Real men go for Ballets...

To celebrate Ondine's birthday yesterday, we caught a ballet performance. It was the Royal Ballet Company and they did Swan Lake. Anyone who didn't get the significance of that, Swan Lake is the pinnacle of ballet performances, a superbowl of ballet performances if you will.

It was breathtaking.

After the last couple of years watching substandard

nice ballet performances (*coughsdtcough*) we finally get to see a company with more passion and grace than I have ever seen (through some fault of their own but not entirely so).

The dancers were passionate. The sets fantastic and the Principals were awe inspiring. Roberta Marquez was capable in her role as Odette but she really shone in her performance as Odile. With nary but a little slip up, she was poetry in motion through the 3 hour performance. The spotlight however had to be on Ivan Putrov, whose Siegfried was playfully wrought with so much joy in his dancing that his jumps looked like the man was floating in defiance to gravity. The corps de ballet were awesome as well and the 4 cygnets were so well choreographed that they sounded like one set of feet moving across stage instead of 4. The male dancers in the corps were jaw droppingly good and stood in contrast to the gawky principals of the SDT.

It was the first time that I ever had goosebumps watching a ballet.

Bravo! And bravo again!

All that said, I'm not really disparaging our local performers as I understand that with financial constraints and a culture that does not actually lend a credibility to the art of movement, (or any art for that matter) it is difficult to actually have a career in the arts of any sorts here, much less shine in said art. That said, it's also been said that some of our local dancers just lack the passion and commitment to really shine in ballet. More's the pity really.

Now, all that articulated, I feel like I need to rebalance the yin and yang in me and go out and shoot some virtual bullets into something.