English National Ballet, Roland Petit Triple Bill, London Coliseum | reviews, news & interviews
English National Ballet, Roland Petit Triple Bill, London Coliseum
English National Ballet, Roland Petit Triple Bill, London Coliseum
A Frenchman celebrates the urges of the loins with much style and no shame
Friday, 22 July 2011
Women mean death to young men: Zizi Jeanmaire and Rudolf Nureyev in 'Le Jeune Homme et La Mort'Collection Roland Petit, reproduced in ENB programme
An obsession with sex and death underlies many of the immortal works of 19th-century classical ballet. Giselle is seduced, La Sylphide does the seducing, the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by sex, the Swan Queen is an apparition of death to Prince Siegfried who is easily waylaid by her doppelgänger, Odile of the 32 fouettées. Roland Petit brought it all out in the open with his ballets in the next century. As one observer said in 1949 of the premiere in London of his ballet Carmen, you could see the men’s trouser buttons popping.
An obsession with sex and death underlies many of the immortal works of 19th-century classical ballet. Giselle is seduced, La Sylphide does the seducing, the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by sex, the Swan Queen is an apparition of death to Prince Siegfried who is easily waylaid by her doppelgänger, Odile of the 32 fouettées. Roland Petit brought it all out in the open with his ballets in the next century. As one observer said in 1949 of the premiere in London of his ballet Carmen, you could see the men’s trouser buttons popping.
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