Original subtitles

(techno music)

- [Yvonne] One, two,

three,

four.

Then, this open business, two,

three, look, behind.

Yeah, no, no, look at the paper, the paper.

Yeah, now you go down stage.

One, two,

three.

This is an open foot, but you're looking at the windows.

It's behind, so, now, you go in that direction, two, three.

Your feet will reverse, your gaze stays.

No. Your gaze,

is to the audience.

Now you keep your body there, one, two.

Keep your body there, three.

Keep your body there, your gaze stays there,

now your facing changes to the wall,

one, two, keep your face in, three, keep in.

Now we're going to reverse the feet,

as the gaze comes to,

the door.

One, two,

three.

You're here, this is three.

Yeah, this is, both feet going that way

and you have to kinda lean forward to get a backward thing.

That's the thing, when the foot is open,

it's much easier to do the backward thing, right?

But if both feet are going there, then...

Leave your foot open, here.

- [Yvonne] Both feet are going,

this is everything to the wall, then just the foot.

Now this is that same funny business here.

Now take your focus to the, now you go down stage.

One, two,

three, the foot goes to the paper,

the eyes go to the windows,

now we're gonna walk to the windows, two, three,

now, reverse the direction and the gaze is to the closet.

- [Yvonne] Should we do that much again, or go on?

Well, let's do a second one.

One,

two,

wall,

wall.

No, it's that open business, foot.

Team, you're facing to the paper on that last one.

Now down stage, one, two,

foot opens, gaze goes to window.

Wait a minute, yeah, okay.

One, two,

three, keep reverse, gaze goes to closet.

Yep, now, keep, now, this is the funny part.

Keep your torso where it is.

Your feet are gonna go toward the paper,

and the torso and the face are gonna stay toward the closet.

One, two, now your feet are gonna go upstage,

your torso remains in that same relationship.

So your torso will be facing the closet.

- No, the paper, paper.

(nervous laughing)

Is there a closet behind that paper?

- [Yvonne] This is the first of eight photos

from Grand Union Dreams.

Shirley was a mortal.

Fernando and Valda were heroes.

I was one of the gods.

It was done about a year ago.

In this first photo, Epp and James are engaged in a duet.

David and Yvonne have just finished dragging them

on the fake grass in a small arc.

When they stand, they undulate their upper bodies in unison,

while passing the red ball back and forth.

They are about to pick up the grass

and involve it in their undulations.

Valda waits.

My question is, what does it mean?

Are they celebrating something?

Yes, that sounds good.

Epp and James are doing a dance of pleasure

at the advent of spring.

- [Shirley] It actually was spring

when we began working on this piece,

and I first met you Fernando.

I think some people went over to your house

after that first rehearsal.

- [Fernando] You asked if we had any booze.

That was where I first had a hint of your humor.

The look on you face when you asked.

- [Shirley] Yes, I remember the look you gave me.

I thought, oh, I'm discovered in my discomfort,

but he's sympathetic.

- [Yvonne] There's the suitcase, and there's Trisha.

Trisha has come down from Olympus,

and has laboriously pulled her way

toward the group of mortals,

who are putting the squeeze on the heroes.

Especially on Epp, who is squeezing the red ball.

In this photo she has just said, "She is my very dear friend

"and I don't like seeing her caught in the middle."

- [Shirley] And there's Fernando in the box.

- [Yvonne] With suitcase.

Why does Fernando have the suitcase?

Is he going away, or has he just arrived?

Why is he in the box with the suitcase?

Is he trying it out as a body supporting device?

And what is in the suitcase?

Dirty socks?

- [Fernando] The complete works of Aristotle in Greek.

On the stairs.

I was going up the stairs and I heard my name.

I didn't even know who was calling me,

but I felt it in my spine.

Something about your voice,

and I turned around and it was you.

- [Shirley] I didn't know there was anything special

about my voice at that time,

but I distinctly remember seeing you on the stairs,

and realizing for the first time that you really

were going to be taking this thing seriously,

and I felt a strong surge of liking for you,

and that must of shown in my voice.

- [Valda] I was always aware of your presence.

It was equivocal, sometimes sinister

in that it didn't declare itself,

especially on that ride we took

into the Mennonite country with Shirley and Lena.

