Ballet!
I went with my mum to see Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty at the weekend. Yes, this is the Matthew Bourne who did the all-male Swan Lake. Sidebar: actually, it's not all-male; I watched a recording of it on TV and there are plenty of women in the cast, including the main roles of the Queen and the Girlfriend. Also, the central love affair is not so much homosexual as it is bestiality; the Prince has a nervous breakdown in the middle of a park and falls in love with an actual swan (or the vision of one - it's hard to tell with the Prince what's real and what's hallucination).
ANYWAY! Back to the Sleeping Beauty - it was brilliant! The costumes were so lush. The fairies stand out in particular with their tatterdemalion splendour, teeny angel wings and black band across their eyes. And then Caradoc, the evil fairy's son, looking very Heathcliffish in his long tail-coat and black ponytail, and poor Leo, the gamekeeper-possibly-turned-vampire?-hero (he gets bitten but we never see him bite anyone else), reduced to sleeping in a pop-up tent in 2011, dressed in a hoodie and tracksuit. The dancing was really intriguing; the fairies entered on a travelator, Aurora danced the Rose Adagio in bare feet rather than the traditional en-pointe, and then there was an extended scene of people dancing in blindfolds through a dark wood (which I think was supposed to represent Aurora's dreamscape spilling into the grounds of the palace). Not sure how they managed not to run into each other, although Mum claims that the blindfolds would have been see-through from the other side. Ooh ooh, forgot to mention! When the evil fairy is casting her curse, they have a dancer on stage to represent the grown-up Aurora, and she wears a mask which blanks out her features so she looks like the people who get their faces sucked off by the Wire in the new-Who episode, "The Idiot's Lantern" - seriously creepy!
And the baby - every review I saw on-line mentions it, so this doesn't count as a spoiler - the baby Aurora is the most adorkable rod puppet, which crawls around the servants' feet and sits up in her crib, shaking hands with the fairies, and tries to climb the curtains at one point :DDDD
The music was pre-recorded, which I was surprised at. At first, I thought that maybe Bourne had gone with some extended symphonic version of the score and it simply isn't possible to fit a proper symphony orchestra into most theatre orchestra pits. But apparently it was done to cut costs so they could spend on the costumes and set designs (which are deliciously lavish, btw). The recording was fine, and I've been to a ballet with recorded music before so I didn't mind. Still you kinda wonder what a live orchestra might have added. I also thought that there was more plot and action - i.e. the entertaining bits - in the first half than in the second; the latter had a few too many atmospheric dreamscapes where nothing much was happening apart from half-nude men in white leggings...
But altogether, Mum and I had a great time!
Sidebar on the Rose Adagio: I had heard pieces from the Sleeping Beauty score long before I saw the ballet performed, so I initially had some quite different ideas about where they fitted in the story. The Rose Adagio is the most developed one. Traditionally it takes place in Act 1 at Aurora's birthday, before she gets her finger pricked, and involves the princess being courted by four suitors, each one presenting her with a rose - hence, the name.
Well, I didn't know that when I first heard the music. I thought that it occurred after Aurora had pricked her finger and fallen asleep. I thought that the music depicted the Lilac Fairy and her lieutenants moving through the palace, putting each person they met to sleep, and encouraging the magical growth of the rose-briars around the building. I have a very clear image in my head that the final swell represents the fairies outside the palace completing their final rituals, while a whole mass of dancers - the briars - slowly climb over a model of the palace building, trailing vines, thrusting out thorns or bursting up as bright red "roses", as the climax builds and the gates close around.
...I realise that doing such a thing on stage would be extremely difficult. The ending as I picture it requires a "palace" that can be moved on and off stage, and is solid enough for people to climb over and through (the "roses", for instance, have to be inside the model, and then pop out of hatches as they "flower"). It also requires a lot of dancers, often joined to one another in a chain by those vines I mentioned, and some of them either carrying giant thorns or being given them through those aforesaid hatches. Lots to go wrong: people could fall and drag others down with them, the hatches could get stuck, the climbing frame could break, or the wheels/rails for moving the palace around could come off altogether.
The lead-up, of the fairies going from room to room "inside" the palace, requires a series of quick set changes (possibly some sort of scrolling backdrop?) and several people moving about the stage at once. "Sleepers" fall off into the wings, unsuspecting "still awake" inhabitants come in. The fairies are all over the place, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes going off-stage and coming back on at a different point. And they'll have either puppet-"briars" or a small chain of child-dancers trailing in their wake.
