F 2 F

In these moments of dangerous, delirious addiction to the face, relative movement might be subordinated to an experience of time and thought, if it were not for dancing. The dance fills this neurotic space of waiting with movement. Automata, mannequins, dolls and cartoon characters have formed adequate stand-ins for unavailable dance partners, but the musical comes closest to the metapsychology of these "solo" dances when Gene Kelly shores up his despondency by dancing with (and then destroying) his own reflection in Cover Girl. Kelly's solo dances have always made a theater for himself, but here, this break of the theater of the body from an intolerable situation verges on the delusional, the schizophrenic.