I think the only ballet I ever saw was Dracula? But that doesn't sound like something that should exist. Maybe my memory is off? It was really boring whatever it was.
It was worse than "Dracula, Dead and Loving It."
I just assume all ballet dancers are secretly like this guy.
Ballet is historically linked to Russians and underaged prostitution. We should probably just get rid of it to be safe.
And arthritis. Which apparently sucks.
But studying arthritis is a good job.
There was a long period where the structure for profit through corporate health care was very inhospitable... unless you were a doctor. Most of today's community hospitals were founded by doctors for their personal profit and later transitioned to nonprofit in a way that did not harm this goal.
A friend, now dead, who had been principal dancer with a couple of major ballet companies once told me "Ballet is about sex. If you don't understand that, you can't understand ballet."
Right, but lots of other types of dance look to be about sex also and don't have children in them.
It's a lot of fun to take ballet class. Ballet has become one of the most important things in my life. I try to squish my entire schedule around it.
If you travel between the liquor store and the Chipotle, there's a small shop labeled "Pure Barre", which I am told is about ballet on some way.
The one near me is between and Chipotle and a Starbucks. But then, what isn't?
I think people who in earlier generations might have enjoyed watching ballet now enjoy watching figure skating.
I'm at the Chipotle. I'm at the Starbucks. I'm at the Pure Barre in between the Chipotle and Starbucks.
Actually, there's a Starbucks just past the liquor store.
I'm a little irked that there are two Starbucks and zero Chipotle near by house.
like the James Joyce of dancing or something (supposedly crap book, but can't resist linking)
I love ballet, but I probably love the Wayne MacGregor Company more than the average "Swan Lake" production. I don't really need to hear Tchaikovsky ever again. But there's no objective response to your question, heebie, except that you probably have ADHD and understandably can't focus on an entire ballet, whereas I probably have ADHD and can peacefully hyperfocus on an entire ballet because there's no distracting talk. Science.
Hey, does anyone want to talk about student debt? If you have student debt, you surely have an SAT score to post too!
1. A Dracula ballet does indeed exist. I've never seen it, but I've seen posters and recall a review in the L.A. Times years ago.
Because Moby needs to know what he's he seen --
https://www.pbt.org/the-company/artistic/repertoire/dracula/
That sounds like something we would have done in 2004.
There's a Dracula ballet MOVIE. Directed by Guy Maddin.
Sadly, there's no "Dead and Loving It" ballet.
I think people who in earlier generations might have enjoyed watching ballet now enjoy watching figure skating.
Er, I dunno. My dad enjoyed watching what he called 'fancy' skating, but had no interest in the ballet.
Who, in earlier generations, actually enjoyed watching ballet? Enough people to make ballet a viable and enduring art form, of course, but I'm pretty sure it's never been broadly popular in the way that figure (or 'fancy') skating has been. I think ballet has all sorts of 'high culture' signifiers that many people find inaccessible and/or off-putting. All of that classical music by those Russian composers...versus the Ice Follies or Ice Capades, with, you know, show tunes!
Doesn't Tolstoy rail against ballet around the midpoint of War and Peace as a base and popular form of entertainment that corrupts morals, much in the way that Bloom in Closing of the American Mind rails against popular music as a degradation from higher culture like ballet?
I guess that was probably opera and also I'm probably misremembering the scene.
I think he was railing against novels, or possibly literacy in general.
25: I think Tolstoy saw ballet as decadent and French. It was a corrupting influence in the Russian aristocracy, and turned them away from the pure folk culture of the Russian people.
I think classical music by Russian composers is the MOST accessible classical music.
I don't know, man, my sister did a bunch of ballet (and other dance) when I was growing up, such that I had to sit through O(n^n) ballet performances performed by kids in Tucson and Reno and therefore believed that I hated ballet until adulthood, when I went to see a first-class company in a big city and found it was one of the best things I'd ever sat down for. Great ballet is great.
Also (has this story come up before?) the ballet in question was Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and during intermission the woman behind us turns to her (presumed) husband and asks, "Which one is the character who [describes something Mercutio did]"? Unhesitatingly and with complete confidence, the husband says, "Bortellini."
I've always enjoyed ballet. Like sex, it's about the body. It's a language but also very physical. It's not about the music or the beat. Any narrative is optional, though I guess that without narrative ballet overlaps with modern dance.
Of course, I'm one of those people who has never "gotten" music. Most musical performances are basically incomprehensible, hence boring and often hellish. I'm not biased though. Modern music is no better or worse than classical music, though it does tend to be louder. I was at a wedding recently where the music was so loud, the waiters were handing out earplugs.
24. Sponsoring high culture is status signaling, ballet is high culture. It's almost beside the point whether anyone truly likes it. In the past and apparently even today it's been a favorite of sexual predators. (But then, what isn't?)
Taking blame for their own actions.
This thread keeps making me think of bears riding a bicycle.
I don't think the bears are at fault there.
I saw a musical theatre show last year that was about ballet (Marie, Still Dancing) and I think that is as close as I have come to enjoying ballet. I wonder how many art forms' existence as 'Art' as opposed to a cultural level around trainspotting are pretty contingent.
I quite like ballet. My wife and and I have been a couple of times. We took xelA to see a slightly bowdlerised Swan Lake around his 4th birthday, which he liked. He has been semi- into ballet since he was little, not so much because of the dancing, as because he likes some ballet music (Prokofiev, etc).
The ballet/sex connection was extremely obvious in that Swan lake production. Not because of anything in the plot, but there was one moment when the Black Swan shimmed across the stage en pointe with her back to the audience, and her -- slightly less iron-hard than is usual for ballet dancers -- backside jiggling slightly, and you could (literally) hear the intake of breath/slight groan from the "Dads" in the audience.
Ugh, why even M now? Sorry to hear it
I'm still trying to decide if I like Arrested Development.
The package on the turkey slices I put in my lunch says they got all vegetarian feed. I hope that means they occasionally got a cheese omlette.
You demand cannibalism of your victims?
Chicken and turkey are at least as distantly related as humans and monkeys.
Looking it up, maybe they are as closely related as humans and chimpanzees, which you shouldn't eat.
So you want your victims to suffer chicken immunodeficiency virus.
I'm changing my mind. I hope the just got a nice cheese plate.