Arts
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 — 13 
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The first time I understood 

George Balanchine was watching 
“The Nutcracker.” More precisely, 
it was while watching a recording 
of Act 2’s “Waltz of the Flowers” 
on YouTube, with New York 
City Ballet’s Ashley Bouder as 
the leading Dewdrop. The six-
minute dance is the culmination 
of 
the 
Christmastime 
ballet’s 

divertissements and the music 
builds with undulating waves of 
grandeur. Tchaikovsky sure knew 
how to write a good crescendo, but 
Balanchine knew how to dance it. 

In the video, Bouder does not 

jump, bounce or even float. She 
flies. Her movements, explosive 
and luxurious, stretch past the 
edges of her limbs. Her dancing 
leaves sparkles in the air — the kind 
that feel so pleasing to the eye that 
one might start to believe they are 
literally seeing the music in front of 
them. 

I grew up away from Balanchine, 

raised in dance studios that 
emphasized classical European 
ballet 
technique. 
Everything 

was 
square, 
everything 
was 

measured, everything was perfect. 
This system has its benefits and 
its beauty, but this moment on 
YouTube taught me (much like 
Balanchine taught the world) 
that sometimes those rules are 
overrated. 

When ballet first came to life long 

ago in the French courts of Louis 
XIV, it was a tool for control; court 
members showed dominance over 
their body’s motion to assert power. 
Balanchine’s immigration to New 

York City in 1933 reversed course on 
that centuries-long rule. Suddenly, 
hips didn’t need to be square 
and shoulders weren’t always 
straight. Fingers were splayed, 
knees could bend, and the need 
for restrained power came second 
to the need to match the music’s 
speed. The change was radical, but 
American concert dance loved it. 
Balanchine co-founded the New 
York City Ballet and its attached 
School of American Ballet with 
philanthropist Lincoln Kerstein. 
He choreographed 465 ballets in 
his lifetime and agitated the very 
existence of ballet in America. San 
Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest 
Ballet, Utah’s Ballet West, Miami 
City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, 
Boston Ballet and Dance Theatre of 
Harlem were all created by artists 
touched by George Balanchine. 
By the time of his death in 1983, 
the world seemed to have already 
decided: He was a genius, and not 
in the hyperbolic sense of the word. 

This is all true. He is, by all 

accounts of the word, an icon. 
But there is inherent danger in 
words like these — in simple lables 
slapped onto complex people. Such 
categorizations encourage us to 
forget that Balanchine was a man, 
as flawed as the rest of us, living 
and working in the imperfect, non-
genius structures and systems of 
the 20th century. 

“Ballet is woman,” he said — but 

what kind? His muses were young, 
often still teenagers. They were 
skinny with small breasts and no 
butts, and their success created 
the silhouette of a dancer’s body 
that still wreaks havoc on women 
today. Floating beneath the surface 
of Balanchine’s legacy are eating 

disorders, body dysmorphia and 
an industry that makes casting 
decisions based on costume fittings 
rather than actual talent. 

Also 
beneath 
the 
surface 

rests ballets like “Le Chant du 
Rossignol,” an early Balanchine 
work that told the story of a sick 
Chinese emperor and relied heavily 
on destructive Orientalist tropes 
from its 1925 origins. When Ballet 
West revived the work in 2019, Final 
Bow for Yellowface co-founder Phil 
Chan spent the better part of his 
year facing off against historians 
who seemed to be too invested in 
respecting Balanchine’s genius to 
recognize the need to respect their 
Asian American peers. 

But perhaps the most notable, 

yet overlooked, factor complicating 
Balanchine’s legacy is Balanchine’s 
use of Black dance in his formation 
of American ballet, a point for which 
scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild 
deserves immense credit. The 
opened chest, bent knees, increased 
speed and syncopated rhythms did 
not come from the singular mind 
of a European immigrant — they 
came from the street and social 
dances of Black Americans across 
the country. And yet, the master 
narrative of Balanchine’s memory 
often frames him as the inventor of 
such techniques. To this day, Black 
dance remains marginalized and 
belittled by the same white concert 
audiences that praise Balanchine’s 
innovation. In a 1996 book, Dixon 
Gottschild explains this under the 
title “Stripping the Emperor,” a 
phrase indicative of such erasure. 

The 

A love letter to Mr. Phoenix

The world has a thing for 

martyrs. People treat it like a rite 
of passage if you make it into the 27 
Club with Jimi Hendrix and Kurt 
Cobain. But River Phoenix never 
even got to see his 27th year.

Phoenix died from a drug 

overdose on Halloween when he 
was only 23. His death was, and 
remains to be, so sensationalized 
that you can even watch the 
guys at Buzzfeed Unsolved try to 
contact his ghost. National news 
stations aired the 911 call that his 
brother Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker,” 
“Her”) made from the Viper 
Room, the club owned by Johnny 
Depp (“Pirates of the Caribbean,” 
“Edward Scissorhands”) where 
River had collapsed. Long before 
social media, River’s life and 
death were treated like a sideshow 
attraction between commercials.

