Ballet and abstract storytelling

Amy finally got her Christmas present on Friday when we went to see Butler Ballet's production of "Swan Lake" at Clowes Memorial Hall. I don't know if my stock just rose or fell on my admission that I went to the ballet, but I'm man enough to say that I went to the ballet AND I LIKED IT! I was a bit distracted by the men in tights and told Amy that if I was a male ballet dancer, I would definitely be stuffing. The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra did a great job with a very challenging score of four acts which lasted the better part of three hours. The only gripe I had with the orchestra was the conductor who was very vocal in his articulated breathing to aid his direction of the orchestra. Of course, we were sitting in the third row, so had we been farther back, we probably wouln't have noticed.

It did strike me how absurd ballet is as a form of storytelling. Nobody says anything, the only concrete plot is spelled out in the program and, in Amy's words, "there seems to be a lot of unnecessary dancing," meaning that they feature a lot of solo and ensemble dances that do nothing to advance the plot. I can't really be critical of ballet as abstract storytelling since one of my favorite pieces of music in the world is Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" which is a symphony trying to tell a story which relies even more heavily upon the information in the program than ballet.

Amy and I had been to "Madame Butterfly" (the Puccini opera) in November in the same building as the ballet and it definitely had a huge advantage over "Swan Lake" in the storytelling department. Even with all of the unnecessary singing, you could follow the plot without the use of the bulletin (but not without the use of the subtitles that they displayed above the stage since the opera was in Italian). I found moments in "Swan Lake" that I wished there were subtitles, but instead only got interpretive movement.

Even so, I find myself wondering what different people might have taken away from the evening. Some probably took away a sense of awe at the beauty of the physical/artistic display they had seen. It was performed very well (from a non-afficianado's point of view) and obviously required great discipline and study on the part of the performers. Some probably simply felt better about themselves for having endured a high-brow artistic endeavor. Some probably left thinking about how sad the story was without any understanding why they felt that way.

I left with the joy of my bride as my main concern as we too rarely get to take in artistic performances that remind us of our former lives as classical musicians. I also left full of God. I saw God in the longing pursuit of the Prince, Siegfried, for the Swan Princess, Odette. I saw the deception of the garden as Siegfried fell under the spell of Rothbart and betrayed his love by declaring it to another. I saw the deaths of Odette and Siegfried parallel the death of Christ and our death to self to be with Him forever. I saw that sacrificial love destroy the power of Rothbart like the sacrificial love of Christ destroying the power of sin and death. I guess I saw a fair amount in the abstract storytelling that I saw.