<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="font-size: 22px;">Blue Heron Walking</div><div style="font-size: 22px;"><br></div><div style="font-size: 22px;"> </div><div style="font-size: 22px;">Not one of Mr. Balachine’s soloists had feet this articulate,</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">the long bones explicitly spread, then retracted, even more</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">finely detailed than Leonardo’s plans for his flying machines.</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">And all this for a <i>stroll, </i>a secondary function, not the great</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">dramatic spread and shadow of those pterodactyl wings.</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">This walking seems determined less by bird volition or</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">calculations of the small yellow eye than by an accident</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">of breeze, pushing the bird on a diagonal, the great feet executing</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">their tendus and lifts in the slowest of increments, hesitation</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">made exquisitely dimensional, as if the feet thought themselves</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">through each minute contribution to propulsion, these outsized</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">apprehenders of grasses and stone, snatchers of mouse and vole,</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">these mindless magnificents that any time now will trail</div><div style="font-size: 22px;">their risen bird like useless bits of leather. <i>Don’t show me</i></div><div style="font-size: 22px;"><i>your soul, </i>Balanchine used to say, <i>I want to see your foot.</i></div><div style="font-size: 22px;"><i><br></i></div><div style="font-size: 22px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></i>- Julie Bruck</div><div style="font-size: 22px;"> </div></div></body></html>