3. Ballet

Whatever else I may do or see on this journey, one thing I really cannot miss is the Ballet - the Bolshoi Ballet and the Kirov, the latter being at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. As a small child, I learnt ballet (and later, Irish Dancing and Ballroom Dancing) and my best friend and I lived in a sort of dream world where we would grow up to be famous ballerinas, we'd practice dance at each other's houses on a Saturday afternoon and looking back we were living in fantasyland. A good place to be for very few children and youngsters of today have the innocent world of fantasy like we did.

I had a book called, "The How and Why Wonder Book of Ballet" by Lee Wyndham with illustrations by Rafaello Busoni. (Copyright 1961 by Wonder Books, Inc.) It had 48 pages and was approx 11" x 8 1/4". I remember there were a lot of coloured illustrations and some black and white ones. It was this book where I first learnt about Nijinski and his marvellous jumps.

The book depicted the history of ballet - did you know the word "ballet" comes from the Italian ballare - to dance?

I've just read the Bolshoi theatre shows around 3-4 different operas and 2-3 ballets each year, so I will have to time my train journey with the ballet if possible.

I've always loved the ballet and was fortunate enough to see Nureyev and Fonteyn dance Swan Lake. Russian ballet and its dancers are famous and I am putting some ballet videos on this blog, not in a post but either in the side bar scroll down. The vids are short excerpts of my favourites.

Today's quote: Dancers are made, not born ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov