We hear you. You can’t stand the buzz about a “certain wedding” anymore. Everywhere you look, it’s all about fairy-tale endings, cheese and romance. You don’t care whether the bride will be wearing vintage McQueen, nor about who made it to the Queen’s private party. You refuse to watch the populist media coverage or to collect [...]
Posts tagged as:
Ondine
While we keep an eye on the ongoing debate about ballet “trying to find a place in our inattentive and increasingly lowbrow culture”, we wonder what kind of future lies in store for ballets that are neither masterpieces, nor flops? Case in point, 1952′s Sylvia, which Frederick Ashton himself had reconfigured in the sixties as [...]
This week we have double reason to party. While at Covent Garden the Royal Ballet returns home for the 2009/2010 season, over here at the Ballet Bag we celebrate 6 months of online balletomania. To mark the occasion we have prepared a – non exhaustive – balletic timeline of sorts, to highlight some of our [...]
In this compelling article dance critic Alastair Macaulay examines what drives the archetypal “heroine of the water”, her allure, her psychological connotations. I recommend it as essential reading not only to those thinking about catching the last few performances of Ondine this week but also to any Swan Lake devotees. In La Motte Fouqué’s Undine, [...]
Is this ballet for you? Go if: You are an Ashton fan. You have a keen eye for demanding technique, quick steps and plenty of characterisation in dance. You like stories involving fantasy femmes fatales, mermaids and ill-fated romances, especially those with a Victorian edge. Skip if: You can’t put up with a difficult non-melodic [...]
