Ballet? Vale...

Last night was a first for me. I was invited by my good friends Charlie and Alicia to go and see a show: I was expecting a play, but it turned out our entertainment for the night was to be ballet. Yes, ballet. This is not a normal Saturday night for me. It was, however, remarkable in many ways.

Firstly, it took place here:

This is the Patio de Armas in the Castillo de Niebla, in a village about half an hour from Huelva. The big square nearest the camera in that picture was set up with maybe a thousand seats, all facing towards a basic but impressively large stage. Whatever you may think of ballet, taking in a show after sunset in a place like that is quite an experience.

The show itself was called Samsara, and here is a promo. Interspersed with projections of pretentious and/or profound quotes from the Dalai Lama and friends, there were maybe a dozen dances of five to fifteen minutes. I thought the costume design and music were both really good throughout, but there were three parts to it that really stayed in the memory, for good and bad reasons.

Beginning.

We opened with the cast of ballerinas (and ballerinos?) dressed in white gis, slowly performing Tai-chi movements while a video montage of the sins of the world (9/11, mass graves, army manouevres) spooled behind them and a melodic buddhist chant droned and modulated. Pretentious, yes, but I have to admit I was spellbound. There was real grace in the movement and the music was truly beautiful, always shifting, never settling, but sticking to a handful of notes. This is the point where I sat back and resolved to give the show a shot. Ballet? No problem.

Burkas.

You'll see some of this if you watch the video. The longest section of the show opened with the female dancers shrouded in Burkas, and it started with a small spotlight on their hooded faces gently shifting from foreground to background - it was unsettling and quite arresting. However, things took a turn for the slightly uncomfortable as from the throng emerged one dancer without the burka, clearly meant to symbolise a "free" woman. She leapt and bounded but was caught by the others, who through the medium of dance attacked her and dragged her down. They did some elaborate motions, meaphorically striking her and trapping her, and compared to the actual proper dancing it looked tacky and am-dram. Next emerged two men in white shirts, who danced together and clearly represented a gay couple - it wasn't erotic or gratuitous, in fact it was stoic and emotional. Again, the burkas (now joined by black-clad alpha males) came for them, and did some more of the stupid hitting dances. And that was about it. That was the "Muslim" bit of the show's tour of Asian dance. Now, I like art to make a political statement, but in this case the statement was "Muslims don't like liberated women or homosexuals". Thanks for that, folks. Care to venture anything further? I'm sure the intentions were good, but all I took away from the set-piece was a feeling of clunky Islamophobia. A great shame.

Bird.

One moment, though, absolutely blew me away. It was a solo dance by one of the men, and I found myself pretty bored, so just listened to the nice music and waited for the next part. Then, right at the end of his dance, he did something amazing. With the orange light projected behind him fading slowly, he stood centre stage, facing out, and leapt into the air, giving a mighty flap of his arms. Again, a leap, and a flap. And I realised that we were watching a mighty bird fly into the desert sunset. The snap of his arms and the carefully-judged parabola of the jump created the exact geometry of that shot we've all seen in nature documentaries. It was utterly uncanny, and brilliantly achieved. Well done that dancing man.

So I quite enjoyed the ballet. And then I went home and ate a steak and punched a wall, just to feel good and secure in my masculinity.