![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A couple weeks back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
genarti, rushin_doll and I went to go see Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera.
First of all, it was 100% amazing and I am now totally bitten by the ballet bug - which I can already tell is going to be a tragically expensive passion, but I DON'T CARE. The swan chorus: beautiful! Odette dancing her transformation into a swan: insanely beautiful! Villainous Von Rothbart being a total pimp with all of Siegfried's ladies and Siegfried's mom and then literally SMOKEBOMBING his way out of the scene: insanely HILARIOUS! (And, uh, that is not even factoring in how I was clutching Gen's arm every ten minutes hissing "that's the music from the bit that Kraehe dances to with Mytho! And that's from the bit that Tutu does her solo to, and HEY LOOK that's the exact choreography oh man!" I am not proud of being that ridiculously obsessed, but Princess Tutu remains my One True Fictional Love at this point in time and I can't help it.)
Anyway, after seeing the show, I had an overwhelming urge to reread Mercedes Lackey's retelling, The Black Swan, which I first read during my Lackey-devouring phase as a thirteen-year-old. Basically, the story of The Black Swan is "It's Swan Lake . . . IF ODILE WAS AN AWESOME YA-STYLE HEROINE AND SAVED THE DAY. Also I guess Siegfried has a story of personal redemption somewhere in there too."
To be honest I didn't care much about Siegfried's story of personal redemption or his evil mother or his and Odette's true love, which is kind of shoehorned into the last hundred pages anyways. I wanted the whole book to be about Odile bonding with Odette! And learning about the ~*~power of friendship!~*~ And, you know, enough of it was that I was happy.
It was also super fun reading it right after seeing the show - Lackey spends a lot of time describing set pieces that are taken straight from the traditional ballet's stage settings. The lake itself is the big one ("and there is this GIANT DRAMATIC CLIFF right next to the lake! Funny how that is!") but the party scene with all of the visiting princesses doing their national dances is also pretty notable.
(It did not, however, give me many Princess Tutu associations - the two stories are both working off Swan Lake, obviously, but taking it in completely different directions. Um, unsurprisingly.)
genarti, rushin_doll and I went to go see Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera.First of all, it was 100% amazing and I am now totally bitten by the ballet bug - which I can already tell is going to be a tragically expensive passion, but I DON'T CARE. The swan chorus: beautiful! Odette dancing her transformation into a swan: insanely beautiful! Villainous Von Rothbart being a total pimp with all of Siegfried's ladies and Siegfried's mom and then literally SMOKEBOMBING his way out of the scene: insanely HILARIOUS! (And, uh, that is not even factoring in how I was clutching Gen's arm every ten minutes hissing "that's the music from the bit that Kraehe dances to with Mytho! And that's from the bit that Tutu does her solo to, and HEY LOOK that's the exact choreography oh man!" I am not proud of being that ridiculously obsessed, but Princess Tutu remains my One True Fictional Love at this point in time and I can't help it.)
Anyway, after seeing the show, I had an overwhelming urge to reread Mercedes Lackey's retelling, The Black Swan, which I first read during my Lackey-devouring phase as a thirteen-year-old. Basically, the story of The Black Swan is "It's Swan Lake . . . IF ODILE WAS AN AWESOME YA-STYLE HEROINE AND SAVED THE DAY. Also I guess Siegfried has a story of personal redemption somewhere in there too."
To be honest I didn't care much about Siegfried's story of personal redemption or his evil mother or his and Odette's true love, which is kind of shoehorned into the last hundred pages anyways. I wanted the whole book to be about Odile bonding with Odette! And learning about the ~*~power of friendship!~*~ And, you know, enough of it was that I was happy.
It was also super fun reading it right after seeing the show - Lackey spends a lot of time describing set pieces that are taken straight from the traditional ballet's stage settings. The lake itself is the big one ("and there is this GIANT DRAMATIC CLIFF right next to the lake! Funny how that is!") but the party scene with all of the visiting princesses doing their national dances is also pretty notable.
(It did not, however, give me many Princess Tutu associations - the two stories are both working off Swan Lake, obviously, but taking it in completely different directions. Um, unsurprisingly.)
