Marie and I went to the ballet this afternoon –my favourite performance of Ballet West’s so far.
It began with a Balanchine piece – and as the curtain went up, there were audible “oohs” from the audience. It was all floaty pale blue tulle, cool lighting, Tchaikovsky, beautiful lines and movements, and was the kind of thing that made me remember why every little girl wants to be a ballet dancer at at least some point in her childhood. (What’s the boy equivalent? Pro footballer?)
They followed that with a Hamlet and Ophelia pas de deux, also gorgeous, very dramatically lit and choreographed.
The title piece of the program was Nine Sinatra Songs, from Twyla Tharp. I loved it; elegant, sexy, camp, beautiful, like the man’s music. It made me want to put on a sparkly frock and go and dance and drink cocktails at a glamourous nightclub; the kind that doesn’t exist any more, and perhaps never did—an amalgamation of Rick’s Bar in Casablanca and something mob-run in Vegas in the sixties. 
Saturday 26 April 2008
Le Ballet
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It was just a great set and beautifully executed. Hooray for the new Ballet West artistic director! No more curing our Swan Lake addiction with ballets about Nazi war crimes!
After our conversation about full-length ballets vs. short pieces and how we usually preferred the latter, I was thinking that in all of the pieces they did I got a sense of character and storytelling equal to most full length ballets I've seen, but without the need for a program to tell me what the story is. I like those little character/scene paintings and I think they free dance to be dance rather than just another illustrative technique for lovely but overfamiliar stories. You wouldn't need to know the story of Hamlet to figure out what's happening between the little bird Ophelia and brooding Hamlet in the pas de deux -- it's all right there, and beautifully danced.
The Sinatra Songs was great, but only because they were classically trained dancers. If lesser mortals tried that stuff, they'd come out with black eyes (and the funny bits would probably look like mistakes rather than funny bits)!
Turns out I have seen Serenade before, but it can't have been as well done as yesterday's, or I'd remember it! Beautiful. Illustrating why it's better to continue on arabesquing with your girlfriends than run off with the single available male who will inevitably leave you for the pretty girl with red hair.
Oh, wait. You ARE the pretty girl with red hair.
I'll fight ya for him :)
I'd forgotten about the pretty girl with red hair--she made me want to dye mine to match her shade.
Serenade was absolutely beautiful. That opening pose alone is pure grace, even before they start to move. I really need to get one of those skirts...
Post a Comment