Word: swanning
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...version of The Phantom of the Opera. This time the maimed and maddened musician, haunting the theater whose owner has stolen his composition, has been transformed into a pop composer. His plagiarist in Brian De Palma's film has become an evil, omnipotent promoter of rock music named Swan. The theater the Phantom haunts is no longer an opera house but a rock palace on the order of the old Fillmore. Phoenix (Jessica Harper), the woman he hopelessly loves, is now an aspiring pop singer. The organ the Phantom used to pound away on down in the sub-subbasement...
Dorian's Wrinkles. The work filched from the modern Phantom (William Finley) is a rock-cantata retelling of the Faust legend. In order to hear it properly performed, the Phantom, as well as his dream singer, must strike similar bargains with Swan, juicily played by Paul Williams, who also composed the film's good score. Swan in turn owes his power to an earlier Faustian deal of his own, a pact that borrows a few wrinkles from Dorian Gray's compact. This repetition reduces contemporary middlebrow mythomania to absurd shambles...
...dual role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake is one of ballet's supreme challenges, and there are many women who meet it with grace and liquid beauty. Plisetskaya, though, is unique. In the limpid forest glade scenes of Act II, most good dancers prettily suggest a girl imitating a swan. In a breathtaking act of theatrical magic, Plisetskaya somehow becomes a lovely humanoid swan giving a passable imitation of a shy maiden. This remarkable ballerina is now 48, and her short, chunky legs have clearly lost some of their spring. But Plisetskaya's legs seem almost secondary...
First-nighters were lucky enough to see Plisetskaya display two startlingly different aspects of her phenomenal talent. She began the evening by dazzling the Metropolitan Opera House audience as Odette in the second act of Swan Lake, and ended it by starring in Carmen Suite, a ballet created especially for her (a rare tribute in the Soviet Union). In between, a dozen or so other soloists performed snippets from the stodgy Bolshoi repertory that allowed them to show off little more than their remarkable discipline...
...high stumps with protrusions that extended like arms, curving formations that looked like the neck and head of a swan, and linked tubes that resembled a string of sausages in a butcher's shop. But the size and shape of these flows indicated that the molten rock had not been forced out under tremendous pressure. On the contrary, it seemed to have simply peaked from the interior of the earth through cracks created as the earth's surface was stretched. Explained Bryan: "Like a cobblestone street, the earth's crust can be pulled apart very easily...