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"Pas and dinner de trois" posted May 21, 2004 at 06:56 PM

Wednesday night I went to the ballet again. It was a good night, but not stellar.

The first ballet was Balanchine's La Source, with very ballet-y ballet music by Delibes. I know next to nothing about Delibes--just that he wrote that wonderful duet for two female voices that has been used in tons of movies and ads--called the Flower Duet, I think, from the opera Lakme. But I think of it as from the movie "The Hunger" (!). It was a very lackluster performance of a very pretty ballet. I loved Ashley Bouder in the secondary role, but the two principals had trouble throughout and then missed an important lift right at climax of the piece.

Next came Dances at a Gathering, which I've written about here three times already. It was the last performance of it this season, and the second where my friend Benjamin danced the principal boy's role. It was terrific, and made up for the lousy performance of the first ballet.

The night ended with Chaconne, which is one of my very favorite Balanchine ballets. Music by Gluck from his opera Orfeo ed Euridice. It's a very classical ballet, building up to alternate bravura dances for the male and female principals, danced in this performance by the stepmother-stepson combination of the ballet master-in-chief's current wife and son from a previous marriage (plenty of Grecian stories address such intrigue, but not, alas, Orpheus). Anyway, there's a pas de trois where the boy dances while playing an imaginary lute--so his left arm is up in the air in a static position the entire time. It's bizarre and wonderful. My friend Saskia was in that movement.

I had dinner afterward at Shun Lee Cafe. We had dim sum, which I enjoyed more than I usually do. I tend to think of dim sum as "hot wet doe." But it was fine this once. It was just me and Carter and Penny, and we had a quick dinner and I was home and in bed pretty early for once.

Last night I dined with Mark Fox at Pepolino. I did not eat any squid. We did have the mussel terrine, though, which is so buttery and fishy and perfect. I had veal ragu on some big flat pasta, and Marc had the delicious gnocchi. I had a crepe dessert which disappointed me. But you can't win them all.


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