Home » Plisetskaya: Style. Musicality. Power. Flow.

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Plisetskaya: Style. Musicality. Power. Flow. — 9 Comments

  1. Neo, I’ve learned a lot from you about the ‘classic’ arts. Your love and passion for it just adds to the examples you show. I bet you could develop and teach one hell of an introductory course on the subject for us backwoods bumpkins. My appreciation for arts has grown as I have aged. I a few years ago walked into the Prado and almost immediately stumbled upon a large Velázquez painting. I was so overwhelmed I started to weep. I guess there really is more to life than rockabilly. ;>).

  2. neo:

    Yes, I would be the poorer for having not read your dance commentary nor attended the videos you have linked.

    Then there’s my specific debt for introducing M. Plisetskaya. I was certainly impressed by the first three dancers, but then came Plisetskaya.

    She was “being” ballet; they were “doing” ballet.

  3. huxley:

    You’re welcome!

    I think recent dancers and present-day audiences don’t even know what they lack. The dancers care almost solely about how high their leg rises – which makes an uglier line, is of zero interest, and has nothing to do with dance. The audiences cheer and applaud.

  4. Sterile (present) versus stirring (past).

    From this old folk dancing fan, thanks, Neo, for sharing the clips and your observations.

  5. Wow. This is perhaps the clearest of your “compare and contrast” dance posts…

    Plisetskaya is definitely not worried about long lines – her head cranes forward as she looks with interest at her plaything, the scarf… making room for its billows as she steps on pointe.

    The last modern dancer has a little of this – she makes the nicest shapes with the scarf, and uses its motion to motivate the swing of the hopping pirouette.

  6. I watched just a bit of all four, and I know zero about dance…

    …but what struck me was that Plitsekskaya moved like the scarf. She seemed to have a reason for holding it, an identification with its unstudied grace – no reason for this thought, but I thought of “the lilies of the field,” blowing in a breeze.

    The other three seemed to me to be holding a prop, as you said. I thought of Gerbera daisies.

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