Saturday Evening at the Ballet

I had the opportunity to go and see the Fall Ballet over at school last weekend. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've seen many of their ballet performances over the last several years, and this ranks as one of their best.

The main piece that they danced was "The Prodigal Son", with music by Prokofiev. I was very curious to see how it would be done- somehow I had images in my mind of dancing pigs a la the hippos in Fantasia. I shouldn't have been surprised to see that it was much classier than that. The beginning of the piece followed the parable pretty closely- rebellious/arrogant son asks for his inheritance from his father, takes the money and runs to the city. Once he gets to the city, the dance departs from the parable a bit. A hoard of ghouls tempts the son into raucous living and introduces him to a beautiful siren who finishes off the job. Between the lot of them, he ends up penniless, exhausted, in rags. As you would expect, he crawls back to his family and is welcomed with open arms. I was interested, however, that the part of the parable of the jealous son who stayed was left out altogether. Perhaps that would have been difficult to act out in dance, however, I've always thought that that was a rather significant part of the story.

Anyhow, I thought that it was brilliantly done, and I was amazed yet again at how much can be conveyed without any words at all.