[ATTENDED: February 21, 2014] Krasnoyarsk National Dance Company
Almost a year ago, Sarah and I went to see a Śląsk, the national Polish folk song and dance troupe at McCarter Theater. It was fantastic. Now, nearly a year later we went to see the Krasnoyarsk National Dance Company of Siberian. And it was also fantastic. Although there were some similarities between the two shows, overall it was quite a different experience.
There were essentially three types of dance in the fourteen pieces. The first type was a frenetic dance in which the men displayed amazing, amazing feats of jumping, and what most people think of as the typical Russian dance (squatting and kicking both legs out). The second type was a slow romantic song in which women glided around the stage with giant smiles but otherwise virtually immobile. The third was a sort of comic skit that told a story–these (and nearly all of the dances) were romantic posturing type of stories. And they were each wonderful in their own way.
The dances did not follow the order of the program–which I can really only tell because there were some dances which were easily defined so it was easy to know if they were in order. Other descriptions were quite vague, so it wasn’t always clear which dances these were. But that’s okay because they were equally mesmerizing. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 