3rd of November 2013.

The dovecote or dovecot? 

Or is someone keeping pigeons in an opera house?

Dear Guy,

After all the turmoil I created in my previous letter(s) about how your love for dance started I like to remind you that your first theatrical love was probably the opera.

I know that you think that the only similarity with your father is a physical one, with unmanageable hair as the principal component, but I can assure the other readers of this letter: "There is more!" It is not a secret that you would have preferred inherited rather a part of your mother's beauty than her sometimes insufferable personality traits. She hated opera as much as she disliked red cabbage and that says it all. With her, you discovered Edith Piaf, Juliette Greco, Salvatore Adamo and the Lecuona Cuban Boys; not the heroines of Puccini, Verdi or Wagner.

During one of your holiday stays at your godmother you brought her almost to distraction since you didn't want to go to bed until you've heard the last note of Verdi's Rigoletto. At that time, probably because they didn't make the link, nobody told you that your father had sung in the Royal Gent's Men's Choir, were Gent's stands for, from Gent!

At the age of fourteen, you first attended an opera performance in the Royal Opera House in Gent, chaperoned by one of your mother's few friends. As a revenge for mammy's indifference about your dad's decease it could count as statement. At that time you did not notice the dramatic inaccuracy of Rodolfo, one of the main characters in Puccini's " La bohème", singing about how cold Mimi's hands were - she's the other main character - addressing the audience from the front of the stage instead of her, standing at least ten meters behind him. Later you always referred to this preposterous situation in your own acting or when you where staging some performances. But then, during that very moment through the music you discovered how love should be expressed ...Love, according to Puccini and Guy! Something comes up to my mind while writing this; remember how, not so much later during an Eastern holiday's camp you gave your gloves to a much older girl (...), with icy hands. You decided to suffer instead of her, as your first personal weltschmerz (world-weariness) experience.

Not so sure anymore if it was at sixteen you decided to take a season subscription to the Opera House in Gent? Anyway during that period of fighting for your independence and rebellion against your mothers way of living you had that irresistible urge to compensate The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, the Black Sabbath's and Deep Purple's of the world with what you considered in that time something more consistent for your juvenile artistic and emotional needs. You chose a seat on the second balcony in a side box to see the stage, a part of the activities behind the stage drops, and a full overview of the orchestra. While I know, that now you are analyzing the light colors, the staging, the props use and the director's or choreographer's vision, in that time you were floating on an emotional bubble of Bel-Canto "beautiful singing" and, yes also, the alleged sensuality of the ballet.

Before the doors opened and during the intermissions you always observed the presence of two policemen walking around seemingly uninterested and looking bored. That reminded you of stories, which origin can't be determined anymore, but describing your dad, volunteering for this duty rather than walking the streets or doing desk work.  Once the performance started he left his colleague and took a place in what you consider the most sacred place of an opera house, now called disrespectfully "the listening seat balcony" but in ancient times was known as the dovecote or dovecot. It should be written with a capital D to indicate the difference with a "duivenkot" as the place where pigeon-fanciers are keeping their pigeons. I believe the opera visitors also called it "le Pigeonnier" obviously with a capital P.

One evening you decided to look up from your seat. During Mephisto's Golden Calf aria in Gounod's "Faust" your eyes diverted from the stage to the Dovecote and yes there he was, sitting on almost the last row, next to a wall opposite to your seat. You were wondering why his eyes were closed, he could not see the stage anyway. Probably it intensified his listening experience. You were disappointed, he was not looking at you, showing his approval that you inherited his love for opera music. Before the end of the aria his effigy disappeared and your eyes were fixing an empty seat. A waltz 'Ainsi que la brise légère' accentuated that sacred moment and the breeze of the dance took your thoughts as in a reverie.

From that day, before and after a performance, you saluted unnoticeably that seat. You always had the feeling he was there, watching over you. You were sad to leave the place for the summer closing, leaving him there alone while waiting to hear his music again, and when a new season started your excitement was intensified by the feeling that you will meet with the ol' man.

