Word: elan
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What gives a dancer the priceless elan that makes the audience lose its heart? Baryshnikov, who was artistic director of American Ballet Theatre from 1980 to 1989 and was never lucky enough to develop a star ballerina, is right that an imaginative response to music is crucial. All four women move in highly individual ways, and Bussell is particularly daring in her responses. Baryshnikov also points to the obvious qualities a ballerina must possess: the confidence and drive and "extraordinary natural facility." But humility is necessary as well. "A young girl must open her heart and mind," Baryshnikov says...
...recovering elan, though, the labor movement has managed only a turn away from the graveyard gate, and the obstacles to a larger revival are enormous. Employer resistance is still ferocious, and the climate in Washington is merely lukewarm. If the Dunlop commission does eventually recommend changes in labor law to make union organizing easier, it is expected also to urge that companies be allowed more latitude in forming worker- management production and quality teams. Some union leaders suspect such a move could open the way for a new form of company union...
...true tale about a young black man (here called Paul) who invaded the lives of some well-to-do New Yorkers by passing himself off as a college friend of their children. And though Guare has cleverly reshaped the material for the screen, where it has been directed with elan by Fred Schepisi, the piece is still not much more than a bit of urban folklore -- a newspaper feature story rather than a full-fledged narrative...
...gesturing captured the simultaneously introverted and erotic Fergus with aplomb. Although sometimes dwarfed by Poulios's emotion and improvisation, Sullivan put together a convincing dramatic collage of her own as the tough and straight-talking Madeleine, a Madeleine that is intellectually, though not emotionally, in touch with Fergus's elan. Yet despite her strong interpretation of the theme, a weakness arose with their non-spoken rapport. Sullivan's often stolid looks during Poulios's passionate monologue's seemed incongruous. Her gestures and portrayal of surprise or rage were often not very convincing...
Like all serious evils, this behavior takes many forms. One instance of this rhetorical recklessness outstrips most others in sheer power and elan. In one deployment it works all kinds of slick magic: it saves the speaker from accountability, establishes (wink-wink) an intimacy with the listener that only a shared and special secret can provide, even wields rhetorical power over space, time and motion. Science cores would do well to study this phenomenon. The phrase?: Happy Belated Birthday...