tamaranth | Grammar and Dance

I went to my first proper ballet on Friday: Prokofiev's Cinderella, Moscow City Ballet, Richmond Theatre. (Because a friend was playing in the orchestra, since you ask). The music had all sorts of snippets from The Love of Three Oranges, musically speaking. The costumes were colourful and indefinably Slavic. And I didn't know what I was looking at.

I was watching an artistic performance which I don't have the vocabulary to describe in any kind of shorthand. I'd have to say 'and then the ballerina caught the raised hand of the dancer playing the Prince, and lifted up to balance on the tips of her toes' - even I know this is en pointe - and it wouldn't be exact enough for anyone to visualise.

And because I didn't have the words, it was also more difficult to know what I was looking at: which bits were especially brilliant, which were standard repertoire? I couldn't analyse what I was seeing and spot patterns, because I didn't know enough to label the patterns when I saw them.

I wonder how much this happens when I listen to music, or look at pictures - art that I do have the vocabulary for, and - furthermore - a vocabulary so ingrained that I find it very difficult to imagine not being able (for example) to pick out a recurring theme in a symphony.

Also wondering how I'd have reacted if I'd known the music better: would I have focussed on that to the exclusion of the dance?