WanderLost

4-23-07

The Dancers exist in a circle near the center of Prague, only a block away from the school where I work teaching English to Czechs in small classrooms with big windows. My building is blue, and down the street from it stands a magnificent synagogue with rising columns, a rose-pink facade and trimmings of blue and gold. Farther down is a charming dark-stone church with tiny windows, an obliging spire and small surrounding park with grass, benches and a blooming cherry tree. The steeple echoes an even taller tower across the street. A brooding stone remnant of medieval times, it stands in somber perplexity as electric trams rumble past its base.

And down the street from this . . . are the Dancers.

Four of them encircle a small fountain, raised on individual stone pedestals. They are also musicians, each with their own instrument, each frozen in the motions of an intricate stone dance. Water casts scintillating reflections on the bases of the pedestals— the visualization of unheard notes in the air.

The Dancers are blindfolded. Cloth entwines their arms and legs, hangs off their shoulders, covers their faces. The Horn-blower’s head is completely covered, yet still raised, the mouthpiece pressed against clothed lips, raised to the sky. The Piper and Mandolin Player, too, have heads closely wrapped. The Violinist, however, tilts her head to the side, cheek lovingly pressed against her instrument. The cloth has fallen away from the bottom part of her face, revealing the tip of a nose, and the merest hint of a musician’s smile.

The fifth Dancer is not around the pool but far away at the other end of the square. This one is the True Dancer. No instrument, for his body is his instrument. Head down, arms up, one leg lifted— the most exquisitely entangled of all, in ropes of shining gold. The sun setting behind me streams through the four clustered Dancers and makes the gold glint. The others are wrapped in gray-green, the color of their own muscled bodies, but the Fifth is tangled in gold. Entrapped, entwined, captive to the gold.

The Dancers enchant me. Though they never move, I can’t stop watching. They seem to be dancing out of their bonds yet at the same time tangling themselves further— the impression of freedom and bondage simultaneously. Their bodies are bound but their minds are not, floating away with the music notes. They are blind, but they don’t need to see. The music is their ears, their sight, their rhythm of life. The Horn-blower raises his head high, chest puffed out with effort. The Piper bends low, leg lifted, fingers poised. Across the water the Violinist stands upright but cocked sideways, arm out with an invisible bow, face resting against her violin. The Mandolin Player’s back is to me- the only one not playing. She holds her instrument by the neck and behind her, gazing up at some point in the sky, arm upraised as though warding off a blow, or blocking out the light. Or perhaps she is beckoning to the Fifth Dancer, beckoning to come join in the Dance. Perhaps to come lead the Dance. The Fifth Dancer seems to be trying to step out of his bonds, yet one feels he’s not free completely, that there’s a danger he might trip on his golden bonds and fall . . . ~