Dear Readers:
As everybody probably knows, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is on an official state visit to the Russian Federation. This is extremely important news, especially for Russia. Kim is one of the few international leaders who has stood up to American imperialism for many years. An alliance with North Korea would be very beneficial for Russia. Mutually beneficial to both great nations. And not just in the military arena…
Yesterday we had the news that Kim took in the ballet at the Primorsky Theater in Vladivostok. The Primorsky being a filial of the famous Mariinsky Theater. Its Artistic Director is Valery Gergiev, a world-renowned concert conductor. Gergiev even used to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, until the anti-Russian sanctions turned him into a non-person. In any case, there is no artist in the world more qualified to conduct the music for Tchaikovsky’s sublime ballet, Sleeping Beauty.
This piece by reporter Kristina Arutiunian includes a short video showing the North Korean leader entering his loge at the theater, surrounded by secret service, translators, and his Russian hosts:
Gossipy Kristina reports that Kim arrived at the theater in a limousine. He was accompanied by Alexander Matsegora, the Russian Ambassador to North Korea; also by Oleg Kozhemyako, the Governor of the Primorye Krai; and other Russian and Korean personalities. These important officials walked up 4 flights of stairs to the main loge, cutting it close and passing through the doors just as the third bell sounded. Five minutes later… the curtain rises, and the ballet has begun. President Kim watches intensely from his private box…
Prologue
King Florestan and his beloved wife, the Queen, are excited about the birth of their first child, Princess Aurora. They invite 6 fairies to attend the Christening, but (egads!) due to a simple clerical error, they forgot to invite the seventh Fairy, Carabosse. Who crashes the party anyhow. Driven by vengeful vanity, Carabosse places a curse on the infant, as follows: On her 16th birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on a spindle, and she will die. Fortunately, the Lilac Fairy appears to save the Princess. Just as Carabosse represents all the bad emotions and tendencies in humans, Lilac represents the good: Modesty, Virtue, Compassion. Lilac does not have the power to revoke the curse, but just enough power to mitigate it: The spindle prick will cause Aurora to sink into a deep sleep, whence she can be awoken 100 years hence by the kiss of a Prince, her true love.
A Work Of Pure Genius
Believe it or not, Tchaikovsky was leery about scoring a second ballet, after his Swan Lake flopped among the public. The genius composer, working with the brilliant Marius Petipa again as his choreographer, took the Sleeping Beauty material from a combination of Brothers Grimm stories, and a French book by Charles Perrault, called La Belle au bois dormant (“The Beauty in the Sleeping Forest”). This combination of motifs also included such fairy-tale characters as Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood, for whom Tchaikovsky wrote cute dance music.
Unlike Swan Lake, with its flawed hero and complex psychology (White versus Black Swan), Sleeping Beauty is simplicity itself. As pure and non-complicated as Princess Aurora. Simple, but not simplistic. Bright and non-ambiguous. This is one of the reasons why Aurora is my favorite ballet heroine. There are no shades of grey on her. She is sweet and nice, girlish and playful. Not a mean bone in her lithe body.
Act I
After the somewhat scary Prologue, with Carabosse entering and leaving in a puff of smoke (it is Russian tradition to portray Carabosse by a male dancer in drag), Kim Jong Un would have watched the charming Act I, which features the famous “Dance of the Roses”. This is my favorite bit. Aurora is celebrating her 16th birthday. Her doting parents decide it is time to marry her off at such a ripe age, before she becomes a barren old crone. They bring her a selection of 4 handsome suitors, each a Prince Charming from a different nation. In a show of balletic virtuosity, Aurora must balance on the tip of one toe while accepting a flower from each suitor. But which one to pick? It’s an agonizing choice, since they are all so rich and handsome, and all pretty good dancers too.
Should I say it? Aurora’s true love, Prince Désiré (aka “Prince Desirable”), has not even been born yet. Aurora must wait 100 years to meet him. And when she does…. Well, I have always felt that he doesn’t have all that much to do, as a hero. He doesn’t have to slay a dragon, or even do much of anything to complete his quest. The Lilac Fairy pretty much hands him everything on a silver platter. Well, to be sure, he has to cut through some brambles to make his way through the Sleeping Forest on his path to Aurora’s boudoir. To bestow on her that magic kiss…
But that comes later. As Act I comes to an end, a mysterious figure has crashed Aurora’s party once again. It’s the evil Carabosse, of course. Come there to complete her curse. The gift she brings the delightful teen is a spindle. Aurora has never seen a spindle before. (Duh! Her parents never allowed her anywhere near a spindle, or in fact any sewing implements whatsoever.) As she examines this device curiously, she pricks her finger of course, and collapses into a deep sleep that imitates death…
Act II
As the curtain opens on Act II … Wait! What is this I hear? Kim Jong Un has left the theater! During the intermission after the curtain closed on Act I. How rude! What a philistine he turned out to be! Or maybe just sleepy. You see, the entire ballet, complete with intermissions, goes on for 4 long hours; and very few people have the stamina for that. Or maybe he had an important meeting to attend. (Giving him the benefit of the doubt.) In any case, Kim missed a ton of great dancing, including this cute number involving Puss in Boots and his kitty-kat girlfriend, the White Cat.
