from 1001 Contemporary Ballets
A good libretto, even an impressionist, double-exposed or portmanteaued one, follows most of the rules of simple dramaturgy. Balanchine once said the perfect type plot for a dramatic narrative ballet was the story of the Prodigal Son. Once there was a man who had everything, then he had nothing; finally he had everything again. –Lincoln Kirstein, Ballet Alphabet (1939)A wealthy businessman has arranged to have knowledge of his daughter’s blindness kept from her by threatening to fire immediately any of the family servants who reveal her disability to her. A psychic tells the businessman that only if his daughter knows of her blindness and wills its removal can she be cured. Into her garden come two men, one of whom falls in love with the daughter and, it seems, she with him. Her father declares that the marriage cannot take place unless his daughter regains her sight. That threat succeeds in miraculously curing her.Ice hockey is played not with a standard puck but a wiffleball.Two young lovers, sunbathing nude on an ocean island, sink beneath a rising tide. While spasms of circumscribed movement break out among isolated groups Several performers vigorously play nothing on familiar instruments, making Contemporary Ballets consists only of a large message screen, probably a Onto the stage comes a man who leaps into the air, where he hangs A large man spits directly on his enemies, apparently blinding each of In a dance lasting at least twenty years, a company of a dozen performers A man falling from behind the top curtain brakes in mid-air, never Drown. The performers scan the audience for past loves. Finding none from the |
