Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Do you cry at the ballet?


Recommended Posts

Crying at a movie or play is nothing unusual. But I wonder if many ballet fans get as weepy as I do. I'm not talking about tears of frustration at a bad performance or of happiness at a glorious one by a favorite dancer. I'm talking about moments in certain ballets that automatically push the sob button. Every time the tree starts growing in Nutcracker, I get misty-eyed. It also happens in Apollo, when the reclining muses each offer a foot to Apollo and then reach their arms up to be lifted by him. And in Serenade after the waltz ends and five women are left alone, descend to the stage floor and turn toward one another. The seventh variation in Theme and Variations, with the corps women supporting the ballerina also does it for me. What about you? Non-Balanchine ballets also count.

Link to comment

I cry at everything. Don't watch TV, so I'm not a candidate, but I know that I cry much more frequently at dance performances than at opera/theatre. In opera, there is always the bad enunciation/pronunciation to jerk me around the bend....with ballet it is much more visceral.

Sometimes I have to really pull myself up short so I don't completely miss something because I am weeping...and of course, sometimes a performance will affect much more strongly depending on what is occurring in one's life. Some music will turn on the spigots even if there is nothing going on onstage (this can get embarrassing during rehearsals when one is trying to fit a costume!)

Preghiera from Mozartiana is a sure bet. Serenade. Lots of Romeo and Juliet. A good bit of Swan Lake....well, I have to be utterly honest and say a good bit of Tchaikovsky. Lots of Midsummer Night's Dream/The Dream.

Oh well, I have lots of hankies (emboidered, of course!) It's interesting, while I shy away from anything sad in movies or theatre, I always go to the ballet.

Link to comment

The scene in Balanchine's Midsummer when Titania offers the ferns (or hay, or whatever that stuff is) to Bottom.That always gets me. Still on the Shakespeare front, I must say R&J (anyone's, except the movie Shakespeare in Love) does not. I am always very busy being vexed by that busybody nurse and interfering monk (or whatever he is), and thinking that if those annoying teenagers had only paid attention to their parents things would have turned out fine. That notion makes me weep, actually, but in a different way.

Link to comment

My initial response was "You mean there are people who don't cry at the ballet?" For me there are a few situations that will always do it, but often not related to the dramatic situation being portrayed. I fall in Farrell Fan's second category, tears of happiness at a glorious performance.

Just the privilege of being in the same room (albiet a very large room) as a ballerina doing almost anything sometimes will bring at least a catch to my throat. I love ballerinas--on stage they are as close to perfect as a human being can be. I once teared up just watching Karen Kain breathe--she had just finished a very athletic solo in "Don Q" and was standing at stage right, downstage, holding a rock solid position watching some peasants cavort while hitting about 25 deep breaths per minute.

Much of "Prodigal Son", "Dark Elegies" Gisele's death, the Adagio from "Swan Lake", actually a lot of stuff will move me to tears or close to them.

When I was much younger, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Mahler would do it, and almost any good performance of the late Beethoven quartets, especially op. 127 still will do so.

My Italian is terrible and my German non-existant, so I am not put off by the often poor diction which seems to abound in opera houses. There are two specific scenes, one in "Rigoletto" and one in "Fidelio" that always move me to tears--every time I see them, even in relatively poorly sung or acted productions.

And I am a stoic compared to my wife, but that is another story.

[ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Waffle ]

Link to comment

I cry at the ballet.

Not just at performances but even at rehearsals, when the music and choreography compliment each other perfectly.

It happens in THE PRODIGAL SON. It happens in LILAC GARDEN. I get choked up and teary eyed by seeing my favorite dancers expressing themselves in such a sublime way.

Now if you want the goose bump moments, that's another thread.

Link to comment

It's s great question --

I also LAUGH at the ballet, usually it's witty feet....

SOmetimes it's like weeping for joy...

Symphony in C -- when the big tune wells up and hte barllerina dives into that arabesque turn, actually , when Betsy Erickson did that role wth San Francisco Ballet, I lost it completely, it slugged me, caught me by surprise........

and Joanna Berman did that to me as Aurora, in her "Russian dance" variation in hte grand pas de deux, she was so tender --

Sibley and Dowell did it to me at the VERY end of Swan Lake, the apotheosis...

ANd MArk Morris as Dido, as he receded from he stage at the end, one step forward and 2 steps back, like a dying heart-beat...

And in "Company B" at San Francisco Ballet....... It made me understand how my parents met and why they married and how I came to be born and why our family's life was so full of regrets the way it was...

Link to comment

When I was flipping through my video library, I came upon my copy of Makhalina in 'Swan Lake', and I watched the fourth act, wondering if the ending was going to be as ridiculous as other productions I had seen on tape.

Of course, I was wrong, and their short but bittwersweet pas de deux in Act IV was so saddeningly beautiful; it was if all could not be helped, and Odette was doomed forever. The music was so touching, I leaped up after wiping my eyes and downloaded it from Morpheus.

Another misty-eyed moment for me is during the Act II pas de deux of Giselle. For me, it's no so much that I love the dancing (although I do, whole-heartedly) but the music itself is so suited to the role that it's almost like being trasported right there to a graveyard. Somehow that music always inspires me to get up and attempt to dance what Giselle is on the screen.

I'm also adding something from personal experience - this summer, our studio performed 'Serenade', staged by Robert Barnett, and I was exiled to the side for a while until I came on for about eight counts during the 'flowers' formation (right after the first girl's short solo), waited, and came on again as an 'Aspirin Girl'. At least, that's what they called them. Anyway, so I was watching from the sides, quite misty-eyed already because I wasn't in the starting corps (because I was seventeeth in a line of sixteen), but when I heard that beutiful music welling up, and the girls gazing past their outstretched hand, I almost lost it. However, once regaining my composure, I danced my heart out. smile.gif

--Luka

Link to comment

the very opening of serenade alwyas brings a tear to my eye.

The first time i saw darcey bussell dance swan lake i cried the whole way thriugh her 32 fouttese and most of the pdd!!

Alina cojocarus mad scene in giselle last year was also a real tearjerker!

one other thing, at the end of centre stage when you se all the graduating students in class at their new companies i always start crying!

dont know why does anyone else find this?

confused.gif

Link to comment

Frequently!

Every time the veil is lifted off Nikiya by the Brahman in Bayadere.

It happened again last night in the Royal Ballet performance of Bayadere with Alina Cojocaru.

Following a performance of Swan Lake with Altynia Asylmuratova I wept for over an hour after the final curtain.

Link to comment

Of course I cry! Some scenes are obvious, like Giselle's mad/death scene, Albrecht dragging himself desperately around her grave, any performance of the Dying Swan.

It seems like sometimes I get teary at the most random moments! The end of the Rose Adagio, when Aurora makes her sweeping low bow, makes me feel so relieved for her and so happy. Any part of The Man I Love from Balanchine's Who Cares always gets me, especially when Robert LaFosse danced it with Viviana Durante at the Balanchine Celebration. He really looks smitten the whole time!

One big one is from Swan Lake, when the Prince meets Odette and finally puts his arms around her and she looks so scared and frail. The best part is where she starts the frantic little bourrees in place, it always tears me apart. <sniff>

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...