River was a reluctant icon. He 

hated his own celebrity (and the 
idea of celebrity at all), but he used 
it as a platform for his activism that 
could only be compared to the likes 
of Jane Fonda (“Klute,” “Grace 
and Frankie”) or Marlon Brando 
(“Streetcar Named Desire,” “The 
Godfather”). He spoke openly and 
passionately about animal rights 
and environmentalism in a time 
before there was a vegan option on 
every menu. Maybe he knew that 
PETA booked him because of his 
name as the precocious 17-year-
old nominated for an Oscar, but he 
swallowed his pride because it was 
what he believed in.

Humility isn’t always included 

in 
definitions 
of 
masculinity. 

River could have performed the 
hypermasculinity of contemporary 
stars like Arnold Schwarzenneger, 
Sylvester Stallone, Patrick Swayze 
or Tom Cruise, but he didn’t. 
This isn’t to say that he wasn’t 
masculine; he could play a young 
Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones 
and the Last Crusade” with all the 
heroism we knew from the action 
star, but with this added fragility 
that’s difficult to achieve in a 
short, ten-minute cameo. River 
brought an intense, overwhelming 
amount 
of 
vulnerability 
that 

would underscore, rather than 
negate, his strength in each and 
every one of his roles. He made 
male tenderness iconic.

“Stand by Me,” based on the 

Stephen King novella “The Body,” 
is meant to be an ensemble film, 
but River’s performance as a 
tough but well-meaning kid from a 
dysfunctional family lit him up on 
everyone’s radar. The story started 
the “You wanna see a dead body?” 
trope as a group of middle school 
boys search for a local boy’s corpse 
in 1959. River may not be what 
most people remember most about 
the movie; it’s more recognizable 
as a clear influence of friendship-
centered adventures like “The 
Sandlot” or “Stranger Things,” and 
as a parallel to other adjacent films 
like “The Goonies” or (of course, 
because of its source material) 
“IT.” Director Rob Reiner (“When 
Harry Met Sally”) captures the 
playfulness and devastation of 
childhood through the image of 
some boys walking down railroad 
tracks together with the dramatic 
irony of their knowledge that it 

was a train that killed the boy 
they’re looking for. 

At its core, “Stand by Me” is 

about love. And while the other 
cast members did an amazing 
job, there’s just nothing that you 
can compare to River’s delivery 
of the line: “I just wish I could go 
someplace where nobody knows 
me.” He admitted to using fake 
tears in the scene (he was only 15 
years old and it was his first major 
role in a feature film), but you 
believe it when he says it. Maybe it’s 
that boyishness that had everyone 
magnetized to the screen. He was 
a kid in 1986 pretending he was 
in 1959, and you wonder if he was 
thinking of himself as his father, 
if this spoke to that feeling when 
you first see your father cry, when 
death stares you in the face, when, 
for the first time, you really, truly 
understand empathy.

I can’t help but wonder if 

“Stand by Me” was River’s way 
of reckoning with his childhood 
in the same way it is for everyone 
who watches the film. River was 
born to hippies who joined the 
Children of God cult when he 
was three. The cult was known 
for its interpretation of God’s love 
through sex, and particularly 
shared 
sex 
partners; 
cult 

members were coerced to sleep 
with recruits in order to convert 
them. Many cases of childhood 
sexual abuse have been reported 
by 
ex-members. 
It’s 
reported 

by Vanity Fair and supported 
by “Stand by Me” co-star Corey 
Feldman (“The Goonies”) that 
River was a victim of child sexual 
abuse. Joaquin Phoenix has since 
insisted that River’s confession to 

Details magazine was a joke made 
“because he was so tired of being 
asked ridiculous questions by the 
press.” 

We can’t know if River was 

a victim of abuse. It is a fact, 
though, that as the firstborn son 
of a family of seven, he often took 
his early acting jobs in order to 
provide for his family. It is a fact 
that the Children of God was a 
cult that attracted sex offenders, 
and even if River didn’t experience 
it firsthand, it’s not unlikely that 
he may have witnessed some of 
it. When his family left the cult, 
they left their given surname of 
the Arlyns behind and renamed 
themselves after the phoenix. 
In interviews, both River and 
Joaquin have looked fondly on 
their family life, describing a late-
’60s openness and an early-’70s 
closeness that kept them together 
after whatever may have happened 

while they were in the cult.

That openness is most apparent 

in “My Own Private Idaho.” Based 
loosely on Shakespeare’s “Henry 
IV” and “Henry V,” River plays 
Mike, a narcoleptic male prostitute 
hopelessly in love with his best 
friend Scott (Keanu Reeves, “John 
Wick”). Directed by Gus Van 
Sant (“Good Will Hunting”), it 
quickly became a cult classic and 
was inducted into the New Queer 
Cinema movement of the 1990s. 
River completely holds his own 
acting toe-to-toe with arguably 
the biggest action star of the ’90s. 
It’s like seeing fireworks for the 
first time: the thump hitting deep 
in your chest, the colors lighting 
up an otherwise dark night, and 
then that strange feeling when 
the show ends and you’re left with 
silence. 