Guy, I think it's high time to buy a ticket. Someone is waiting for you to share a music lover's experience, and maybe more, with you in the Dovecote. Don't forget to comb your hair.

Yours,

Guy.

-

1st of September 2013.

Read in About  1st of September 2013:  Acknowledgments & research.

Song of a Wayfarer.

How a dance influenced forty two years of a lifetime.

Dear Guy,

You are seventeen now and we are at the end of an average summer. The train ride brings you back from the seaside to Gent. Seated opposed to the driving direction you see the coastline getting smaller till it disappears totally as if it was a delusion. You don't realize the scene is a metaphor for what is really going on; the farewell to your youth, wherein youth differs from innocence, a rare commodity you had renounced long ago.

Your thoughts are now behind that fading out border... The girl who washed the dishes in the brasserie was at least five years older. The words of Michel Delpech's  song "Pour un flirt", the latest summer hit, are scrambled with Mungo Jerry's "in the Summer time", the previous year's top chart. Your last coins ended in the juke box.  It all looks a bit like a road movie.

A few hours later you are in the Gent Opera House. It's not Maurice Béjart's  'Rite of Spring' that impresses you the most; John Neumeier's version,  a few weeks later will affect you a lot more, but what leaves you flabbergasted at least for weeks if not for months or years, is  that mind blowing dance between two of the best classical dancers at that moment, Nureyev and Bortoluzzi.

Even now, when asked,  I'm telling that this is the best dance I have ever seen in my life and "The two blue eyes of my darling", the last part of Mahler's 'Songs of a Wayfarer' are etched forever in my brains. 

At that time, you did not know why it affected you so much neither that it will take you years to find out. Apart from a highest level dance performance on both technical and emotional level it had all the ingredients of your personality that has developed your further life till what it is nowadays.    

May I remind you, for a good knowledge, the dance shows the two or more personalities of a human being. That dualism in each of us is expressed by two human bodies e.g. two dancers.

So this is you! Or is it me? It was and it is both of us. It is you at twelve p.m. and me twenty four hours later. It is you trying to express your doubts with my body; it is me writing with your voice. It is my despair against your hopes. It is my resignation as a counterbalance for your restlessness. It shows us,  taking care of the others while not capable to look for ourselves or let me rephrase, it is me wanting to protect my beloved ones but desperately in need for their concern. It is the power of knowledge confronted to the powerlessness to execute. Above all it is the need to express the paradoxes within ourselves and trying to understand the struggle of the individual confronted with his environment. It is me against the 'hostile'-world. It was you thinking the year Two Thousand was ages away while now it is far behind me. It is again me, facing unfinished business before quitting for a final destination.  It is the eternal nomad wandering in our fantasies, now and then, uneasily troubled.

You see, Guy, I didn't betray you till now and that will never happen as this is the essence of my existence.

Guy, I do not know if you feel uncomfortable now, as I feel a bit guilty about this confrontation of your future and my past. If so, I apologize for harassing you with something that once will be described as my life. As a reader of this you should know that probably tomorrow I will feel uneasy but the wayfarer in me will continue to wander packed with my acts and feelings till Terpsichore comes to invite me for the last dance.

Eternally yours,

Guy.

-

15th of August, 2013.

Dedicated to my Latin American Friends.

Dear Guy,

Maybe you are wondering why I never told you how I came to 'Dance'.

Probably I didn't because it's a long story that started in January 1963 when a famous Latin American orchestra was performing in my native city, Gent. The venue was a music hall in the centre of the city, and its interior is hidden since forty-five years behind cardboard walls of a drugstore.

The orchestra was playing there for somewhat eight weeks till carnival time. During one of those carnival shows I ended upon the stage between the singer Enrique Fontana and the dancer Nadia Crystal. I could only find Fontana in The Search Engine, but I can assure you, all of a sudden the posters of Sylvie Vartan decorating the walls of my bedroom were fading away, Nadia existed and how!

