Last night I got the urge to see a clip of the ballet “Dances at a Gathering,” which is on the short list of my favorite ballets of all time. It was choreographed by the musical theater and dance genius (that is not an exaggeration; more like an understatement) Jerome Robbins in 1969.

I saw it then with the original cast on which it was choreographed, and about five more times in the next few years, and I count each experience as peak. It was dance as radiance and transcendence. Set to a series of Chopin pieces for piano—a single piano accompaniment is somewhat cliched these days, but back then it was a revelation—the choreography was the near-perfect (perhaps the perfect) realization of the glorious music by Chopin. For me it was an hour that went all too fast.

Then at some point it left the NYCB repertoire—I saw it again with a subsequent cast, and it was not the same, but it was still great—and later a lot of the original dancers retired. Time marched on, and I noticed that it was rarely produced by other dance companies. But I remembered.

YouTube has no videos of the original. It doesn’t even have many videos of revivals, and for some reason most of them are from the Paris Opera Ballet. There is even a full-length version from POB, but it’s hard for me to watch because the images in my memories interfere, and the video is so inferior to what I remember that the contrast almost makes me weep, even though I suppose if you never saw the original you’d think the new one quite fine.

Here’s one of the very best excerpts by POB, of one of the very best portions of the ballet. I think if you watch it you will see what I mean about the merging of choreography and music in a seamless whole. My curmudgeonly and nitpicky observation, though, is that the original dancers did the bravura moves with such abandon, such wild recklessness and beauty, that they made the audience gasp with delight. No such animal here, although it’s still very lovely:

Thinking of “Dances at a Gathering” got me to thinking of one member of the original cast, Violette Verdy, who played the girl in green. No one has ever equaled her in the role, and I don’t see how anyone ever could. It was built on her quicksilver musicality, perfect phrasing, and infectious charm. I started searching to see if there were any new YouTube videos of her old clips, and suddenly noticed in the comments section of an old video of her the word “RIP.”

How odd, I thought; some misinformed person thinks she’s dead.

And then I saw the news that she had died on February 8, 2016. No!!!! I practically screamed, and put my head down in sorrow.

I knew Verdy was in her 80s, and I know people can’t live forever. But it’s sad to think that her shining, sparkling light is gone from the world.

There were obituaries and tributes; I’m not the only one who remembers. And fortunately, there are photos and videos of her talking. Watching and hearing her converse, even as an elderly person, was almost as enjoyable as watching her dance had been—she had that wonderful a quality of lightness and depth at the same time. Here is Verdy talking, just about two years ago, at 80:

In her memory I ask that you read a post I wrote about her last September, and that you watch the videos there. I don’t think you’ll be sorry. In it, I wrote about a certain video of another dancer doing one of the parts choreographed on Verdy and meant to showcase Verdy’s unique qualities:

…[A]s you watch the dance (which is only about two minutes long) it is as though you can see the ghost of Verdy’s movement peering through the choreography…

I said her shining, sparkling light is gone from the world. But it strikes me that it’s an odd but wonderful thing that her presence, the “ghost of Verdy’s movement,” still shines through in the choreography that was made on her. And the ghost of that extraordinary choreographer, Jerome Robbins (who died in 1998), can be seen there, too.

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?