Gavotte Quotes

Later, with strange galaxies turning in slow gavotte overhead, neither thought the act of love had ever been so sweet, so full

The pageant of the river bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded itself in stately procession. Purple loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant locks along the edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sunset-cloud was not slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last one morning the diffident and delaying dog-rose stepped delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if string music has announced it in stately chords that strayed into a gavotte, that June at last was here. One member of the company was still awaited; the shepherd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the ladies waited at the window, the prince that was to kiss the sleeping summer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet, debonair and odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to his place in the group, then the play was ready to begin.

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.' Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance... 'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.' But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave.

So, what, are you going to be the village himbo, now?" "Himbo?" Gavotte repeated, confused. "What's himbo?

The pageant of the river bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded each other in stately procession. Purple loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sunset cloud, was not slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last one morning the diffident and delaying dog-rose stepped delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if string-music had announced it in stately chords that strayed into a gavotte, that June at last was here.

Nesta is a wolf who has been locked in a cage her whole life. 'I know,' Cassian said. She was a wolf who had never learned how to be a wolf, thanks to that cage humans called propriety and society. And like any maltreated animal, she bit anyone who came near. Good thing he liked being bitten. Good thing he savoured the bruises and scratches she left on his body every night, and that her unleashing when he was buried in her made him want to answer with his own. Elain leaned forward. 'You only think you know- you haven't seen her on the dance floor. That's when Nesta truly lets the wolf roam free. When there's music.' 'Really?' Nesta had told him once, when he'd dragged her out of a particular seedy tavern, that she'd been there for the music. He'd ignored her, thinking it an excuse. 'Yes,' Elain said. 'She was trained in dance from a very young age. She loves it, and music. Not in the way I enjoy a waltz or a gavotte, but in the way that performers make an art of it. Nesta could bring an entire ballroom to a halt when she danced with someone.

Do you ride?" The question was out of his mouth before he'd thought. She glanced at him, surprised by the comment coming out of nowhere, but then she nodded and looked ahead. "I love to ride. I don't get as much opportunity as I'd like what with being in London so much, but whenever I can manage it, I'll get on a horse." Her lips twitched and she glanced up at him. "Preferably one of Demon's." He grinned. "His are the best." "Do you have any?" He nodded. "One definite benefit of being connected to the family." "I love the exhilaration one gets when pounding along-I think that's what I enjoy the most." He blinked. Decided hard riding wasn't the best choice of conversational topics. At least not for him. Especially not with her. "What about dancing?" "I love to waltz. I even enjoy the older forms, the quadrilles and cotillions. They might be less fashionable now, but there's a certain...reined power in them, don't you think?" "Hmm." Where was an innocent topic when he needed one? "Have you ever danced the gavotte?" "Years ago." And he still remembered it. And of course the thought of dancing that particular measure with her, in full flight, instantly filled his mind.

This dance was the dance of death, and they danced it for George Buffins, that they might be as him. They danced it for the wretched of the earth, that they might witness their own wretchedness. They danced the dance of the outcasts for the outcasts who watched them, amid the louring trees, with a blizzard coming on. And, one by one, the outcast outlaws raised their heads to watch and all indeed broke out in laughter but it was a laughter without joy. It was the bitter laugh one gives when one sees there is no triumph over fate. When we saw those cheerless arabesques as of the damned, and heard that laughter of those trapped in the circles of hell, Liz and I held hands, for comfort. They danced the night into the clearing, and the outlaws welcomed it with cheers. They danced the perturbed spirit of their master, who came with a great wind and blew cold as death into the marrow of the bones. They danced the whirling apart of everything, the end of love, the end of hope; they danced tomorrows into yesterdays; they danced the exhaustion of the implacable present; they danced the deadly dance of the past perfect which fixes everything fast so it can’t move again; they danced the dance of Old Adam who destroys the world because we believe he lives forever. The outlaws entered into the spirit of the thing with a will. With ‘huzzahs’ and ‘bravos’, all sprang up and flung themselves into the wild gavotte, firing off their guns. The snow hurled wet, white sheets in our faces, and the wind took up the ghastly music of the old clowns and amplified it fit to drive you crazy. Then the snow blinded us and Samson picked us up one by one and slung us back in that shed and leaned up hard against the door, forcing it closed against the tempest with his mighty shoulders. Though bullets crashed into the walls and the wind came whistling through the knotholes and picked up burning embers from the fire, hurling them about until we thought we might burn to death in the middle of the snow and ice, the shed held firm. It rocked this way and that way and it seemed at any moment the roof might be snatched away, but this little group of us who, however incoherently, placed our faiths in reason, were not exposed to the worst of the storm. The Escapee, however, faced with this insurrection of militant pessimism, turned pale and wan and murmured to himself comforting phrases of Kropotkin, etc., as others might, in such straits, recite the rosary. When the storm passed, as pass it did, at last, the freshly fallen snow made all as new and put the camp fire out. Here, there was a shred of scarlet satin and, there, Grik’s little violin with the strings broken but, of the tents, shacks, muskets and cuirasses of the outlaws, the clowns and the clowns themselves, not one sight, as if all together had been blown off the face of the earth.

