Tuesday 10 April 2012

Happy Easter, Cry Baby

As is appropriate for a lapsed-catholic slavic-melancholic family, we spent the evening of Easter Monday at the ballet. Four hours of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion is enough to make you feel like you've caught up on a year of mass going. In the case of the Hamburg Ballet, directed by ueber-choreographer John Neumeier, it is also enough to make you feel like neither faith nor words are needed to have a celestial experience.

This was the second time I saw a ballet directed by Neumeier, and the second time I produced tears from watching movement. But in the crucial moment the solution prepares to roll down my face, I think of the opening scene of Almodovar's Talk to Her and self-consciousness becomes a dam.

Don't let that stop you.


                                                   
 Opening Scene of Pedro Almodovar's Hable con ella (Talk to Her); with dancing by the Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal


John Neumeier, Saint Matthew Passion - Blute nur, du liebes Herz



John Neumeier, Saint Matthew Passion - The Last Supper scene

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