Sunday, October 21, 2007 - TCBC's Performance of the Ballet Giselle
The middle month of Spring in Hobart was punctuated last night with the sublimity of the Tasmanian Classical Ballet Company's exotic performance of the romantic French ballet Giselle at the Theatre Royal. There were, as usual, only two performances - an early afternoon performance and the normal evening performance. Because I prefer going to the theatre of an evening rather than an afternoon, I had booked two tickets for the evening performance and we were seated close to the stage.
Eliska and I had a thoroughly enjoyable Saturday evening at the ballet, which had not only superb dancers and choreography but the costumes and scenery were phenomenal. The performance was ethereally surreal. What is more, we were both pleased beyond measure that the Tasmanian Classical Ballet Company stuck to its preferred rendering of the classical ballets in the classical style. For as the From the Director page in the official program to the 2007 season performance states:
"The Tasmanian Ballet Company is unique amongst professional ballet companies throughout Australia in that we are the only professional ballet company that concentrates on producing recreations of traditional classical ballets. For example the Australian Ballet's recent production of 'Swan Lake' was set in a mental institution, and the male leads wore tuxedos a far cry from the traditional lakeside scene with a corps of ballerinas in tutus. Our box office sales for 'Swan Lake 2005' and 'The Nutcracker 2006' show that traditional classical ballets performed in their traditional style are very popular with audiences."
For the same reason, even though I am a Shakespeare buff, if buff will be accepted as a description of my leaning, I refused to book for and attend The Bell Shakespeare Company's production with its modern rendering of Shakespeare's play Macbeth, which that company performed in Hobart at the Theatre Royal. Contemporary Shakespeare, like opera and ballet, doesn't do it for me.
I concur with the Patron of the Tasmanian Classical Ballet Company, His excellency, the Honourable William Cox, Governor of Tasmania, that the Tasmanian Classical Ballet Company "...makes an outstanding contribution to the cultural life of this State." More the so, I would hastily add, since it sticks to its adopted approach of rendering classical ballets in the tradition of classical style.
As a service to ballet and to those of whom may not be acquainted with the ballet Giselle, I include a hyperlink to a Wikipedia article on this romantic ballet Wikipedia: Giselle. This also saves me from having to write a longer entry, which would please some people. I would, for the same reasons, include a hyperlink to Wikipedia: Ballet so as to convey to the less well-informed the history of ballet and to a certain extent the etymology of the word. Last but certainly not least, is included the Wikipedia article on the history of the pointe shoe Wikipedia: Pointe Shoes. Wikipedia is definitely gaining some exposure and usage in the blog entry.
As an aside, I couldn't but help to find amusement at the dissimilarities of the character Hilarion, the village greenkeeper, in the ballet Giselle with that of the Christian saint of the same name and subsequently named Master Hilarion (aka Master H) an Adept in Hierarchy in accordance with the occult and Theosophical traditions. Further on this I will not say in this entry.
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About Me
CTWO is a compilation and synthesis of the knowledge and thoughts of Cyber Trekker anent science and technology, philosophy, politics, the arts and a distinctive alternative viewpoint as a traveller in cyberspace during the 21st century in the creation and perpetuation of a pax cultura throughout Terra Australis specifically and Terra generally in a unity of diversity, while confronting the inky blackness of human concepts.
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