"The Little Mermaid" by the Hamburg Ballet

(Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 9 February 2013)

Whereas the absence of a live orchestra eliminates the no-man's land between the dancers and the audience, the choreographer's divorce between the dance and the music precludes the dancers from engaging with the audience. This divorce is endemic in classical ballet and is particularly pronounced in the first third of this performance. Passion is lost as musicality is suppressed in an effort not to be literal.  The musicality is regained later on, as the dancers begin to dance with (not just next to) each other.

Towards the end of the ballet, one gets inured to the redundantly grotesque. Classical ballet seems to have been devised to guide ships in the fog, not to communicate subtle emotions. In theatre, verbal subtlety can be communicated from a faraway stage, whereas ballet choreographers must fear that physical subtlety will fail to reach the house's distant corners. If indeed so, then large concert halls are inappropriate for dance performances, which should be downscaled and transferred to smaller venues, akin to jazz clubs. This transfer may also cleanse classical ballet of its competitive element; more would aspire to the dramatic prowess of Lloyd Riggins, this ballet's star.

As male ballet dancers age, they mature and grow more masculine. As female ballet dancers age, they seem to lose femininity and revert to girlhood. Females may try to arrest ageing, succeed at it, and overdo it. Males, by contrast, seem to accept ageing and, in order to compensate for it, develop dramatic skills.

One cannot be an artist full time, for one needs time to simply be, and to inhabit the messages that it is the artist's vocation to communicate.

Art is an escape into an ideal world that one would wish to be a part of. If the world one inhabits is ideal in that one does indeed wish to be a part of it, then any art that does not emerge spontaneously may be redundant.

The poor like the rich more than they like art, for the luxuries of the rich are real, and hence potentially attainable. Demanding exorbitantly progressive taxation would be akin to demanding to close down museums on the grounds that the riches exhibited there are unattainable to most.