Chaz just swam through the room with his arms undulating like a manta ray’s swan arms, which ballerinas practice and practice to subdue the elbow to a boneless flow of rhythmic rise and fall, where flapping is too harsh a word until at the end of the dance the swan realizes she’s dying and flaps frantically to conclusion, Chaz was not frantic.

The Dying Swan is all Plisetskaya arms. It was her signature role, her calling card, a solo that often ended the evening. We saw her as often as we could.

There were and are dying ballerina swans before and after Maya, but she was the go-to iconic. I particularly liked the way she floated en pointe, her arms pure swan, seamless like articulate pasta noodles, then as she realizes she’s dying, she desperately flaps her swan song, drops to the stage, her body draped over an extended leg, she jerks her head up in a sudden rigor mortis, then drops it down for the final pose.

Wild applause, cheers, “Brava!”

Plisetskaya was for so many years the World’s Prima Ballerina Assoluta. She was famous for learning a role immediately without rehearsal, the way Toscanini memorized a new score in the airplane on the way over and went right on the stage to conduct.

A vivid Plisetskaya memory is one of the many times we saw her live in Los Angeles where she came often to capacity crowds. The Swan died, and we followed her to the bus where the company was being driven to their hotel and she was still signing programs with her authentic autograph. She took Shirley’s program, signed it, and passed it back through the window of the bus.

A ballet hooligan pushed through the crowd, snatched the autographed program from Shirley’s reaching hand, and rushed away through the crowd which tried to stop and catch him because they saw the whole thing. They were true ballet lovers and felt the transgression in their very swan bones. Alas, he escaped, but we came SO CLOSE we almost touched Maya’s outstretched hand.

Such is life. You lose a few, and then a few more.

But the Dying Swan lives on as Chaz flew through the living room.