FR BRENDAN PURCELL’S HOMILY FOR THIS WEEKEND: HOW A BALLERINA LIVED HER TALENT FOR DANCE BY LOVING JESUS IN EACH PERSON SHE MET What’s funny about today’s parable of the talents is that it doesn’t seem to matter how talented we are. The whole point is: to everyone who has, will be given more. It’s only the guy who wastes his talent who gets into trouble. But the most important talent we all have is the talent to love, so we can understand the awful regret we’ll have—expressed in the parable as the grinding of teeth, a symbol of hell—if today we waste our most precious talent, by not loving when we can. Liliana Cosi, Ballerina A few years ago at a meeting for artists and eggheads, Liliana Cosi, who used to be the principle ballerina at La Scala, Milan, happened to sit at the same table where I was having my lunch. I asked her about her life. She told me she’d been a natural as regards dancing, and when someone from the La Scala ballet school saw her perform at school (she was 9 at the time) she immediately invited Liliana to join. Though her home background wasn’t in the least religious, in her late teens she’d come across the Dialogues of St Catherine of Siena, and wanted, like Catherine, to give herself completely to God. When she was in Brussels for a performance, she’d been asked to deliver a parcel to a priest. Liliana remembers him saying we have to look for Jesus in our brother. Liliana was amazed. She used to pray to Jesus present in the Tabernacle in the church, but on the bus? Suddenly she saw Jesus in each one. In an interview she’d said: ‘I dedicated all my physical and emotional faculties to this ideal. Even my femininity and maternal sense are fulfilled, but in a more universal way. I like to think of the world as one great family. ‘That’s why I want to belong to everyone—even the farthest spectator must feel I’m completely for him or her. ‘To reach the human soul is the greatest joy for me. An acquired skill isn’t enough—it can show off a technique but not a state of soul. ‘While I was watching Margot Fonteyn [a famous English ballerina] practising one day, I asked her: “Why do you put your leg in that position for that movement?” “Because it’s the most difficult way,” she answered. ‘There was no other reason. And this is the source of the beauty of our art. Inspiration without work means nothing to a dancer. Dance is truly an art which unites earth and heaven. It joins the muscular tiredness of a dock-worker to the expression of the deepest inner life.’ At La Scala, her career was being blocked because she rejected the advances of one of the principal directors at the company. She couldn’t help hoping that the more important ballerinas might get sick, as that’d give her a chance to take on a bigger role! So when an opportunity came to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, in 1963, she took it up immediately. In the meantime, she’d been accepted to live with the small group in the Focolare who share a common life and take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. She left for Rome with another companion in the same ideal, Vera. Liliana remembers her three or four years in Moscow as like Paradise. For the first time she was living in a little Christian community, with Vera, and she was able to find Jesus in everyone she met. She remembers one May Day celebration, when, instead of the usual red, everything was painted blue, which for her was Mary’s colour, so she saw only Mary all around Moscow. One time, hanging on a building opposite her flat was a huge copy of Picasso’s famous painting of a dove, which Communists used as their emblem for peace. For her, this of course represented the Holy Spirit of Love, which cheered her up every time she saw it. She learned in Moscow that everything you did could be an expression of the same love, that the hard work of preparing for a new ballet part, going to Mass in St Francis Church, travelling on the Moscow Metro, prayer and work, weren’t separate things. Again, Liliana: ‘I remember one day a principal ballet mistress of the Bolshoi saying to her star pupil: ‘Always remember—and this will help you throughout your career—a ballerina must be pure, she must be limpid.’ One day, a big opportunity came for her. The prima ballerina of the Bolshoi was ill, and she was asked to dance her role in Swan Lake, a role which the Bolshoi had never before entrusted to a foreigner. The danger was, if it didn’t go very well for her, the critics would write about it and the news would immediately get back to Italy and could destroy her career. On her way out to the stage, the woman director of ballet made the sign of the cross on her forehead three times. That night she was a huge success, it was the greatest debut of her career. As soon as he read about her success, the same La Scala director who’d previously blocked her career sent her a telegram promoting her to the level just below prima ballerina. When the time of her Bolshoi contract was up, at the airport, Liliana’s Moscow director, who herself was seeking something deeper in her life, told Liliana, ‘I love your God.’ In fact, she liked Liliana so much, she invited her back to the USSR as a guest artist nearly 150 times since that time, more than any other non-Russian ballerina. We probably don’t have Liliana’s particular talent for dancing, but let’s never regret that we wasted a minute of our most beautiful talent, to love, to look for Jesus in all we do and in all of his brothers and sisters we’ll meet this week. 33rd Sunday of the Year, St Columbkille’s, Woolloomooloo, 16/11/4
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 18:17:50 +0000
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