Utterance
June 16 2025
by Mark Kikot
by Mark Kikot
Marshalling the unities
of space
and time
and form,
the dancers
find their footing,
flow
like water
fleshed
around the roots
they nourish,
patterns of refinement
woven through the orchestrated will
and range of operatic voices.
But the frangible
is never far removed,
and even virtuosity
can lose
its place
and slip
beneath the surface,
grasping
momentarily
at language
out of keeping
with the tone and sentiment,
decorum and precision,
of Baroque expressiveness.
So when the singer/heroine’s
recall and fervent love
of healing notes
and broken words
betray her
for an instant,
lapse’s understudy, “Shit!”,
escapes her lips;
except that for the sake
of authenticity
it should be “Merde!”,
because the tragedy’s Médée,
transfigured by Charpentier,
infused libretto of Corneille.
Once we’ve shrugged off
our priggishness,
suppressed our chuckles,
I remain perversely channeled
in my sense
of how appropriate it seems;
a faux pas, yes,
and yet, in it I hear a faintest echo
of Medea’s rage
and treacherous revenge
that reaches us across millennia,
on wavelengths amplified by pain,
to pass a monstrous judgment
on a brutal unjust world of love.
April 9, 2017