was first. Almost impersonal in the relaxed contemplative movements, his manner indicated that Shiva himself deigned to appear.
Engrossed, Vida almost forgot to signal the curtain call, a slip which galvanized her into perfect cuing from then on. The response of the audience made her breathe easier. The dance of Ranna's maidens was greeted with indulgent applause by an audience settled into an evening of placid if not excited pleasure. The entrance at last of Lucy as a Hindu princess in the solo devised by Ranna drew a solid round of applause mingled with surprised chuckles and whispers.
They don't care what she does, it's her beauty and the peculiar childlike earnestness which enchants everyone, Vida thought, relieved that the first round of combat was over as Lucy bowed and exited to vociferous approval before Ranna's solo which was to end in the duet.
In the duet, which was the conclusion before the intermission, Ranna was unquestionably the one who made the dance and the demand for the encore. Lucy was too much of a ballet dancer to absorb Ranna's legato rhythms.
The intermission passed in hopeful tension, with the dancers' cheeks flushed and their eyes enlarged.
"I forgot to tell you," Lucy told Vida breathlessly, "Clem has asked us and the cast to come after the show."
The curtain rose on Ilona's number and Vida, watching the exactly performed group movement, wondered if there was something in the portentous solemnities that escaped her. I am on the side of all manifestations of modern art and experiment, she thought, but there is a difference between synthesis and synthetic. Ilona is an unnatural performer. A natural performer is unself-conscious. At home on the stage. Ilona is unsure of her meanings therefore resorts to physical distortion. She exaggerates a meaningless arbitrary pose, in aped art-moderne angles hoping to prove an indefinable subtlety and cow those terrified of being labeled Philistines which, as Vermillion said, is the worst possible insult nowadays.
After tittering and some outright laughter, at the end came a smattering of applause and from a contingent in the right balcony a volley of bravos. The reception, Vida thought uneasily, was what Ilona could say was that of any new art form. But to me, she concluded, it is pseudo, pre-Raphaelite vapors accented with modern angles and distempers.
