(no subject)
Went to see ABT's Don Quixote at the Met, with Paulina Semionova, on loan from Hamburg Ballet. It's not exactly a new production, as far as I'm aware of, but in fact it has changed quite a bit from the last one I have seen. The costumes are exceptionally pretty, and not at all what I remembered; several solos have been moved around, and the music in the dream scene was straight out of Paquita, much to our surprise. All in all quite enjoyable. The quality of the female corp just keeps on improving, but that male corp still leave much to be desired. I haven't seen Paulina dance before - technically quite flawless, but puzzlingly lacking in star quality, which is kind of the opposite of what you'd expect for someone from Bolshoi, who are usually dazzling on stage, but not always technically precise. What it comes down to, now I think about it, is that she's not particularly musical, and her dance phrasing has a rather flat quality which seems all the more uninspiring when compared to her co-star, David Hallberg, who is surely one of the best male dancers to come out of ABT in a generation.
Afterward my mom said to me, these classics are still really the best, too bad nowadays no one seems to be able to create these full length ballets anymore. Now, the standard answer in the dance world to this is that we're not Victorian anymore, and story ballets are not cutting edge or modern. In fact the NYTime critic just wrote a rather sneering review of Don Quixote and sang fulsome praise of a new bill of mixed (abstract) works. But if I think about it it's really an idea that's very peculiar to ballet. In no other classical art is there so much contempt for the classical repertoire. No one in the opera world holds the rather ridiculous notion that opera should be pure singing and no narrative. What has happened, I think, is that in the dance world the choreographers are now the only creative voices, and they have lost the skill of choreographing for more than a handle of dancers and weaving it into a coherent narrative. As a result the new full length ballets always look silly and amateurish. Now operas and musicals also have involvement from the director, the composer, and the librettist, as well as the choreographer, and the result is a much more sophisticated narrative. But I don't quite see how that's going to happen in ballet nowadays -- it may well be that the art form is going to fade out soon, since in spite of what the critics say, I don't seen how many people, even dancer lovers, will sit through evenings after evenings of the pure bodily contortions that pass for modern choreography nowadays.
Afterward my mom said to me, these classics are still really the best, too bad nowadays no one seems to be able to create these full length ballets anymore. Now, the standard answer in the dance world to this is that we're not Victorian anymore, and story ballets are not cutting edge or modern. In fact the NYTime critic just wrote a rather sneering review of Don Quixote and sang fulsome praise of a new bill of mixed (abstract) works. But if I think about it it's really an idea that's very peculiar to ballet. In no other classical art is there so much contempt for the classical repertoire. No one in the opera world holds the rather ridiculous notion that opera should be pure singing and no narrative. What has happened, I think, is that in the dance world the choreographers are now the only creative voices, and they have lost the skill of choreographing for more than a handle of dancers and weaving it into a coherent narrative. As a result the new full length ballets always look silly and amateurish. Now operas and musicals also have involvement from the director, the composer, and the librettist, as well as the choreographer, and the result is a much more sophisticated narrative. But I don't quite see how that's going to happen in ballet nowadays -- it may well be that the art form is going to fade out soon, since in spite of what the critics say, I don't seen how many people, even dancer lovers, will sit through evenings after evenings of the pure bodily contortions that pass for modern choreography nowadays.