Word: balletic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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From the opening curtain on, exoticism was in the air. Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, embarking on a four-city, eight-week U.S. tour, chose to lead off its engagement at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House last week with Le Corsaire, a full-length ballet that very few Americans have ever seen. The kind of diversion that appealed to 19th century audiences in Paris or St. Petersburg, Le Corsaire now seems a genuine novelty, and, like the Kirov itself, it signaled that something fresh and curious can still be found in the post- glasnost era of big tours and cultural exchanges...
...good are the Kirov dancers? There is little question that Americans are technically superior -- faster, stronger, more rigorously trained. Some credit must go to Russian immigrants. Balanchine revolutionized ballet by demanding that a performer move swiftly through positions rather than prepare for them and then hold the pose. Baryshnikov, as artistic director of the American Ballet Theater, adapted Balanchine's methods to the old story ballets...
...veer out of control. But apparently this bothers neither her nor her bosses. The dancers display an endearing, innocent pleasure in the least of their achievements; a chaste young demi-soloist, having completed her variation, will milk the audience for applause -- and get it. At the New York City Ballet such deportment would be considered inexcusably vulgar...
That's pretty much the movie. Peters is cute and irresistible, Eastwood is cute and irresistible, and then the two of them, like ballet dancers, are cute together. Peters' character has a baby, who is cute too, but the kid still has a lot to learn. Everyone plays off stereotypes of stereotypes, so Peters does a send-up of Eastwood's middle-aged machismo, and Eastwood, eyelids fluttering prettily in that fine Mount Rushmore face, takes off Peters' little-girl-lost act. Eastwood wins...
...CHARLES IN CONCERT WITH THE NEW YORK CITY BALLET (PBS, May 12, 9 p.m. on most stations). Such Charles classics as Hit the Road Jack and What'd I Say provided the inspiration for Peter Martins' ballet A Fool for You, being presented Live from Lincoln Center...