A lovely venue for a relatively new WI group, celebrating their 15th anniversary.
I always mention live screenings as a cheaper introduction to ballet. They can sometimes be a bit frustrating though when the camera is showing either, a close up, or stage left, when there’s something happening on stage right. But they can show details that would normally be unnoticed from the auditorium, certainly from my usual seat in the gods.
An engaged audience and one member asked me an interesting question. She had gone to see a live screening of Dutch National Ballet performing Giselle; she was interested in a costume detail.
She had noticed that the Willis had mistletoe on their costumes. I knew that there was a pagan connotation to mistletoe, but I was incorrect in its malign meaning; it was believed to be a symbol of male fertility and virility. Although, in the context of jilted women dancing men to their death it still has a great significance. It’s as if the Willis, jilted women, who will never be mothers, are taunting the men that they are dancing to their death.