Came the sensation! The feathered, follies lookalike, dancer started to rub her feathers in front of my face and between the wipes, being on the right height, I was admiring for the first time in my life the curvy bum of an adult woman. Are these the words we were using in those years, tell me?

This was the day I originated some interest in dance, being it for the wrong reasons. Guy, be reassured, I got more noble thoughts later but some germ was sown.

As for the orchestra I can tell you this, it was founded by and named after the legendary Ernesto Lecuona, the composer and pianist of e.g. "Malagueña". Tidbit... I will create my new solo dance on it. All the best soloists from Latin America where part of the 'Lecuona Cuban Boys' orchestra and if I got the privilege to see all their shows it's because my absolutely crazy mum fell in love with the trumpet player, Saul Torres from Venezuela. A while ago, when I was at the pre carnival party at the Gaira Cafe in Bogota, despite Nadia's absence but largely compensated by some neighboring señoras, chicas sounds not very respectful in this case, I felt the same excitement as fifty years ago. Fontana became Vives, and the most fantastic conga players reminded me the Peruvian, Alberto Cortez, the best of his generation.  To finish this roundup of that bunch of best of Latin America's musicians I end with the man who's a monument in Afro Latin Cuban and Jazz music, Bebo Valdés. My whole life I will remember that tall black man, bandleader at that time,  seriously laughing, sitting at his piano and showing his appreciation for the solo performances by other musicians by clapping the thumbs instead of the hands.

Dear Guy, I hope I was not browbeating you too much with this enumeration of names and facts. I only wanted to remind you where your love for Latin America was originated and the first seeds of your passion for dance. I didn't want to go into details how your mother's love story ended. We both know that Micky, as she was called by her past and future lovers, forgot soon about one trumpeter for another.

'Someone', named you once ' hopelessly monogamous'.  You have taught yourself faithfulness and loyalty in absence of a model. We'll talk about Someone later.

After all this turmoil; for now, allow yourself a peaceful sleep.

Faithfully yours,

Guy.

P.S.

As in every important letter, a P.S. can't be missed, but it's a sad one I have to write. In my research for this letter it came to my knowledge that Bebo Valdés died in Stockholm, Sweden on March 22, 2013. He became almost ninety five years old.

http://youtu.be/Y4z1avxgJfY

No, the dancer on the cover of the record is not Nadia Crystal.

-

24th of April 1966.

Dear Guy,

I am now two weeks before my twelfth birthday and yesterday when I came home from the boarding school a strange event or shall we call it an incident took place.

It was sunny and warm for the time of the year and I was sweating a bit, not unusual at the beginning of your adolescence I would say, while waiting for the bus.

I don't remember if I was using my key, I don't even remember if I had a key of the house, or if my mother came down the stairs to open; did I ring?  Maybe she threw the key holder from the window upon the staircase.  I remember walking up to the living room situated above the garage. I was still sweating.

What I also remember, this because of the returning action that takes place every week, is the embarrassing embrace with my mum, an act that breathes something erotic, but again on the verge of adolescence, corporality gets a different significance.

I'm not sure but I could notice a degree of nervousness with my mother but after forty seven years this can be a late interpretation of a convulsive movement.

After exchanging the usual trifle she announced on a fake key tone that she had something important to tell me. Faster than the announcement I was told my father died and meanwhile buried. It was clear that the time between the two events must have been as short as the speed the words were pronounced.

Silence.

Not sure if my later love for opera finds its origin in that moment yesterday.

Certain is that when I was attending a few years later some opera performances I was enjoying the dying heroes' long aria before the slow curtain drop.

The next phrase, or was it a mixture of words in a random order, sounded something like (There is) bread (and) spreads ... kitchen cupboard...

Well, Guy, it was yesterday two weeks before my twelfth birthday, on the edge of my adolescence and the sweat suddenly was ice-cold.

I wish I could remember if the spread was sweet or bitter but I know the knife moves were filled with hate.

Yours,

Guy.