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The Dance
When Arsis and Thesis met on the dance floor,
one bowed to the other, the other implored:
“Let’s strike up the band now with haste and due speed.
Why wait for the others? We’re all that we need!”
Away they both flew over polished blond boards,
the grace and the charm of their movements drew roars.
A glide and a turn, elevé and plié,
gavotte, sarabande, allemande, and bourrée.
What more could one hope for, this dance so divine,
one stares and one wonders, could this have been mine?
A skill of such beauty, an art now so rare,
Terpsichore lives yet and beckons you dare.
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Poet’s Note: “The Dance” was very much inspired by my Stanford advisor and musicology professor George Houle (1927-2017) who would never let his students forget the importance of arsis (lifting the foot/upbeat) and thesis (lowering the foot/downbeat) in our study of Baroque music.
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Vera Kochanowsky, a resident of the Washington DC area, is an early music specialist, harpsichordist, and choral director. She has published two books, the first a revision of her father’s memoirs (Lenin, Hitler and Me) which details his escapes from communist Russia and Nazi Germany, and the second (Anna and Boris: The Love Letters), a translation of her parents’ correspondence during and just after World War II. A third book, her first book of poetry, will be released in September – 101 Haiku: A Journey Through the Seasons.
You brought the art of the dance to the art of poetry like a beautiful ballet smoothly executed in musical time and rhyme.
Vera, your composition combining many music and dance words forms, as well, an excellent classical invitation to those “polished blond boards.” I appreciate the complementary names of the partners, as my choirmaster continually instructs his singers on proper placement of arsis and thesis in chant. You know, as an early music specialist, how difficult that can be in unmetered Gregorian passages–and how much it contributes to the essential beauty of words sung! It can, however, be ours. You inspire confidence!
Dear Margaret,
Thanks for your observations and kind words! Indeed, as a choral director myself, I have long worked to try to get singers to realize that music is not just melody. The notes must be hung on some kind of structure and a clear rendering of the underlying pattern of beats, regular or even irregular, really heightens the impact of the text and strengthens the power of the music to move the listener.
A beautiful rendition of the dance steps I fail to possess, well presented as a poem honoring those who float through sound and tempo.
Thank you, Ms. Kochanowsky. This is both an informative and an endearing poem. I have wondered from time to time how study of rhythm in Gregorian chant has advanced since my minimal contact with the topic 50 years ago. I couldn’t see how proposed interpretations of manuscript signs squared (as I thought it likely they should, at least a bit) with later developments (rhythmic modes, prevailing rhythms in motet repertories before the work of Leonin and Perotin). I left all that behind and except for hearing ordinary chant items at Mass, according to old editions and with organ accompaniment, of course, have had no exposure to it since.
Your short list of Baroque dances is a bit startling to me: my applied study of these types, primarily in Bach (unaccompanied and orchestral) never made me think of waltz music, but your lines do–very danceable!
2 questions: 1) did you ever sing in the St. Ann’s Choir while you were at Stanford? (My wife and I were involved there ca. 1973-1976); 2) Are you familiar with any of the work of my thesis advisor, Judith Schwarz, whose principal interest is dance and dance music of the 17th and 18th centuries?
Perfect iambic pentameter. Not a single misstep. Thanks for an informative, merry read, Vera.
Vera, this is a great poem, the rhythm of which catches the orderly but artistic motion of those old dances of the baroque era. It creates a vivid image of quick-moving dancing shoes, although I rather think your rhythm fits with a gigue and not with an allemande, gavotte or bourrée and is much too lively for a sarabande. I love the music from this period and even earlier, although I’m afraid the dance steps are quite beyond me.