FLOODESIGN

had dance in his DNA from his mother, the prominent Graham dancer Jane Dudley. Hank Neimark was brought in to serve as stage manager from the very beginning and stayed with the series for many years; he remembers using his knowledge of the medium and his wiles to hold the set together. Jay Millard, a camera operator who also served as an associate director, or A.D., first worked with Balanchine on the taping of "L'Enfant et Les Sortilèges" in 1981. When calling the action for the camera operators as an A.D., Millard simplified his description of the dance into "spins, turns, leaps and lifts," a running commentary piped into their ears. "I'm like an air traffic controller," he says. "Flowery descriptions are useless. They just need to know how much space, and how high." To listen to the camera operators describe their craft is to understand their language to be the result of physical and psychic labor — much like dance. To frame the choreography artfully, "you have to know the dance in your bones," Hurwitz says. "I try to be as transparent as possible," says Millard. "Shooting is musical. We feel what's going to happen next," describes Smith. "What they do is so surgical," Diamond says. "I want every frame perfectly framed. And it's those guys that do it. How? I am mystified. I really am." The camera operators do what they do by managing to focus on the present and the future simultaneously. "You really get into it, and you are keying off every move they make," remembers Fussell, whose camera work gave us the crystalline shots of "Chaconne" I described above. His heart would begin to pound as they counted down into a taping. "Every dancer telegraphs to an extent: where they are going, how they're moving. The problem is, the better they are, the less they telegraph, the more they surprise you. In a sense, you're dancing with them. But then you've got this issue of what's next. If you're doing a pas de deux and it's beautiful, and the arms and legs are going out, and you're struggling to maintain that frame — you basically go into a Zen state, you're into it, and you're living in that moment. But you gotta worry about the next moment. I came to live for, like, a long pas de deux, or solo, and you'd know where you were going to be for the next few minutes. But then reality hits and, oh God, what's next?" "Oh God, what's next?" is a familiar refrain for those of us raised on endangered dance languages. It may also be a refrain for the entire human condition. Here, the craft of a camera operator may be the most useful salve against the vicissitudes of time. For if Fussell's Zen-like attention to the present moment teaches us anything, it's that something always comes next. A new present emerges out of the moment that just passed; new languages emerge out of the old. New dancers, too, arrive, with new interpretations of choreographic ideas, just as new directors and camera crews will appear to film them. And yet I long for the dance worlds I see in the videos to return — I am a dancer, after all. When the evanescence of my art form saddens me, I hold on to what dance has given all of us: the ability to cherish time, to pay attention and to frame our fragile humanity. Nostalgia is not limited to dancers; each camera operator I spoke to looked back on his experience recording the great dances of the 20th century with hushed pride. "I don't have anything more to add, only to say it was a wonderful time," Fussell says wistfully at the end of our phone call, speaking to me from Nashville in late March. I could hear his dogs barking in the background. I found myself wanting him to live forever. 10 | PEAKPERFS.ORG AND YET I LONG FOR THE DANCE WORLDS I SEE IN THE VIDEOS TO RETURN — I AM A DANCER, AFTER ALL. WHEN THE EVANESCENCE OF MY ART FORM SADDENS ME, I HOLD ON TO WHAT DANCE HAS GIVEN ALL OF US: THE ABILITY TO CHERISH TIME, TO PAY ATTENTION AND TO FRAME OUR FRAGILE HUMANITY. NOTE I am exceptionally grateful to Matthew Diamond, Ed Fussell, David Horn, Tom Hurwitz, Hank Neimark, Molly McBride, Jay Millard and Ronnie Smith for sharing their stories with me. TOP ROW: EMILE ARDOLINO, RONNIE SMITH, MR. B, DON LEWIS. BOTTOM ROW: ED FUSSELL, MERRILL BROCKWAY. PHOTO PROVIDED

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