5.2.07: Tragic Love

Went with CS, as she had been given an invitation, to see the premiere of Peter Martin’s version of the Romeo and Juliet ballet at Lincoln Center. The ad campaign is terrific, and very clever — an image of a dagger in negative space made of tiny fencing male dancers and leaping maidens, with the tag line “tragic love”, but with no mention of the ballet or even of Romeo and Juliet. This makes the whole thing seem very hip and modern — a bit of what P Gelb has been trying to do at the Met opera. It isn’t. It’s an old narrative ballet with old music (though occasionally tuneful) and sets, décor and costumes by artist Per Kirkeby that look like a giant scale high school production (though NY high schools usually do better than this).

These old narrative ballets, of necessity, have lots of mimed drama and what is supposed to be acting, all of which is possibly needed in order to impart the narrative. The acting looks, to me, like a parody of silent film acting — lots of mugging and swooning. Some corny-ass shit. It was mentioned to me that I might have preferred Balanchine ballets as they are much more abstract. I might, but then there’s a very good chance I’m just not a fan of ballet.

I have a hunch that this production was driven by the ballet marketing department. I’ve seen the same thing happen in the music business — someone tries to figure out what the public might be seduced into paying for, and then the work is created to fit those criteria. Finding a cute young girl and having her sing emo-type tunes would be one example. A mainstream rock band with hip-hop cameos would be another. In this case a hoary standard with a story that every punter knows is (by the linking of the names Peter Martin and Kirkeby) brought up to date, dusted off, and therefore something classic is made new — supposedly, at least on paper — and the ad campaign is designed to reflect all that.

I focused on the music, which had two catchy themes that recurred over and over in various guises. I made a mental note to investigate one of them that seemed to be based on a series of ominous-sounding chords. (Odd that it first occurs during a sort of festive ball scene — as foreshadowing it’s a bit heavy-handed, and it’s far from festive.)

Ex-President Clinton was seated right above us in the presidential box (with Chelsea I think.) He was introduced and people stood and applauded. Wonder if he was as bored as I was? Wonder what his legacy will be — NAFTA (sort of a disaster for Mexico and U.S. manufacturing.) Dismantling welfare. Handgun registration. Assault weapons ban. GATT. Dayton peace accords. Kosovo. Banned research on human cloning. Strong air quality act. Global Warming Protocol signed (it was?) Saddam Hussein was bombed. Expanded NATO. Some pretty decent stuff and some serious compromises, too.

Back to the ballet. Truckloads of money are shoveled at this stuff — to keep these spiffy halls operating, hold these gala events and pay the massive union costs in the theaters. It seems the audience are a bit of an elite club here, which is fair, I guess — if they want to sponsor this sort of thing, to bankroll it, then they’re welcome to have it all to themselves if they want to.