Town Square (Part 1 of 2)

It’s early May and I sit in the Duluth, Georgia town square, a place that is struggling to maintain a small town feel while adrift in the suburban sea.  One anchor of the square is City Hall, built in the old style with columns, verandas, arched windows and ornamental carved eave supports.  Robbed of any real charm either by newness or recent renovation, it feels like one of those new outdoor malls called “The Avenues” or perhaps “The Centre,” as if spelling it in the British way will render it more interesting.  There is here a past to feel that has been painted over.  It will gain much if it remains standing for a hundred more years.  Architecture acquires character, a soul, only with time. 

The City Hall overlooks a new festival center and amphitheater, capped with a cupola that carries on with the imitation early 20^th century scheme.  Onstage, the Gwinnett Community Band plays Gershwin, which they do quite well, making it sound oddly enticing on a bright May afternoon.

There are young families with children everywhere, mainly toddlers.  They amble along, upright on legs too stiff, each step a deliberate new experiment in gravity.  There are boys with thick dark curls and silken blond little girls.  Their shining eyes, blue and brown, look up from faces painted with flowers and ladybugs and Batman, clearly expressing the wonder and joy that was long ago left behind by the parents that love and care for them.   

But the grayer and slower moving adults show it.  That joy and wonder is apparently not lost.  Perhaps it’s simply dormant as people work through those middle years of building a life, only to be reborn with the first grandchild.  It’s obvious in their gentle smiles and gazes at these beautiful children.  

Other kids, older ones have been cut loose to roam the square.  They seem to have left their shoes somewhere in an enormous pile.  Not yet worried about being cool, their feet slap the red brick walkway as they run by or stare at the blacksmith demonstration or the snow-cone machine.

There are the still older kids, the ones that under some otherwise unnoticed full moon changed into teenagers.  The girls are budding young women, aware of their new beauty but not the power it has brought them.  The boys are becoming men that move with the casual confidence of youth, still unaware of manhood’s uncertainties.

A group from The Southern Ballet Theatre has been introduced and is taking the stage.  It is composed entirely of females that appear to range in age from maybe sixteen to perhaps mid twenties.  They are swans in slippers that glide like skaters across the stage and leave behind not ripples, but crinoline echoes.  They weave a dance of fluid movement and graceful jumps and intricate passages with, around and through each other.   There is no need for knowledge of their art here.  They are breathtaking beauty and undeniable grace.  They pirouette and plie on toes and flexing thighs and tightened calves as slender arms move in smooth circles. 

I watch each girl for a moment and, despite their synchronization, begin to see stylistic differences.  Some become lighter and smaller as they move. Others are stronger, more assertive in their movements.  Still others seem to become a vision of the song itself, soft jewels in a musical crown.  And together, they are so enchanting that only when the music ends do I realize that they are slipping into the wings. 

I wait a few moments and one of the dancers walks casually across the stage and takes a place on the corner.  She is beautiful, one of the older ones and she, more than any of the others, personified those that seemed to become lost in the dance.   A contemporary song starts, “Paradise” by Coldplay.  It’s a wistful one of a young girl’s dreams.  She begins to move and immediately captures the audience.  There are steps quick and anxious.  There are moments of writhing regret and wallowing want as she lies on the stage.  There are arm movements from arcs to circles to angles that flow as smoothly as water in a stream.  There are hand movements that defy anatomy.  There are leaps, incredible moments when she hangs above the stage and time itself stretches.  She makes each of these movements transition unnoticeably into one another.  Finally, she returns to her starting position, wearing the lost look that she has maintained for the entire dance, and the music ends.  There is silence for a moment while I and my fellow oafs of the arts are stunned.  Until applause and shouts begin to smother the amphitheater.  She gets up, bows and smiles.  As she walks off stage, there is a bounce in her step. 

Another modern song starts.  I don’t recognize it but it has an energetic beat, not quite a dance song, per se, and lyrics of challenge and personal victory.  Out comes another of the older dancers.  She was the best example of the more aggressive dancers.  She begins to dance and her steps are definite, purposeful.  Her moves are also fluid, but, more like a stream overcoming a rocky bed, moving from one to the next with absolute clarity.  She seems to at once flow and snap into position.  Her stances and leaps exude strength and assertiveness.  Her shoulders, neck and cheeks begin to flush as she commands the song to come to her.  She attacks the dance with utter confidence.  She challenges the audience with her direct gaze.  She seizes the stage and crowd.  Finally, after exorcising all resistance from all quarters, she moves back to her starting position as the song ends.  There is again that moment of stunned silence before applause floods the tiny valley.  She bows and her steps are defiant as she walks off stage.

Her performance was the equal to her colleague’s.  But in a completely different way.  One dancer had taken music and moment and gently molded herself, almost loosing herself in it.  The other had taken music and moment and molded them together through strength and will, absolutely owning it.

            I move on in awe of these different faces of beauty.


These people do beautiful things:  http://www.southernballettheatre-ga.com/