The Teenage Ballet Twin Boys

[PeterRS]

Another bit of culture! One art form that has never really interested me much is ballet. I have seen not more than half a dozen in a lifetime of theatre going, but to be fair each has been rather special. At university I had to spend two months studying in Vienna. The legendary pairing of Rudolph Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn were dancing the ballet Giselle at the Opera House. I managed to get a standing ticket. I was never a Nureyev fan, but the way he used the stage as virtually his home and had the audience in the palm of his hand was remarkable. 

At the start of my career I went to see a short ballet/dance at the Royal Ballet choreographed by one of the great choreographers of the day, Jerome Robbins. His Dances At A Gathering has no story. It is just pure dance with six couples dancing to the piano music of Chopin. I loved it. Robbins, of course, is arguably best known as the choreographer of the original West Side Story.

John Cranko was unquestionably one of the finest of all choreographers. Gay and based at London's Royal Opera House before the law was changed, he was arrested and prosecuted. He moved to Stuttgart where he literally became a star in the world of ballet. His Romeo And Juliet was amazing, as was a ballet he created for his four top stars which he named Initials R.B.M.E. each being the first initial of their first names. Perhaps surprisingly, he used not ballet music but the Second Piano Concerto of Brahms. Fabulous evening. It has became one of his most famous ballets.

My last ballet experience was a major work by another great choreographer, the American John Neumeier. who headed the company in Hamburg for 51 years till last year. Beforehand, he had worked with Cranko in Stuttgart. Also gay, he created a Swan Lake which he titled Illusions Like Swan Lake in which he changed much of the story and had the principal character loosely based on mad King Ludwig of Bavaria who built all the Bavarian castles like Neuschwanstein. I saw this way back in 1977. The company just had to take it to Munich because  everyone in Bavaria in the south was desperate to see it!

In my time, I have known a handful of ballet dancers and am always amazed at their dedication and hard work for what for most is a relatively short career. I have been having some email exchanges with a Hong Kong dancer who is now a Principal with the Paris Opera Ballet, the first Asian ever to be awarded such an honour. But I have also seen on youtube a rather fascinating vdo featuring two 16-year old identical twins from Berne, both of whom have been studying ballet for years and will shortly attend the John Cranko Ballet School. The vdo was filmed at a short summer school in the USA. It has some clips from ballet class where the stretching always amazes me - as do the young guys cute asses (oops!) I have a feeling that we will be hearing a lot more about these twins in the world of dance some years into the future.