Gotta love a man in feathers

[geoviki]

Both ravurian and isiscolo are laughing at me because I am inarticulately muttering: Swans! Swans! Check out the icon if you don't believe me.

I took a day from the salt mines to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Live! You cannot imagine a more slashy ballet. Well, okay, male ballet dancers do have that rep, but that's offstage, you know what I'm sayin'? This was all about The Prince! And the Swan! And the Prince and Swan dancing together! With lots of other male swans all swanning about. No subtext necessary. It was a slasher's paradise.

I was in the third row, and I could hear the special swan breathing and the special swan hissing, and see the special swan sweat, for God's sake!

So maybe it wasn't feathers, actually, more like llama wool-looking stuff. But it looked swan-like. And the choreography was very swan-like.

This is the ballet performed by the grown-up Billy Elliott in that film, if you remember.

In honor of my new swan fetish, I link you to copperbadge's Swan!fic: No Treaty

Comments

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

Ooooh I would have loved to have seen it.

And don't you think the "Enchanted Lake" suite is ever so slightly creepy? There's an undertone of menace (the strings) and it's just... creepy.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

The choreography really enhances the creepiness, too. The swans aren't all tame and safe there - they play up the dangerous nature of wild animals. Like the story I linked to says - a swan can kill a man with its wings. I don't know if that's true, but it could be. Of course, you'd end up in the newspaper for dying a weird death.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

If you're ever bored, look on wikipedia under "unusual deaths". It's oddly fascinating and lots of Darwin Award material.

God, I'd have loved to have seen that...