Ballet Stories - Magic flute

by tybalt

Ballet Stories - Magic flute

One of the less known story ballets is "Magic flute" by Bèjart (Mozart's music). Béjart reduced costumes to simple ballet dress with only differentiating colours: Tamino red pants, Papageno orange pants, Pamina white leo, the three women violet leos. Béjart doesn't retell Shikaneder's story completely but works out characters. So the colours of the costumes will just be a help to identify, but the persons are general types more than individuals.So it's no classical story ballet but ballet "with elements of magic flute".

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Reply by Odette

Ballet Stories - Magic flute

Hello Tybalt,

Thank you for your ballet stories submission, you never fail to give me so much interest in reading what you have to say. Your extensive knowledge on ballet is truly fascinating.

Here you give an excellent example of how versatile ballet stories can be. This shows that ballet stories are not just full of fairy tales and magical narratives, but stimulate off powerful and diverse stories to portray in depth characters and express intriguing motifs.

Dancers have to be versatile enough to go beyond the steps and see the meaning behind the choreography to interpret their characters. The ability to express, interpret and perform such diverse pieces of work. This is what makes both ballet and ballet dancers so unique.

Best Wishes,

Odette