I took Jazzy to a few modern ballets and she seemed to really enjoy them. We saw some extremely creative performances including a beautiful, traditionally dressed ballerina dancing to the sound and backdrop of a freeway at night, some to U2 and Lenny Kravitz and dancers squirting water from bottles and their mouths over plastic sheeting before artfully sliding across it in time with the music.
About a moth ago, the next daughter and I went to see The Netherlands Dans Theatre. It’s well worth checking out the link - they are breathtaking. The concepts tare hought provoking – like a dance with teams and puppets and a woman softly reciting:
This is you,
This is your face,
This is your hand,
This is your back,
This is you – reaching back….
It struck me that this was all about trying to get back to the past – but regardless, it was provocative and beautiful. And their ability to integrate the background footage to the actual dance on stage was startling. I really can’t speak more highly of this performance.
So when I got the email from The Art Centre offering reduced price tickets for Ballet Revolucion (surprisingly, that’s NOT a typo!) – direct from Cuba. I snapped up a couple and took my friend Dawn, our suggogate grandmother and one of our wonderful relatives who’s not related.
And what a disappointment! I realise now how lucky I’ve been with my previous selections. This was like a high school rock eisteddfod. There were 16 dances and for some reason they felt – like school children – that they should all be on stage together for most of the time, which would have been fine if they could all keep together. In fact, it took me a while to try and work out if their lack of precision was deliberate – I don’t think it was. The music and their efforts were highly energetic and they all looked like they were having fun – but it was just modern dance to modern music. It could have been ‘Cuba’s Got Talent.’
Next time the tickets are reduced, I should know there may be a very good reason….
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