Festival fare

I chanced the rain: I went to Stage 88 to see the Australian Ballet for the Canberra Festival. This was a free performance, the cultural leadup to the following night’s pop extravanga, Skyfire (urgh). I was surprised to find a generous audience sitting under umbrellas with their picnics despite a heavy downpour an hour before and the spitting rain at the start.

What was this show? The skills, the strength, the balance, the stunning bods are evident, but you have to ask why. I wonder if this is inevitable with an allcomers show of this type. This was clearly the equivalent of opera’s favourite arias. You can understand this. The unwashed (I include myself here) don’t know the repertoire or understand the style or customs of the art. Maybe it’s just that, but I’m mulling further. On the morning after, the Canberra Times featured a half page review of the Australian Ballet performing Infinity in Sydney (Extreme triple bill a challenging delight, by Michelle Potter, in Canberra Times, 17 Mar 2012, p. 24). I was thinking what to write here so I read this with some interest. Michelle obviously was impressed and the three works comprising the show were far more complex and purposeful than this show, but what surprised me was how little there was to say. Ballet and music are both wordless arts so their messages are ill-defined, received differently by different audiences, emotional rather than rationally explicable. I’m not sure I say much in these pages other than that a technique is thus or a purpose is sound. Seeing an art form that I don’t understand leaves me at a loss and somewhat unsatisfied. Ballet is a highly refined form, and French at that, so can seem mannered and affected. The little girls in tutus rollicking in the mud before the stage enjoyed the playtime, and I enjoyed the skills and strength and beauty, but I can’t say I was sorry when it ended. It’s a stunning artifice, perhaps a pack of cards, and I need to see the sharp end before I could form any half-valid opinion. I once saw Nureyev and what I remember was just the hero calisthenics. There was a bit of that here, too, and it garnered the most applause (and it was impressive). I used to attend modern dance. That was also skilled and obscurely metaphorical, but at least it seemed closer to home without the formal artifice of a pre-Revolutionary French court. This show was like your favourite top hits album - but then it didn’t claim to be more. It made for a classy picnic, even in the rain, and a goggle at impressive skills. But I await a more profound connection.