Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake, Op. 20

Finally finals. It was a good year. I just can't complain. Listening to the world, to it's beat, it just seems being alive, healthy, and having basic services as running water and drainage, a dear luxury. 

Yesterday I wanted to be swooned by Swan Lake from the Russian State Ballet. May I start by saying, I am totally ignorant about ballet but it seemed to me either the stage was too small or the bodily expression of the dancers a little bit cold and stiff?

Then entered the Prince.

With his striking blue eyeshadow, it reminded me of a polished Ziggy Stardust and all the little nuances around the ballet faded away (some ripped costumes, turns in second gone vertically, almost off stage heheh kidding). It was just perfect, which of course made me wonder if David Bowie was ever part of a ballet?

In any case. After these thoughts vanished, I kept enjoying the bodies in movement, then the plot behind the ballet started flooding my mind. "By the banks of the lake at moonlight", a Swan Queen, a Prince, disguised sorcerers and a great love capable to free bewitched spells.

Two little dazzled girls behind me were making some feeble turns on their own. One of them asked to the other, why didn't the dancers speak, the other answered in a hushed tone of voice: "Because they're Russian, that's why!".

Was this theme outdated? No. The prevalence of some things through centuries remind me sometimes, it's a long list of facts and events that have unfolded in this world that made history and the culture as we precariously come to know or interpret it.

What it did seem completely outdated was this coy relationship between the Prince and Odette, on which I thought the Odile's fierceness resembled a bit of nowadays go-and-get-it attitude from women. And let's not forget our Prince, he'd rather go to the forest with his friends, rather than getting married, seems pretty up to date on some the men's attitudes around compromise?

What I don't seem to understand still, is that, after all these centuries, why is it, a daring sexuality from a woman, always has to be an act of devilish incarnation, or some sort of phenomena like an alter-ego, a binomial phase of good or bad within a fragmented woman.

Nonetheless, maybe these reenactments serve as the stepping stones of reconfigurations or even metaphors we use to understand the convoluted world we live in?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on The Black Swan from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv