"Kings of the Dance" & "The Pink Panther"
Feb. 26th, 2006 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicSaw "The Pink Panther" tonight with the dad and sister. I felt a bit guilty after refusing to see "Nanny McPhee" with him, and this seemed like an acceptable compromise. I was so sure the highlight of the movie would be the credits, but it turned out to be pretty good light comedy; lots of slapstick and other obvious gags, which the majority of the audience enjoyed, but also a few clever jokes I've already forgotten, as well as smaller pleasures like Jean Reno doing comedy and a cameo by Clive Owen as "Agent 006." Actually my brain is sort of scarred after seeing Jean Reno dance to Beyoncé in a pink jumpsuit, especially once he started gyrating his hips. Henry Czerny was lovely in his role as "Yuri the soccer trainer who trains." A couple of slashy jokes, too, which the moviemakers couldn't pass up. What is it these days with films' and television's inability to let homosexual subtext remain subtext? Is it just that they know a certain segment of the audience is going to read something slashy into the scene, and they maintain control by acknowledging it and laughing it off?
More analysis than the movie invited, anyway.
But the ballet last night. Oh, the ballet. "Kings of the Dance" featured four of the world's top male ballet dancers -- Ethan Stiefel (U.S.) and Angel Corella (Spain) of the American Ballet Theater, Johan Kobborg (Denmark) of the Royal National Ballet, and Nikolay Tsiskaridze (Russia) of the Bolshoi Ballet -- all of whom seem quite humble and embarrassed to be in a program with that name. The first act started out with a video introducing the dancers and describing the goals of the program to members of the audience who mightn't be too familiar with ballet in general or the dancers in particular, which was a benefit for my dad who hadn't ever experienced ballet except for "The Nutcracker" a couple of times. My favorite quote was from Nikolay Tsiskaridze who said he at first tried to compare himself to the others during rehearsals but soon realized it was impossible, because they're all incredibly talented in different ways: that it was like comparing the sun and the moon, and "Kings of the Dance" was like having them bright in the sky at the same time. Better than Christopher Wheeldon comparing them to tennis balls a few minutes later.
The screen lifted to reveal the newly-introduced dancers in rich, dark jumpsuits. They did a modern piece freshly choreographed by Wheeldon, who I hadn't heard of before last year but is one of the big names in the field. It alternated between group performance and solos. Pretty and enjoyable, but not heart-stopping.
The second act was originally slated to be something called "Le Jeune (Homme) et La Morte" (The Young Man and Death), which sounded promising, so I was disappointed to find out this week that it had been switched to something called "The Lesson" ("La Leçon"). But the new one, based on a play by Eugene Ionesco and choreographed by Flemming Flindt in 1963, was described in the pamphlet as "dark," so I didn't much mind the substitute. "The Lesson" had one male part and two female parts. The "Kings" were supposed to take turns playing the male role over the four nights the program runs at the City Center, only Ethan Stiefel apparently couldn't do it because of a knee injury, so someone else danced it twice -- but that's incidental; the point is, last night it was Johan Kobborg, and he was jaw-droppingly good.
Scene opens in a dance studio that's just slightly wrong enough to unsettle, with warped mirrors and shabby woodwork. It's a bit of a mess in there. A prim, stern, bespectacled mistress struts/slides comically, exaggeratedly, across the room, straightening chairs and opening the curtains to prepare for an arriving student. She tosses a pair of toe shoes out of sight behind the piano. A bell rings and a fresh young girl traipses downstairs into the studio ready for her lesson. The woman frowns at her and tries to quell her enthusiasm. The girl gets her soft shoes on and stands at the ready. A timid man in a cardigan peeks in from the doorway, hides, peeks in again, hesitates, ventures into the room hugging the wall, shoulders hunched and head ducked, clutching sheet music to his chest. He can hardly bring himself to approach the girl, rocketing backwards when she reaches out to shake his hand. After a short argument with him the stern woman starts playing the piano and the man -- the teacher -- commences in his stiff, peremptory way to show the girl what moves to try. She watches, imitates, improvises, flirts with him coyly, and he's taken aback again and again by her jubilance and mischievousness. It's still being played as comedy, though the music promises something horrible at any moment. At one point, showing her how to raise her arms, he accidentally touches her breasts from behind and he jerks backwards, practically blushing, and we laugh too.
<-- That's Johan Kobborg, but not the woman we saw last night.
