Maybe the extreme stylization of ballet irks me. Male dancers have to be strong enough to throw women up into the air and catch them making them look as light as a feather. Granted, given that many ballerinas battle anorexia, they might in fact be lighter than average. But still, you try tossing 90 pounds around like a basketball. And that is the problem. It's too unreal. It defies all sense of physics. It's almost like slight of hand. On top of that, some pieces seem so divorced from the rhythm of a piece-probably the elemental cause of dance in the first place-that I find it hard to suspend judgement.

Of course, there is a paradox here, for I love many piece of music written for ballets. Among these some of the most important musical works of the 20th century, written for Diaghilev's Ballet Russe in Paris, namely Stravinsky's Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring.

Granted, there are exceptions. Today's work I find extremely accessible and the melding of visual images and music to be almost flawless. No doubt I had heard the Suite from the ballet countless times during the Christmas season on the local classical station. In the fall of 1974, my unrequited love, J*** M******** suggested we go see Fantasia, in which Disney's illustrators did a clever job having fairies trace iridescent patterns on spider webs with drops of dew. And who can criticize the dancing mushrooms?

But what really made me like the work, was seeing it performed later that year, also at Indiana University.

Tchaikowski bio

Midi (Scroll down)

Could only find the suites recorded

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