ballet: Carmen

My parents have season tickets to the ballet and the promoters gave them an extra pair of tickets to today's show, so they invited us to join them. I'd only seen live ballet once before, so I figured it was worth checking out at that price.

( review: Carmen )

While I'm glad I went, I fear I might be insufficiently sophisticated to appreciate ballet. I found parts of the show -- mainly the ensemble dances -- tedious; I felt they were doing the same moves over and over and none of it was advancing the plot. In general I am fairly plot-driven; I can appreciate performance art that isn't supposed to have a plot, like some forms of dance and acrobatics, but if there is a plot, I expect it to be relevant. In this regard ballet is even harder than opera; at least with opera there's dialogue, albeit dialogue that I have to read for myself. You don't get that with ballet, though; the story is told mainly through movement and secondarily through music, and this might not be enough to hold my attention in a visual medium. (I can, of course, appreciate the music on its own merits, but it seems a waste of the stage and dancers.) If I set plot concerns aside and try to appreciate it as just dance in the abstract, I find that the dance doesn't hold my attention the way, say, the movement from Cirque de Soleyl did.

The reason my parents had extra tickets is that the ballet company made a controversial decision this year, and they lost subscribers over it. (So I see this as a "bring your friends who might then subscribe" ploy.) ( Read more... )

All that said, the protesters at the theatre were polite, and the absence of live music did make a difference to the show. So I hope PBT can get their financial house in order and return to having live music. It would be a win for everyone. But the protesters need to focus less on perceived (but not actual) "rights" and focus instead on the financial and artistic issues, in my opinion.