"After the Dance"

"--AND you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . ." started Tolstoy his short story, "After the Dance." That was pretty much what I was thinking after I watched the, sometimes superficial and sometimes deep, but throughout graceful and colorful dance of the Collage company.


The dance was to a moving series of eclectic and mesmerizing songs, the origins of which came from very very old lands and from cities the ruins of which do not even exist anymore. The dancers, half of whom are dear friends, moved uncompromisingly and with an obvious eagerness to please.

And this was their choice to create their environment, actively, with sweat and compromise, not by chance. They not only committed to a painful process of training, but they stripped their personalities and ideas, submitted to an idea and were part of an echo from the past into a back-alley Cambridge theater. They created their environment, and I am glad to touch it, albeit briefly.