We were on our second visit to the Big Apple. The first time was with our sixteen year old daughter, whose love for big cities drew us there. Her “coming out” at fourteen also took us across the country for New York City's amazing annual Gay Pride Parade. This colorful and poignant parade brought five hours of visibly courageous lives. From the first beat of the drum, from the first strut of a LGBTQ group, from the first clarion chant, tears washed down my cheeks. We were in the middle of the largest, most cosmopolitan American city where miles of the prestigious 5th Avenue had been blocked off and the sidewalks were jam packed. . .all in support of my daughter!
Our waving of the rainbow flag was then. Now we were staying at the same Chelsea Hostel, but my husband and I were in New York City as an empty-nest, born-again couple. We wanted this trip to possibly be a second honeymoon, or at least we wanted to attempt to carve out our own adventures. Naturally, we couldn't help missing our daughter and noticing all the same-sex hand holding and romantic overtures. But this only made us broaden our smiles and encouraged us to softly squeeze our own wrinkled hands together.
Walking the newly constructed High Line, attending a play at the intimate Atlantic Theater, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and going to a monthly Moth Story Slam, an Internet Meet Up, twice crowding into a dank underground basement for an Upright Citizens' Brigade improv performance, gave us, we thought, a nice taste of what New York City has to offer. Bowing to the inevitable, we did, however, stroll shoulder to shoulder down the streets of Times Square, marvel at how small the Rockefeller Ice Rink was, and how vastly glorious the Metropolitan Opera was.
We were feeling alive, feeling in love, feeling less shy of the unknown, strange places. Once we had made our decision to fly to New York, I immediately bought tickets to Billy Elliot, the Tony Award-winning Broadway Show of the season. We had loved the movie about a gender bending young boy living in a conservative British town who against his traditionally masculine, coal miner father's beliefs wants to be a ballet dancer.
The small and ornate theater was on a Broadway back street. We got there early and crowded into the lobby with the other waiting theater goers. Last-minute tickets were being sold, drinks at the bar were being sipped and when the doors opened, everyone surged forward. We climbed one set of velvet lined steps, and then another, to enter the affordable balcony. Finding our seats midway in the upper section, it felt like we were sitting in a bird nest on the highest branch of a gigantic tree. I peered down and saw the bright lights of a wide open empty stage. Watching entering patrons filling in the spaces around us, I couldn't help but notice a well-coiffed and elegantly dressed gay couple. One young man put his arm around the other with whisperings of excited anticipation. Black, brown, gay, straight, white, Asian, does it matter what we wear on the outside when we all just want to enjoy the performance?
The curtain rises and a small, rural British town appears. The entire audience becomes mesmerized by the theme, the music and the dancing...especially the dancing of the show's young, brightly talented eleven-year-old star. I know the story, and at first this comfort lulls me into enjoying this musical play from a safe distance. I say safe because it isn't until a scene from the second half that I begin to understand how this show is effecting me.
By the aforementioned scene Billy Elliot has become a dancer, despite the displeasure of his family and the gender biased culture he has grown up in. He knows with body and soul that he must dance to survive, to be his authentic self. He has been preparing with the help of his ballet teacher to audition for a respected dance academy. And this particular scene comes when he has met and triumphed over these obstacles.
The young boy star begins to dance in the middle of a seemingly blank stage. The backdrop is a simple blue hue and a light mist begins rolling in, giving a trance-like dream effect. Within the first few minutes of the boy's solo, there appears a muscular adult male dancer by his side. The dancer is elegantly tall and bare chested. The boy and the man are dancing side by side and across the stage. My thoughts drift to this being a metaphor for the boy's growing up: a dance in tribute to the adult self he will become. Then this adult gently begins to lift the boy as a male dancer would traditionally lift a ballerina. I am shocked to feel a steady stream of tears running down my cheeks. I quickly wipe them away. But as the statuesque male dancer continues to lovingly lift and gently interact with the young Billy Elliot, the tears become unstoppable.
Why am I crying? I feel I have never in my life time seen such beauty, such grace. At sixty, I feel cheated. Haven't I always been led to believe that the marvel of ballet lay in the male sweeping the female ballerina into the air? I try to pat my tears dry, to no avail. This scene of an adult male dancer and a boy child dancer has pierced my core. How I have been limited, I think, by the discriminations and stereotypes! It is as if by society's gender moral judgments I have blinded one eye. The man raises Billy Elliot once more, carrying him high up in the air and then the man is gone. Billy stands alone on the stage. The curtain descends and the applause explodes.
It has been nearly a year since this last New York City trip and I am only now putting my emotions from that Billy Elliot Broadway performance into words. Strange places give us unexpected emotional insights. I was tossed up and out of the balcony box that evening, when the comfortable gave way to something new and authentic and breathtaking! What more can I see with my two preciously given eyes? I thank my beautiful Queer daughter and the loving LGBTQ people I have met, for the gift of a wider vision.
(c)2011
No comments:
Post a Comment