"I always thought ballet would be a music box come to life. A dainty princess twirls in a stiff tutu while a prince solemnly assists, and the whole performance would serve up a tax-free inheritance in pointe shoes - polished, rarefied, and untouched by mortal concerns like gravity or sweat. In reality, one heroine fumbles every life decision and ends up in a swamp."
"Then comes Raymonda, a 19th-century prima ballerina in a world of men, but now she's holding all the cards: She can marry Harry, mess around with Ike, and be Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. At least, that's Creative Director Tamara Rojo's take for San Francisco Ballet. Our OG heroine is a noblewoman from 1898 and has perfect posture, but minimal personal agency; She twirls for the affection of two men, one a war hero, the other a bad boy."
Ballet expectations of ethereal, untouchable spectacle are upended by contemporary productions that range from swamp-bound heroines to AI dread and vengeful ghost squads. Raymonda receives a feminist reworking that keeps the central love triangle but removes fatal outcomes and adds career ambition and nursing duties akin to Florence Nightingale. The protagonist moves from passive noblewoman to a figure balancing romance and professional desire. Sasha De Sola's portrayal emphasizes heart and career tensions rather than battlefield heroics. The update advances gender politics roughly a century while softening some edges into more modern romantic-drama tones.
Read at Medium
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]