What's Your Favorite Ballet?

[dancer1912]

I have seen the Australian Ballet video (with Rudolph Nureyev.....his production) but I only saw it live a couple of months ago when Gary harris restaged it for The Royal NZ Ballet. It was wonderful.....and I liked the music.

[Mischa]

I attend ballet performances regularly since a couple of months, living just a couple of kilometers away from Pina Pausch's studio in Wuppertal I have luckily the chance to watch some extraordinary companies. Basically I started with similar prejudices people have towards classical music (anorexic children in tutus etc.), at the end of the day ballet music makes sense once you've seen it live. Most of the performances I've seen were compilations of songs or movements, but no matter, what it was, I was simply blown away by the energy, the aesthetics and the phantasy.

Asking for a favorite: musically I'm stuck in the beginning of 20th century, I'd really love to watch L'Après-midi d'un faune on stage, I've seen the Russian more or less classic ones from Stravinsky and Prokoviev - I'd prefer watching a ballet over an opera every day.

I really love Sacre, I played it a few times, but I really got the music the first time I watched the ballet live:

[ame]http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA[/ame]

Though it's not my favorite movie (it's a bit of a BPO propaganda movie, isn't it?) I enjoyed the staging of the "Rhythm is it" - project, you can feel the energy of the staging & music:

[ame]http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=_e-cwOn5w3A[/ame]

[haydnguy]

@dancer1912:

I actually looked at the DVD you saw also but decided on the one I ended up with since it was a bit newer production and got good reviews. I did watch the Australian Ballet on DVD recently do Coppelia and thought they did an outstanding job.

@Mischa:

You are certainly in an enviable position where you are to see great ballet. I enjoyed both those clips you posted and went ahead and looked at what is labeled "Dance Series I". They really do make great use of lighting in that movie. I really like the wide angle shot where Rattle is down in front with the spotlight on him while looking at the stage behind him.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB8ySWjvuc"]YouTube - DANCE SERIES I: RHYTHM IS IT![/ame]

[Herodotas]

I am not a ballet fanatic, though I have seen all the big Tchaikovsky classics - I went initially for the music and the spectacle, but increasingly I appreciate the choreograophy.....how each note or musical phrase is filled with movement. I wonder how a composer goes about writing a ballet? Does he do so in conjunction with a choreographer or does he write the music and then leave the movements to be added at a later stage? I live in the sticks but was pleased to discover that a cinema in Lincoln (about 35 miles away) put on Royal Ballet and Royal Opera films. Went to see the ballet "Manon" recently (music by Massenet) and was very impressed, especially by the "parody" dancing during a drunken scene. Generally though I think I prefer "beautiful" or "elegant" dancing to wonderful melodies as opposed to ugly dancing to ugly music!

[haydnguy]

Sadly, I've never seen a ballet in person.

I will try to change that in the coming season by going to either Dallas or St. Louis. In the meantime, I'm "stuck" with the DVD player. I'm not complaining though because I've enjoyed them so far.

[Despina41]

So I meant to review this ballet I saw in Berlin in December, but I was busy and somehow forgot. Anyway, it was a premiere, called Caravaggio, choreography Mauro Bigonzetti.

It was a very Italian production, except for the dancers, who were either Russian or Asian. The Ballett-Intendant (sounds so smuch more official in German) of the Staatsballett is Vladimir Malakhov of "Malakhov and Friends" fame. I didn't recognize him until about 20 minutes into it, then I realized we were watching Malakhov and friends, just under the name Caravaggio.
But yes, Italian. The colors and costumes were appropriate for something about Caravaggio -- "something" is about all you're getting on this one, because the program also had no idea what the piece was about -- and the music was interesting. It was "after Monteverdi" which could portend doom, but it was OK!

I was pleasantly surprised. It had all the 16th century and early 17th century musical tricks -- Malakho- I mean Caravaggio's solo dances were mostly harp and strings in that Merula-toccata tradition with lots of stylzed ornaments and no harmonic motion. It was mostly modal with some early 17th-century-sounding "tonal" cadences thrown in for variety. The most modern sound we heard was like Barber's style of Romantic modality. Anyway, the composer was Bruno Moretti. I guess hes in a long line of Italian throwback-to-the-good-old-days composers. Oh, the best part was the random introduction toward the end of the Monteverdi toccata from L'Orfeo. I was excited: "YESSSSS -- best minimalist piece of music EVERRR!"

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay79V_tMGzI&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay79V_tMGzI&feature=related[/ame]


Many of the group dance numbers were modeled off this sort of spectacle. "Mont-e-ver-di's he-mi-o-la!"
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU681o8BlZs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU681o8BlZs[/ame]

I have NO IDEA what this ballet was about. The program didn't know either. Something about Caravaggio's work and his life. Well, I don't think that ballet is really a great place for telling a story, since there's no dialogue (I am a big fan of dialogue). So that didn't bother me.

There were some beautiful pas-de-deux (uh, plural, French speakers?) in the ballet - the one in the first act over a ground bass (yes, it was baroque) was very tradiational. A repeat performance of that more or less in the second act, although the second act also started with a pas-de-deux between Caravaggio and another guy -- I have no idea what this ballet is about - and that was very nice too; since the entire ballet is very traditional, I'm going to assume from the music that this was some sort of dream-like situation, but then, we didn't know if the people on stage were supposed to be real people or muses or ideas in the first place. So who knows! But it was pretty to behold.

Here are some pictures from the Staatsballett main page:

[haydnguy]

Getting ready to watch this now:

[haydnguy]

Catching up on this thread a bit. I did watch Sleeping Beauty.

Last night I watched through the beginning of Act II of Lulu starring Christine Schäffer when my wife came in from out of town. I'm going to finish watching it tonight.

[Herzeleide]

Ballet version of Lulu?

[haydnguy]

hehe, no I've been kind of using this as the opera/ballet thread...