Nigel Forde

This poem is by a man who I don't think understood the communication of dance - understanding for the first time. Like a blind man having his eyes opened. It is a joy for me to see the miracle. Also I have the privilege of knowing both the poet (who, in a previous incarnation in this lifetime was a best man at a wedding where I was the bride) and the dancer - an unbroken friendship since we were eleven years old and we went to The Arts Educational School together. Rebecca went on to have a long and distinguished international career with The Ballet Rambert and other companies.

Rebecca Dancing

You unfold, oh, soft as snow,
A slow geometry like light
Inside a shell.

You move without adverbs, your every noun
Hull down on horizons of your own creation
Where nothing is, but all’s becoming.

I need help in this new universe
You’ve made; where hairsbreadth
Of finger tilts
And all the weighty freight of physics
Turns to miracle.

You move in the thought of colour.
Flecks of gold
Spin from your shoulders
And greens lean into darkness
As you turn. I have seen you kick
Vermilions from the air which you inhabit;
I have seen your special way with silver.

Then, hey adagio! Your body
Vanishes into what it is: alliteration,
Flesh made word;
Into random eternities which poise
For a second every second. You unmake me,
Like music.

I do the best I can,
Hopeless, despairing surrealist,
I run outside into real space, real time,
And build you a sunman.