I didn't know what you were about,

or who you were attracted to.

- [Fernando] Actually, I hadn't intended to ask you to go,

but somehow, meeting you by accident like that,

passing through the doorway,

I did it on the spur of the moment.

- [Valda] Yes, and I immediately asked

if Shirley and Lena could come,

because I didn't want to be alone with you.

- [Shirley] Then he kept coming to the house

with those messages for you.

- [Valda] That really confused me.

Not that I thought much about it in a personal way,

but rather, you know, in that way that one does

when you are trying to figure out someone else's intentions,

whether or not they are directed at you.

So I didn't really think anything about him personally

until you told me about those talks

you had with him about me.

I think then I began to look at you differently,

maybe with more curiosity.

When we went to the theater that night

I was very aware that you were sitting next to me.

I don't know how aware I was

that you had maneuvered to sit next to me.

Do you remember?

And the whole audience stood up so enthusiastically.

I turned and looked at you as if to say,

oh Christ, do we have to do this too?

And we stood up.

- [Fernando] Yes, I remember.

Then later, I sat next to you in the Pancake House,

and at one point I took out a pencil

and I was writing something,

which you noticed in a certain way.

I was embarrassed.

- [Valda] The night of our last performance,

you said after it was over that you'd be coming to New York

and that you'd like to look me up.

I told you my address,

and said that information had my phone number.

Then later at that small party I was aware of you

for no particular reason.

You were across the room talking to Donald.

I made that gesture with a bottle of brandy,

offering the last drop to anyone who wanted it

before I wolfed it down,

and finally you sprang laughing up and accepted the bottle.

Then later you were lying down.

As I started to leave, on impulse I went over

and laid down on top of you, saying, "Goodbye, Fernando,"

thinking it was the last time I was going to see you there.

Almost instantaneously,

as though you were expecting me to come to you,

you grasped the back of my head

and drew me down to your chest.

You caressed my hair and sighed deeply.

Then there was all that confusion

about who would drive us to the airport.

We didn't expect you.

- [Shirley] Yes, I didn't know what to think either,

although I sort of knew.

I guess I was just a little uncomfortable

because you had already showed me

that piece he had written for you.

- [Valda] I regretted that later.

It seemed too intimate to show to anyone,

even to Shirley, but I was still not ready

to acknowledge your intentions toward me.

So for the moment I had to pretend it was not as intimate

or private as it later seemed to me.

By the time you arrived to drive us to the airport

I knew what was going on and I was getting excited.

- [Yvonne] What made you excited?

- [Valda] It was like the excitement of performance,

experiencing my beauty and value,

when all those eyes are focused on me.

I am at my best as a performer.

- [Yvonne] Why did you have to wait before getting excited?

Don't you ever experience attraction to someone

before you are sure whether or not

they are attracted to you?

- [Valda] Yeah, sure, but I really wasn't

in that frame a year ago.

You know what I had just come out of; I was very depressed,

so I wasn't able to use my eyes too well.

Besides, I really do enjoy performing.

- [Yvonne] Okay.

- [Fernando] When we went back to find--

- [Valda] Wait, Yvonne were you reading that?

- What? - Those questions.

- [Yvonne] Yes. Why do you want to know?

- [Valda] I just wondered. Sorry Fernando.

- [Fernando] We went back to find your eyeshade,

went upstairs, looking through the rooms.

There was hardly any light.

- [Valda] I wondered why you didn't touch me.

Wondered why I didn't I didn't touch you.

- [Fernando] I stood on the landing beside the doorway,

as we were going back downstairs.

I thought you would have to squeeze through.

- [Valda] Oh God! You gave me so much room.

- [Yvonne] What else happened

while we were rehearsing that piece?

- [Shirley] The hotel.

- [Fernando] The hotel.

That's where I first got a sense

of certain aspects of your mind,

that made you seem very different to me.

I was lying on the bed and you were sitting on it.

I can't remember now exactly,

what led us to talking about Henry Miller.

- [Shirley] Somehow we got into who influenced him,

and I said Blaise Cendrars influenced him

and we started to argue, only it wasn't an argument

because I simply repeated my opinion

while you repeated yours.

