Nicolo Fonte’s ‘Beautiful Decay’
Mark Golebiowski
Aspen, a popular winter destination for skiers and snowboarders alike, is also home to an equally distinguished contemporary ballet company, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (ASFB). Under the directorship of Tom Mossbrucker, ASFB is comprised of uniquely eclectic and versatile artists.
This past February 28th and 29th, the company performed Nicolo Fonte’s, Beautiful Decay, which originally premiered in 2013 on BalletX in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I remember hearing about this premier, and ever since have eagerly sought the opportunity to see this ballet. The six and half hour drive from my home in Salt Lake City was well worth the effort to see this piece performed live. Nicolo’s choreography so beautifully encourages the audience to pause and take notice of life, and it’s inherent beautiful decay.
I had the great privilege of speaking with Nicolo before watching the performance by ASFB, since we had worked together during my time as a dancer with Ballet West. I was fascinated to learn that the original inspiration for this ballet, which had significantly impacted audience members in Philadelphia at it’s premier, was a photography exhibit of nearly dead flowers.
In his own words, “When beginning the process of imaging this work, I kept thinking back to the feelings I experienced when looking at Mark Golebiowski’s series of 3-D photographs of nearly dead, but still very vibrant exotic flowers. These flowers were so full of movement, and retained such a potent identity- even as sense of self- that the beauty evident in the decay was to me both noble and touching. It seemed to me that the photos created an entirely new perspective on something we don’t always take the time to notice- and that intrigued me.
Beautiful Decay was a process of discovery as I tried to tease out the same kind of feelings I experienced when I first saw Golebiowski’s photographs. The simple juxtaposition of pairing physically vigorous and experientially young dancers with the timeworn and hard-earned brilliance of elder dancers instantly created a compelling and irresistible dynamic for me to tap into. As we pass through the seasons of our lives and move from vigor to (hopefully) sagacity, we will come, if we are lucky, to an ever- greater understanding of our inherent and unique beauty.”
Nicolo uses the inspiration of the decaying flowers in the photography exhibit to remind us of our own connections with nature. The flowers being representative of the death we as humans will all eventually face. Nicolo further connects us with nature by paralleling the phases of human life with the seasons of the year. In our conversation, Nicolo indicated that we as a society reject this very natural process of life, and instead have a very youth obsessed culture. He asserts that there is beauty to be found in the natural aging process, just as there is beauty in each and every season in nature.
I am reminded of the words of Frank Ostaseski, founder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, and author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, “Each moment is born and dies. And in a very real way, we are born and die with it. There is beauty to all this impermanence. In Japan, people celebrate the brief but abundant blooming of the cherry blossoms each spring. In Idaho, outside the cabin where I teach blue flax flowers live for a single day. Why do such flowers appear so much more magnificent than plastic ones? The fragility, the brevity, and the uncertainty of their lives captivates us, invites us into beauty, wonder, and gratitude.”
This theme of connection with nature, and life being tied to the seasons, is further demonstrated in Nicolo’s choice of music. For Act 1 Nicolo uses Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played on original baroque instruments, and reserves Icelandic artist, Ólafur Arnold’s album For Now I am Winter in Act 2. In Act 1, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the dancers’ movements oscillate to depict these seasonal phases of our lives. “We will all go through a spring, summer, fall and winter - whether we like it or not.” - Nicolo Fonte. As a retired dancer, the vibrant and expansive movement in Act 1 especially invoked my personal memories of dancing Nicolo’s choreography. His movement choices, which require human bodies to explore their extremes, always felt challenging, but also deeply satisfying. My own body began to stir with excitement as the memory of Nicolo’s choreography came back to life. And as I watched, I was astounded at the dancer’s range of athleticism; especially the extreme flexibility and fluidity of the male dancers in the company.
For all of Act 1, the company dancers move rapidly and continuously from stage left, to stage right, portraying the urgency of youth. Impulsive, and always charging forward. Nicolo draws attention to this sense of urgency as if to ask the audience, ‘What is our hurry’? His choreography indicates that we are all heading in the same direction, we cannot reverse time.
Nicolo incorporates two dancers in their seventies for the cast of Beautiful Decay. Their presence on stage is powerful. Through the first Act, I sense that they’re watching on as if in remembrance.
