A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a star danced
In 1995 I was a second year student in university, ready to declare my major in dance. My university was built on a hill and the dance and theatre classes were actually all off campus, over the railroad tracks even. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was in my twenties so I did as much walking as I did dancing. And everywhere I went I carried with me a cardboard box containing the Star Wars Ballet.
I expect that’s a bit hard to picture so let me fill in a few blanks.
The box was one of those candy fundraiser deals with a built in handle. It was brightly colored and emblazoned with Hershey or Reeses or something. I don’t remember where I got it but it served my purposes very well. And inside the candy box were pages and pages and pages of handwritten notes, and three cassette tapes full of John Williams’ symphonic Star Wars.
It is sixteen years, three prequels, and two animated series later. I don’t know where the box or the notes ended up. I wouldn’t be able to play the cassettes if I found them (do people even know what cassette tapes ARE?). But I still believe in the Star Wars ballet. And now all I need is an iPhone to carry the whole thing around.
But you know what would be even better? Making it happen. Star Wars as a three-act ballet performance. The music already exists. The passion certainly exists. And Queen Amidala won an Oscar for playing a ballerina.
Who’s with me?
This Swan incarnation, unforgiving, sordid at times, not trying to embellish, to the point that beauty eventually emerges on its own, struck and mesmerized me.
It did trigger interesting discussions on many close (or not so close) subjects, expanding our conscious aura in an unmistakable manner.
The same conjunction of bodies (celestial, archetypal, physical) set by that “that SciFi saga”, which indeed feels far, far away.
Will you ever find that tape? Will you have a working tape player by then? One thing remains: the memory of it, expanding, passed along, already blossoming into a new existence, new meaning.