“But Michael,” you might find yourself wondering, “surely there is no subject about which you are not the paragon of knowledge. You are far too clever as well as handsome to have such shortcomings.” Well, while I thank you for your praise of my intelligence and dashing good looks, I will confess that when it comes to anything dancing related, I have all the sensibilities of, well, a skinny white dude. Last night, however, I attended a ballet version of Anna Karenina at the Aleksandrinsky theater, and given that the concept of going to the ballet is something entirely alien to me, I thought I’d share my humble impressions with you: the gentle internets.
The plot of the ballet centered on the triangle between Anna, Karenin, and good ol’ what’s his face (the guy Anna leaves Karenin repeatedly for… it’s been a while since I read the book and it’s not like there was any dialogue to refresh my memory). Levin and Kitty were nowhere to be found. This, however, was not a bad thing, as Kitty just acts like a snotty and aristocratic tart right up until the last couple of chapters, and Levin mopes and chops wheat for the entire damned novel. So it was nice to see that the creators of this production had the prescience to know that the interesting part of the novel is watching Anna slowly self-destruct. This ends the part of the post where I at least look like I know what I’m talking about.
The meat of the matter here, is of course the actual dancing. This was absolutely gorgeous. I don’t quite know what else to say here other than “damn, those people were bendy”, but it definitely takes some serious skills to impart a story as involved as Anna and make it comprehensible without uttering a single word.
One thing that I noticed, though, is the men (insert proper gay innuendo here). This is to say that not once did I get the impression that these guys were going to head out to a club with large drinks containing cocktail umbrellas and names like “the fire island sunrise” or something. As opposed to the look you see on male dancers in shows that seems to convey “I am having a faaabulous time”, these guys, even in their tights and slippers (especially the guy playing Karenin) seemed to convey at all times “yes, we are certainly dancing, but if you so much as snicker, we will break your spine”. Granted, we’re not in the soviet days where training to be a dancer basically meant spending your entire childhood and adolescence in some kind of ballet-gulag, but these are men who will clearly get round after round drinks bought for them in a bar because of what they do rather than getting wailed on for being a fairy, all on account of how seriously ballet gets taken here. I feel like I wouldn’t have nearly as positive an impression of the whole ballet thing had I experienced it for the first time in America, where it’s such a fringe interest, where 95% of anyone who gives a crap is female. Also, I realize I'm not mentioning anything about the women here, which doesn't help my "i assure you, I'm straight" case, but it's simply because there wasn't much to say other than they were a) Russian, b) skinny, and c) very very bendy.
And I will conclude that for the finale, the entire cast came out and conveyed to the audience the concept of a train. Through dance. They made us believe that there was an actual train. By dancing. It sounds ridiculous I know, but it’s only because it was a spectacle so intense that mere words cannot describe. Also, the first person to make reference to “doing the locomotion” will be shot. Until next time!
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