{"id":330,"date":"2019-08-04T18:00:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-04T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elesdancing.com\/?p=330"},"modified":"2019-07-19T22:11:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T21:11:10","slug":"medusa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/04\/medusa\/","title":{"rendered":"Mini review: Medusa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Company:<\/strong> The Royal Ballet
Venue:<\/strong> Royal Opera House
Coreography:<\/strong> Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Music:<\/strong> Henry Purcell and Olga Wojciechowska
Date:<\/strong> 18 May 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHOREOGRAPHY \u2002 \u2b50\u2b50<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not my cup of tea and not what I would expect from The Royal Ballet. Or any ballet for that matter. Most of the production seemed to be a slightly awkward contortion performance rather than a dance show. The extreme extensions and back-bends didn’t always flow very well, resulting in a frustrating overall experience. The “rape of Medusa” (I wouldn’t have been sure that’s what it was if I hadn’t read it in the programme) was choreographed in a way that seemed to almost ridicule it. To be honest, it made me feel very uncomfortable. I was very confused by the fight between Medusa and Perseus’ soldiers. She seemed to be killing them (by twisting their necks, for example), but they remained alive regardless. If this was meant to represent a much bigger “army”, I’m afraid it could have been done better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PERFORMANCE \u2002 \u2b50\u2b50<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This was my first time watching Natalia Osipova, and I’m afraid to say I was a bit disappointed. In addition to the issues mentioned above, her facial expressions often seemed overacted and added an unfortunate comedic aspect to a very serious theme. I did enjoy how expressive her arms were. The rest of the characters didn’t seem particularly remarkable or memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STAGING \u2002 \u2b50\u2b50\u2b50<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Minimalist. It included the bare minimum so that the stage resembled a temple: some stairs, plates with offerings and two huge rectangular columns. More columns were added during the performance, especially after Medusa’s transformation, perhaps to represent the inside of the temple? I’m not sure, I found that some of the imagery wasn’t very clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COSTUMES \u2002 \u2b50<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not that great. The only costume which created an immediately recognisable character was Medusa’s after her transformation, and only because of the snake “wig”. I found the costumes of Perseus and his soldiers weirdly disturbing. They resembled a brown shapeless sack, but sheer, for some inexplicable reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MUSIC \u2002 \u2b50\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I quite liked the mixture of classical\/traditional music and electronic music. The singing was also rather nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IN A NUTSHELL<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Would I recommend?\u2002\ud83d\udc4d\u2753 \ud83d\udc4e\u2753 \ud83e\udd2f\ud83d\ude35<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you really like contortion, maybe this is the production for you. As for me, I doubt I would watch it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Company: The Royal Ballet
\nVenue: Royal Opera House
\nCoreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
\nMusic: Henry Purcell and Olga Wojciechowska
\nDate: 18 May 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,26],"tags":[14,15,18,12,37,35,38,34,28,36,27,33,19],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-dance","category-reviews","tag-ballet","tag-ballet-dance","tag-ballet-post","tag-dance","tag-henry-purcell","tag-medusa","tag-olga-wojciechowska","tag-review","tag-royal-opera-house","tag-sidi-larbi-cherkaoui","tag-the-royal-ballet","tag-triple-bill","tag-world-wide-ballet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elesdancing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}