Then things start to change. The girl gets tired, but he refuses to let her rest. He pulls her up from the chair when she sinks into it, and gestures angrily for the stern woman -- his wife, presumably -- to continue playing. When the girl leaves the room to put on her toe shoes, the wife leaves too. The girl comes back, looking more apprehensive than before. The man pulls a black curtain over the window, locks the door. They start to dance again. He starts to look hungry as he stares at her. She tires quickly and again he refuses to let her rest, now dragging her by the arm when she lags, gripping her shins when she doesn't lift high enough. His movements have smoothed out a bit since he first entered the room. After a little more of this, he gets rougher -- sends her reeling into the barre, tumbling onto the floor. At last, trembling with exhaustion and fear, she gathers her bag and huddles by the door.
While she stands there he slowly, deliberately plucks open the buttons of his cardigan, drapes it across the chair. Unties his tie, slides it off his neck, places it on top of the cardigan. Unfastens a few buttons of his shirt, stretches his neck from side to side, rolls his sleeves up to the elbows. Smiles a little and stalks toward her. Kicks the bag from her hands with a short, sharp flick of his leg.* Leads her back to the middle of the room and really starts dancing with her.
(It was the sort of moment where you blink and wonder if you're really seeing what's happening onstage -- if someone really wrote this, choreographed this, is really dancing this, because it's just so deliciously disturbing and twisted and sexy it's supposed to be hidden in your own mind rather than displayed in public. But displayed in public it was, and I sat there in sadomasochistic awe, blushing in the dark for enjoying it.)
He pulls and shoves and lifts and drops and humiliates her, strokes her face and kisses her, strikes her, stands erect over her, all graceful elegance and raw male power now, as she dances and sobs and dances more. He's a beautiful and violent partner. They end up by the barre again and he bends her backwards over it as she struggles. She might fight him, scratch him, and that's why he retaliates, or he may get carried away with himself; I don't remember which it was. Either way, he ends up strangling her, and she flops to the floor. He breathes heavily and looks down at her.
The stern woman comes back in, flips on the lights, takes in the scene. She walks over to him. By now he has taken a few steps back, looking partly horrified and partly confused, and his shoulders have started to hunch again, his hands coming up to his chest and wringing each other. The woman circles while he puts his sweater and tie back on. She motions for him to take the girl's shoulders while she grabs the legs. He looks incapable of doing anything without her instruction. Together, they carry her out of the room, goose-stepping at first to the music. After a few moments, the woman reappears. She straightens the chairs, opens the curtains. She tosses the girl's fallen toe shoe behind the piano. A bell rings. The curtain falls.
*At that moment a child a few rows back gave a delighted laugh, thinking it was supposed to be funny. I've been reading up on it and found that the ballet was restricted to evening-only performances at the Royal Ballet in England this season because it was deemed unsuitable for general audiences.
To my left, my manager (she was there too) let out a breath. To my right, my dad laughed, thinking the piece was comical. I slid down in my seat, grinning and boneless, still not quite believing it had been real. I don't know whether the piece would have been as powerful, or as alluring for me personally, if another of the men had danced it last night. There was something... primal about the way Kobborg danced it, the way he embodied the timid and unrestrained halves of the character, that makes me think he would have outshone them. ETA: I've also just read that he earned an Olivier Award nomination for dancing it in London. /ETA. Perhaps needless to say, I have a new favorite dancer added to the canon. Alas for he belongs to a ballet company across the ocean. You lucky Brits. And Danes! thank you for this brilliant specimen of artistry.
Perhaps also needless to say, I was at once utterly contented and resigned to the fact that the rest of the evening would pale in comparison to this. The third act comprised four short pieces, one for each dancer, who had worked one-on-one with choreographers to create them. Ethan Stiefel, my manager's favorite, went first and did a lovely if sometimes strange modern dance called "Wavemaker" that looked inspired somewhat by a baby bird and somewhat by zombies. It involved twitching and slow flapping -- undulating, I suppose, like the titular wave. Then Johan Kobborg came back for a new rendition of "Afternoon of a Faun," and blew me away again.
