Dangerous Ballet
‘Dangerous Liaisons’ by Choderlos de Laclos is one of those
books you won’t read in school, but that every educated man should read. Four centuries
after the book’s first edition in 1782, it is still fresh and interesting. Maybe because
people are interested in eternal questions such as love and revenge, seduction and malice.
Or maybe there are those who truly believe that even the cold-blooded heartbreaker can
fall in love.
The novel was adapted as a film many times – the most popular
versions are ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ (1988) with Glenn Close and John Malkovich,
and the other is ‘Cruel Intentions’ (1999) – modern version for teenagers with Sarah
Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe. What is more important is that you can see the plays in
the theaters all over the world. And this year ‘Liaisons’ was seen as a ballet.
The National Ballet of Latvia premiered their interpretation of the
famous novel in Riga in May, 2006. And this December the ballet was shown in Moscow, 26
years after the National Ballet’s last visit to Russia. There were only two
performances, on December, 14th and 15th and it got me interested the moment I saw the
promotional poster in the metro. Being a big fan of the book, I decided that there was no
way for me to miss this ballet.
And, believe me, I wasn’t disappointed. Although the tickets were
quite expensive (the cheapest ones cost about 600 rubles), I enjoyed every spent coin. The
storyline was introduced as a series of balls, during which all the key events took place.
This is the only way it could be done in my opinion, as the original novel was written as
a series of letters. The cast was brilliant and every dancer fit their character quite
well. I won’t even talk about their dance moves – they are all professionals, so what
can you expect? The music really deserves to be discussed separately! I can’t imagine
this tragic performance without this grand orchestral music on the background, which
completed the wicked atmosphere of the ballet.
It was the first time I went to the ballet and I liked it very much.
It’s definitely one of the best interpretations of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ I have ever
seen. People were leaving the Music Theater of Stanislavsky, Meyerhold,
Nemirovich-Danchenko, in amazement.
By Michael Agafonov,
Lyceum No. 1523, Moscow
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