[NOTE: This is a revised version of a previous post.]

Some time ago I was taking a walk, listening on my iPod to some ballet music, and I suddenly wondered—for no particular reason—whether the Eliot Feld ballet “Intermezzo” might have finally made its way to YouTube.

During the 70s I had seen the ballet in person many many times, with the original cast. Certain passages from it are among the most beautiful choreography I’ve ever witnessed, casting an overwhelmingly romantic spell.

The Brahms music was no small part of it, but it was really the choreography that created the emotional effect of a bygone era of grace and lush romance. Three couples dance in a series of vignettes, sometimes all together and sometimes just spotlighting one of the couples. Their movements are marked by dramatic and inventive lifts that are never circus-y despite their breathtaking daring, while still managing to express the mood of an old-fashioned ballroom where couples court and smoldering feelings are kept in check by decorum.

I didn’t really think the ballet would be on YouTube—but when I checked, lo and behold, there it was, the entire thing (including a few parts that are comic, although for me they are very much overshadowed by the serious sections).

The picture is blurry and small. And the dancers are not the original dancers (this version was recorded in 1985).

But there it was and there it remains, after all these years without it. And even though it’s somewhat like watching a gossamer, translucent, diminished ghost of the past, it’s still a very beautiful ghost that stirs up very beautiful memories, all the more precious because I didn’t think I would ever see it again in any form.

I will reproduce the full-length ballet here (in two parts) at the end of this post. But first please indulge me and let me talk a bit more about my memories.

Central to those memories is the extraordinary Christine Sarry from the original cast. Sarry didn’t look like any other dancer I’d ever seen, before or since. She was so small as to be almost midget-like, with a childish body and legs that were also short for a dancer. And she even had short hair, which is highly unusual for a ballet dancer even today and most assuredly was unusual back in those days.

But oh, what amazing attack she had, what speed and calm, what a way of timing her movements and giving them just the right emphasis, breath, and shape without ever being schmaltzy or overdone. Words cannot describe her—well, they don’t have to describe her, because I found a very small clip of her in a portion of a rehearsal, and then a tiny bit of a rehearsal-type performance in the ballet. In the rehearsal Sarry isn’t even dancing full-out. And in the rehearsal-type performance she is not in costume—no puffy romantic skirts to give the requisite light and cloudlike feel—but instead is garbed in leotards in a private rendition for potential backers in 1969, when the ballet was newly choreographed and hot off the press.

It’s easy to spot Sarry—she’s the tiny one with the short hair. This is nowhere near as lovely as a real performance by her. And it doesn’t feature any of the speed for which she was known, and which was fully showcased in other sections of “Intermezzo.” But I still think it conveys some of the special quality of her movement, which Feld exploited by inserting many quick changes of direction where the dancer’s impetus leads one way and then suddenly (and gracefully rather than jarringly) reverses and goes the other way. I’ve cued it up to show a brief part of the rehearsal, and then there’s a small part of the performance. At the end of the rehearsal and before the section with a bit of the performance, the bald man talking to Feld is the great British choreographer Anthony Tudor. If you listen closely, you’ll hear that he is praising Sarry:

Today, Sarry is still affiliated with Feld, although she once called him, “The most difficult person I’ve ever worked with.”

And here is most of the full-length ballet, in costume with the later cast from 1985. The fast parts were Sarry’s, and as I watch this I can see her in my mind’s eye—with her lightening speed, sharp-yet-smooth emphasis, and exquisite phrasing. But these dancers are pretty darn good, so enjoy: