a place you’ve never been

the short opens on a music box. taglioni danced in william tell at the paris opéra in 1829.

the role that made taglioni a star, paris 1832.

bellini wrote it for giuditta pasta, and cornell made a box for her in 1950. a prayer to the moon.

the ballet taglioni choreographed in 1860. cornell made a pantry ballet (for jacques offenbach) in 1942.

for tamara toumanova, who got a box of her own in 1946.

one of the two tracks cornell put under his film rose hobart, from a record he found in a junk shop.

after to have and have not, he made her a penny arcade portrait.

a song about cornell, named after his soap bubble sets. the first, shown at moma in 1936, had a map of the moon in it.

a ballet inside a toy box. it opens with the box asleep, like the house in queens while he worked.

built from secondhand records: a song about leaving, for a man who never left.

old ballroom records, looped, leading into a waltz.

written for piano in 1839, in the years taglioni toured russia, where the highwayman stopped her.

his version of the night: she dances on the snow.

played on instruments carved from ice, which melts.

glass, played like ice. its ice is glass. it never melts.