- [Fernando] Yes, I was trying to remember

the name of someone else.

I still think that it was someone else.

His name starts with a K--

- [Shirley] No, it was Blase Cendrars.

- [Yvonne] Cendrar, I think.

So how the hell did that give you a sense of her mind?

Did that seem like obscure information or something?

- [Fernando] It just had to do with that moment and yes,

I guess her access to that particular information.

- [Yvonne] Here the mortals have become an inexorable wall,

shuffling forward on Kleenex box-shod feet.

On the right, one of the gods, David,

is walking about in great agitation in very squeaky shoes.

Doug stands behind Valda, obscuring her face

with a gray cardboard disc.

Dong stands behind Doug with a microphone.

Doug reads a speech from Jung,

about how if you don't pass through the inferno

of your passions you'll never overcome them.

Quote: "Whenever we give up, leave behind

"and forget too much, there's always the danger

"that the things we have neglected

"will return with added force", unquote.

Somehow I transposed that

into David's squeaky, agitated walk.

Understated passion.

Fernando walks backwards before the greedy wall.

They're eating from a big pot, as you can see.

Fernando says:

- [Fernando] See how cruel they look.

Their lips are thin, their noses sharp,

their faces furrowed and distorted by folds.

Their eyes have a staring expression.

They are always seeking something.

What are they seeking?

They always want something.

They are always uneasy and restless.

I do not know what they want.

I do not understand them.

I think that they are mad.

- [Yvonne] That's also from Jung.

He quotes a Pueblo Indian about the white man.

The mortals have become cruel white men.

- [Valda] I want to finish about the airport.

I have to tell you this.

When you kissed me goodbye,

or rather you were leaning against that rail

with your feet crossed the way you do,

and I moved in to kiss you goodbye

because people had begun to board the plane,

you reached for the back of my neck

with your left hand and drew me toward you.

Your right arm was bent

so your forearm was against your chest.

As you pressed me against you and we kissed,

my breast momentarily rested

against your hand which didn't move.

- [Fernando] Yes, is that what made you think of

those lines, all day he sits before you

face to face, like a card player.

Your elbow brushes his elbow.

If you should speak, he hears?

- [Shirley] The touched heart madly stirs.

- [Yvonne] Bullshit!

- [Valda] Oh for Christ sake Yvonne, get with it.

- [Yvonne] Okay okay, go on.

I'm really enjoying all this.

- [Valda] Then I watched very carefully

while you kissed Lena and I saw it wasn't the same at all.

You see, I was still not clear--

- [Shirley] It was so obvious.

- [Valda] As I said before,

I wasn't in a state of mind to think of such things.

- [Fernando] When I got into New York

I tossed a coin about whether to call you.

- [Valda] What would you have done if it had come out tails?

- [Fernando] I would have called you anyway,

but I would have felt it was all wrong.

- [Valda] You're funny.

- [Yvonne] Now the hero James

is reaching the climax of his brief odyssey.

Tannis in the wings, harpy or avenging angel,

waits to mount his back

at the most difficult stage of his journey.

Fernando and Valda aid and impede him at the same time,

supplying resistance and support to his forward lean.

The gods wait expectantly on Mount Olympus.

This episode resolves itself as James,

with Tannis riding piggy-back, clambers up the stairs.

On reaching the top they crumple

into the waiting arms of the gods,

who then lower them to the floor

on the other side of Olympus.

As they are lowered, Yvonne reads from Jung.

"At the beginning of the illness, I had the feeling

"that there was something wrong with my attitude,

"and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap.

"But when one affirms things as they are,

"without subjective protests, accepts the conditions

"of existence as one sees them, accepts one's own nature,

"as one happens to be, when one lives one's own life,

"then, one must take mistakes into the bargain.

"Life would not be complete without them.

"There is no guarantee, not for a single moment,

"that we will not fall into error,

"or stumble into deadly peril.

"We may think there is a sure road,

"but that would be the road of death.

"Then nothing happens any longer.

"At any rate, not the right things.

"Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead."

- [Shirley] Such righteous sentiments.

Now at this remove from that piece

it seems terribly burdened

with a kind of relentless truth-mongering.

- [Yvonne] What do you mean?

In this last speech Jung seems anything but righteous.

