" and "Figaro" were far apart in quality and personality.

In "Barber," Joyce DiDonato was the best Rosina I've ever heard, delivering the coloratura effortlessly. But "Figaro" was a disappointment, with Dan Ettinger muddling through his Met debut and Danielle De Niese simpering and posing as Suzanna.

To be fair, Rosina is an older, more mature woman in "Figaro." Yet The operas are not so far apart in style as to preclude a more unified approach. Perhaps some future musical director will have mercy on Beaumarchais.