Reflections after seeing “The Red Shoes”
By Michael D. Wyly - June, 2006
Andrei Bossov's new ballet, The Red Shoes, premiered in Orono, opening Friday, 2
June, with a repeat performance on Saturday. It is a masterpiece.
A ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale about a pair of shoes that
dance on and on regardless of the wishes of the wearer was the subject of a famous
1948 movie that even to this day influences the dance world.
Andrei's version captures the whole ballet culture. It is a ballet about a ballet.
While riveting throughout, the ballet's final scene most vividly clinches the story.
We see the whole Corps de Ballet on stage now. The lead ballerina has already yielded,
removed her red shoes, thrown them down in a gesture of good riddance, only to see
the ballet master unhesitatingly pass them on to her understudy. As the show draws
to its close, the Corps de Ballet, so smoothly that we in the audience do not notice
the transition, now faces away, backs towards us. The girl who had been the lead,
the one who rejected the red shoes, enters stage right in street clothes and in
the company of a young man. They are oblivious to the ballet happening upstage until
they have crossed all the way to stage left in carefree conversation, the red shoes,
now a thing of the past. The music is soft, slow and haunting. We see now that the
Corps de Ballet, still facing away from us, is formed up for a final curtain call
before an imaginary audience backstage, the Corps still facing away from us, the
real audience. As if looking through a window, the girl now sees what is happening.
The principals are coming out now, one by one, taking their bows. We do not hear
the applause – except in our imaginations where it thunders. The young man watches
the girl as she watches the dancers, entranced, returned again to her ballet world.
He arms go out fluidly and she turns and dances an ethereal adagio. Her replacement,
the new lead ballerina, is coming out now, to center stage, in front of all the
other dancers but furthest from us, as she and all the rest still face the imaginary
audience backstage. Center stage the new ballerina bows in her moment of glory.
The music fades, the adagio ends; the girl in street clothes, dancer no more, dashes
off, distraught.
But life goes on and so do the red shoes. The music rises and quickens and weaving
through the Corps de Ballet, now coming towards us, is the cobbler, who tempted
the dancer with the red shoes in the first place. Facing us center stage he pulls
out two pairs of beautiful red pointe shoes, a pair in each hand. From each side
of the stage comes a string of little dancers, eight to ten years old, and they
follow the cobbler, disappearing into the Corps as the curtain closes.
The ballet is set in America, at a fairground, where children play and dancers dance.
It is there that the cobbler first pulls out his wares. And it is there that the
balletmaster first makes his entrée – clearly a Russian ballet master among
American dancers. How am I so sure? Because Andrei himself danced the part and he
makes his appearance while the girl who dared to take the red shoes is dancing out
of control. He stops her. He teaches her to do it right. The regimen will prove
too much for her. She goes to church. But she cannot stop dancing. It's the shoes!
Parishioners give counsel through their movements, turning their legs in, not out,
as if to say "Don't dance, don't dance!" and the priest gives ominous warning.
At the sight of the ballet master she removes the shoes but there is no mercy from
him. There is, as there always is in real life, someone else waiting in the wings,
relishing the opportunity.
This is Andrei's "Coming to America.", his autobiography. He has not told me this
and he may or may not know it (I think he does) but it clearly is.
Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale is a Christian morality tale. The shoes represent
the temptation, the material world, a vice. In the fairy tale it is not until the
girl rids herself of the shoes that she finds peace. But a weeping girl leaving
Andrei's stage conveys to us the opposite.
The red shoes of real life affect different people different ways, however, and
on the Saturday night showing the lead ballerina (there was a different one each
night) after her nostalgic adagio, took the young man's hand and walked off calmly,
recovered from her reverie. It was a mistake. It was not what Andrei had in mind
and no doubt it will be done his way next time. Yet to me in the audience, both
endings portrayed real life when I consider all the different girls I have watched,
as they hear as youngsters, Andrei's Russian-accented French for the first time,
the sharp snap of his fingers counting the time, and “put on the Red Shoes.”
Back to Reviews
|
|
|
