The Lost Ballet

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 21 – The Whosey Replies

  Sunday evening at 9pm the Junes were in bed with glasses of port, watching a movie starring George Clooney and Renee Zellweger. Roger had claimed half a dozen times that Zellweger’s performance was Oscar material, and that as an actress, she was the heir to such stars as Katherine Hepburn and Emma Thompson. Gwen was waiting to see what all the hubbub was about, though she had to admit, secretly, that Roger had good taste in women. It didn’t hurt her sense of anticipation any that she would have to struggle with watching Clooney.

  Usually Roger turned his cell phone off after dinner, enjoying the peace and quiet of home, alone with his wife, dog, and cats. It was one of his favorite social activities. But today, something told him sub-consciously to leave it on. Momentarily, he was pissed when it rang, right in the middle of the great scene in the hotel lobby, when Clooney is trying to pick up Zellweger using a witty repartee. Everything he says, which is pretty good, she tops, sticking it back in his face, rebuffing his advances. Roger loved this scene. It was great enough that once he’d had thoughts of leaving his wife, getting in the Jag, driving to Hollywood, and trying to peep into Zellweger’s living room window.

  “Hello,” he said, into the stupid phone.

  “Hallo, Pete ‘ere, from England. What you blokes got going on there in Charleston, USA? Isn’t Charleston where you lot started your civil war, and called it an unpleasantness? Never been to Charleston. Anyway, read your ad in The Times. What you saying ‘bout Paul and me? What’s this ‘bout ballet? Paul did the New York thing six months ago. I’ve listened to the music, but not seen the dancing. Music’s nice. I love old Paul. What’s this ‘bout me inviting him to a Charleston ballet performance? Eh? You there?”

  Roger managed to find the pause button on the TV remote. He wasn’t going to miss any of Zellweger’s dialogue with Clooney; not for a phone call, even from Pete Townshend. He held his hand over the phone, said to Gwen, “The Whosey.” Then he hit the speaker button on the phone so she could hear. The pause button on the remote had frozen a close-up of Zellweger. Perfect. “I’m here, Pete. We’re here, me and my wife, Gwen. I’m Roger. We’re the Junes. Thanks for calling. It’s late over there, isn’t it?”

  “Late? It’s 2am. I’m getting old, but not dead yet. Haven’t been to bed before 2 since I was a nipper, fifteen years old.”

  “Oh, well, anyway, glad you gave a buzz. Thanks very much. How’s the weather over there? Foggy? Cold? Not here in sunny Charleston. Great here. Going to be great here for months to come. No fog. Still have a synthesizer, do you? Still playing music, are you? Still get around ok, are you?” He paused, then said, “Pete, do you know Renee Zellweger, the actress? She’s got great style and presence. Love her in that movie with Clooney. They’re like Hepburn and Grant.”

  Gwen grabbed the phone away from her babbling husband. “Pete. Gwen June here. We have a proposition for you. That’s what the ad was about.”

  “You paid 50,000 pounds just so I’d ring you up? Nice to feel wanted in Charleston. Guess I’d better hear this proposition. Gwenny?”

  “Yes, Pete.”

  “That’s a lovely accent you’ve got there. I’ve always liked the American southern accent. On women, that is. Not so much on the blokes. Keep talking, Gwenny.”

  “We know you’re friends with Paul McCartney. We saw you playing together on the two 911 concerts in New York. We know he composed the score for the New York City Ballet production of Oceans Kingdom.” Now Gwen paused, but not just to look at George Clooney on the TV, the way Roger had, at Zellweger. She paused for effect. “Pete, we have something going on here in Charleston. Something special. A world-class artistic event, involving music. We thought you might find it interesting. It’s kind of like a competition. With Paul. A music composition and performance competition.”

  “I’m listening, Gwenny. Keep those southern sounds coming.”

  “You know Stravinsky, Pete? The Russian guy.”

  “Old Igor. I know his stuff. Some of it was pretty wild, for his time.”

  “We have a Stravinsky piece. A score for ballet. No one other than us has ever seen it. It’s a lost score, Pete. A hundred years old. And we’ve got it. We’re going to produce the ballet. A world premiere, here in Charleston. It’s funded, Pete. Very well funded. We want this to be a great artistic event, and we have an unusual idea for the music. Not only Stravinsky’s music, but something else, too.”

  “What else, Gwenny?”

  “Well, umm, how to put it? Umm, can you imagine a newspaper headline of, ‘Townshend Plays Lost Stravinsky Score’? Can you could see that in print, Pete. Or maybe ‘Townshend Outshines McCartney in Ballet Production’. Or ‘Townshend Plays Stravinsky World Premiere’. Like in big ads in the arts section of The Times of London. Or The New York Times. Or in Le Monde. Can you see those ads, Pete? I bet Paul can see them.”

