Everything Was Beautiful at the Ballet

Boxing Day Treat-  Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, at the Sadler's Wells with loved ones!

We invited K.  She got there early and got us a bottle of white wine.  At intermission, we shared another.

Conclusion:  The ballet was incredibly non-thinking, funny, easily understood and just good fun.  Choreographically, it was encouraging to watch something non- earth shattering, filled with repetitive, uninventive movement, that touches so many in the audience, won real awards, and is a box office success.  The music was wonderful, the lead swan tired, the prince a flawless dancer.  My favorite moments were the unveiling of a naked statue (even I was caught, surprised, and laughed loudly!), and when some cell phone went off ringing (more laughter from yours truly!!!).  The last scene possibly inspired by Hitchcock's Birds, showed some sophistication in crafting.  I left the theatre with a big smile on my face and thinking, if I had it my way, I would have finished the dance with a royal hunt and a killing.

And as 2013 draws to a close, we made a pilgrimage (start by paying penance ie climbing up all 193 steep stairs leading from the bowels of the Covent Gardens Tube Station to the very top of Long Acres...) to the Royal Opera House this afternoon.

In action, the Royal Ballet dancing George Balanchine's Jewels (choreographed in 1967) set to music by Faure, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky.

The first ballet, Emeralds was brooding and hinted at the Romantics.  I sat there and felt my mind begin to wander.  On occasion, I even spied on my husband, and caught him clearing his throat politely.  Rubies that followed had bite, thrusting of hips, jazz hands (Balanchine falls in love with his adopted home, America!), and was thankfully executed with that sense of speed, precision and charismatic confidence Balanchine technique demands.  Diamonds the last of the ballets, with South Americans Marianela Nunez and her husband Thiao Soares steering the company, offered food for thought.

photo credit:  The Royal Opera House

Nunez is the true jewel of this afternoon's performance, for she simply became, the music.  The conflict in the Tchaikovsky score, the echoes, the attack, the victory- we heard and saw every note in each gesture she offered and in every one of her limbs stretched, coiled, spun.

Watching Balanchine danced well, you see his musical genius and comprehension.  You see his absolute obsession of the woman, the ballerina.  He is relentless in his demands of her, hardly ever allowing her off pointe.  At "rest", the ballerina is aching her back, inclining her torso, or suspended with legs split high in the air.

One lesson I learnt watching today's dance was the use of retreating.  Emeralds was easily forgettable especially because the dancers seemed too unconvinced themselves.  But the finale arrested with the use of a retreating corps, and in this, a sense of passing was felt.  Time or memory, or time and memory, recede.

Memory...

I remain unconvinced by the Royal Ballet as a company, but ever, a Balanchine fan.  I saw a great ballerina dance today.  A dancer slipped and fell on stage at the start of Diamonds- perhaps forgivable as the stage floor and pointe shoes can be very slippery.  But then towards the end, another dancer committed the true crime of stumbling in his second pirouette, and landing, not on his knee in line behind his mate, but tumbling out of line, nearly even putting his hand down to catch himself!  

Then again, perhaps that's what's most beautiful about ballet as a living art form.  Like life, we dream, we soar.  And then the Icarus curse.  We fall.