Last night we went to the see the New York City Ballet!
As part of a campaign to get more 'youngsters' interested in the ballet, the NYC Ballet have collaborated with (my favourites) street artists Faile to create two nights of art and ballet.
Tickets were released a few weeks ago, and sold out very quickly due to the very nice price of $29! Luckily I'm on Faile's mailing list so we were able to get some before they went on sale properly, but even being part of the pre-sale didn't ensure us orchestra seats... but it didn't matter as we were on the front of the 4th balcony and had a fantastic view.
Tickets were released a few weeks ago, and sold out very quickly due to the very nice price of $29! Luckily I'm on Faile's mailing list so we were able to get some before they went on sale properly, but even being part of the pre-sale didn't ensure us orchestra seats... but it didn't matter as we were on the front of the 4th balcony and had a fantastic view.
Before the ballet all the ticket holders were able to enjoy an exhibition of brand new Faile pieces - all inspired by old ballet costumes and old promotional posters and playbills...
The pieces were all created out of lots of different sized blocks of wood and canvas's and metal plates, all painted or screen-printed or engraved - they were absolutely amazing - I especially liked the petal plates they'd made...
The next part of the exhibition was a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge tower made up of similar sections...
The sheer number of elements to all these pieces was incredible, I wouldn't even know where to start it I were them. Not only did they design and paint and produce each individual element (painted on 5 sides) but they slotted them all together in a huge jigsaw puzzle...
It was great seeing some of the images I've seen pasted around on walls in Manhattan and Brooklyn - I remember seeing some Faile in some alley in SoHo the very first time I visited New York in 2004 - and now I was seeing the same images (in colour) as part of a fancy exhibition at the ballet!
There were some people there who were mega Faile fans and were spouting off lots of trivia about them, there were others who were saying 'Oooh I've seen that thing on a wall in my neighbourhood' and then there were some people who didn't know anything about Faile but were there purely for the ballet. So it brought a great mix of people together for the evening.
The ballet itself was good - there were 4 sections and all the music and dances were supposedly based on or related to the art work... I think they were pushing it a bit there, but they were all modern pieces, from the 70's, 80's 90's and 00's.
We really liked a couple of the sections, but there were a couple of very questionable moments of 'interpretative' dance (I can't stand interpretative dance!) - a 40 minute long performance with 'dancing' to the soundtrack of a squeaky door and people sighing... it was the longest 40 minutes ever!
Despite the squeaking door soundtrack the costume for that particular section was pretty amazing. The female dancer was wearing a huge (reeeeeally huge, it covered nearly the entire stage) floaty dress that had elastic attaching it to the ceiling, so when she moved it created these amazing billowy waves that looks liked slowmotion water... so that bit was great.
Apart from the dodgy dancing, the whole night was absolutely brilliant, I loved the art and it was amazing to see Faile's work in a proper exhibition environment rather than on the walls of Brooklyn (although I'll never get bored of seeing their pastings on the walls either).
We really liked a couple of the sections, but there were a couple of very questionable moments of 'interpretative' dance (I can't stand interpretative dance!) - a 40 minute long performance with 'dancing' to the soundtrack of a squeaky door and people sighing... it was the longest 40 minutes ever!
Despite the squeaking door soundtrack the costume for that particular section was pretty amazing. The female dancer was wearing a huge (reeeeeally huge, it covered nearly the entire stage) floaty dress that had elastic attaching it to the ceiling, so when she moved it created these amazing billowy waves that looks liked slowmotion water... so that bit was great.
Apart from the dodgy dancing, the whole night was absolutely brilliant, I loved the art and it was amazing to see Faile's work in a proper exhibition environment rather than on the walls of Brooklyn (although I'll never get bored of seeing their pastings on the walls either).
To top the whole awesome evening off, we got to keep some art and take it home! Each ticket holder got given a little box like this...
Inside each box was a little wooden block...
The wooden blocks were taken from the pieces that were created for the subway adverts to promote the evening... it was such a great idea. Each block is totally unique and each side is painted with something different!
Not surprisingly there are already a load of blocks on ebay with people trying to sell them for $200 each!!! Needless to say, we're keeping ours.
It was such a great night and it felt brilliant to be part of such a special event. The second night is happening in May, all the tickets are sold out, but someone at work has a couple of spare, so we might be tempted to go along again - I'm not sure if the art will be different, but the dances will be and so will the little wooden blocks!
I'm going to go and read my Faile book now...
No comments:
Post a Comment