Carabas

A young woman stands downstage center, facing the audience; she never turns around. She's performing a simple, faltering version of the whirling, intricate dance going on behind her - contemporary ballet, the entire troupe on stage behind her. Everyone is in black and silver and painfully beautiful. This is her dream we're seeing play out behind her, her ideal. But the music is melancholy, nostalgic even - it's a waltz in a minor key, reminds me of Dvorak. Starts with just a music-box-like piano, but the music swells as the dancers behind her become the focus, all strings. I get swept up in the overwhelming sound of it and the movement of the dancers, until in the end it gradually fades away again to those music-box-like piano notes. A woman's voice from offstage calls to her to come to bed, the sun has risen. I focus on her profile as she turns to look offstage, towards that voice; when I look behind her again, the dancers have vanished. She leaves the stage.

England in the 1940s or so, I'm disembodied and watching a man and a woman singing a duet in a garden. Both of them are thinking about a man named Dyson. They were friends when they were younger, but he left the country years ago and they haven't heard from him since; in their memories, he's a sort of ideal. I'm thinking how disappointed they would be if they were to see him now.

When their song's over, they talk with the people who'd been listening. The woman who'd been singing is speaking to a particular man, very wealthy, and hinting that she's expecting him to invite her along to a particular event. But although they clearly have some kind of history, he finds this suggestion laughable - he hardly even thinks of her as a woman. I'm surprised, since I'd just been thinking about how beautiful she is - the dream image had zoomed in on her profile as she was talking to him, and I'd been admiring the curve of her nose, the softness of her hair. Very beautiful. But the man walks off with most of the others - they're heading back toward the house. The man she'd been singing with comes up to her and says he saw her talking to that wealthy guy, and how they seem to get along well. She says, "Sure do."

My POV turns around, not following them - I'm focusing on the opposite direction. On a hill overlooking the garden, there's a man who'd been hiding among the trees and bushes, watching them. This is Dyson.