footlight

And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market - the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, their response and your performance twinned.

January « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market - the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, their response and your performance twinned.

norbert blei | updike’s poems « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

So what crosses the footlight and projects its emotion to me is what I'm listening for.

Piano Pathways: Daniel Pollack, 50 Years Later 2008

"No one ever accused us of being over-rehearsed," Stephen Stills says at one point, shortly before he's shown tripping over a footlight on the stage and playing flat on his back while he rolls from side to side trying to get himself back up.

Evan Handler: Find the Cost of Freedom (of Speech) 2008

So what crosses the footlight and projects its emotion to me is what I'm listening for.

Piano Pathways: Daniel Pollack, 50 Years Later 2008

So much of fault we find; but on the other side the impartial critic rejoices to remark the presence of a great unity of gusto; of those direct clap-trap appeals, which a man is dead and buriable when he fails to answer; of the footlight glamour, the ready-made, bare-faced, transpontine picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, but how much dearer to the mind!

Memories and Portraits 2005

“In youth, exercise and learning; in adolescence, ambition; and in early manhood, love — no footlight passion.”

Love and Mr Lewisham Herbert George 2004

Then Ito took the cork back, immediately stopped the bottle and lit a sealing candle, the flame a tiny footlight to his face while he turned the bottle to catch the dropping wax.

December 6 Smith, Martin Cruz 2002

He whistled on a small footlight he had noticed earlier, holding the azoth low enough to keep the driver from seeing it, should he look over his shoulder.

Nightside The Long Sun Wolfe, Gene 1993

"Talk about footlight favorites," she complained to Helen Morton, as they dressed together for a performance, "that Joe Strong is getting all that's coming to him."

Joe Strong on the Trapeze or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer Vance Barnum