“Trīs Draugi”

(Latvijas Nacionālā Opera un Balets, 18 December 2019)

The ballet lacks mathematics. It is literal. All the dramatic heavy lifting is supposed to have been accomplished by Erich Maria Remarque as remembered by audience members. To reference the appropriate pages in the eponymous novel, the choreographer resorts to pantomime, singing, grunting, laughing, and wailing---only not to trust the dancers to support a stand-alone narrative with their dancing, and rightly so. “Trīs Draugi” is appropriate for the People’s Theatre in an authoritarian republic much smaller and less artistically accomplished than the one that has put it on.