Quote:
Originally posted by Rosie:
Le Carnaval des Animaux by Alexei Ratmansky ended the evening and I’m sorry but I have to say that I hated it. But I was obviously in a minority as it drew a huge response from the audience. I found it tedious with fairly boring choreography. I thought the costumes were muddy and uninspiring and at times I struggled as to what was going on. I found the whole ballet pretty dire really and while the rest of the audience found it very funny, I barely cracked a smile. Maybe I missed something or had a sense of humour bypass last night!
This is not to detract from the dancers though who were great. I particularly enjoyed Lorena Feijoo as the Elephant and Maffre as the Jellyfish. Her Dying Swan was effective too, though if you’re going to parody this piece, then I prefer the Trocks rather than this rather flimsy attempt.
I know what you mean, Rosie. I had the same reaction to it the first time but it grew on me. There are little subtleties in the work especially in the characterization of the different creatures to the music, once I got past the humor, which is hard to do the first time as it's right there in your face.
But if you think about it, it's not really a comedic work. The comedy is just a way to convey the theme. The work is deeper than that. If you view the work as comedy, as did Crisp, then it fails but you have to look beyond that. It's not a classical work by any means but Ratmansky doesn't stray very far from classical ballet storytelling.
<small>[ 22 September 2004, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: Azlan ]</small>