Righteousness connotes a certainty

that he is arguing against.

- [Shirley] It's the tone of self-congratulation,

or complacency of someone who has

had a revelation and is laying it out.

Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.

Really!

Maybe it's simply the fact of isolating such things

from a longer text that bugs me.

I just don't like the sound of it.

- [Yvonne] Well, you know Shirley,

that I have always had a weakness

for the sweeping revelations of great men.

That's why I'm going at this concert so differently.

The line, oh God, you gave me so much room,

is really very much more moving to me

than anything I used last year,

even though on an aesthetic level

I'm simply doing another form of storytelling.

More intimate, less epic.

- [Shirley] What do you mean,

oh God, you gave me so much room?

- [Yvonne] For heaven's sakes,

we've just been going through that,

we said it, it was in the text.

It's about these two people

who are very attracted to each other

and they go up in this room and there's not much light,

and they're looking for this eyeshade,

and they're maneuvering around and neither one of them

is really sure of the other one's feelings,

and there's this little landing

and they go out on this landing,

and the guy goes out on the landing

and he thinks he's not leaving her much room

and that she'll have to squeeze through,

and later on he tells her that.

When he tells her she says,

"Oh God, you gave me so much room."

- [Valda] Were you saying that or reading it?

- [Yvonne] I was remembering it from Hofstra.

- [Shirley] I get it.

Lets go on. I'm tired of all this.

Shirley is telling Fernando

how she put it off as long as she could,

but finally she went up to see

the pictures of the rehearsal.

Fernando was hardly listening.

- There she's thinking-- - What is she thinking?

- [Shirley] I look like an old-time movie star.

(amused laughing)

She's complaining about how

she doesn't want to do it anymore.

- [Yvonne] He says, "Then don't."

- [Shirley] She thinks about leaving the room.

- [Yvonne] She finds his inscrutability pretty hard to take.

She wonders what he would do if she left the room.

Would he feel remorseful, or would he follow her?

- [Shirley] She resents the fact

that he always seems on top of the situation.

She would like him to speak to her.

- [Yvonne] He's very tired of her indecisiveness.

He says, "What?"

- [Shirley] She says she doesn't know

what to do with herself.

- [Yvonne] You see, there's a lot of time,

and you don't have to talk all through it,

just put in an occasional comments about...

We don't have to fill up that time

with everything that may be going on.

She's wondering why he doesn't say anything.

She really wants him to talk to her.

- [Shirley] She can't bear his indifference.

- [Fernando] He wants to know why she's afraid.

- [Shirley] She says that she's worked in a form always,

which disappears as soon as it reveals itself.

She does not want to be observed as fixed and final.

- [Yvonne] She embraces him because she realizes that he may

feel as frustrated as she.

- [Shirley] She's surprised that she's told him

about her ephemeral nature.

- [Yvonne] She's thinking, what is it about him?

She can't figure it out,

whether it's his cunning or his docility.

It always puts her on the defensive,

makes her focus on herself.

- [Shirley] He asks her whether she's afraid of failing.

- [Yvonne] Here he's looking into her eyes.

- [Shirley] She doesn't want to talk about it anymore.

She feels he's not very sympathetic.

- [Fernando] But Fernando is very confused.

He doesn't know what she's talking about.

She really confuses him.

He loses track of the issues all the time.

He only asks, why didn't you come with me?

But the only answer that he gets is, do you have any money?

(subdued laughing)

- [Yvonne] It comes a little later.

There!

- [Shirley] She says, "Do you have any money?"

- [Valda] Valda is disconsolate.

She's remembering a visit to John's house.

It was in the country, she enjoyed the fresh air,

the flowers and the birds, food, vegetables from the garden.

She said it was so beautiful

she thinks maybe she'd like to live there forever.

She talks about a movie they saw together.

They both cried.

There was an old woman in the film

who's performance affected her very deeply.

As usual John had turned critical when they left the theater

and deemed his previous opinion sentimental.

She's used to this kind of response in him.

You might describe it that way, Valda replies.

It's also a story about a man who loves a woman,

and can't leave her when he falls in love

with another woman.

I mean, he can't seem to make up his mind.

Or I could tell it from the point of view

of the first woman.

