Anna Andrejewna Achmatowa
Anna Andrejewna Achmatowa

I hear always the sad voices
of summer
passing like red winged birds
over the high grass

Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire

I suspect it is this Camelot view that leads Miss Croce to be rather unfair to Gene Kelly…I should say the difference starts with their bodies. If you compare Kelly to Astaire, accepting Astaire's debonair style as perfection then, of course, Kelly looks bad. But in popular dance forms, in which movement is not rigidly codified, as it is in ballet, perfection is a romantic myth or a figure of

speech, nothing more. Kelly isn't a winged dancer; he's a hoofer and more earthbound. But he has warmth and range as an actor…Astaire's grasshopper lightness was his limitation as an actor - confining him to perennial gosh-oh-gee adolescence;; he was always and only a light comedian and could function only in fairytale vehicles.

Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie

A willing heart adds feather to the heel,
And makes the clown a winged Mercury.