Readers not so familiar with ballet steps, need to know that classical Russian ballet is actually French; and that the names of all the steps are in French. For example, that cute little bouncy step used in this dance is even called pas de chat (“step of the cat”) defined as “a jump in which each foot in turn is raised to the opposite knee”.
Kim also missed this cute dance of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. In which it would not be out of place to adduce the metaphor: Little Red = North Korea. Wolf = USA. “Ew! Get away from me, you icky wolf! I support Russia!”
Besides the cat and wolf dancing, Kim, by leaving early, would have missed a whole boatload of other adorable show pieces, not to mention the final Triumph of Good, wherein Prince Désiré kisses Princess Aurora, and wakes her up from her long nap.
Kim’s punishment for being such a boor: He must don a purple tutu and perform the triumphal dance of the Lilac Fairy. For example, here is a variation from the Ukrainian National Opera:
Aurora: Um, honey, what did I miss while I was sleeping?
Désiré: Where do I even begin?
THE END
Awful Avalanche 
RT has an interesting documentary on Russian ballet for us balletically challenged. It’s part of RT’s Inland Visions which is a series of excellent documentaries about Russia (themes like Dagestan, Lake Baikal, Kaliningrad’s amber, etc.). The quality of the RT shows reminds me of the many superb BBC documentaries 25+ years ago.
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Visions…
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Thanks for links!
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And speaking of those balletically challenged…
Just where the heck doe Russia get-off with it’s trademark infringement of a Walt Disney classic? Sleeping beauty is TRADEMARK’d gosh darn-it, Russia needs to develop it’s own IP and not keep stealing our stuff !
[and for those already typing…that was ironic…and yeah, I really do think…stop typing]
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I wondered if somebody would have the gall to mention Disney, LOL!
Just for the record, I despise all Disney versions of the classics, they have taken everything that is good and right in this world, butchered it, and turned it into trash.
Having said that, I find it in my heart to make one tiny exception. A couple of years ago my sister forced me (at gunpoint, almost) to watch Maleficent which is Disney’s more woke version of the Sleeping Beauty story. I was, like, “I refuse to watch this woke b.s.!” And my sister was, like, “You WILL watch it!”
To my vast surprise, I ended up liking it. A couple of decent ideological points were even made. Namely, I liked the way the writers mocked the whole concept of the “Prince Charming” superman who can fix everything with a single kiss. In previous generations, Disney sold the pre-feminist view of girls (aka “princesses”) who just needed to find that right fella. There is one line where the witch Maleficent mocks that concept: “You think a boy that you just met is the one who can fix all your problems and make everything right?” Making the rather wise observation that real relationships take a lot of time and effort to build properly.
Another good point (some people may find this too woke or even creepy) is when Maleficent herself turns out to be the one whose kiss is the right one to wake up Aurora. Because it is a platonic kiss (on Aurora’s forehead) which denotes genuine affection and caring. I liked that a lot.
(It would have been creepy if the Disney jackals had gone farther and had an actual relationship between the two women, not because lesbianism is creepy, but because Aurora is only 16, and Maleficent is — well, hundreds of years old!)
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Of course somebody in your commentariat would “have the gall”…what’s the internet for if not for irony? And yeah…I really do think.
But…but..uhm…that age difference…wouldn’t it be more PC? Er…uhm..maybe that’s DC…uhm, I always get the two confused…
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I bet I know why lil’ Kim snuck off after the first act, and it’s not because he was bored to balletears. He saw the floppy foppy hair volcano* on that green dancer dude and decided “I’ve gotta get that look for myself! I’ve been rocking the same pompousdour for two decades, and it’s stale. Time to find me summathat green Brylcreem straight away!” When Kim has his next photo op, don’t be shocked.
Also too: ”it is Russian tradition to portray Carabosse by a male dancer in drag” WTD?!? (What The Drag?) Will this be possible any more under Putler’s anti-tranny laws? Where is the pious screeching about that the way there is with drag queen story hours at the local library?!? I tells ya, the Worldwide Transexual Conspiracy To Turn People Into Pre-verts (h/t to the military moron at the end of “Dr. Strangelove”) is everywhere, and it never sleeps. Unless it is “sleeping with” someone that it shouldn’t be.
* Yes, I realise it’s green-dyed ostrich feathers, not actual human hair
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Dear Leader Kim has plenty of time to find himself a new doo. Did he actually think he would be able to find a barber at 10 o’clock in the night in Vladivostok? Therefore, your theory is demolished.
As for Carabosse, look, this is a big powerful, evil fairy, so of course it HAS to be a man in drag. That’s just tradition. Ballet has its own traditions, which are not subject to the political whims of whichever government is in power. The laws of art heed not the decrees neither of woke nor anti-woke dogmatists!
P.S. – for those interested in the topic of (Ballet + Woke Politics), I did this series way back in 2019 about a scandal wherein American Russophobic racists accused Russians of being racists. I am particularly proud of this piece, because I totally did a number on this American black chick with weak feet who tanked in classical ballet and had to switch to modern dance, then decided to blame the Russians for all her problems, what a loser! heh heh
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