She loves him and endures his cruelties, yes, cruelties.

You see, from her vantage point his weakness has become,

yes, become, cruelties.

Yes, endures his cruelties because he always returns to her.

And although she won't acknowledge it,

she really does think, no, feel,

that she can't live without him.

How did she ever get into such a fix?

She also thinks that he loves her best,

and that love will finally conquer all.

After all, he always returns to her doesn't he?

Or I could tell it through the eyes of number two woman.

She loves him and wants him to leave number one.

She even gets pregnant.

Then her own husband demands a divorce.

He's had enough.

How did she ever get herself into such a fix?

But I don't care to dwell on number two.

How can such things continue to happen?

As I said before, he can't make up his mind.

Then number one gets sick, so he stays with her

but doesn't give up number two,

or rather number two doesn't leave him.

I don't want to make it sound as though

he holds the controls, even though the two women

sometimes act as though he does.

- [Shirley] Which woman is the director

most sympathetic too?

- [Valda] I think number one,

maybe simply because she appears first.

- [Yvonne] Now John is thinking of a particular event.

It happened about six months earlier.

He was outside their house, and some muggers attacked him,

and he had come out of the house, and screamed,

and if he hadn't heard her scream

he would've plunged the knife

that he'd taken out of his pocket

into his would-be attacker's throat.

And later she had clung to him.

She seemed very excited and vulnerable,

and he was very perplexed by this,

and he felt rather bitter.

They made love, but his mind was half elsewhere.

I was reading a part that John

would have read, I forgot to mention

that I'm going to be, did I mention,

that I'm going to be taking some of John's parts.

- [Shirley] Valda says that they're waiting for Shirley,

and that it would be a good idea for Shirley to go now.

Shirley said they can wait,

because she has always wanted to speak to Valda,

to tell her how impressed she is with her.

She was particularly impressed

with something that Valda had said.

It was that Asia is not clay in the hands of the West.

- [Fernando] Here she said, "Wait a minute".

But she leaves and he doesn't know, where did she go.

- [Yvonne] Here they're waiting for her to come back,

and she doesn't come back.

- [Fernando] Here comes John, to pick up Fernando.

The train will be leaving soon,

and he's worried about being late.

He's going to Chile.

- [Yvonne] Very good.

- [Shirley] Shirley tells Valda how fond she is of her.

What a dear friend she is,

and how she hates seeing her caught in the middle.

- [Valda] Valda replies,

that Shirley shouldn't worry about her.

She thought she'd made her decision

but now she's not so sure and that's what's confusing her.

- [Shirley] Shirley's surprised

because she thought that Valda was sure.

- [Valda] Well Valda says it's not as easy

as all that because other people

become affected by the decisions one makes

and what will Nina and Theresa do?

- [Yvonne] Shirley tells Valda about a dream she had.

- [Shirley] I had a dream about a wall.

The wall is not concrete or metal.

It is steel mesh, like a fence in a schoolyard.

There are no doors.

Rather it's the kind of a wall

that I would like to climb rather

than walk through a ready-made door.

I do climb the wall and it feels terrific.

I'm stretching my body as I climb,

feeling the pull on my legs and arms

as I reach the top and climb over.

I enjoy going down the other side.

What I like about this wall is that I have no fear

of being locked out or locked in.

I can always get in or out by climbing,

by my own physical nimbleness and agility.

On the other side, I find that I am in a schoolyard,

which is in fact the schoolyard of the school

across the street from the house where I was born.

There are no children in the schoolyard on this day,

although it is a beautiful spring day.

I run around freely, the wind blowing in my hair.

I am happy, bouncing a large volleyball.

I bounce it up and down, and against a brick side wall.

It feels good just to run around and be free,

and have all that space to myself.

I feel my body stretching,

and I'm running around the yard very fast,

but I am full of energy, not at all tired.

I have an enormous sense of great physical well being.

Of a stretching and toning up of all my limbs,

and the back of my neck.

When I wake up I am really happy.

I remember that I have caught a glimpse

of something alive and free within me.

- [Valda] Valda thanks Shirley,

she says she's made her feel much better.

Shirley says she'll leave now,

while she still has time to catch the train.

She doesn't find it very easy to go.

