What it was, was football

I thought about football this morning. This is unusual for me, because I'm not a football fan. I'm doing good to know what a down is, and the whole idea seems vaguely silly to me. I wouldn't tell one of the lumbering mastodons that play the game that, you understand, but the idea that people watch with fascination -- that's always been beyond me. It still is. But it's a little closer, now.

The reason is an article that appears in this past Sunday's Washington Post -- Leaps and Bounds, about the similarities between professional football players and ballet performers. I didn't intend to read it, but was caught by an illustration -- a photograph of Lynn Swann, football player, Peter Martins, ballet dancer, and Twyla Tharp, choreographer, in the middle of a dance move from a 1980 program she'd done, Dance is a Man's Sport, Too. I can always be stopped by a photograph of an attractive woman, and that, she was - slim, graceful, and limber. Still is, too, as this Annie Liebovitz photograph shows. Not in my most flexible days....

So I read the article. And what I found out was that aside from the tactics of the game, and the thunder of heavily armored guys smashing into each other, there's a grace involved. The best, more graceful players have a precision, a body awareness that rivals that of a professional dancer. In fact, during the Dance program, George Balanchine, who was Martin's company's choreographer and boss, told the ballet dancer that he ought to leap higher, because the football player was getting more air time than he was. Those players take that grace and precision and turn it into the ability to leap, grab, drop, and dart, knowing in three dimensions where they are and where they want to go. If the normal football player's a tank, these guys are javelins. Teams win because they have that ability of thinking and moving, instantly. As one coach remarked, they take a very difficult task, and they make it look easy.

I read it all the way to the end, and thought huh. Football. Who'd have guessed?