So yeah, really, really complicated, and tough, and probably expensive, what with all the set building, props and costumes involved. And you would have to change around the score and shift the Rose Adagio from the middle of the act to the end.
...But damnit, it would be cool if it worked :DD
...I think too much about these things, don't I? #^.-#
ANYWAY! Back to the Sleeping Beauty - it was brilliant! The costumes were so lush. The fairies stand out in particular with their tatterdemalion splendour, teeny angel wings and black band across their eyes. And then Caradoc, the evil fairy's son, looking very Heathcliffish in his long tail-coat and black ponytail, and poor Leo, the gamekeeper-possibly-turned-vampire?-hero (he gets bitten but we never see him bite anyone else), reduced to sleeping in a pop-up tent in 2011, dressed in a hoodie and tracksuit. The dancing was really intriguing; the fairies entered on a travelator, Aurora danced the Rose Adagio in bare feet rather than the traditional en-pointe, and then there was an extended scene of people dancing in blindfolds through a dark wood (which I think was supposed to represent Aurora's dreamscape spilling into the grounds of the palace). Not sure how they managed not to run into each other, although Mum claims that the blindfolds would have been see-through from the other side. Ooh ooh, forgot to mention! When the evil fairy is casting her curse, they have a dancer on stage to represent the grown-up Aurora, and she wears a mask which blanks out her features so she looks like the people who get their faces sucked off by the Wire in the new-Who episode, "The Idiot's Lantern" - seriously creepy!
And the baby - every review I saw on-line mentions it, so this doesn't count as a spoiler - the baby Aurora is the most adorkable rod puppet, which crawls around the servants' feet and sits up in her crib, shaking hands with the fairies, and tries to climb the curtains at one point :DDDD
The music was pre-recorded, which I was surprised at. At first, I thought that maybe Bourne had gone with some extended symphonic version of the score and it simply isn't possible to fit a proper symphony orchestra into most theatre orchestra pits. But apparently it was done to cut costs so they could spend on the costumes and set designs (which are deliciously lavish, btw). The recording was fine, and I've been to a ballet with recorded music before so I didn't mind. Still you kinda wonder what a live orchestra might have added. I also thought that there was more plot and action - i.e. the entertaining bits - in the first half than in the second; the latter had a few too many atmospheric dreamscapes where nothing much was happening apart from half-nude men in white leggings...
But altogether, Mum and I had a great time!
Sidebar on the Rose Adagio: I had heard pieces from the Sleeping Beauty score long before I saw the ballet performed, so I initially had some quite different ideas about where they fitted in the story. The Rose Adagio is the most developed one. Traditionally it takes place in Act 1 at Aurora's birthday, before she gets her finger pricked, and involves the princess being courted by four suitors, each one presenting her with a rose - hence, the name.
Well, I didn't know that when I first heard the music. I thought that it occurred after Aurora had pricked her finger and fallen asleep. I thought that the music depicted the Lilac Fairy and her lieutenants moving through the palace, putting each person they met to sleep, and encouraging the magical growth of the rose-briars around the building. I have a very clear image in my head that the final swell represents the fairies outside the palace completing their final rituals, while a whole mass of dancers - the briars - slowly climb over a model of the palace building, trailing vines, thrusting out thorns or bursting up as bright red "roses", as the climax builds and the gates close around.
...I realise that doing such a thing on stage would be extremely difficult. The ending as I picture it requires a "palace" that can be moved on and off stage, and is solid enough for people to climb over and through (the "roses", for instance, have to be inside the model, and then pop out of hatches as they "flower"). It also requires a lot of dancers, often joined to one another in a chain by those vines I mentioned, and some of them either carrying giant thorns or being given them through those aforesaid hatches. Lots to go wrong: people could fall and drag others down with them, the hatches could get stuck, the climbing frame could break, or the wheels/rails for moving the palace around could come off altogether.
The lead-up, of the fairies going from room to room "inside" the palace, requires a series of quick set changes (possibly some sort of scrolling backdrop?) and several people moving about the stage at once. "Sleepers" fall off into the wings, unsuspecting "still awake" inhabitants come in. The fairies are all over the place, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes going off-stage and coming back on at a different point. And they'll have either puppet-"briars" or a small chain of child-dancers trailing in their wake.
So yeah, really, really complicated, and tough, and probably expensive, what with all the set building, props and costumes involved. And you would have to change around the score and shift the Rose Adagio from the middle of the act to the end.
...But damnit, it would be cool if it worked :DD
...I think too much about these things, don't I? #^.-#