And 
that’s 
without 
the 

knowledge that River himself 

wrote the iconic campfire scene 
where Mike confesses his love to 
Scott. Mike tries to talk about their 
friendship, asks what he means 
to Scott; Scott is confused, and 
maybe a bit put off. 

“I only have sex with a guy for 

money. And two guys can’t love 
each other,” Scott says.

Mike 
stutters 
out 
a 

noncommittal 
response, 

eventually admitting, “I love you 
and you don’t pay me. I really 
wanna kiss you, man.” 

Scott doesn’t say anything. 

Mike curls in on himself, hugging 
his knees until Scott holds him and 
a wolf howls in the distance.

It’s complete, utter, unguarded 

love. It frames the film in a 
completely different light than the 
original script. 

MARY ELIZABETH JOHNSON

For The Daily

FLICKR

Thinking of female film 
directors as famous icons

From the screen of a dark movie 

theater, a white horse stared at me, 
and I stared right back. At the time, 
I was 20, “LA dreaming,” working 
in California for the summer while 
taking classes at night, watching 
“Fish Tank” (2009) by Andrea 
Arnold in UCLA’s Mendelson 
theater. I sat with my arms 
wrapped tightly around my legs, 
pulling them into my chest so that 
my chin was imprinted red from 
being stuck between my knees. All 
my weight rested in my dirty-white 
Reeboks — they left a mark of muck 
on the leather seat beneath me. 

A bit later, the white horse died. 

It got shot on the day Mia (the main 
character) turned 16. It was the 
same day her dreams of becoming 
a dancer died, because a promising 
audition turned out to be a 
seductive scheme. It was the same 
day her mom’s friendly boyfriend 
turned out to be sexually deceitful 
towards Mia, with her birth control 
tossed aside when she needed it 
most. “Fish Tank” came to a close 
with Mia, her mother and her sister 
in the living room, mirroring each 
other, as they danced to Nas’ “Life’s 
a bitch.”

The blood vessel in my left eye 

popped — I forgot to blink. With my 
eye bloodied up, the lights turned 
bright and I felt my blood rush back 
into my feet, with red imprints on 
my chin and legs and cheeks from 
holding on too tightly. I sat squarely 
in the dirt my Reeboks left on the 
chair. 

I felt gritty and wrecked. I felt 

like Mia’s white horse was still 
there, with all her dreams and 
vulnerabilities staring at me. It felt 

like Arnold had changed the way 
my blood was flowing.

When I turned to my left to face 

my best friend Kemo, whom I’d 
met at the beginning of summer, I 
knew he felt this bloodied, tender 
rush too: He was looking at me 
with the smallest of smirks, which 
fell quickly into a more serious, 
contemplative look.

I wanted to dance, I wanted to 

call my mom and I really wanted 
to take the birth control pills I had 
missed for the past three days. 

***
Andrea 
Arnold 
— 
director 

of “Fish Tank” and “American 
Honey” (2019) — captures fleeting 
beauty and the essence of young 
women who are tightly stuck in 
the whirlpools of poverty they find 
themselves in, who bear the full 
brunt of babies and children and 
lost dreams and sexualization. She 
does this with delicacies: turtles let 

free in the ocean, white horses, flies 
and wasps stuck to honey — I fell 
utterly in love with Arnold’s work 
that summer. She wove herself into 
the helix of my DNA.

After watching “Fish Tank” in 

UCLA’s theatre alongside Kemo, 
we plowed through Arnold’s films 
“American Honey” and “Wasp” 
that same week. He and I would 
meet in the Common Room of our 
dorm to make those two bean bag 
chairs and that tiny TV our bitches. 

The vending machine always 

came first: I’d get two strawberry 
Nutri-Grain bars and he’d get fruit 
snacks. When other students would 
open the door to try and study, 
they’d usually see us throwing our 
favorite fruit snack flavors at each 
other, talking shit, with our eyes 
peeled on the screen. They would 
know they were intruding, and 
then they’d promptly leave.

In 
that 
over-air-conditioned 

common room we talked about our 
dreams, mostly. Who we wanted to 
be, what we wanted to create and 
be a part of. And maybe that’s why 
my love of Arnold is so strong: she 
makes films about what it means 
for young girls to have dreams, and 
she scares you just enough about 
what those dreams are susceptible 
to.

She’s an icon to me, but 

definitely not an icon to others, 
let alone known by others. And 
I find it extremely hard to distill 
my isolated idolization of Andrea 
Arnold down to a matter of 
“personal taste,” when not a single 
female is listed when you google 
“famous directors,” or when my 
friends can’t name a single female 
movie director.

SAMANTHA CANTIE

Daily Music Editor

A24

NYC BALLET

Balanchine: the forgotten 
parts of his complex legacy

ZOE PHILLIPS
Senior Arts Editor

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

The blood 
vessel in 

my left eye 
popped — I 

forgot to 

blink. 

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