  “Keep talking, Gwen. I can almost see them, just as you say. Big ads. Always liked old Igor’s stuff. You gonna have good ballerinas? With long legs?”

  “We’re going to have the best ballerinas, Pete. You ever worked with world-class ballerinas?

  “Haven’t Gwenny. But doing new things is a good way to stay young. Paul seemed to think it was a good thing to get involved in. Ballet, huh? Ballet. Music and the dance. What’s Igor’s score like? What’s the music like? Can you send me a CD?”

  “Pete, understand this. It’s a lost score. He wrote the music in Russia in 1914. He got called back to Switzerland, unexpectedly, because his wife was sick. He left the score in the desk where he was working, and never went back to Russia to get it. We just found the score, hidden in a secret compartment of that desk. Here in Charleston. No one has seen that music since he finished it way back then. It’s never been performed. He wrote it right after his great, world famous composition, Rite of Spring. We don’t know what the music sounds like. No one does. We need someone to figure that out, and play it.”

  “But Stravinsky was a classical orchestral composer. I’m a rock n roller. Where’s the match?”

  “Pete. It would be a great challenge, wouldn’t it? Ballet. You’ve done opera. There’s the match. You can do big pieces, where the songs are linked by themes. Opera tells a story. Ballet tells a story, too, through the music and the choreography. Huge challenge. Incredible opportunity for whoever can figure out the score, and make it work for a world-class production.”

  “Gwenny, are you really married?”

  “I am, Pete. Roger is here next to me, in bed. He’s the guy who answered the phone, started raving about Renee Zellweger.”

  “No offense, Rog. You guys aware that I’ve worked with a guy named Roger before?”

  “We’re aware, Pete. We love his singing.”

  “Roger, do you like Gwenny’s voice as much as I do? That southern thing is so, so….seductive. You don’t mind me saying that, do you, Rog?”

  “I don’t mind. I’ve been around that voice a long time. I still love it, though I guess I’m used to it. She’s seductive in other ways, too, Pete. Wait till you see her.”

  Gwen said, “Can we get back to ballet? Pete, do you see what would happen if you got involved in this? You’d be competing with McCartney. He did the music in New York, something new for him. Now, you’d be doing the music, here, in a Stravinsky production. A friendly competition, on the world stage.”

  “I’m getting interested, the way you put it. What else?”

  “There are two main forms of ballet. Classical and modern. Our production is going to be a modern production. Stravinsky wrote the music for a small orchestra. We know that much. We could produce the music that way, and have classical dancers, doing classical choreography. Or, we can do the music differently. And that is what we’re thinking.”

  Townshend said, “How would the music be different?”

&n
bsp; “It would be all you, Pete. You on the synthesizer. You would transcribe the score from orchestra to synthesizer. You would play all the parts, all the instruments. You would BE the music. Just like you did thirty-five years ago with Quadrophenia. A one man orchestra, playing music by one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers, with the world’s greatest dancers moving to it on stage. Vision it, Pete. Vision it.”

  “And McCartney would be there, watching. Is that the plan?”

  “Umm, Pete, we don’t actually know him. That would be your job, to get him here. You’d have to play the friendly competition thing with him.”

  “What’s the schedule for this thing, Gwenny? I got stuff going on.”

  “Less than a year. The premiere, eleven months from now. But, you would have to get going on the music right away. Come here soon and figure out the music, so we can keep going with the choreography. Can you do that?”

  “Not sure about that, Gwenny. Like I say, I got some commitments, a contract or two, involves money.”

  “Pete. Remember me saying the production is funded? Well-funded.”

  “Yes, I do. That’s the sort of thing that catches my attention. I remember.”

  “We know your time is valuable, and we want to pay you a fee. That’s part of our budget. But, Pete, on our end, we have to get going on this. So the fee is for a quick start. I hope that sounds fair to you.”

  “That fairness thing, which would be connected to the amount of the fee. What might that fee be, Gwenny?”

  Gwen took a deep breath, said, “The fee we had in mind is five million.”

  There was a pause on the London end of the line. Then, “Would that be dollars, or pounds, Gwenny?”

  “That would be dollars.”

  “A fee of five million pounds would be more than fair, Gwenny. More than fair. Would be very, very fair.”

  Now it was Gwen’s turn to pause. “Pete. We love you. We love your songs. We want you to do this. But, we have to pay the dancers, too. You’re the best, and they will be the best. So, umm, dollars is what we have. Five million of them.” She added, “It’s the competition, Pete. With Paul. You’re the MEN in the rock n roll world. And now this. A new, and great, opportunity. Think of the value of that.”

  “Would I get to meet some of the ballerinas? Hang with them?”

  “Yes, Pete.”

  “How soon is soon, Gwenny?”

  “Next week would be good.”

  “You going to be around?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m the boss.”

  “You still going to have that accent of yours?”

  “Yes, Pete. I’ll still be me.”

  “See you next week, Gwenny. You too, Rog.”