[NOTE: I was going to put up a bunch of smaller posts, after my post earlier today on Iran. But the news of a possible deal – and the nervousness about its terms and whether they will amount to a concession to the Iranian regime – has unnerved me. So far I’ve thought Trump won’t cave, but it’s not as though I have some sort of certainty on that, because he’s a mercurial character who has always been in love with the deal. So I’m extremely nervous about this, although I’m waiting to see the details. I figure I”ll be updating later tonight or tomorrow.

In the meantime, I think I’m just going to post something that has nothing to do with politics, and then go take a walk.]

Walk like an Egyptian and run like a ballerina:

The greatest practitioner of the ballet run was Galina Ulanova, whose ballet heyday with the Kirov and then the Bolshoi was during the 1940s and 1950s. She was the child of two ballet dancers and felt she never had a choice about ballet, but she certainly made the best of it. She was unique as a dancer and as an actress, earning praise such as these statements:

Sergei Eisenstein: “Ulanova — cannot be grouped together with, compared to other dancers. In terms of what is most cherished, By the very nature of her secret…She belongs to a different dimension.” …

Margot Fonteyn: “I cannot even begin to talk about Ulanova’s dancing, it is so marvelous, I am left speechless. It is magic. Now we know what we lack.”

But it is this comment by dance critic Arnold Haskell with which I most agree:

My memories of Ulanova are, to me, a part of life itself, bringing a total enrichment of experience. To me, hers are not theatrical miracles but triumphs of human spirit. Where Pavlova was supremely conscious of her audience and could play upon its emotions as upon an instrument, Ulanova is remote in a world of her own, which we are privileged to penetrate. She is so completely identified with the character she impersonates that nothing outside exists.

But it’s running we’re talking about here. Ulanova originated the role of Juliet in the Prokofiev ballet, and it featured this famous run. Here Ulanova is running to Friar Lawrence’s cell in desperation. I believe she’s in her forties in this clip: