The ballet doesn't lie.

It just tells stories well.


Saturday night we had our first theatre-outing for this semester's cultural excursion, to the Mariinsky Theatre, of course, to see a new ballet called "The Little Humpbacked Horse." It's based on a fairytale written by this guy and is about a princess and a poor boy, etc, etc, a king, a horse, etc, etc, plot line not all that exciting and predictable. But the music was, as always, excellent (and from where I was sitting I could see the cello section down below me in the pit perfectly) and I really enjoyed the design of the show. It was modern in style and minimalist with bold, solid colors (the photo above from the Mariinsky website shows their portrayal of the fire-birds in the story) that imitated a Malevich painting. There were peasant women who danced in costumes exactly like this, and the brothers and father of the main character had outfits with white and fade-ins of primary colors like this. And then they danced in front of giant red square and such.

Moral of the story: who needs avant-garde art class when you have the ballet?!