Word: tintagel
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...quiet, leafy street in the loveliest neighborhood of Colombo, Dr. Lucien de Zilwa christened his new house Tintagel. It was the height of British colonial rule in Sri Lanka, but de Zilwa didn't choose the name - that of King Arthur's legendary birthplace in Cornwall - out of any attachment to empire. He was a fashionable man, living in the most fashionable part of the city, and it was the vogue at the time among the local élite to give wistful English names to their villas...
...That cosmopolitan history has been maintained in the house's present rebirth as Paradise Road Tintagel Colombo, www.tintagelcolombo.com - a luxury hotel and restaurant opened in 2007 by Colombo designer and homeware retailer Udayshanth Fernando. "I'm a very close friend of Sunethra Bandaranaike," says Fernando, referring to the elder daughter, who had planned to sell off the furniture and rent the house to a foreign embassy. "I said: 'Why don't you rent it to me?' She spoke to her brother and sister and there we went...
...party of "trippers," costumed in 1916-style dusters, derbies and veils, comes to picnic in the ruins of the Cornish Castle of Tintagel. It soon develops that the romantic young man is in love with the beautiful young girl, even though she is married and her husband is along. About the time this situation has begun to look hopeless, both romantically and dance-wise, the indiscreet lovers drink to each other, and go into a magic-potion trance. The stage darkens, the ruins of Tintagel fly up, the dusters, derbies and veils come off, and in a flash the trippers...
...legendary story works itself out in a lyrical dance duet by the lovers (Diana Adams, Jacques d'Amboise), a sword fight between Tristram and the cuckolded king (Francisco Moncion). Then, as Tristram and Iseult lie adying, the stage darkens again, the ruins of Tintagel descend, and the dancers don their dusters, derbies and veils. They wander off, wondering whether it was a dream...
Ashton produced little that was new in ballet movement. But he proved again how well he can handle character, mime and storytelling. For an audience whose principal fare is George Balanchine's classical abstractions, Ashton's little trip to Tintagel made a picnic indeed...