37 replies to this topic

[Joseph]

I think I may do something like the Disney Cartoon. Where somehow Caraboose finds an actual spindle wheel (after they have been burnt) and maybe it can be on wheels or something; I don't know. Interesting arguments, Hans...

[Mel Johnson]

I'd say so.  A spindle from a wool wheel would be about the size of a long pencil.  The bearing end would be iron.

[carbro]

Hans, on Jul 25 2005, 09:44 PM, said:

Oh goodness carbro...I don't think this is my favorite ballet anymore...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ouch!  I hope you're not pulling a guilt trip on me   .  I think I appreciate  how much you love/d SB.  But the event occurs at the official celebration of the princess' marriageability, right?

It's a SYMBOL.  There's poetry there.  Really.

[Hans]

Hm...sometimes I wonder if we don't read too much sex into the classics at times.  Is that really what people would have thought in 1895?  This is, after all, a ballet in which she's awakened by a kiss...on the forehead.

[carbro]

Yeah, that was their introduction.  Not even first date!

I don't think we are a whole lot more preoccupied by sex, but I am very sure that we are less private about discussing it overtly and therefore don't allude to it through symbols and metaphors.  

My grandfather was born in 1897, a bit before in vitro techniques were developed.  SOMEONE was thinking about sex in 1896, if not 1895!

[Hans]

I didn't say we think about sex more now; I said maybe we read too much of it into the classics.  Sometimes, after all, a cigar is just a cigar (as the famous psychiatrist whose ideas keep popping up in Swan Lake and the Nutcracker said).

[Majinsky]

Sleeping Beauty is my favorite ballet ever, and I feel there's nothing wrong with it.  I think you people are taking things to seriously.  Who cares how she pricks herself?  Who cares what the spindle looks like?  Who cares how she awakens?  Just enjoy the freaking ballet!

[Alexandra]

Actually, most of us do care about these details, Majinsky, and the site was set up so that there would be a place where people who do care about such details can discuss them.  If you want to be a dancer, you might want to spend some time thinking about them too, because there's a hell of a lot more to ballet than the freaking dancing, much as we love that, too.

[Hans]

Sleeping Beauty is my favorite ballet too.

The purpose of this particular forum is to discuss ballets in depth, and that's what we're doing.   From my point of view, this type of conversation is enjoyable because I get to hear others' opinions and ideas as well as learn some of the history behind the ballet, which gives an already rich and detailed ballet an even greater depth and significance.  Thus, I feel that such knowledge allows me to more fully, as you said, "...enjoy the freaking ballet!"

[Alexandra]

Re the spindle and symbolism -- I'm one who thinks that the overtly sexual initerpretations are inappropriate. Read the diaries of people writing in the 18th and 19th century and most do not go into great detail about their sexual prowess, yearnings, or obsessions. More important, the spindle and the idea of spinning goes back to ancient myths - the Fates wove the cloth of life and snipped the thread when a life was over, is one of them.  It's just as likely that the spindle has that connotation.  (I think it could be a symbol of marriageable age, and spinsterhood, too, but that doesn't make it a phallic symbol.)

[Majinsky]

Details are nice and everything, but I'm just hoping people would be fascinated more by Aurora's dancing and her acting than by if the spindle she's holding really even looks like a spindle.

[carbro]

After a while, steps are just steps.  Even in ballets like Agon or Symphony in C, if there isn't feeling, or a sense of some meaning behind the steps, there's no interest in seeing the same ballet time after time.  Dancers who don't understand this bore me to tears.

In SB, the Rose Adagio is different from the Vision Scene.  Not because the steps are different, but because one is a teen on the brink of womanhood and the other is a figment of Desire's imagination.  Great Auroras show the difference.

[Alexandra]

Oh, I think people do care about all of it, details, dancing, acting, history, tradition, everything.

[Alymer]

the most beautiful and effective way of dealing with the spindle scene that I've ever seen was Fonteyn in Nureyev's original Sleeping Beauty production in Milan.  The disguised Carrabosse gives her a bunch of long-stemmed roses.  She pricks her finger, looks concerned - she's clearly been told about dangerous spindles.  Oh - it's only a thorn.  No need to worry, so she's all smiles again.  She unties the roses and starts to distribute them among the people around her and there, hidden in the middle is the spindle.  So she knows what is about to happen to her as the danse du vertige begins.  I made some enquiries and I was given the distinct impression it was something she had worked out for herself.  But you can imagine the play of emotions...

[Helene]

In the Sylve DVD, she tosses the flowers all over the stage -- like someone voraciously tearing the wrapping paper off the baby shower presents -- making me fear she or someone else was going to trip over them.

What a lovely gesture to give out the flowers.