Saturday, April 12, 2008

Dance, sucker, DANCE!

I saw Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands in San Francisco. I'm not a big one for ballet. As Jerry Seinfeld said, "I've seen people on tiptoes." But I was blown away.

What made it so good? Story. Here's a choreographer who understands the need for narrative. If you're not involved in the story, if you don't care about the characters, who cares how clean that arabesque was? Technical prowess by itself doesn't impress me.

So far I've now seen Ed Scissorhands, Nutcracker!, Swan Lake and the Car Man and I just can't get enough.

If you're new to him, here's a little primer on Matthew Bourne and Nutcracker! narrated by Matthew Bourne himself.


And here's one of my favorite moments in all of his works. It's from Swan Lake.



Of course it helps that all his works are just a little bit gay...

3 comments:

Craig said...

A little bit?

Yeah, I'd say so.

Jake said...

Gay and oh so beautiful.

Craig said...

Yeah, it is really beautiful. When in Vienna this summer I had a chance to see part of a performance of Swan Lake. It was amazing.