tutu trouble: ballet battles break out on the dance floor
My darlings, gather round, for I have a tale to tell, a saga of silk and sequins, a whirlwind of twirls and travails, and â I'm not ashamed to say it â a touch of tulle trouble. Oh, the drama! It happened yesterday, November 20th, the day the heavens themselves descended upon the hallowed halls of the Royal Ballet. Let me paint you a picture, with a brush dipped in the deepest hues of gossip and excitement:
It began, as it so often does in the ballet world, with the exquisite grace of a swan, but morphed into something a bit more chaotic than the âDying Swanâ (although, I must say, poor Giselle did have some rather questionable footwear issues that evening).
Our leading ladies, letâs call them The Swans â shall we say, Miss Pinks and Miss Whites â they arrived as per usual in their matching swan-themed dressing gowns, but something was off, my dears. Not the usual backstage bonhomie, more like an arctic breeze blowing through the studios. There was a distinct chill, a tension so palpable you could practically taste it. The air crackled with more static than a nylon tutu on a bad hair day. And it was all about... well... tutus, of course. What else?
I tell you, darling, this whole scandal had started to unfold in the hallowed halls of Madame's (that's Madame Tutu, naturally, who supplies our most fabulous dancewear) just the previous week, with the delivery of their latest batch of tulle. Now, this was no ordinary tulle, my dears. It was the âGrande Diva Collection,â spun from the finest silk spun from the most ethereal threads, designed in the shape of swans and blessed by... well... Madame's lucky swan feather, or so they say. And I'll confess, even I (who am quite the connoisseur when it comes to these things) had to gasp at its magnificent delicacy. This was haute couture, the holy grail of tulle! Imagine, my lovelies, the most elegant dancewear a dancer could hope for! But it seemed, in our world of pirouettes and pas de deux, it could be as divisive as a diamond necklace amongst a gaggle of debutantes.
Well, apparently, this âGrande Diva Collectionâ wasnât designed to be divided: a single, glorious length of exquisite swan tulle meant to be shared â the ultimate fashion statement of ballerinas in synchronicity. Think of it: a swirling symphony of white, a billowing mass of perfect pinks... divine, simply divine, But it appears the concept of "shared" had never quite caught on with Miss Whites and Miss Pinks. And to be fair, my dear, it is quite a challenge: two swan-like dancers, one exquisite swan-shaped length of âGrande Diva Collection.â I would say they needed a professional ballerina tutu whisperer on call!
You can practically imagine the tension as the curtain went up, their tutus perfectly matching, but with more attitude than the Royal Opera House. This was more âThe Swan Lake Battleâ than âSwan Lakeâ, let me tell you. I'd almost say it was something of a swan tug of warâŠ
Here's how it went, as the story unfolded : The Swan (Pinks) made a spectacular entrance and all eyes were on her. The Grand DĂ©veloppĂ© and the graceful arabesque, the classic âSwan Lakeâ opening you know so well... It would've been divine, my dear, if only a certain rival Swan had not, in a show of such petulance I dare not name, decided to make her âdebutâ just slightly in advance. A move that, I would say, put all other debuts in the shade â of a decidedly non-pink hue, one must add. Miss White decided to make her own bold and slightly oblique move â sheâd added a flourish or two and even a few twirls, one could say it was her interpretation of the Grand Jeté⊠Only it appeared that she was âswattingâ at Miss Pinksâ tulle to make it clear that she too had a share in its grace, that she was part of this grand tutu tapestry.
Oh darling, there they were, our two swans. They were dancing in a tulle-covered fury, both with the same exquisite, elegant tulle on their lithe, long limbs but not as intended. It became the âWar of the Swan Tutus,â and it had us all watching through our opera glasses, and not a single dance move was left out. There was a point, dear, when the choreography itself went out of the window, forgotten among the flurry of frills.
Our two prima donnas were now fully committed. Miss White, the younger one with an edge of anarchy to her dance â the daredevil of the two â had decided to use her âfeatherlightâ advantage (if I can be so cruel as to call a featherweight ballerina âfeatherlightâ) and took to leaping. Oh, she could jump, that Miss White, and how she used it to add to the excitement as her tulle, attached to her body by some kind of ballet magic (we still have no idea how these things are designed and fixed to ballerinas, do we, dear?) became the prop of choice. And let me say here that it was a most effective use of âthe tulleâ, one that required considerable athleticism. It was a truly thrilling showmanship from Miss White, a dance with a slight lack of coordination and rather a lot of artistic freedom (which, I think I need to point out here, was a most refreshing change in the dance world) all this with the added âcharmâ of her having her pink tulle rival entangled around her own feet. She didnât let up, her legs flew high in the air â one almost had to wonder how she managed it - and she seemed to dance on with a certain insouciance as if this tulle mayhem were the most natural thing in the world, with her swan rival trailing behind, but never truly losing the pinkness from her tutu. It made it rather a joyous fight.
Let's just say this whole tulle tangle added an element of chaos and an added level of excitement. We were in awe â not only at the performance and the way it evolved into a truly remarkable, almost surreal display of tulle - we were in awe of Miss Whites' athleticism, her ability to dance like this with her rival's tulle around her ankles. She kept it going. And if anyone was looking at their programs you wouldn't blame them and let me be the first to say I did. A bit more than a bit âshocked,â I say, and a lot of âsquealingâ, dear, a lot of âsquealingâ.
Miss White was clearly a new force in ballet â not only an athletic ballerina with exceptional jumps, but one with a certain bravado that was both entertaining and unpredictable. One couldn't but admire her chutzpah - and her tutu had certainly got our attention! This wasn't a ballet of grace â it was a show of defiance â of tutu domination, let's say.
Miss Pinks, for her part, did her best to stand tall amid the fray, a swan queen amidst a hurricane of white tulle. And what a fight. I must add here that Miss Pinks was quite graceful, her legs were longer and slender â and with all her dignity. It was hard, oh darling, it was so hard, to watch her tulle being pulled in all directions. But what elegance. You wouldnât want a swan like her in your corner - she was a swan queen to the end and that is what she continued to be.
By the time they made it to the end, our two ballet icons had created something that had us gasping for breath. They couldn't be separated. We werenât sure which one was doing the leading because they had become one â a ballet tapestry with a pink side and a white one.
It took an intervention from the very serious, very stoic, but definitely most beautiful, ballet master (a truly elegant man in a classic grey suit â the most handsome of suits) to take to the stage and gently, with the gentleness of a maestro and the sternness of a father in a fatherly dance that we had never seen him perform before in all his ballet years (he used to perform the role of Prince Siegfried in âSwan Lakeâ, you know, the gentle young prince, heâs got the looks of a ballet god but not a ballet prince! And he would never be so unnecessarily dramatic, oh dear⊠he really did not need to move his hands like thatâŠ) Anyway he gently made them both stop their tulle-tastic battle to take their bows.
What did we learn from all of this tutu trauma? Ballet is full of passion â the kind that can only happen between the most talented, determined, and elegant women in the world and, that it can happen through their choice of tutus. And that, a ballerina in a tulle war is still quite an amazing sight to see.