There was something magical or dreamlike about it, although I don't remember details the way I do for "The Lesson." For one thing, he utterly embodied the Faun, yet all he wore was a pair of mauve pants, and his reddish hair had hardly been styled. He has a strange face -- heavy brow, glittering eyes, prominent round cheekbones -- which, like David Hallberg's, looks startling up close but magnificent onstage, so that helped. And the choreography was nothing short of brilliant. Kobborg was graceful and angular at the same time as he played in first one, then two, then three spotlights serving as beams of sunlight in a forest of stage fog. The combination of movements this man, Tim Rushton, dreamed up! It was like watching the Kama Sutra of satyrs, Kobborg melting from pose to pose that screamed "inhuman" without me being able to pinpoint how it was possible for a man to do it equipped only with that pair of pants, that face and that impossibly deep well of talent. I swear he had extra limbs at times. Lying there drowsing in the sunshine, he even pulled himself half up from the floor like a mime, his hands gripping nothing but light. I described him as "primal" before; it certainly applies here as well.
Deep breath. So Nikolay had the unfortunate slot after Kobborg's, but he made do with a series of humorous solos from "Carmen" in which he played both male and female roles. Last came Angel Corella, and I really hope he's in some of the ballets I selected in the spring because he was magnificent as well, confident and comfortable. He did an adorable solo in a suit and loosed bow tie to Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train," strolling across the stage with his hands in his pockets, winking at the audience, fake-tap dancing like Gene Kelly at some points, doing a startling number of spins (be awed by my knowledge of ballet terminology!) at others. He reminded me of someone, too, and while I've settled on Kyle MacLachlan I'm still not sure that's who it was. Anyway, yay for charming Angel Corella.
1,800 words later, we silently thank the LJ-cut. Whew! I am just so grateful to have had the opportunity to see this show, for those two foreign dancers I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise, because it featured a cluster of talent all on their own rather than in a three-hour-long narrative ballet with a large cast, and because those smaller pieces didn't reduce them to powerhouse or virtuoso performances. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Let me know if you hated or loved it, actually, because there are three or four ballets coming up from May to July and you can tell me to shut up or keep going.
More analysis than the movie invited, anyway.
But the ballet last night. Oh, the ballet. "Kings of the Dance" featured four of the world's top male ballet dancers -- Ethan Stiefel (U.S.) and Angel Corella (Spain) of the American Ballet Theater, Johan Kobborg (Denmark) of the Royal National Ballet, and Nikolay Tsiskaridze (Russia) of the Bolshoi Ballet -- all of whom seem quite humble and embarrassed to be in a program with that name. The first act started out with a video introducing the dancers and describing the goals of the program to members of the audience who mightn't be too familiar with ballet in general or the dancers in particular, which was a benefit for my dad who hadn't ever experienced ballet except for "The Nutcracker" a couple of times. My favorite quote was from Nikolay Tsiskaridze who said he at first tried to compare himself to the others during rehearsals but soon realized it was impossible, because they're all incredibly talented in different ways: that it was like comparing the sun and the moon, and "Kings of the Dance" was like having them bright in the sky at the same time. Better than Christopher Wheeldon comparing them to tennis balls a few minutes later.
The screen lifted to reveal the newly-introduced dancers in rich, dark jumpsuits. They did a modern piece freshly choreographed by Wheeldon, who I hadn't heard of before last year but is one of the big names in the field. It alternated between group performance and solos. Pretty and enjoyable, but not heart-stopping.
The second act was originally slated to be something called "Le Jeune (Homme) et La Morte" (The Young Man and Death), which sounded promising, so I was disappointed to find out this week that it had been switched to something called "The Lesson" ("La Leçon"). But the new one, based on a play by Eugene Ionesco and choreographed by Flemming Flindt in 1963, was described in the pamphlet as "dark," so I didn't much mind the substitute. "The Lesson" had one male part and two female parts. The "Kings" were supposed to take turns playing the male role over the four nights the program runs at the City Center, only Ethan Stiefel apparently couldn't do it because of a knee injury, so someone else danced it twice -- but that's incidental; the point is, last night it was Johan Kobborg, and he was jaw-droppingly good.
