Word: fauned
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...nasal whine of The Turning Point, and handles the dramatics fairly well. But the role swamps de la Pena; he acts like a dancer, relying on exaggerated expressions and quivering limbs to convey emotion. He performs several of Nijinsky's most famous ballets, including Afternoon of a Faun and Le Spectre de la Rose, but we see all too little of his dancing; Ross focuses the photography in Faun, for example, mainly on de la Pena's face...
...listened to my heart, it would break." Without resorting to flaming mannerisms, Bates suggests perfectly the character's homosexuality; he touches women, even when affectionate, with a reserved disinterest. Admittedly, Diaghilev has all the good lines; chiding Nijinsky for eating too much candy, he warns, "Nobody loves a fat faun...
...next appeared in a very different work, Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, which has almost no steps at all. It is a brief, seductive work about two dancers practicing in front of a "mirror" (actually the proscenium) and gradually making enigmatic erotic contact with each other. Baryshnikov's first original Balanchine works are Stars and Stripes and Rubies, both of which happen to call for speed, wit and fiendish virtuosity...
Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun sets to music Mallarme's L'Apresmidi d'un Faune, a symbolist poem replete with a striking vagueness, fluidity and sense of reverie. A faun--half man, half goat--arises from his sleep near Mount Aetna in Italy and wanders through the woods. The whole image is one of dreamy light and dark, tentativeness and delicacy. The faun chases a group of nymphs up and down the mountain, but ultimately loses them as he once again yields to the soothing oppressiveness of sleep...
...PRELUDE SUGGESTS this same flowing, uncertain dreaminess. Throughout the work, the HRO almost perfectly conveyed this delicacy and subjective use of different sounds. The horns evoked impressions of the tremulous colors of the forest and the unmuted strings suggested the dance of the faun. Particularly impressive were the excitement and fullness which the whole orchestra achieved as it suggested the faun's anxious chase of the nymphs. The winds, brass and violins showed just the right amount of restraint that Mallarme imparts to the faun in the poem...