Tchaikovsky’s Swans Dancing Through the Cosmic Curtain
by Noel Joshua Hadley
“A father’s love for his daughter is not blind.”
That happens to be a quote I whispered into my wife’s ear
near the end of Rivqah’s dance recital,
and I stand by it.
If I had to guess, the audience did not see the spiritual curtain lifted
on my three-year-old daughter during her entrée onto stage
with the other pink girls in leotard and leggings,
resembling a fluttering line of butterflies
rather than the swans Tchaikovsky
choreographed them to be.
The way she sautéed breathtakingly from the Torah to the Tanakh,
right on through the apocrypha to the four gospels
and the midrash’s of Paul, preforming a plié
into the book of Revelation
speaks for itself.
Sliding one foot behind the other in a chasing motion,
the chassé reminds us of Origen’s doctrine of apokatastasis.
Mainly, the ultimate restoration of all created souls
with death being the last defeated enemy.
Her use of the plié undoubtedly harkened to Docetism,
which is why, if the audience saw what I saw
then they too are contemplating if the Son of God
is simultaneously a baby, a boy, a handsome youth
and the tired old man he might have been
had Herod’s boys not nailed
his hands to the cross.
“Nor is a mother’s,” my wife responds,
offering little if any clues as to what she perceives in the dance.
Given the glow on a mother’s face, our little ballerina’s arabesque
likely provides added commentary to the eucharist.
Another ballerina takes a tumble, as does my daughter.
She falls precisely as she was intended to,
thereby proving the doctrine
of predestination.