Said ballet master Antonio Castilla, quoted in "The perils and pirouettes of staging a ballet aboard the Queen Mary 2/The Cunard line’s flagship offers passengers a rare opportunity for performances at sea with the English National Ballet" (WaPo).
"The body of the dancer is very, very sensitive to the changes... We work down into the floor and then from the floor we adjust up, and unless you do it from the floor, it’s just fake."
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You’d think this would be a welcome challenge for some of the world’s best dancers.
But no, everything must be pirouetted into an unjust situation in order to be reported these days.
There are few things more enjoyable, if you enjoy those kind of things, than navigating a ship on high seas. Easily, one of my favorite memories of all time.
We saw this Cirque de Soleil- style act on a cruise ship once. I have NO IDEA how they performed those feats of balance.
When American dancers go to Europe, they complain about the raked stages. This is just European dancers finally having a stage to complain about.
How much is the floor lifting/falling with each wave? Does it matter for anything other than jumps?
Dance to barcarolles, or anyway something in 12/8 time.
My niece is auditioning for Disney Cruise Lines. No en pointe…
Crack, you have led an interesting life.
Actually the fact that so many commenters here have led such interesting lives is a major factor in why I've been hanging out here for two decades.
The Navy Seals have a saying for times when circumstances can’t be controlled: “Full credit”
In the movie Royal Wedding (1951) Fred Astaire and Jane Powell do a dance number on board ship, which then hits heavy seas. Hilarity ensues. Pitching and rolling
I assume he isn't choreographing chaine turns for the ballerinas. I don't know how you spot and travel on a moving deck.
Also, I hope the insurance on injuries has a high payout. Maybe these are dancers near the end of their careers who are looking for a retirement bonus.
Even those of us on land are all hurtling eastward at a thousand miles an hour. You get used to it.
Do you generally feel the motion on a ship that size?
Saw a juggler performing - or trying to - while on a cruise around Cape Horn. He was mostly successful.
i think this would take dance, to a whole new level... Wait a minute;
i think this would take dance, to a whole new unlevel. That's better!
Jamie said...
Crack, you have led an interesting life.
Thanks. Yeah. Here's the main ship I served on, being sank by the Australian Navy for target practice. The Captain was a sadistic bastard, who assigned me to the Captain's Gig, so that he can keep an eye on me. I watched that asshole hack to death some of the most beautiful creatures in the sea, with a machete, when he got them onboard. Blood and guts, flying everywhere, with him, laughing the whole time. I'll never forget it.
He eventually lost his command over leaving some boat people stranded in the ocean, while he ran off to try to win another medal for doing something more glamorous. That was kind of weird, because we had gotten so good at picking up lost boat people, that even I got a medal for doing it. We were always doing something with that guy.
Yancey Ward said...
Do you generally feel the motion on a ship that size?
If a ship is empty, it gets tossed around like it's made of cork. If a ship is full, nothing can move it's mass but itself.
Tom T. said...
"Even those of us on land are all hurtling eastward at a thousand miles an hour. You get used to it."
True. It really does depend on what scale you decide to look at things from.
Men don't appreciate the training, discipline, and hard work that goes into this boring art form.
'Men don't appreciate the training, discipline, and hard work that goes into this boring art form.'
Exactly.
I would rather see them stumble all over the place...more entertaining.
One of my good friends spent four years in the Navy in the mid 1960s before going on to law school. Jack had qualified as Officer of the Deck on the USS Oklahoma City, but spent the last 18 months of his service as an officer on a Navy cargo ship based in Long Beach. The ship was on a solo voyage from Long Beach to Pearl Harbor. There were several engineering officers on that voyage who were not qualified to navigate the ship. The Captain told Jack that "It's a big ocean and here's the time to give those officers a chance to navigate". So with either the Captain or Jack looking over their shoulder, those officers got a chance to maneuver the ship.
If you are moving and the floor is moving, make it a fandango.
I once spent a week on a 185 ft ship for an oceanographic cruise out of Santa Cruz. We had 12 to 20 ft seas the entire time. I recall dancing across the deck a few time, albeit involuntarily.
I was also on a large cruise ship out of Baja in 10-15 footers. The motion of the ship was easily perceptible but not obnoxious. A few passengers got sick, but that's not a surprise. People differ greatly in their susceptibility.
My experience on a large Navy ship is that in port it's very huge, imposing structure. But out in the North Atlantic in the wintertime it's like going to sea in a bucket. We were not equipped with the stabilizers that cruise ships carry, and the ship had a very uncomfortable pitch. What loosened your breakfast was the pause at the top and the bottom of the pitch. It was not dishonorable to be seasick, but one still had to do one's job.
When I went around Cape Horn and to Antarctica the entertainment was a magician and singers - the cruise line must have learned not to send dancers to those waters.
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