Violent acts in ballets?

[Fonty]

Surely Odile has to be played as someone who is part of the "dark side"?  So I don't see how she can possibly be abused by her father, she has to be complicit in the whole affair.  How the dancer does it is up to them, but if she is played any other way then it simply doesn't work.  The audience cannot possibly start to feel sympathy for Odile, otherwise the whole thing collapses like a pack of cards.  

 

I fail to see how Aurora is being abused.  I think the idea that she is kissed without her permission is ridiculous.  After all, the prince is doing so for the best of motives, to break the curse.  If he didn't, she and the entire court would sleep forever.

 

 

[AnneL]

On 19/11/2022 at 23:20, pianolady said:

I'd recommend Sally Banes Dancing Women for a look at differing interpretations of the classic ballet female roles and her reading of Aurora as empowered rather than passive, and there are lots of feminist critiques of ballet which take hugely differing views about how far women are empowered- or otherwise- by these roles and by ballet generally. Off the top of my head, Alexander Daly, Jennifer Miskec, Priya Thomas on the sylphide, a few searches will  these will bring up copious examples through their bibliographies. This subject is especially close to my heart as I'm midway through a PhD on the children's ballet novel as an empowering female space! As others have said, there is a big difference about how the ballets seemingly treat gender at plot level, as opposed to the differing interpretations across the eras, as well as ballet offering such a powerful space for female expression- albeit often with male ballet company directors in charge!

That sounds like an amazing subject for a PhD thesis! 

[alison]

5 hours ago, Fonty said:

I fail to see how Aurora is being abused.  I think the idea that she is kissed without her permission is ridiculous.  After all, the prince is doing so for the best of motives, to break the curse.  If he didn't, she and the entire court would sleep forever.

 

Not only that, but since she appears to him in a vision begging him to come to her rescue, and the only way the spell can be broken (we presume) is with a kiss, what else is he supposed to do?  I mean, we have to assume they sort of "know" each other from the interaction in the vision scene.

[James]

1 hour ago, alison said:

 

Not only that, but since she appears to him in a vision begging him to come to her rescue, and the only way the spell can be broken (we presume) is with a kiss, what else is he supposed to do?  I mean, we have to assume they sort of "know" each other from the interaction in the vision scene.

The lawyer in me has always justified it thus: Aurora is incapacitated, likewise her next of kin, her parents. The Lilac Fairy, as her godmother, is effectively in loco parentis, and the preceding mime (at any rate in the Royal Ballet’s production) shows that she gives her tacit consent to the kiss.

[bridiem]

10 minutes ago, James said:

The lawyer in me has always justified it thus: Aurora is incapacitated, likewise her next of kin, her parents. The Lilac Fairy, as her godmother, is effectively in loco parentis, and the preceding mime (at any rate in the Royal Ballet’s production) shows that she gives her tacit consent to the kiss.

 

Indeed, the Lilac Fairy all but instructs him to kiss Aurora; or at least helps him to come to the correct course of action. They're all (including the prince) playing their necessary part in the fable; each fulfilling a pre-ordained role.

 

 

[Emeralds]

Just to say that not all productions have Odile being controlled by her father. In fact, in most of the productions I’ve seen, Odile herself is pretty in control of the situation and deriving great pleasure in toying with Siegfried- she has no plans to marry him or be in a relationship with him, she just wants to win the game of capturing his affections, then dumping him. There are a few productions out there where Odile might be an instrument of her father’s or neither Odette nor Odile are real but simply visions presented to Siegfried or hallucinations by Siegfried, but in most productions, Odile is in charge of her own life. 

 

I've mentioned this about Aurora in another thread where we discussed this topic before- is Florimund carrying unwanted advances on Aurora without her consent or is it more innocent? Well, Aurora is actually doomed to a “living death” or persistent vegetative state if he didn’t intervene (and everyone else is unable to save her). She hasn’t died but she isn’t living - she has no quality of life. Florimund is resuscitating her- it’s just a kiss! (Not a prolonged snog.) If she were given CPR it would be far more intrusive and invasive (unless the rescuer just happened to have a CPR mask and gloves handy!) and the kiss is chaste and light compared to some greetings in some cultures. So, yes, her godmother has given permission, and indeed, when Aurora wakes up, she does indicate that she somehow had “met” Florimund before, in her dream and was delighted to be seeing him “again”. But she was almost killed by Carabosse before that though, if we’re discussing murder of heroines in ballet.