what ballets would you recommend for a ballet beginner? i've seen a scattered few from my local ballet, but i feel like i'm missing important foundational stuff and no clue where to begin !!! <33333
omg i love this question! this is the foundational trio imo:
1. giselle (premeired 1841, music by adolphe adam)
this is my number one. it's on the upper end of plot density as far as ballets go. it's about a medieval-german peasant girl (who has a direct line to God) descending into a search for the truest 'proof' of love, there's a whole day-into-night journey going on, she kills herself twice, uhhmm the latter half of act 2 is just one long power struggle between her and this pagan ghost queen as like opposing ethical paradigms because she's female-christ at this point, etc. act 2 is especially sublime to watch (carnivorous lady ghosts, men begging for their lives), but the sexy sexy public suicide scene is in act 1, u can't miss that. and act 2 can't hit properly without the context of act 1, so, you know.
(imo the best recording available on the internet is the natalia osipova/carlos acosta one from ROH in 2014, it's behind a paywall on their website which i do have a login for, just ask!)
2. swan lake (premiered 1877/1895, music by pyotr tchaikovsky)
people like swan lake because it's good. the actual narrative isn't as built as giselle's is— the main thing swan lake gives you to chew on is the whole odette/odile thing. ballet character of all time. deposed princess, lives in a marsh, turns into a bird and can't control it, heavily implied csa victim, and there's TWO of her and the other one is evil and goth. i feel like sometimes people recoil at how twitchy/feeble odette is in her vernacular, but i find it so engaging (much falling over, she's face-down in her own knee a lot, she never faces the audience and breaks the fourth wall the way odile does, etc.) oh and you can technically skip act 1 if you want, you don't even see odette until act 2. odile is there for act 3, odette returns for act 4.
ABT link | mariinsky link ("kirov" was just their soviet name btw)
3. rite of spring (premiered 1913, music by igor stravinsky)
certain people dislike rite of spring because they're cocomelon babies. the narrative here is very procedural; it is about a human sacrifice ritual. there's not really any distinct 'characters' beyond the sage (pops up for like 2 mins at the end of part 1) and the chosen one (the maiden who gets sacrificed at the end). the actual music and choreography are cacophonic/upsetting but in like a very deliberate way. you should get a sense of what standard ballet looks like before watching this one, that way you can more readily see how individual components of technique are being exchanged for their opposite. also it's cool to compare the chosen one's death with giselle's :)
original choreo link | pina bausch choreo link
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