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The Royal Ballet, Onegin, January 2015


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I totally agree, Jackie.  I keep visualising it again this morning and I hope that in future I will be able to retrieve it from the recesses of my old brain, close my eyes, and see it all again as I try to with the Cojocaru/Kobborg performances!

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Since you've brought up the subject of Lensky, it struck me retrospectively that, while I'd got the impression of a very smitten young man - love's young dream and all that - I don't think I ever really got the feeling of him being a Romantic Poet from any of the dancers. To my mind, that's an important bit of characterisation, because it underlies all his behaviour in Act II, whether it reflect the way he actually feels or whether it be the way he feels he *ought* to act.

 

And again, retrospectively, I was very disappointed to hear that I had indeed missed Nicol Edmonds dancing Lensky on the last, Friday, matinee. Since I hadn't seen him since the very beginning of the run, it might have swung my decision to go to that performance if anyone had updated the website casting :(

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I always understood that while Onegin is a sort of romantic, Byronic, anti-hero, Lensky fresh from his studies in Gottingen with his head full of German learning and sensibilities is, in fact, a callow, inexperienced youth.He is described as a poet but his poetic gifts are limited to feeble imitations of French verse.The contrast is between these two men and their worlds.

 

Onegin's world is full of superficiality which he does not recognise until it is too late. Forced to stay in a provincial backwater while his rich uncle, to whom he is heir, dies, Onegin judges everyone and everything against life in the capital.He regards the people where he is staying including both Lensky and the Larin family as irredeemably provincial. You can not convey that sort of detail in balletic terms so you end up with the characters and the story as you experience them in Cranko's ballet.

 

There are some themes that ballet can handle but there are far more that are beyond its scope. I think that a ballet about Lensky is likely to fall into the latter category.It will probably require its audience to seek the assistance of lengthy programme notes which in my books is tantamount to an admission that a subject not suited to ballet.

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