culture review
Forgot to post about seeing The Bright Stream (Ratmansky) a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was delightful. Perhaps a little too much of the tired "ho ho! fat ladies are amusingly ill-co-ordinated! and when people try to cross gender lines, hilarity ensues!" kind of humour, but on the whole, quite lovely, artistically, musically, and technically. With bonus man en pointe and arabesque en bicyclette, which were fun to see - and no-one gets away with cheating on their wives or dumping their fiancees, of which I approve.
This week I saw Kudelka's Cinderella; it's American Ballet Theater, but this one was a lot more Theater than Ballet, and not especially good theatre at that - the jokes aren't funny and go on too long, and the whole thing feels a bit cluttered and ragged. I suppose you could say that's a subtle meta-comment on Cinderella, who is supposed to be ragged; but one expects, for example, a pas de quatre to be a *little* more co-ordinated than it in fact was. Also, putting men into dark suits and then having them dance on a black stage isn't good planning; they look like a lot of bobby-about shirtfronts in some kind of strange puppet play. Another example of *planning: ur doin it wrong* is having a whacking great circle painted on the stage and then doing a whole lot of circle dances that are embarrassingly non-circular. Just looks messy. Still, yummy costumes, and some cute ideas, plus a decent quantity of women with agency (I notice these things).
I rather enjoy the way it works high up at the top of the Met building - you buy a $20 seat, and then when the lights go (this being the Met, successively up and) down,* everyone in the $20 seats sneaks over into the empty $30 seats. With one's opera glasses (birthday-present binoculars from a long time ago), one manages rather well.
* i.e. they raise the chandeliers, and the house lights go down.
This entry also appears at http://hatam-soferet.dreamwidth.org/669896.html.
people have commented there, and you're welcome to join them. I've disabled LJ comments for the time being because of excessive spam.
This week I saw Kudelka's Cinderella; it's American Ballet Theater, but this one was a lot more Theater than Ballet, and not especially good theatre at that - the jokes aren't funny and go on too long, and the whole thing feels a bit cluttered and ragged. I suppose you could say that's a subtle meta-comment on Cinderella, who is supposed to be ragged; but one expects, for example, a pas de quatre to be a *little* more co-ordinated than it in fact was. Also, putting men into dark suits and then having them dance on a black stage isn't good planning; they look like a lot of bobby-about shirtfronts in some kind of strange puppet play. Another example of *planning: ur doin it wrong* is having a whacking great circle painted on the stage and then doing a whole lot of circle dances that are embarrassingly non-circular. Just looks messy. Still, yummy costumes, and some cute ideas, plus a decent quantity of women with agency (I notice these things).
I rather enjoy the way it works high up at the top of the Met building - you buy a $20 seat, and then when the lights go (this being the Met, successively up and) down,* everyone in the $20 seats sneaks over into the empty $30 seats. With one's opera glasses (birthday-present binoculars from a long time ago), one manages rather well.
* i.e. they raise the chandeliers, and the house lights go down.
This entry also appears at http://hatam-soferet.dreamwidth.org/669896.html.
people have commented there, and you're welcome to join them. I've disabled LJ comments for the time being because of excessive spam.