Last Friday night a good friend and I went to Lincoln Center to see the Balanchine choreographed The Sleeping Beauty. We went on a special event which included a cocktail party and a backstage tour before the performance. Overall it was an experience I am really glad to have had, going backstage and coming out onto the stage to look into the audience was an exquisite experience I will long remember. The theater itself is gorgeous and I have not even mentioned the joy of entering the Lincoln Center complex. The majesty of history and excellence envelopes you as you start up the steps.
The ballet itself, I'm very sorry to say was interminable. I really am sorry o say that, I really wanted to love it, partially because my friend actually took me as a birthday gift and partially because I wanted more of the majesty of history and excellence but I got instead the same 6 movements performed over and over and over and over and over, ok, you get the point. I am trying to give leeway to the costumes since I don't know very much about theater costume history and maybe I am missing key piece of information. I do however know a lot about fashion history and I can easily say those costumes really confused me. We start out with men in a vaguely 17th century look-think the Three Musketeers and women in gowns that were a little 18th century a little 16th and 17th thrown in the mix as well. Then we move into a scene where the men are in sailor costumes that look like little boy sailor suits only in olive satin with red and white striped t-shirts underneath. Please don't ask me what that was about because if my life depended on it I could not hazard a guess. Then we move into a gold and brown Victorian (19th Century) hunting scene and then finally (yes F-I-N-A-L-L-Y, 2 and a 1/2 hours later) into an exquisite 18th Century ball gown scene. Here, the men and women were all from the same century and they were simply beautiful. But in reading the programme it was to have started out in the 18th century (very unclear) then everyone sleeps for 100 years (hence the Victorian costuming) and the prince who rescues everyone...what...brings them back to the 18th century and we all look like Marie Antoinette again in pastel bejeweled (though very beautiful) gowns????!!!!!!?!?!? And the princess of sleeping beauty namesake was in a tutu the whole time-that at least I get but the really ironic funny thing is that in the real 18th century ballerinas, opera singers, and actresses were considered women of low birth and would never have been let into a ball of any kind let alone a royal one as a guest. But that is neither here nor there really. And one other marvelous costuming feat: the evil Queen who puts sleeping beauty into her 100 year sleep has 4 fantastic minions. Their costumes and movements make them appear like bugs-so much so that in their last scene they crouch down together and some blackish deep silvery panels on their backs move gracefully up and down. It was enchanting (although I detest bugs of any kind and never want to be near any but when you have the opportunity to see them up close and dead pinned into a thick Lucite case you see just how very beautiful their black bodies are).I spoke to my fashion friend about it over the weekend because he has a degree in dance. I am desperately trying to understand how this ballet survived it's 150 year history and is continually performed and loved apparently. My fashion friend explained that Balanchine is a form over function minimalist choreographer so his ballets would be very clean and simple even if filled with too many characters and too many colors. Did every fairy who came to pay homage to the newly born princess really have to have her own dance-especially when I would swear to you each was exactly the same? Couldn't they have all been together on the stage and danced? And if they did each have to have their own dance-could they have not preformed them at the same time? I think that would have the whole scene so much more depth. And if form is what was truly important and if you are at the caliber of dancing at Lincoln Center shouldn't all the forms be perfect? When there were group performances, all the arm and leg extensions were always perfect-all at the same time and the same height (Bob Fosse was another big proponent of technical precision and I applaud him for it) but there were so many little missteps on landings and that really is unforgivable, especially if you are all about form.
But, as I say, I am so very glad to have had the experience and I would really like to go to more ballet. And I will, apparently my best glam friend's ex boyfriend is a very senior exec at American Ballet Theater and I have begun to express my intense interest in tickets...
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