Ellin gritted her teeth and took several labored breaths before saying, “I’m sorry, Questioner. You took me by surprise, but you’re quite right. There’s no time for … whatever.
“Um. If I had to recover an old dance on Old Earth, I’d find all contemporary accounts of the performance. I’d look for letters written by cast members or observers, interviews given by them. I’d look for critical reviews, either printed or broadcast. I’d look at impressions noted by audience members or notes made at the time by dance aficionados. If the ballet had a name indicating a traditional or well-known story, like, oh, Romeo and Juliet or Homage to Dorothy, I’d find the story.”
“Designs of costumes or even bills for costumes are useful,” offered Bao. “Costume often defines character, and character defines movement. Same is being true for scenery. The music is being a good place to start, also musicians themselves. Then, one is doing what Mouche said. Surely not all Timmys who danced are being dead! So I would be talking to the ones left. They are describing the steps and movements they were doing, as well as those other people were doing.”
“If we still have some of the Timmys who danced,” said Ellin. “They aren’t all dead, are they?”
“Not quite all, no,” said Questioner, with a significant look at the Hags. “The governing powers were not quite that efficient.”
Bao went on, “If we have story, we can start with plot. Who are characters? What is represented, what is emotion? What is done? Surely this much Kaorugi knows!”
“According to the Corojum,” said Questioner, “Kaorugi knows only that the dance soothed the Quaggima and let it sleep.”
With her brow furrowed in concentration, Ellin offered, “It might be plotless, Bao. Just movement for movement’s sake. Kind of like hypnosis, or wall patterns. I always kept my walls on patterns because they were soothing. And if there’s no story line, it’s very difficult to figure out what went on.”
“Assume for the moment there was a story,” said Questioner.
“Well then, I’d look for representations of the work of the solo dancers, verbal or pictorial, to see how they moved, how they worked, what their style was … “
“Style?” asked Calvy. “I don’t see—”
Ellin interrupted him, “We know the Timmys danced. Well, they were shaped differently. What could that shape do? What kinds of jumps, positions, movements? How did the choreographers work? Did they work out lengthy series of steps and teach the series, already set, or did they allow the dancer a share in developing the vision? On Old Earth, we’d ask the patrons of the ballet, as well, but I guess that doesn’t apply here.”
“The music,” said Bao. “Again, I am emphasizing importance of music.”
“How many people are we talking about here?” asked Calvy. “How many dancers? Musicians? Scene setters?”
Ellin, who had, despite herself, become interested in the problem, shook her head firmly. “The numbers aren’t that critical. Even in a large ballet, you wouldn’t need everyone in order to learn what they did. A lot of ballet is ensemble work. One dancer in an ensemble could reconstruct the whole ensemble, or large chunks of it, because she would move as everyone else does, or groups would move in repetitive sequence. It wouldn’t matter if there were twelve or two hundred, they might all be doing the same steps. The same is true for small groups: in a pas de deux, for example, either dancer could remember what the other one did … “
Bao objected, “Except, there were being in twentieth century, so-called modern dances in which every person was doing something completely different from everyone else. Movements and groupings were being more sculptural … “
“But if these were very small dancers, doing something to soothe a very large being, they’d have to move en masse to be perceived, wouldn’t they?” Ellin asked plaintively. “I keep getting this twentieth-century, Old Earth flash of Busby Berkeley musicals. Hundreds of dancers parading around. Or carnival processions! Or even pageants! Something with hundreds, thousands of participants, all jingling and jiggling, headdresses bobbing, skirts swirling … Looking at the size of the wings on that creature in the pit, I wonder if it could even perceive individual dancers.”