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A nose for nuance.

Article Excerpt
The critic Kenneth Tynan had a party game. "Who are you?" you asked some guest. After the response you asked: "And after that, who are you?" Another reply, then: "After that, who are you?" It was the undressing of an onion, a shot at reality beyond polite artifice. First the prison would offer the banal curriculum vitae of his or her life so far. Next perhaps something more personal. Finally--at least if the questioner got lucky, or the questioned got flustered--some actual statement of belief. Some secrets are hidden even from yourself.

I wonder how Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, born in St. Petersburg, January 22, 1904, died New York, April 30, 1983, would have described himself. What would he have told us, what would he have hidden? Was he--although I suppose we are all a bit of both--a man of self-knowledge or of self-deception? The facts are easy enough: training in Russia, choice between dance and music, influence of Lopukhov and Goleizovsky, exit to the West, choreographer for Diaghilev in his final years, a period of cheerful indecision, Denmark. London, Paris, a school in New Haven, a series of false starts and temporary exiles, then finally history. It obviously didn't seem like history at the time, but...

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