# Aargh ...



## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

must ... say ... something good ... about ... Swan Lake ...

well, let's see. The audience seemed to love it. They applauded vociferously, cheering and screaming. I did not fall asleep (as I did at La Fille Mal Gardee, a few weeks ago) but that may have been because my seat wasn't nearly as comfortable for this show lol. Yes, the seats at the Met are not the most comfortable. But pass on. A guy two seats down commented six or seven times on how high up we were ("It's high as hell") and then noticed there were two floors of audience above us and commented on that as well. On the other side, four or five Sweet Young Things talking about how everyone there was four times as old as them, while (no doubt a propos of nothing) staring at me. So: pleasant seatmates, check. The star ballerina got TWO big bouquets of flowers at the curtain call, which considering she'd probably worked and slaved ten years for perhaps five years of stardom on the stage, I call not quite enough.

But I think we need the Announcer From Hell. In a World ... Lost in Time ... in which all communication is by dance, all entertainment is by dance, and all competition is by dance, and in which all dancers have only a very limited vocabulary of dance, well, enough of that. It was like being at a football game. Here a kick, there a kick, here they run, there they run, and nobody ever scores. What I wouldn't have given for a Regie director who would just whip the prima ballerina's clothes off and get it over with, on stage. Woah! What are they doing! Usher! That's not in the score! You've got to RESPECT the WISHES of the COMPOSER, amen, world without end.

It was funny, at one point. I'm absolutely certain the dancers got a full beat off the music, and started to do the big dramatic lifts when the music was just twiddling along. Well, they carried on, as of course they had to do.

Ah well. I should probably just stick to ballets that are less than 100 years old. Maybe that's the good rule, for me. And next week, Le Corsaire, from 1856! Erp. Ah well. I shall go anyway, and just find out. Giselle (1841) wasn't bad, last year. I wouldn't go a second time, but the first was not a waste. And I did find myself humming one of last night's violin solos, this morning.


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