Scene opens in a dance studio that's just slightly wrong enough to unsettle, with warped mirrors and shabby woodwork. It's a bit of a mess in there. A prim, stern, bespectacled mistress struts/slides comically, exaggeratedly, across the room, straightening chairs and opening the curtains to prepare for an arriving student. She tosses a pair of toe shoes out of sight behind the piano. A bell rings and a fresh young girl traipses downstairs into the studio ready for her lesson. The woman frowns at her and tries to quell her enthusiasm. The girl gets her soft shoes on and stands at the ready. A timid man in a cardigan peeks in from the doorway, hides, peeks in again, hesitates, ventures into the room hugging the wall, shoulders hunched and head ducked, clutching sheet music to his chest. He can hardly bring himself to approach the girl, rocketing backwards when she reaches out to shake his hand. After a short argument with him the stern woman starts playing the piano and the man -- the teacher -- commences in his stiff, peremptory way to show the girl what moves to try. She watches, imitates, improvises, flirts with him coyly, and he's taken aback again and again by her jubilance and mischievousness. It's still being played as comedy, though the music promises something horrible at any moment. At one point, showing her how to raise her arms, he accidentally touches her breasts from behind and he jerks backwards, practically blushing, and we laugh too.
<-- That's Johan Kobborg, but not the woman we saw last night.Then things start to change. The girl gets tired, but he refuses to let her rest. He pulls her up from the chair when she sinks into it, and gestures angrily for the stern woman -- his wife, presumably -- to continue playing. When the girl leaves the room to put on her toe shoes, the wife leaves too. The girl comes back, looking more apprehensive than before. The man pulls a black curtain over the window, locks the door. They start to dance again. He starts to look hungry as he stares at her. She tires quickly and again he refuses to let her rest, now dragging her by the arm when she lags, gripping her shins when she doesn't lift high enough. His movements have smoothed out a bit since he first entered the room. After a little more of this, he gets rougher -- sends her reeling into the barre, tumbling onto the floor. At last, trembling with exhaustion and fear, she gathers her bag and huddles by the door.
While she stands there he slowly, deliberately plucks open the buttons of his cardigan, drapes it across the chair. Unties his tie, slides it off his neck, places it on top of the cardigan. Unfastens a few buttons of his shirt, stretches his neck from side to side, rolls his sleeves up to the elbows. Smiles a little and stalks toward her. Kicks the bag from her hands with a short, sharp flick of his leg.* Leads her back to the middle of the room and really starts dancing with her.
(It was the sort of moment where you blink and wonder if you're really seeing what's happening onstage -- if someone really wrote this, choreographed this, is really dancing this, because it's just so deliciously disturbing and twisted and sexy it's supposed to be hidden in your own mind rather than displayed in public. But displayed in public it was, and I sat there in sadomasochistic awe, blushing in the dark for enjoying it.)
He pulls and shoves and lifts and drops and humiliates her, strokes her face and kisses her, strikes her, stands erect over her, all graceful elegance and raw male power now, as she dances and sobs and dances more. He's a beautiful and violent partner. They end up by the barre again and he bends her backwards over it as she struggles. She might fight him, scratch him, and that's why he retaliates, or he may get carried away with himself; I don't remember which it was. Either way, he ends up strangling her, and she flops to the floor. He breathes heavily and looks down at her.
The stern woman comes back in, flips on the lights, takes in the scene. She walks over to him. By now he has taken a few steps back, looking partly horrified and partly confused, and his shoulders have started to hunch again, his hands coming up to his chest and wringing each other. The woman circles while he puts his sweater and tie back on. She motions for him to take the girl's shoulders while she grabs the legs. He looks incapable of doing anything without her instruction. Together, they carry her out of the room, goose-stepping at first to the music. After a few moments, the woman reappears. She straightens the chairs, opens the curtains. She tosses the girl's fallen toe shoe behind the piano. A bell rings. The curtain falls.
*At that moment a child a few rows back gave a delighted laugh, thinking it was supposed to be funny. I've been reading up on it and found that the ballet was restricted to evening-only performances at the Royal Ballet in England this season because it was deemed unsuitable for general audiences.
To my left, my manager (she was there too) let out a breath. To my right, my dad laughed, thinking the piece was comical. I slid down in my seat, grinning and boneless, still not quite believing it had been real. I don't know whether the piece would have been as powerful, or as alluring for me personally, if another of the men had danced it last night. There was something... primal about the way Kobborg danced it, the way he embodied the timid and unrestrained halves of the character, that makes me think he would have outshone them. ETA: I've also just read that he earned an Olivier Award nomination for dancing it in London. /ETA. Perhaps needless to say, I have a new favorite dancer added to the canon. Alas for he belongs to a ballet company across the ocean. You lucky Brits. And Danes! thank you for this brilliant specimen of artistry.
