Beauty, Beautiful, Beauteous.

Closing in on the end of Act One of Sonnets.
Before our last big number, we have a dissertation... rumination... observation about beauty. Now, people like to see ballet because the dancers are "beautiful creatures." This is not a secret, although sometimes people like to gloss over this. So we now have two sonnets about beauty. During these poems, a tall beautiful blonde is manipulated, presented and adored by 3 men.



They take turns partnering her and passing her from one to the other. She is, however, not a pliant object. She is very much in control of the situation. This is the second dance in a row where men are being placed in a position of adoring women. In the previous pas de deux, the sonnet reader was a slave to his adored one. A speechless one actually in that he states that he cannot put into his love into words. The person that is narrating this section seems to have no problem layering word upon word upon word, as he ponders the essence of beauty.



This piece is followed by a very brief solo for the featured dancer. She drifts across the front of the stage, pretty much just looking decorative and lovely. This piece was choreographed for a dancer who was new to the company... Anna Counts. She is no longer with us, so the piece has been passed on to another dancer... Shannon. Although Shannon is bringing doing the steps that were choreographed for Anna, she brings different things to the solo. Anna always seemed to be amused by what she was doing. She had a sophisticated way of moving and always seemed to put the audience (and her partners) in their proper place... which was somewhere beneath her. Shannon is much more approachable and warm. when she performs the balances and promenades among the men, she seems to be a bit more vulnerable. So where the piece used to be about beauty as an ideal, it is now more about beauty as it exists in reality.