For the Record

 

“I was asked to demonstrate the step,” said England’s Wayne Sleep, 25, a soloist with the Royal Ballet and specialist in the entrechat…. “Then the producer said how about breaking the record? So I did.” …Sleep’s acrobatics on a London TV program stunned balletomanes all over the world; he became the first person in recorded history to cross and uncross his legs five times in a single leap. The feat is known as an entrechat douze for its twelve movements: the leap, five crossings, five crossings and the landing. Not only was Sleep’s feat unprecedented, but only Russia’s late, great Vaslav Nijinski had ever been credited with an entrechat dix. Newsweek.

 

A dreamlike leap

By England’s Sleep!

He didn’t doze,

He did a douze.

His legs arose

In curlicues.

 

He shrugged, “O.K., I’ll make a run,”

And then went heavenward (that’s one),

And five times crossed, and uncrossed five,

And then returned to earth alive.

 

And on TV, no less. Voilà !

Sleeps’s the king of entrechat.

 

Nijinsky, may he rest in peace-

Would that he were above the ground!

Nijinsky settled for but dix

Movements in a single bound.

 

A joy forever. He will last.

And yet…his mark has been surpassed.

Will Chaplin, too, be cast in doubt?

Will someone edge Caruso out?

 

But look! As consternation reigns

Among the world’s balletomanes,

We see Nijinsky rise again.

His spirit jumps into our ken:

 

He climbs, descends, meanwhile with ease

Weaving patterns with his knees,

And stops just off the ground, and says,

To open with some humor, “Treize.”

 

And now he’s serious; now he soars

Sufficiently to cry “Quatorze!”

And now, although he starts to pant,

Up he goes-he’s done a vingt!

 

And now he’s really going good.

Nijinsky, folks, has just vingt-deux’d.

We sense he could go on to cent-deux

But evidently doesn’t want to.

 

For now, with one great closing spring.

He goes through untold scissoring

And disappears-a quantum leap-

And leaves the blinking world to Sleep.

 

Roy Blount Jr.