When Valda received this package in the mail

and saw who it was from she was longing to open it,

and could hardly wait until her friend left.

But suddenly she felt less anxious,

she wondered what she was getting into

receiving gifts from him.

(audience laughing mildly)

- [Yvonne] The face of this character is a fixed mask.

We shall have her wear an eyeshade

to reveal her inner and outer appearance.

The eyeshade hides the movement

of the upper half of her face,

but the lower half where the tongue works stays visible.

She must function with a face of stone,

and at the same time reveal her characteristic dissembling.

- [Fernando] Here he is coming back from Santiago,

holding that funny letter

that he doesn't know where it came from.

- [Valda] Valda asks if they had a good time,

and he says, "So-so."

- [Fernando] And she asked him if he had missed her,

and of course, he missed her a lot.

- [Valda] She decides to look at the letter later.

She asks if he received her letter,

and where he was in the house when he read it.

- [Fernando] I was in the living room talking to Nina,

when Theresa came in with the mail and handed me a letter.

I looked at it, saw that it was from you

and stuck it in my shirt pocket.

I had to finish my business with Nina.

Later I took it out of my pocket on the way upstairs;

I paused half-way up the stairs to open the envelope,

read the letter hurriedly, then continued on up

to the bedroom to sit and pore over it.

- [Shirley] I'm sorry about the whole thing,

mostly for myself of course, but after that, for you.

I think if you can stand it you should take him back.

I will probably change my mind and want him back,

but I've never, I don't know how to phrase it,

except that I suppose that he is split,

and I thought I could put them back together but I can't,

and you have the constant half, and I'm simply not satisfied

with the other transitory half that he gives me,

that in the atrocious novel that is his emotional life,

represents the evil feminine principle.

I don't know how I got stuck in that category,

but I'm stuck there in his neat little box

labeled emotional, childish, demanding, bitchy,

undisciplined, unintellectual,

pleasure­oriented, etcetera, ad nauseam,

while you are apparently are in an equally untrue box

labeled unemotional, mature, fair, disciplined, etcetera.

Passion versus companionship, sex versus work,

child/mother versus sister/friend,

and countless more sickening,

cliché­ridden, schizophrenic categorizations,

which I am sure are as unfair to you as they are to me.

But maybe you are stronger and cleverer than me

and can live with the pattern or break it.

I can do neither. I think he needs you.

Anyway, he needs somebody

who won't let herself be destroyed by him,

and unfortunately or fortunately, I am not that person.

For one thing, I have less to fall back on

every time he is cruel.

Less work, less friends, less emotional independence.

Less experience with his cruelty than you have.

You have all that time with him to build on.

I thought that wouldn't be so important,

because I thought we would live in the present but he won't.

He's either wallowing about in his past,

or cruelly tempting us both with impossible futures,

putting off making a life with me until we go away,

get a house in the country, have children, etcetera.

All of which he can't do, and even if he could,

it wouldn't help because it's external.

Anyway dear lady, I used to be afraid of you,

but I am not anymore.

It's him who is hurting me, not you.

And I am free to like you, which I do.

I gather that you're unhappy right now,

but maybe that will make it easier

for you and him to get back together.

He is very unhappy too, and I can't help him.

He doesn't really seem to want those things

that perhaps he reproached you for not providing.

I think he wants an essentially homosexual relationship,

only with a woman instead of a man.

Maybe you can make a good life with him, I hope so.

I'm sick of all this unhappiness all the time.

He doesn't deserve to punish himself so much.

He's only bad because he demands to be so good.

And I think he really does love you,

much more than he will ever love anybody else.

Most of the time I have felt

that I am just some kind of strut, or support,

in some incredibly complex

and probable painfully beautiful structure,

which is his relationship to you,

which should flatter you immensely,

but it sort of makes me feel a little stupid.

I really think I deserve to have my own structure somehow,

built by someone in me about us.

Anyway, that's what I think,

and I'm not sure why I feel I should tell you,

but I feel some kind of compulsion

to explain things to myself, by telling other people.

And also, I just wanted to tell you that I like you,

and that you should take him away from me now.

Not that I have him, but you know what I mean.

And really, I think it would be the best thing

for him and me, and maybe you,

although it would be presumptuous of me

to pretend I know what you need.