A section with the company women begins as they simply stand, gazing at the audience perhaps with the brash confidence of youth. They seem to gaze adoringly as if looking at their own youthful reflections in a mirror. Throughout the first act dancers couple up, and then break apart, to go on and dance with different partners, perhaps reflecting the impermanence life’s early relationships. Act 1 concludes with the elder dancers taking center stage and creating movement that the younger company dancer’s then begin to mimic.
Nicolo’s choreography encourages us to notice the wisdom that comes with the passage of time, as well as the value of slower deliberate movement. Younger generations have much to learn from the elder generations, but this requires taking time to slow down and pay attention.
In Act 2, Nicolo adds more layers and depth to the ballet as the atmosphere suggests the winter season of life. In nature, winter is a time of extended darkness, a time for going inward, for hibernation, and to rest and withdraw. Nicolo portrays the younger generations’ intense resistance to accepting the passage of time and aging. Instead of the constant movement from stage left to right, the company dancers begin to look back, perhaps finally noticing that time is passing. They seem to want to break free from this inevitable decay.
In one section, a woman runs towards the audience grasping for something out of reach, perhaps symbolizing this attempt to hold on and cling to life which is always changing, and where time is always passing. I also sense a longing to escape and break free. She is pulled back by a group of men, who are wearing black suits. I wonder if this also represent the constraints of modern working life. Nicolo portrays so well the grace and wisdom of age in the elder dancers, but also the frustration of accepting aging in the younger dancers.
As I watch this choreography, I feel the tension, the angst and frustration we may experience with this natural process. But the presence of the elder and wiser dancers shows us that there is beauty in decay, in acceptance, and in the Winter season of our lives.
This winter stage of life intensifies through the music of Icelandic artist, Ólafur Arnalds’s album For Now I am Winter. Ólafur describes the inspiration behind the title track, For Now I am Winter, “It is inspired by the dilemma of not really believing in an after life, but still wanting to believe that things are not just lost into oblivion. At the same time, it inspires you to do as well as you possibly can as a human being, while you have the time to do so. So the song is kind of a realization and understatement in the album that we don’t really know what’s going to happen, but something is going to happen and we accept it.”
I am also reminded of photography critic for The New York Times and Harvard Professor and writer, Teju Cole, whose biography is simply the Inuit word, “qarrtsiluni,” which means “sitting together in the dark, waiting for something to happen.” It seems that Teju Cole, similar to Icelandic artist Ólafur, finds meaning and value in darkness. These cultures which exist more intimately with darkness appreciate the beauty of this quieter winter season. Cole’s favorite poet is the Swedish poet Tomas Transfrömer. Cole says that Transfrömer, “seemed to have unusual access to this membrane between this world and some other world. Transfrömer, in his poetry, keeps slipping into that space. In any case, I just found his work precisely the kind of thing I wanted to read in the silence of the middle of the night and feel myself escaping my body in a way that I become pure spirit, in a way. So I’m attracted, in all the arts, to those places where something has been quietened, where concentration has been established. I think one of the greatest artistic questions for any practitioner of art is, how do you help other people concentrate in a moment?”
Nicolo understands how to make people concentrate in a moment. Throughout Beautiful Decay he engagingly depicts the delicate fragility of human life and also the importance of slowing down, and making time for reflection. The winter season allows time for concentration and deeper insight, but is also a place of complex emotions: fear, loneliness, and a sense of isolation. There is the acknowledgment of these darker places, and value in accepting their existence as they are also what also give our lives meaning.
Throughout the ballet, the dancers find their way to a seated position and slowly tip backwards, reaching the crown of their heads backwards as if falling. These moments suggest we are all falling victim to time and we do not see where we are headed. The dancer’s gaze is up to the sky, maybe intentionally on Nicolo’s part, to show we have to look up and fall with a sense of trust, and surrender. I also like to think there is a sense hope in this fall and surrender. As the curtain closes, the dancers are coupled, and gently holding one another. Despite the darkness of winter, there is warmth in another’s embrace.
Perhaps this is the only consolation in our experience of the passage of time and seasons: the comfort of a shared experience. While the performances are impermanent, the ballet itself is timeless. And an important commentary and reflection on the path we will all take toward our own beautiful decay.
References:
Nicolo Fonte Interview
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet Beautiful Decay performance program
The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski
On Being with Krista Tippett - Interview with Teju Cole: Sitting Together in the Dark
Photos of BalletX by Alexander Iziliaev