Word: fouettes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dancing master who instructs the ugly stepsisters starts his lesson with the opening phrase of Balanchine's Theme and Variations. The girls are played by male dancers (Johan Renvall and Thomas Titone) performing, Tchikaboumskaya-style, on pointe. In the ballroom scene, Renvall even tosses off some free-swinging fouettes, a bow to the legendary Pierina Legnani, who stunned St. Petersburg in 1893 by doing 32 fouettés in Cinderella...
...wait. Up onstage were none of the usual Bolshoi Ballet stars, no Plisetskayas or Vasilyevs, no familiar figures at all. In fact, although the dancers showed flashes of the rigorous technique and expressive line that mark the Bolshoi style, there was here and there an unaccustomed slip, a slack fouetté, a leaden lift. What, then, accounted for the electric atmosphere in the theater? Why was the audience applauding so encouragingly, pointing out dancers and scribbling notes in programs...