Tag: ballet

That Awful Confrontation of Body and Will: Dancers Nureyev (Oleg Ivenko) in The White Crow (Ralph Fiennes, 2018) and Baryshnikov (as Nikolai) in White Nights (Taylor Hackford, 1985)

Ballet is dance—it is delicate movements set to music, illustrating a tale: it is adagio (slow movements) and allegro (rapid movements) and arabesque (the body’s weight on one leg, with the other leg aloft, backward) and changement (change of feet) and fifth position (the heel of one foot against the toe of another, the two feet close, turned out) and plie (bending of a standing leg) and sauté (jump); and it is the life, the creative work, Rudolf Nureyev wanted.