Etudes | |||||||
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| Name of Work | Etudes | ||||||
| Production Date | 1948 | ||||||
| Production Location | United States New York, NY City Center Theater | ||||||
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| Media Types | Sascha Radetsky and Jared Matthews as principal male dancers., Three principal dancers plus various soloists plus a very large corps de ballet. Xiomara Reyes as prima ballerina | ||||||
| General Notes | |||||||
Description
A non-story ballet. A sequence of vignettes, or scenes of various corps members performing increasingly complex ballet exercises, and eventually moving away from the practice barr, and doing freestyle steps, and then complex groupings, and then partnering, and then expressive scenes that go beyond mere classical technique, then freer steps and sequences that indicate the growing confidence of the dancers to let "rip" with their skills. The ballet starts out slow for the first 15 minutes -- with fairly slow deliberate sequences. Then gets more complex, then gets more overlapping and excited, with no spaces between sequences, culminating in a grand finale of orderly but intense dancing. Subject is the progression and process of developing skills (in this case dance skills).
Theme
Hard work results in great achievement in life -- and that results in beauty and excitement in life.
Emotional Sum or Sense-of-life
Thrilling pleasure at beautiful movement and great success at developing the best within you.
Context Information
Ballet succeeds to the extent it integrates the movements and patterns with the music chosen. Clearly there is a very high degree of connection here. The music arranged by Riisager was tailored to a very fine degree to the choreographic concepts (and vice versa). This particular performance was marred by the usual poor performance of the orchestra of the ABT. They have botched this music consistently over the last decade or more -- perhaps the music requires some high level of winds quality and other features, that most professional musicians cannot achieve.
Tags
non-story ballet
