Last night I went to see Preljocaj's Snow White at the Chateau de Versailles and I have never been so impressed by a ballet in all my life. The setting was sublime: an open-air amphitheatre looking on to a stage floating on one of the expansive garden's ponds, the sun setting on the chateau in the distance by way of a backdrop. Even without the ballet I would have been overawed but the performance itself was spectacular - Preljocaj has stayed close to the Grimm Brothers' narrative to produce a powerful tale of love, jealousy and beauty, with emotive dance sequences for the love scenes (for which I bawled my eyes out), incredible cirque de soleil type acrobatics (for which we ooohed and aaaahed), and an extremely dramatic choreography for the iconic moment when the Wicked Step-Mother murders Snow White with the poisoned apple (gasps all round in the audience). The Jean-Paul Gauthier costumes were stunning - Snow White wearing a fluid white body suit type thing with strong shoulders, and the Prince wearing fabulous fluorescent orange accessories. At the crescendo of the performance, with tears streaming down my face, the crescent moon bathing the audience in magical moonlight, when things just couldn't get any better....they did. An array of fireworks was set off behind and around the stage - red, smokey affairs for the evil Step-Mother's last scene, and glittery golden and white streams for Snow White and the Prince's. A fairy tale performance in a fairy tail setting of the ultimate fairy tail ballet. The only downside - nothing will ever top this! Oh, and the fact that trains stop running from Versailles shortly after the performance finishes - getting home was just as epic as the ballet...
