Dance in America by Mindy Aloff

Author:Mindy Aloff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2018-08-22T18:40:05+00:00

Renée is in her late twenties, but Tony, some ten years older, is far jauntier. He has a flip way of pulling the brim of a soft hat down over his eyes, and he walks like a dancer, quickly and gracefully. Waiting for a green light at a street crossing, he is apt to go into a tap routine at the curb, and when he crosses against the light—as he would rather do—his progress among taxicabs and trucks is a dance number in itself. It is only when he sits down that he looks tired.

He lives alone in the apartment once occupied by the late Florenz Ziegfeld, in the Ziegfeld Theatre Building on Sixth Avenue. Tony has furnished the apartment with pieces from a house he and Renée once had at Rockville Centre, and the décor includes some rather massive furniture, several oil paintings, and a mink coverlet for the bed. The large living room contains almost nothing except a grand piano and a phonograph, and the De Marcos rehearse there before a mirror which covers one wall. The mirror is blue, so Tony and Renée see themselves with a kind of gloomy accuracy, unrelieved by any reflection of light from the windows opposite. Whatever personal conflict troubles the De Marcos is apparently forgotten as soon as they begin to work together. At rehearsals, Tony, in a white shirt, gray slacks, and gray suède shoes, shuffles thoughtfully around the floor at first, while Renée, barelegged, in sandals, and wearing print culottes and a backless, halter-­neck sweater, sits expectantly on the piano. At the piano is a young man, earnest and spectacled, named Sam or Paul or Charlie. (The De Marcos change their rehearsal accompanists often, so as to surprise themselves into keeping things lively.)

Presently Tony puts a record on the phonograph and the accompanist listens attentively, his hands off the keys. Tony dances slowly across to the piano. “Do you get it?” he asks the accompanist. “Da da dee-­ee, dada dum de um hm-­m . . .” For a minute he stands over the boy at the piano, his arms and shoulders and feet moving, his hands conducting the music from the phonograph in the corner. “Pick it up from there,” he says suddenly, shutting off the phonograph. “All right, Renée.” Renée slides down from the piano and accurately meets him in the middle of the floor. Tony whistles the melody continuously as they dance, except for occasional directions thrown over his shoulder to the piano-­player. “Wait. Right there, bring it up”—here he curves one hand, lifting it—“now, sh-­h-­h. . . . Retard. . . . Now! Bring it up again.” Sometimes Leonard, the colored valet, plods through the room during rehearsal, laden with packages and bound for a storeroom in the rear. “Hello, Leonard,” Renée says, her face upside down and whirling. “Hello, Leonard,” says Tony, spinning madly, “did you get that suit from the cleaner?” Leonard replies briefly and goes on his way. Sometimes the end of a dance comes out wrong at rehearsal.

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