A friend from home, Briana Brown, is studying abroad in Milan this semester and planned to travel this week through Prague, Vienna, London and Edinborough with a friend from her college. The two arrived Sunday, I met them at their hostel around 5, expecting just to take them to dinner and walk through some of the city, but then they mentioned someone else at the hostel asking about a ballet. I had previously checked the programs of all of the concert houses looking for something interesting, but hadn't thought there was anything. After asking at the hostel desk, we decided to do standing room and just see what happened, having no idea what the ballet was actually called.
SUCH a good decision.
We grabbed kebab sandwiches and got to the standing room entrance exactly an hour and a half before the performance, bought 4 euro tickets to stand on the first level and ended up witnessing the premiere performance of some magnificent dancing.
The theme of the performance was the "contribution of American dancing to the twentieth century dance", to quote the program. There were four pieces, entitled as follows:
Theme and Variation, to Tchaik's Orchestra Suite No. 3, with choreo by Balanchine
Variations on a Theme from Haydn, music by Brahms, with choreo by Twyla Tharp
The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, to Schubert's Symphony in C-Major D 944, 4th mvt, choreo by William Forsythe
Rubies, to Stravinski's Capriccio for piano and orchestra, choreo by Balanchine
The order was stylistically chronological. The first Theme and Variation was lovely classical ballet repertoire with tutus and pale yellows, and then the Brahms had a chocolate brown backdrop and flowy simple tunic costumes in cappucino tans and foam white. One of the duet pieces within this ballet captured the essence of sweet, simple love, not cutesy or over the top, just real. The Forsythe ballet had costumes in neon green and purple, just too close to the Teletubbies for me to handle, but the choreo was interestingly modern enough to take my mind off of the strange children's show, thank goodness. Rubies had flashes of jazzy hands and musical theater-esque head movements and attitudes, and the costumes were sultry crimson studded with crystals and sparkles. I bet up close they look incredible, because under the light there were just a million things glittering.
Wowed by the performance and completely dehydrated, the three of us wandered around to find a place to get some drinks and maybe dessert, and ended the evening with Radlers (the girl beer of Austria--40% beer, 60% lemonade, and only 2% alcohol...) and a dessert that the waiter himself described to me as a "dream".
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