And What The Hell Is A "Mirliton," Anyway?

[bloodyrosemccoy]

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All right, I have one last question for the holidays: what in the bloody blue blazes is up with ballet, anyway?

 

Heather, Aunt, and I went to see The Nutcracker a few days ago.  I dunno what Tchaikovsky’s problem was with his music, because that, at least, is gorgeous. But good lord on a cracker, the dancing is just bizarre.

 

There is one thing I can say for it, and that is that it’s a hell of a study in endurance athletics.  But it’s not very exciting to watch, if you want the truth.  It’s all sort of slow and trippy, and some of the dancers scare the hell out of me. Heather and I think the women should do more lifting of partners, just so that they pay some attention to their upper bodies and don’t wind up looking like somebody mismatched a torso from a Holocaust photograph with legs sculpted by Michelangelo.  The main dancer (prima donna?) in the Arabian dance had countable ribs, as did many others—perhaps to give the guys who lift them something to grip. So you’ve got all these weirdly proportioned people nancing and fluttering about the stage to magnificent music, and you wonder why you don’t just buy the CD, because that’s all you need.

 

What bothers me about is how it’s supposed to be some sort of high class and cultured thing to watch, and that somehow you’re edified by doing so.  What it looked like to me was a load of people parading around the stage.  It is more than understandable to admire what years of hard work will allow a dancer to stand en pointe or whatever.  But to say to yourself that you are somehow becoming a more sophisticated person by watching it is just silly.  It’s really the same as any other type of dance, but for some reason it gets the glory of being fancy. I never could figure that out.

 

 

Discussion Question: does anybody else think that Clara’s just acting like she likes that ugly nutcracker doll to be polite?  I mean, that thing’s pretty stupid looking. If I were her, I’d have kind of wished he’d gotten me a nice doll, or an iPod. Who the hell wants a big fugly wooden utensil for Christmas, anyway?

 

 

Also: ‘Mirliton’ means all sorts of things, apparently, so my guess of ‘something sort of like panpipes’ wasn’t far off. It’s got enough meanings to be a little like one of those words you just toss in when you can’t think of something to say, like 'doohickey’ or “thingumabob.’  “Hand me that there … uh … mirliton.”  I think I’ll start using that.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Prima ballerina, actually.

And yes, classical ballet is a bit odd, and the dance culture creates an awful lot of eating disorders. En pointe is hell on your feet (I never got that far, thankfully), your career on-stage is frequently over by your mid-20s, and there's intense pressure to remain as thin as possible.

[(Anonymous)]

Ballet is beyond messed up (I danced for 6 years, before being told, gently, that 11 year old me was 'too chubby' to adequetly perform well as a ballerina. I hope that bitch teacher rots in hell). From what I have later learned, dancers (or at least the ones in the Ukrainian State Ballet) must remain UNDER 117--no more, no less. The main reason is so that the male leads can pick them up. Dress rehearsals and the week that leads up to them are even more nuts, as no one eats, except for watered down yogurt and celery, and your feet are disgusting to look at. (It was sad, my bellydance perfomance class was after the Eugene Ballet finishes with our room, and I can tell which 10-12 year old girls are going to drop out within the next few years. You can't have a normal life and be a professional dancer, unless you're a stripper, I suppose. Ew.)

Even more messed up is the book 'The Nutcracker' by H.H. Hoffman, which I think you as a anthropological linguistic will enjoy. Uncle Dusseldorf (?) is damn near a child molester, the battle between the Christmas toys and rats is digustingly graphic, and Clara ends up marrying the Nutcracker when she's at the ripe old age of 15. I don't know why she likes the nutcracker either--something ugly, pointless, and destructive: what a great Deautchlander toy! Maybe she painted Stars of David on the nuts and gleefully destroyed then in the Teutonic made nutcracker. I need to stop wanking on pre WW II Germany.

[vogtalicious.livejournal.com]

That above message was from Kristen, btw : ).

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Hoffmann's pretty damn weird. Have you read "The Sandman"?

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

It depends on the production you see. I went to the San Francisco Ballet, which has a fairly new production with some fun stagecraft (and relocates the "real world" action to turn of the century SF), and makes Drosselmeyer into a much more active and benevolent figure.

The best part is still the Trepak.