The language of ballet is one of dramatic gesture: In La Bayadère, after the beautiful temple dancer is bitten by a poisonous snake, she communicates her resignation to death by throwing her hands up in the air; when Giselle discovers her lover is betrothed, she begins to dance wildly, eventually dying of broken-hearted exhaustion; in Swan Lake, when Odette learns that Siegfried’s promised himself to her evil twin, her arms beat frantically in protest of her entrapment in swan form; and when a masked attacker threw a jar of sulfuric acid in the face of Sergei Yurevitch Filin, director of …read more
Source: The New Republic
