As it turned out the live ballet production from the National Opera House in Paris was four productions from the Diaghilev days of the Les Ballet Russes.I very much enjoyed two of the four!
Le Tricorne (The Three Cornered hat-1919) is a lively and colourful ballet with a totally Spanish flavour and Le Spectre de la Rose (The Spector of the Rose 1911) a brief but quite beautiful duet between a girl and a rose "ghost", they were amazing to watch, but I didn't quite enjoy the controversial L'apres midi d'un faune (Afternoon of a Faun-1912) (humm a man dressed as a deer gets his sexual kicks by rubbing himself on a nymph's clothing!- not quite my cup of tea there I can tell you) and I found the famous Petrouchka (below), rather unsettling and uncomfortably racist
We had a gin and tonic in the interval as did the smattering of people in the audience.... sad there wasn't more people there
I'm not very up to date on ballet anymore. When I was a kid we went to NYC to see Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. For some reason I'm thinking it was all male dancers. Not sure. I saw the Bolshoi Ballet when I was 15 (in Moscow). My Auntie Vi was a dance teacher and my mother was a big ballet and opera fan. The only ballet I've seen in years was The Nutcracker (Dec5th)---just love Tschaikowsky. We used to have seasons tickets to Phoenix Ballet but no more.
ReplyDeleteSent a little something in the post to you today. They said 10 to 14 days. Let me know when you get it. x-c
I have only seen one live ballet; all the rest have been TV, DVD, or YouTube. It must have been wonderful to see live performances.Even the ballets you didn't care for must have had some great moments. We used to watch or read The Nutcracker when the girls were young.
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