Albeniz—Malagneña 2. Bach—Gavotte and Musette in G minor 3. Bach—Gigue from the B-flat Partita 4. Bach—Two-Part Invention No. 8 5. Brahms—Intermezzo in C, Op. 119, No. 3 6. Brahms—Rhapsody in G minor 7. Chopin—Etude in C minor, Op. 25 8. Chopin—Mazurka in A minor, Op. 68, No. 2 9. Chopin—Waltz in E minor 10. Debussy—Clair de lune 11. Debussy—La Fille aux cneveux de lin 12. Debussy—Minstrels 13. Grieg—Nocturne in C, Op, 54, No. 4 14. Ibert—The Little White Donkey 15. Liszt—Consolation No.3 16. Mendelssohn—Scherzo in E minor 17. Navarro—Spanish Dance 18. Palmgren—May Night 19. Poulenc—Perpetual Motion 20. Schumann—Arabeshe 21. Schumann—Des Abends 22. Schumann—The Prophet Bird 23. Schumann—Warumf 24. Cyril Scott—Lotus, Land 25. Cyril Scott—False Caprice

The theme of music making the dancer dance turns up everywhere in Astaire’s work. It is his most fundamental creative impulse. Following this theme also helps connect Astaire to trends in popular music and jazz, highlighting his desire to meet the changing tastes of his audience. His comic partner dance with Marjorie Reynolds to the Irving Berlin song “I Can’t Tell a Lie” in Holiday Inn (1942) provides a revealing example. Performed in eighteenth-century costumes and wigs for a Washington’s birthday–themed floor show, the dance is built around abrupt musical shifts between the light classical sound of flute, strings, and harpsichord and four contrasting popular music styles played on the soundtrack by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, a popular dance band. Moderate swing, a bluesy trumpet shuffle, hot flag-waving swing, and the Conga take turns interrupting what would have been a graceful, if effete, gavotte. The script supervisor heard these contrasts on the set during filming to playback. In her notes, she used commonplace musical terms to describe the action: “going through routine to La Conga music, then music changing back and forth from minuet to jazz—cutting as he holds her hand and she whirls doing minuet.”13 Astaire and Reynolds play professional dancers who are expected to respond correctly and instantaneously to the musical cues being given by the band. In an era when variety was a hallmark of popular music, different dance rhythms and tempos cued different dances. Competency on the dance floor meant a working knowledge of different dance styles and the ability to match these moves to the shifting musical program of the bands that played in ballrooms large and small. The constant stylistic shifts in “I Can’t Tell a Lie” are all to the popular music point. The joke isn’t only that the classical-sounding music that matches the couple’s costumes keeps being interrupted by pop sounds; it’s that the interruptions reference real varieties of popular music heard everywhere outside the movie theaters where Holiday Inn first played to capacity audiences. The routine runs through a veritable catalog of popular dance music circa 1942. The brief bit of Conga was a particularly poignant joke at the time. A huge hit in the late 1930s, the Conga during the war became an invitation to controlled mayhem, a crazy release of energy in a time of crisis when the dance floor was an important place of escape. A regular feature at servicemen’s canteens, the Conga was an old novelty dance everybody knew, so its intrusion into “I Can’t Tell a Lie” can perhaps be imagined as something like hearing the mid-1990s hit “Macarena” after the 2001 terrorist attacks—old party music echoing from a less complicated time.14 If today we miss these finer points, in 1942 audiences—who flocked to this movie—certainly got them all. “I Can’t Tell a Lie” was funnier then, and for specifically musical reasons that had everything to do with the larger world of popular music and dance. As subsequent chapters will demonstrate, many such musical jokes or references can be recovered by listening to Astaire’s films in the context of the popular music marketplace.

She was going to clobber him with her sketchbook then dance a gavotte on his elegant, talented fingers while wearing her riding boots. “This

EUPHORIA   Holding her in my arms makes me feel young and makes me feel old. Here there is no question as to how strong our love is and always will be. Reaching for her face, both my hands now caress her above the eyes before drawing a single finger down the side of her face in close examination of her perfect beauty. She now takes each breath in congruence to my every touch. Holding her close to me I follow the main artery reaching up into her brain cavity, ever so gently grabbing a hold of her shape with each amalgamating crimp of my lip’s kiss. Her honeyed lips now overlap in a mesmerizing sequence of twists and turns defining all of nature within this gravitating romance. Beautifully naked in a sciatic squirm of innate belonging her igneous hourglass-like figure curls up against mine in a deliquescent manner formulating the equilibrium of our edifying.   She woos me with her altruism and her childlike glow. Gliding over the emollient ewer of her extricating kiss our hearts conjoin in this luminescent rectitude of irrepressible euphoria. Sketching down her solar plexus by my touch abreast we bask in the bounteous espy of everlasting jubilance. When we kiss it’s as if we are dancing in the serene existence of Mother Nature’s melody. Her slender arms and hands revolve around my face and shoulders with an enchanting gentleness like gracious fireflies gleaming against the starry dusk of a fervid fantasia. Intertwined within the gradient of our love’s desiderated gavotte her second nature becomes aware of herself in me–and I in her.

William Hamilton once referred to the 'gavotte of chromosomes' seen in the process of cell division and in sex. This is a good image - a courtly dance, tuned by evolution, of joining and separating. We can seen some of the same thing on a larger scale, in - to adopt Julian Huxley's phrase - 'the movement of individuality.' The process at this larger scale is not itself an adaptation, a to-and-fro tuned by evolutionary design. Instead it is the recurring upshot of masses of separate evolutionary events. But there is some of the same rhythm of sealing off and opening up, of consolidating and reaching out, in the dynamic linking organisms and Darwinian individuals.