I've combined two Paris Opera Ballet topics, here:
Guest Posted: 22 Mar 2006 03:46 pm
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Why do they call this a NEW production. What's new about it.
I think the old was GREAT!
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KANTER Posted: 24 Mar 2006 12:30 pm Post subject: A brief breach in the Boycott
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Owing to the presence of Carlos Acosta in the fair city of Paris, the author of these lines decided to interrupt, though briefly, a boycott of this run of La Bayadère.
Boredom being a powerful force, etc.
To make a long story short, I'm not too certain whether Acosta may have been on cloud nine to find himself dancing, at the top of his rather considerable form, alongside a Nikiya (Aurélie Dupont), who over the last decade has, so far as I can see, danced but a single role - that of Aurélie Dupont - and a Gamzatti (Eleonora Abbagnato), who is onto her fifth or sixth attempt in the role, and cannot in any way get through the choreography.
While our ballet masters here refuse, for reasons that I cannot fathom, either to alter the steps to suit Abbagnato, or let her dance something else, and have people who are extremely competent - like Fanny Fiat for example, dance Gamzatti.
And why Ould Braham is not dancing Nikiya is one of life's little mysteries, eh?
Anyway, the production is really winding down, and is starting to look pretty dire.
No attention is being paid to the corps de ballet's mime. Solor's friends loiter about the stage, chit-chatting and comfortably slumped, as though they were lounging at a pool-side party. The exception being, as usual, Simon Valastro...
In fact, now that I think about it, Audric Bézard may be about to replace Mallory Gaudion as my bugabear (had to stop hammering on Gaudion, terrible actor as he is, because at the end of the day, he is just too good a dancer...). Every time I see Bézard go down onto the stage, clueless, shoulders slumped forward, making cocktail party gestures, I feel I am about to have what Groucho Marx called
A STRANGE INTERLUDE
The ensembles look dreadfully ragged, and to say that the corps de ballet seems to be letting out all the stops, and taking the mickey out of Minkus (god, what an awful score) along the lines of The Pharaoh's Daughter, would be a gross overstatement. Everyone looks either a/ exhausted or b/ worried that someone is about to punish them for Making a Mistake.
La Bayadère is a three-ring extravaganza, so why can't we let our hair down and do a Nutter?
Talk about joy in dancing...
Well, Acosta did his bit. Very good dancer, although I can't say I'm taken with his naturalistic mime. Fanny Fiat and Thibault were absolutely extraordinary in the 3.17 seconds allotted each of them on stage, but one of the things I've learnt in ten years here, is that one should avoid being too good a dancer, lest one be punished with Bit Parts. I mean really, who could be so stupid as to actually ENJOY classical dancing, eh? Must be something awfully wrong with those two.
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