🦢 on ballerinas and narcissists
Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Myself, Mona Awad's All's Well, a very short Swan Lake, Hegel, and mediæval guitar jams
10 June 23 | Vol 2 Issue 21
I went out dancing last Saturday. An easy enough activity I thought. Later, I took a taxi to a second nightclub. Which at the time seemed perfectly sensible. It was only when I left the dance floor and ventured outside from six hours of asymmetric shuffling that I discovered the venue was in fact up a mountain. Literally. The lights of my city someway in the distance. With a very long walk home. I’m still in recovery. So, newer friends of this newsletter, please excuse a more disjointed and lighter post.
This week, if unexpected post-clubbing mountain hikes were not enough I've also seen a mediæval lute player — the lute, not the player being mediæval, and actually it was a vihuela [1 ] — and been to the ballet. One of these things I actually wanted to do. I figure the gamblers amongst you are giving it even odds. Coin toss. It was the ye olde guitar thrashing. Here's some galliard for thou all to doth your hankies to. Or whatever’s the current fashion for cod piece dance floor moves.
Which leaves the ballet. Don't get me wrong I love Black Swan as much as the next chap. Bit sexist you say? I think I spotted one other man in my block of seats. I'm not a fan. I have been to the ballet before, Swan Lake in fact. I fell asleep. What they don't tell you about all that leaping and prancing is how noisy it is. Clump, bash, crash as they land on the boards. Loud enough in fact to wake me with a start when the cygnets come heffalumping along, clump, clump, clump. Don't worry, I was soon back asleep. Why on earth did you go, if you didn't like it? I was taken. Fair enough I suppose since I had, just days before, surprised my assailant with an hour-long 15th-century vihuela jam.
I was right. I don't like it. The whole thing is like some weird cult rendition of Siegfried and Roy do pretend magic aerobics via expressive dance and mime, meets circus gymnasts who never quite manage to throw each other through the air, set to "can you guess what is happening now" music. I might have been bored were I not so horrified. Then words I had recently heard came back to haunt me, I haven't been to the opera but I know I don't like it. Is this something Julian the faux Daoist column writer would say? No, he would quote Hegel. Julian the faux Daoist column writer can be quite annoying and pretentious at times. But Hegel did say something very useful: Learn from ideas you dislike. Or, good shit may be hidden in a genre you regard as beneath contempt. [2 ]
I admit I was somewhat tuned out (as opposed to tuned like a lute), so did this revelation come before, or during a choreograph I unexpectedly found entrancing. The event was a "greatest hits" repertoire rather than a particular ballet. Which in itself was quite disconcerting for the uninitiated (me), as there would be two minutes of dasher, dancer, prancer, followed by five minutes of excessive bowing and curtseying in a contortionist manner. But there I was, finding myself engaged. Anne told me after it was the swan and prince dance from Swan Lake. Hegel had me. If I threw away my preconceptions there was something to enjoy. These newly found acceptance glasses began to fog over as we returned to more Prancer, Vixen, Donder and Blitzen. Then something magical happened.Â
With only a single spotlight traversing the black stage, a lone illuminated all-in-white ballerina (Siegfried or Roy?) did the dying swan dance. It was exquisite. I am actually willing to state this in public. All the more so for being performed out of context, no padding, no support troupe, no stage set, just this extraordinary movement. Three minutes of magic. This is actually pretty standard for opera, sitting through ninety minutes of yes he will, nooooo he wont! yes he will, no he wooooont! for three minutes of sublime beauty. Aka the aria.
So remember Hegel next time you're dragged silent screaming and invisible ninja kicking to an abstract art exhibition, modern jazz concert or contemporary dance performance. You're allowed to hate most of it, but don't let your Blinkers (not one of Santa's reindeers [3 ]) blind you to one snatch of exquisite joy. A gateway drug. A new experience. Something that enlarges the world, making it a fuller and better place for you. Even watching a Fast and Furious film.
Sandwiched between the looting lute-ing (a favourite joke during the London riots) and mountain based dance floors I watched Sick of Myself.
An entrant from Cannes last year, the debut from director Kristoffer Borgli seems to have stayed under the radar. I thoroughly enjoyed Triangle of Sadness, which at the time seemed quite vicious. I hadn't seen Sick of Myself. Variety calls it a disturbing satirical body horror film, while Little White Lies dubbed it a none-more-black relationship comedy [4 5 ]. Variety really needs to lighten up more. The contrast in perceptions does highlight just how nuanced and acidic the film is. Here's the trailer, but as always, if it sounds remotely intriguing, watch it knowing as little as possible. I watched it on the premise alone — a narcissist artist couple outdo each in a series of one-upmanship micro-aggressions — knowing in advance might diminish the cringe humour as their tactics are revealed. Its joy lies in the balance between laughing at their appalling antics, and the discomfort of your own schadenfreude.
Avoiding obviousness it also acts as an astute satire for social media, the way it forces us to perform out our own lives, living in a state of suspended judgement, waiting to see wether life events were well enough staged for public appreciation. Think Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth and Lobster) meets Cronenberg (David or Brandon).
Watch the trailer if you must.
To close, I've just purchased Mona Awad's last novel All's Well after hearing it described as giving Black Swan. Surely the greatest film in the narcissist ballerina canon — there, I've just tied this week's two seemingly disparate threads together. Dusts hands.
Admittedly she also wrote Bunny, one of my favourite reads of recent years, which I sent as a birthday present very recently to nephew Elliot, who graced last week's column, he devoured it in days. A multi-generational five star read. So high hopes for All's Well.
All's Well by Mona Awad | Buy here
Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now, she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.
That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.
🦢
This week featured
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Holborne
Kristoffer Borgli www.imdb.com/name/nm5589501/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Awad
Our heroes are actor Kristine Kujath Thorp in role, and a twirling swan. Drawn by artist in residence, Fatima Fletcher. Show your appreciation by following fatima.fletcher on Instagram. Her work is for sale at fatimafletcher.com, where she’s available for commissions. Her wonderful orchid place mats are for sale at fatima-fletcher.square.site/s/shop.
Buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/vfnIE9P0Ta
References
Both ballet and opera seem to be able to combine the fatuous and the sublime without pause for breath. Though often the best bits are where the dircetor attemps the sublime but only achieves the fatuous and the audience spontaneously bursts into laughter.