@payslipgig / payslipgig.tumblr.com
finding out there's a frankenstein ballet and that it was in october of last year…DEVASTATING
look at this. look at these. im foaming at the mouth
It was stupid good. So good in fact that the bbc filmed a version and put it on dvd when it debuted. I bought that dvd after I saw the show and put it up on the Internet Archive. The audio is not great but the dancing is spectacular. Ever see a pas de deux around an anatomical dissection? You will.
Akane Takada and Ryoichi Hirano in Romeo and Juliet (Royal Ballet 2019)
Raven Girl / Connectome, Royal Ballet (2013)
going through some old pictures from this past year and found these gems…after the curtain closes the first act on the last show of nutcracker, it’s customary to dump ALL OF THE SNOW AT ONCE while the snowflakes are still on stage
here we can be seen making snow angels and just generally enjoying the last nutcracker of the season…when there are 27 of them and you do big party girl, snow, and flowers in every single one of them, this is the most liberating feeling in the world
it’s not just Ryan the happy snowflake here, it’s Ryan AND THE MANY HAPPY SNOWFLAKES
audrey malek and cortney taylor key photographed in adriana pierce’s animals and angels by leigh-ann esty
ingrid silva, dandara amorim veiga, daphne lee, amanda smith, and yinet fernandez photographed for the plie project by melika dez
Michaela DePrince in Swan Lake
Royal Ballet, Coregrapher: Wayne McGregor, Designer: Vicki Mortimer
The American Ballet Theatre is debuting its first same-sex pas de deux tonight, performed by Calvin Royal III and João Menegussi. A snippet of the performance has been circulating on TikTok (above), and it’s so beautiful, I was moved to tears. I tried to capture the tenderness of these thirty seconds in charcoal and pencil as best as I could. (Below.)
paunika jones photographed performing as marie taglioni in pas de quatre by william miller
precious adams and andile ndlovu photographed performing as aurora and prince florimund in sleeping beauty by joan ward
joan myers brown and mary johnson photographed, circa 1949, by courtesy of mobballet
Absolutely losing my shit over this Russian ballet dancer jumping around like freaking Gumby while also playing the accordion. Actually you should watch the whole thing because the following sequence of a giant kickline of similar gumby-men is also tripping me out
As a former ballet dancer, I absolutely lost it watching the full version. Just, holy shit.
Tumblr always says that they want men to be sluttier, but we finally get a male version of the can-can (a fixture for girls in my ballet school), and you mock them?
This isn’t pure ballet, by the way. It’s heavily influenced by Hopak (Cossack dancing) – unsurprising considering it’s a Russian company. Those bits where they bounce between deep pliés (squats?? I guess) and then back up to standing are classic Hopak moves. I remember when I was at my fittest, doing about five or six hours of dance a week, I could do those deep Hopak pliés, but I sure as heck felt it the next day. These guys would absolutely have thighs of steel. (And not so much hip flexors of rubber bands, but hamstrings of rubber. Hip flexors of steel. That’s gonna be the necessary ingredient to be able to kick your leg above your head. Which I used to be able to do, once upon a time.)
Ballet itself is a formalised form of dance that has always taken peasant dances into itself and stylised and gentrified them, so a melding with Hopak is absolutely part of the tradition. As part of my ballet training, I was taught stylised versions of a hornpipe (a sailor’s dance, not entirely unlike Yablochko above), Hungarian folk dancing, the tarantella, the polonaise, and flamenco. There are even steps like ‘pas de basque’ which acknowledge that they’re lifted from other places – in that case, Basque folk dance.
this isn’t mockery homie, it’s amazement and amusement