Perhaps also needless to say, I was at once utterly contented and resigned to the fact that the rest of the evening would pale in comparison to this. The third act comprised four short pieces, one for each dancer, who had worked one-on-one with choreographers to create them. Ethan Stiefel, my manager's favorite, went first and did a lovely if sometimes strange modern dance called "Wavemaker" that looked inspired somewhat by a baby bird and somewhat by zombies. It involved twitching and slow flapping -- undulating, I suppose, like the titular wave. Then Johan Kobborg came back for a new rendition of "Afternoon of a Faun," and blew me away again.
There was something magical or dreamlike about it, although I don't remember details the way I do for "The Lesson." For one thing, he utterly embodied the Faun, yet all he wore was a pair of mauve pants, and his reddish hair had hardly been styled. He has a strange face -- heavy brow, glittering eyes, prominent round cheekbones -- which, like David Hallberg's, looks startling up close but magnificent onstage, so that helped. And the choreography was nothing short of brilliant. Kobborg was graceful and angular at the same time as he played in first one, then two, then three spotlights serving as beams of sunlight in a forest of stage fog. The combination of movements this man, Tim Rushton, dreamed up! It was like watching the Kama Sutra of satyrs, Kobborg melting from pose to pose that screamed "inhuman" without me being able to pinpoint how it was possible for a man to do it equipped only with that pair of pants, that face and that impossibly deep well of talent. I swear he had extra limbs at times. Lying there drowsing in the sunshine, he even pulled himself half up from the floor like a mime, his hands gripping nothing but light. I described him as "primal" before; it certainly applies here as well.Deep breath. So Nikolay had the unfortunate slot after Kobborg's, but he made do with a series of humorous solos from "Carmen" in which he played both male and female roles. Last came Angel Corella, and I really hope he's in some of the ballets I selected in the spring because he was magnificent as well, confident and comfortable. He did an adorable solo in a suit and loosed bow tie to Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train," strolling across the stage with his hands in his pockets, winking at the audience, fake-tap dancing like Gene Kelly at some points, doing a startling number of spins (be awed by my knowledge of ballet terminology!) at others. He reminded me of someone, too, and while I've settled on Kyle MacLachlan I'm still not sure that's who it was. Anyway, yay for charming Angel Corella.
1,800 words later, we silently thank the LJ-cut. Whew! I am just so grateful to have had the opportunity to see this show, for those two foreign dancers I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise, because it featured a cluster of talent all on their own rather than in a three-hour-long narrative ballet with a large cast, and because those smaller pieces didn't reduce them to powerhouse or virtuoso performances. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Let me know if you hated or loved it, actually, because there are three or four ballets coming up from May to July and you can tell me to shut up or keep going.
no subject
Date: Feb. 26th, 2006 01:06 pm (UTC)Because you should.
no subject
Date: Feb. 27th, 2006 03:52 pm (UTC)(It was the sort of moment where you blink and wonder if you're really seeing what's happening onstage -- if someone really wrote this, choreographed this, is really dancing this, because it's just so deliciously disturbing and twisted and sexy it's supposed to be hidden in your own mind rather than displayed in public. But displayed in public it was, and I sat there in sadomasochistic awe, blushing in the dark for enjoying it.)
Isn't it incredible - in a wonderful and horrifying way at once - when that happens?
no subject
Date: Feb. 27th, 2006 07:27 pm (UTC)Related story time!
There was a moment in the "Frankenstein" TV movie (appropriately) when Harker had Jenna handcuffed sobbing to a toilet and started to cut away her shirt with a pair of scissors. Later on as I was watching the "making of" featurette, my dad came in and sat down. Partway in they showed that clip plus a still shot from a different angle where you see Jenna half-topless and Harker standing over her. I had enjoyed the scene the first time but was intensely uncomfortable with my dad sitting right there. At first I attributed it to being embarrassed because there was, well, a half-topless girl on the screen. Then I realized it wasn't the photo or the scene itself but rather my reaction to it that made me feel ashamed -- even though he didn't know how I'd reacted. Shame and the fear of being "found out" to have deviant vicarious pleasures.
With "The Lesson," the fear and embarrassment were mostly, strangely, absent. Thinking about it now I wonder if that's because we were enjoying a socially respected art form rather than a mediocre horror film, or because there were so many people in the audience who had clearly enjoyed it, even if perhaps not for the same reason(s), or because I wasn't directly responsible for the content of the ballet (as opposed to having gone and rented the movie), especially since "The Lesson" had been dropped in to the program at the last minute.
...Long way to go to say "Yes, rather!" :)