Have I ever been so aware that you were a dancer, Richard Armitage?

[Left: Richard Armitage in Esquire video, 2013. Cap from Armitage Fan.]

I know you were a dancer, twenty years ago. Now I imagine you dancing only out of love. I remember when you said that as a teen you were afraid people would watch you and think you were not very good. I remember when you said musical theater was too showoffy and I think in the settings where I can observe you, that you do not dance to call attention to yourself. Still, I observe it here and there, the twist of a wrist, the way one of your characters rolls his hips, the jaunty cock of your chin, the pose on a red carpet or the position of your feet.

You may not dance any more, but someone taught you how to move, how to pose for just an instant, never heavy-handed. The slide across the room to pick up your jacket, the pointed foot, the tango you perform with no partner but your thoughts.

Are you still the dancer who wants not to be seen? Is not wanting to be seen the same as not wanting us to see?

The way you slide from fastening your cuff link, to the crouch to tie your shoes, the elegant pull of your leg onto the stool, the twist of your torso toward its center. The bend of the leg that you do not hold, but release, practically, to bind the laces.

The split-second you hold until you’ve been observed, then move on.

We see how a dancer moves, bracketed by how he quiets himself, how the blink of an eyelash strikes tidal waves against your pale, still face. But you do want us to see, I think — to focus on the things that move so minutely, your wrists twisting around fingers circling down on buttons. You look quietly away but you know we are watching and whatever it is we feel we see — you want us to have seen it, even if you wish not to be observed. Your hands are brisk, they tug, then fasten, then smooth. They draw us forward through seconds all too quickly gone.

You stare into the mirror that is a lens; you see only yourself but we see all of you, as your brow moves, as your eyebrow arches, as your lip curls. What story did you tell yourself here, is it the story you are telling us? What are the details you are placing there only for yourself, the things we perceive at best in the corner of our vision? Something about the feelings with which you background your movements reminds me of the statues high up in medieval cathedrals, detailed, subtle, glorious ornamentation placed where only G-d could see it in its fullness.

I watch you now, again, again, and wrestle with my desires. I’m caught in the tension of this paradox of the man dressing unobserved while nonetheless observed, my brain shears around the knowledge that you perform carelessness, unconsciousness for us with studied carelessness — all the details tell us that you don’t notice even as you put them there on purpose to be noticed.

You stare out of the frame — both by yourself and putting yourself in our presence with your haunted eyes. You want not to be seen even as you pose yourself, ineluctably, wanting us to see. You conquer the lens with your silence.

~ by Servetus on July 11, 2014.