Paquita!

As an adjunct to the opera subscriptions, Laura organised a ballet subscription. Last night we saw the 'tutu spectacular' Paquita.

While I enjoy ballet and don't dispute the level of technical mastery and artistry involved, I generally don't enjoy ballet as much as opera. This is probably due to the telling the story through dance/pantomime element - I feel less involved in it than I would watching and listening to people singing. The emotional hook is there as much in ballet for me compared to opera. But when ballet rocks, its rocks. I still remember describing Grand Tarantella as completely psycho dancing due to all the crazy leaps and whatnot.

Paquita goes into the rockin' crazy territory. The programme was pretty much a number of celebrated pas de deux and a newly choreographed from from a dancer in the company. My personal favourite was Spring Waters that featured the ballerina doing a horizontal jump into her partner's arms - imagine how horrible wrong it could have gone! But it didn't so it was fine. And there was another point where she was held above his head and spun around, also tricky. But the general favourite went to the aptly named La Favorita (left) which was a few minutes of Spanish inspired crazy. I can't remember who was the male, but the ballerina was Reiko Hombo who despite being only a member of the Corps de Baller, gave a wonderfully tight execution of the dance. Sue declared it the best performance of the night and thinks she'll go far.

As for the main performance of the night...hmmm...when it went well, it was beautiful. When it wasn't it was scary. My high (low?) light was when a bead fell off a soloist's costume - the *ping!* was audible. I was so scared another performer would slip on it during the night!
(Photos from Australian Ballet site.)