Ha ha i'm kidding - i have no life in Ballet or association with ballet - except for watching the fairly pointless Black Swan - and now I've been watching BBC4's Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with English National Ballet.
It's a three-part documentary, and my god it's depressing. You'd think it would be interesting, insightful and inspirational? No. It focuses on the cost-cutting, the problems with being too old as a dancer, the upset and angst of the dancers... all accompanied with stark music and a grave voice-over.
Who decided to take this direction with the show?? Why couldn't it be a cool insight into the lives of ballerinas? What is wrong with the BBC?? Why is it all doom and gloom? Look at Eastenders - it's not drama, it's misery!
Alas, my poor license fee money...
5 comments:
One suspects that the original purpose of the programmes was to highlight the negative effects of cost-cutting and the dissolution of the Arts Council on the arts in the UK, but, then, Black Swan came along, and the programmes had to take on a new role: satisying the public at large's thirst for knowledge about life inside a ballet company. Round peg, square hole....
I dunno Mart. I mean I love going to the ballet, and all the glamour of a show, but I found it interesting to see that they have the same stresses as I do offstage; worry of cutbacks, or if they are too old to actually progress in their career. Although I think the choreographer needs a kick, for leaving things all to the last minute - he really got on my tits, blaming everybody else for the mess of the first night!
I guess I just seem to be surrounded by the effects of the Recession all the time, so I resent seeing it on a ballet documentary too!
That choreographer was such a dickhead. I hope he watched the documentary and realised how out of order he was - but I doubt he will realise.
Or maybe they're just whiney toffs who thinks the world owes them a living, or Pushy mother forced them down the ballert route and they have no qualifications to do anything else or sense of the real world?
This is a niche show, on a minor arts channel, and probably there to help justify the BBC throwing money at a station nobody really watches while making sweeping redundancies and relocations. More people watch the over the top unrealistic reality of Louis Spence than high brow high art of the ballet. I think it's just fodder for Harry Hill to take the piss out of
the director definitely seemed a bit out of touch...
i think after Black Swan, the documentary was well timed... Shame it didn't focus on the ballet as much as it could have done!
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