One of my favorite books is Jack Butler’s Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock.  The full plot is a little hard to describe, but it’s generally the fictional story of an aging, well-to-do 1980′s Arkansas lawyer, Charles Morrison, and his aging beauty queen wife, Lianne.  As with all books, stuff happens to them and there’s some dialogue along the way.

A favorite concept in the book is where Charles refers to his wife as a “mood projector”:

“As soon as he entered the foyer, he knew she was home, though there were no lights on at all.  Some trace of warmth from the walls, perhaps, where she had placed a palm to steady herself while she took her high heels off.  A faint radiation, a wisp of her perfume, some stirring of the air in a way that only the living can stir, so that hours later it will not be entirely calm. . . .”

“‘Where’s Mrs. Morrison, Clemmie?’ he said.  When Clemmie had a martini waiting, it meant trouble.

“‘Upstairs,’ Clemmie said.  Worse yet.  If Lianne was happy, she was usually visiting, or out on the lawn to greet him, or in the kitchen chatting busily with Clemmie and helping with supper, or out in the greenhouse puttering with plants.  If she was angry, she was waiting in the foyer, or was in the library, reading with white-faced concentration, or had the formal dining room dressed, the china ready to receive the most minimal of offerings from la cuisine nouvelle.  Upstairs, now – upstairs meant she was depressed.

“He felt it in the air, invisible draperies.  She had her mother’s ability . . . to charge her surroundings with her own emotion.  An unrecognized psychic talent, the mood projectors.  You lived inside their feelings.  They were happy, the day was sunny.  They felt black, it was damn sure gonna rain on your parade.”

I’ve met several of these people.  And I think good dancers, actors, or other performers should actively cultivate this quality – at least on stage.  Even if it’s an “unrecognized psychic talent”, it’s maybe something that can be taught.  Fill the room with whatever you’re feeling.

I think Artistic Director Alison Page with Arova Contemporary Ballet has it.  When I visited Arova last time, I watched her dance (even injured, I believe) and then watched her talk after the performance.  Her gleefulness at a good plan coming together was obvious and well-conveyed.  I was specifically looking forward to seeing her again at the Arova choreography competition, but she was forced to be more reserved during the Sunday awards program and, as a result, things were more reserved right along with her.  It’s really fun to get to know some of the local performance groups well enough to feel like I’m getting to know the people involved.

My two favorite pieces of the competition were Ne Me Quitte Pas, choreographed by Jennifer Medina, and OnCe Distracted, choreographed by Jaime Kilgore.  The Medina piece was the audience favorite and captured first place.  But what I didn’t notice until I sat down to write was that Michelle Imhoff was the dancer for both of them.  She must have changed her look – which I know women are apt to do.  Since I liked each of those pieces, maybe she has some latent projectivity?

Is this why dancers and actresses can sometimes get a reputation for being difficult to live with?  Those “invisible draperies” they can put up in the air?  If so, and you’re living around one of them, you might should put some efforts into keeping them cheerful and giving them somewhere to perform.  Let ‘em work it out before they come home.

Even though I’m starting to see more dance, I understand I’m still a complete novice.  It’s especially obvious when, by happenstance, I get to sit next to a former somebody with the Alabama Ballet who lets me in on some of the significance and history of the pieces I’m about to see.  It’s good to know all that stuff, but I still know just about nothing except that, when dance is good, it can be really very enjoyable.

It also doesn’t require a dance expert to remind me that I can’t experience the ballet like some others do.  Maybe my favorite moment of the night came after intermission, when two little girls decided they needed a better view.  I was sitting on the front corner and they came down all star-struck and starry-eyed and sat – kerplunk – right in the middle of the aisle next to me.  For some little girls (and some little-girls-at-heart), ballet must be something that grabs the heart early and just refuses to let go.  It must be true for some of the guys, too, but there’s maybe nothing on earth quite like that obvious heart-on-my-sleeve passion.

Since I don’t have the same passions or expertise, I know I watch dance differently than other people.  For example, it seems (to my untrained eyes) like there might be a pecking order in dance companies.  There’s usually a lead dancer or two that gets most (or all) of the principal spots.  Even without reading the program, I can usually tell who must be the best just by listening to the reactions of the crowd.  There are oohs and aahs.  Things may get a little more still.  And there’s usually more, and more dedicated, applause.

Being tuned in to this kind of adoration, though, sometimes makes me feel kinda dance-stupid, because these principals often aren’t the ones I’d pick out as my favorites.  It makes me wonder what I’m missing out on or what I don’t understand.

My hunch is that a dance troupe (or a baseball team – whatever) with a bunch of athletic people all thrown together will quickly self-sort by technique and physicality.  For example, it’s easy to judge that a ballplayer who runs a 4.4 second 40-yard dash is faster than someone who can run it in 4.6 seconds.  Dancers must have their own little internal tests for who can jump higher, hold a position longer, or spin most cleanly.  These quantifiable qualities might represent the first and easiest analysis in attempts to sort out the order of who might be the most talented.

But for someone like me, I have absolutely no direct frame of reference for when a dancer does something well.  (As an example, I was going to write here something like “I can’t tell when a dancer has executed an excellent __________,” but I can’t think of even a single ballet term, other than “pas de bourree”, which I only know from that Ghetto Superstar song, and I don’t even know what it is…)  Instead, I’ve got to rely on context clues to form my own opinions about what’s good.  Finding any obvious mis-steps or wobbles may be easy, but I’m sure I miss a lot of mistakes which even those little girls might have noticed.

But – other than the artistic directors – who wants to watch carefully for mistakes?  Instead, I’m relying on the confidence of the dancers, the reactions of the crowd, the breaks and blocking of the choreography, and the expressions on faces of the dancers themselves when they know they’re doing something well.  I’m looking for those little flashes of genius.  To me, most performances feel something like: dance-dance-dance-dance-dance-dance-dance-mygoodnessthatwaspretty-dance-dance-dance-dance-wowthereitisagain……..  For any artsy people who read this, but can’t understand the other side of the athletics fence, I watch sports in pretty much the same way.

It’s those dancer expressions which I think may be underrated.  When I see these performances, I find myself watching faces and just using my peripheral vision to take in the whirling and stretching bodies.  So the face, eyes, lips, and lashes may be as important as the feet.  I don’t want a girl who just walks beautifully in heels; I want someone who walks beautifully and can still devote her rapt attention to her intended audience – me.

At least two of the Alabama Ballet dancers did this brilliantly on Friday night (and I hope I have these names right): Catherine Garratt and Jennifer Ferrigno.  I couldn’t even begin to tell you whether they have the best or worst technique, but I can confidently say that they’re fun to watch.  Both kept their eyes on the audience and changed expressions to suit shifts in mood and the motion of the performance.  Smile when you can and look serious when it’s called for.  Flash those pretty eyes.  Above all else, find a way to share with us that you’re having a good time.  Dance is best when its joy is infectious.

That’s at least one reason why I really appreciate any performances which the Alabama Ballet holds “@ Home” in its practice space.  It’s a warmer and perhaps more catching experience to watch dance when it’s up close and personal, listening to the hoofers clop and all that stifled panting for air.  More, please.

Thanks a ton to Leslie Cooper and the Alabama Ballet for allowing me to see the performance.  I’m also looking forward to the FREE schedule of open-to-the-public Second Tuesday shows.