MR. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century, by Jennifer Homans
Opera is all about saying goodbye, Virgil Thomson is reputed to have said, and ballet is all about saying hello.
《B先生：喬治‧巴蘭欽的20世紀》，珍妮佛‧霍曼斯著
維吉爾湯姆森曾說過，歌劇的意義在於告別，而芭蕾的意義在於迎接新的開始。
在《B先生》這部感性、莊重且時常扣人心弦的俄羅斯編舞大師喬治·巴蘭欽的全新傳記中，詹妮弗·霍曼斯用苦樂參半的筆觸捕捉了巴蘭欽無數次的告別——他就像卓別林筆下的流浪漢一樣，在20世紀上半葉被追趕。
第一次世界大戰爆發時，巴蘭欽還是沙皇俄國的年輕舞蹈學生。三年後，13歲的巴蘭欽被迫靠尋找食物度日，因為革命擾亂了他的生活。在兩次世界大戰之間的歲月裡，他輾轉於魏瑪共和國的柏林（直到希特勒終結了那個頹廢而富有創造力的知識分子環境），以及巴黎、蒙地卡羅和倫敦之間。
二戰前，他逃往美國。他曾在百老匯和好萊塢教授芭蕾舞並擔任編舞，之後與劇院經理林肯·柯斯坦（Lincoln Kirstein）共同創立了紐約市芭蕾舞團（New York City Ballet），該團後來於1948年成為美國事實上的國家芭蕾舞團。在那裡，他幾乎憑一己之力，重振了這種日益脆弱和保守的藝術形式的語言。
In “Mr. B,” a sensitive, stately and often thrilling new biography of the Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine, Jennifer Homans finds a bittersweet tone to capture Balanchine’s many leave-takings — the way he was chased, as if he were Chaplin’s Tramp, across the first half of the 20th century.
When World War I arrived, Balanchine was a young dance student in czarist Russia. Three years later, at 13, he was forced to scavenge for food when the revolution disrupted his life. He spent the interwar years shuffling between Weimar Berlin, before Hitler put an end to that decadent and creative intellectual milieu, and Paris, Monte Carlo and London.
He fled for America before World War II. He taught ballet and choreographed for Broadway and Hollywood before, alongside the impresario Lincoln Kirstein, he founded what would become in 1948 the New York City Ballet, America’s de facto national ballet company. There he almost single-handedly revitalized the language of an increasingly brittle and conservative art form.
We’re right beside Balanchine, for example, when he starts class at his first ballet school, absorbing the oldest lessons.
First position, heels together, toes open, hand on the barre to steady the unbalanced body, arms down, back straight up through the spine, shoulders relaxed and wide, belly button pulled to the vertebrae, bones aligned. Release the excess, muscles wrapped around flesh, simplify, simplify, simplify. It is basic: Find the axis. Drop a plumb line from the top of the head down through the spine into the heels in first position, divide the body down this center, right from left. Turn out the legs, turn out the feet, turn out the hips, turn out the spine.
例如，巴蘭欽在他第一所芭蕾舞學校開始上課時，我們就在他身邊，汲取最古老的經驗。
第一個姿勢：腳跟併攏，腳趾打開，手扶把桿穩定不平衡的身體，雙臂下垂，背部挺直，肩膀放鬆張開，肚臍貼著脊椎，骨骼對齊。釋放多餘的肌肉，包裹著肉體，簡化，簡化，再簡化。很簡單：找到軸線。在第一個姿勢下，從頭頂畫一條鉛垂線，穿過脊椎到達腳跟，以此為中心，從右到左將身體分開。雙腿向外轉，雙腳向外轉，臀部向外轉，脊椎向外轉。
身體細節不著痕跡地流向形上學。關於在巴蘭欽指導下跳舞，霍曼斯寫道：
舞蹈削去身體，磨練肌肉，微妙地移動骨骼。訓練即蛻變，與巴蘭欽共事，如同一場蛻變，交織著痛苦、自我毀滅和羞恥，也飽含著渴望與喜悅。外在的形態甚至可以撫平破碎的內心世界，至少在舞蹈的瞬間是如此。它無法抹去一個人的缺點，也無法減輕她的焦慮，但它確實承諾會讓她擁有更有序的靈魂。在巔峰時期，舞者感到流暢有力、渾然一體、協調一致，最重要的是，她感到渾然天成。更少的體重，更少的食物堵塞（更多血液流向肌肉），讓身體感覺如同“真正的輕盈”，如同一台潤滑良好的機器。即使是每天課堂上例行公事般流淌的鹹鹹的汗水，也感覺像是一次卸下重擔，一次淨化，將舞者從不聖潔、平凡的自我中解放出來。她變成了一個全新的生命，一個部落的一份子，一個被藝術選中的成員。
Physical details drift unfussily toward the metaphysical. About dancing under Balanchine’s tutelage, Homans writes:
Dancing pared the body, honed the musculature, subtly shifted bones. Training was transformation, and working with Balanchine involved a kind of metamorphosis entangled with pain, self-destruction and shame, but also with desire and joy. External form could even harmonize a fractured inner life, at least in the moment of dancing. It didn’t erase a person’s faults or dull her anxieties, but it did hold out the promise of a more ordered soul. At peak the dancer felt fluid and strong, integrated, coordinated, and above all clarified. Less mass and less food clogging the system (more blood to muscles) added to the feeling of the body as “true light” and a well-lubricated machine. Even the salty sweat purged through the ritual exercise of daily class felt like an unburdening, a purification that set a dancer apart from her unholy and civilian self. She was a different creature, part of a tribe, a chosen member of art.
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