But if you need a very complex love, he has that for you.

- [Fernando] Do you think that I should say that?

- [Valda] What?

- [Fernando] I mean about admitting that I feel superior?

- [Yvonne] Shirley is asking John

what he thinks of the performance,

what he thought of the last performance.

And he said he liked some of it,

and some of it he disliked intensely.

He was in such a bad mood at the end of it

that he couldn't even applaud,

and he couldn't come backstage.

He apologizes, but he says, "You wouldn't want me

"to pretend I was enthusiastic

"when I wasn't, would you?"

And she said, "No,

"but I'm just sorry that

"you can't take pleasure in a friend's success."

And he says, "Well, I must admit

"that a couple of hours later I felt pretty threatened by it

"and I was wondering what I was going to do next."

She's amused by that, and she says,

"Well, at least you're forthright."

Shirley asks Valda, "How did you feel?"

- [Valda] Oh, I didn't really know what I was doing.

There was so little time for adequate preparation,

and I didn't always know what was expected of me.

I mean, if I come in a door and see you two here,

what am I supposed to register?

Fear?

Surprise?

Nothing?

- [Fernando] I don't know what to do next.

I feel like a shell. I am so afraid.

- [Yvonne] Fernando is watching them.

- [Fernando] She says to him

that they were discussing the performance.

And he asked if they want something from the delicatessen,

because he was going to get some cigarettes.

But she tells him to wait,

that she wants to show him something,

and also the delicatessen is closed.

Here they are back in the studio,

and Fernando is saying to her why did he show her that,

that he has seen it a hundred times.

Though she said that she does it differently now,

that she understands it better.

But he said that it looks the same for him.

- [Yvonne] He asks if they're waiting for the others,

meaning

Epp and

Jim and Yvonne.

And Yvonne has come in, meanwhile.

Do you guys realize you can save your back--

As long as the hands,

are in, the arms are always

in this slot, Fernando.

You see, it's as though a string between the hands,

are always parallel to the wall.

This is the beginning, the end of one.

Now this left one is good, chase the right,

think of it that way maybe,

and they just about meet a little bit ahead of your body.

Now they start separating, to make 180 degrees.

This is parallel to the wall, perpendicular to the floor.

Then you keep this 180 degrees

and you start turning your body,

and now you bring the left one up, keep turning your body,

toward me, toward me, bring it around,

until you start walking in the other direction,

and start chasing the right hand again.

Now you can start walking a little,

avoid the step-together-step.

You're either walking backwards, or you turn.

Use as few steps as possible when you turn.

Oh wait, look, no no, no no,

not the cup, not the cup, the angle--

- [Babette] Shirley is already in position

and I see the entrance of Fernando, and I stay a long time

and there is something else in the box.

I pan again and I see you move a lot.

I pan again, I pan three times.

(crosstalk)

- [Yvonne] Now, keep your body,

and,

here,

yeah, paper, now keep your body to the wall.

But Shirley, wait, wait, wait, wait,

Shirley, go back to this.

Now the feet go to the window, the body faces the wall.

No, not the paper, the wall.

Paper, wall, window, closet.

Scissors, rock! (mild laughing)

Where are we?

Okay, I'm gonna do a special thing here.

We're gonna start,

with some of you in the box,

others of us,

we will get out in character.

Whatever you're doing,

just start walking in that direction,

and walk straight off.

Okay, you're doing that, Fernando's in the box,

Valda...

Babette will say.

♪ Take me to the station ♪

♪ And put me on a train ♪

♪ I've got no expectations ♪

♪ To pass through here again ♪

♪ Once I was a rich man ♪

♪ Now I am now so poor ♪

♪ But never in my sweet short life ♪

♪ Have I felt like this before ♪

♪ Your heart is like a diamond ♪

♪ You throw your pearls at swine ♪

♪ And as I watch you leaving me ♪

♪ You pack my piece of mind ♪

♪ Our love was like the water ♪

♪ That splashes on a stone ♪

♪ Our love is like our music ♪

♪ It's here and then it's gone ♪

♪ So take me to the airport ♪

♪ And put me on a plane ♪

♪ I've got no expectations ♪

♪ To pass through here again ♪