Your Humble Blogger cannot sing or dance. Well, I can, and I frequently do, but the results are painful for those around me. Sometimes literally. The singing and dancing is not my forte.
It’s an odd thing, then, to be learning dance choreography again. In Rough Crossing, there was a final Big Dance Number that was deliberately cheesy enough that the audience could be amused by the non-dancers amongst us as well as the dancers. Nobody thought the dancing was good, but it amusingly (I hope) indicated Big Dance Number, which was the point, and that was sufficient.
This time, a key scene takes place in Windermere House (in St. James’, I believe) while a dance is being held in honor of the titular character. The action takes place in the drawing room; Oscar Wilde did not indicate that we see any dancing whatsoever. On the other hand, people like dancing. I would be surprised if there wasn’t a producer or director in 1893 that wanted to stop everything and have a big lovely popular dance. Our group isn’t doing that (and I mock it, but seriously, audiences like dances) but we will be peeking in to the ballroom by means of a scrim. We will project Society in silhouette. This means that we supporting cast will be required to waltz (Ha! Ha! My waltzing has been declared a weapon of mass destruction by the UN High Commission on Nasty Bruises) and we will be carrying out a couple of quadrilles.
Quadrilles would have been a touch old-fashioned, I’m thinking, by 1893, but then Lady Windermere is plausibly setting herself up to be deliberately old-fashioned. And the quadrille in silhouette will be lovely. On the other hand, we will be in a very tight space, and very close to a light, in very warm clothing—I’m thinking it will be like the Black Hole of Calcutta in the Up Left corner. On the other hand, the men’s part of the set involves standing still for twenty-four out of the thirty-two bars, or if we include the entire dance, 80 out of 136. Not too strenuous.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.