ABT’s Raymonda: I think it was set in Balletland Some Time Long Ago… well, maybe not that long ago, because the chandeliers appeared to bear lightbulbs rather than candles… but there was a Saracen (12th century Syrian nomad, according to my dictionary) and Troubadors (11th – 13th century France, Spain, and Italy), and Hungarian dancers (the word “Hungarian” can be traced back to 1533). So, I guess I have no idea where or when the action was supposed to take place. Like I said: Balletland Some Time Long Ago.

It was kinda like Swan Lake, except Prince Sigfried was Raymonda; kinda like Bayadere because there was some scarf-dancing and also because she falls asleep and there’s a weird dream sequence; wait, no, maybe that’s more Nutcracker because an inanimate object becomes animated and because she has to choose between the Good Prince and the Evil Prince… no, that’s more like Act III of Swan Lake again. Oh, and there were the obligatory National Dances, where Carmen Corella did the best Spanish (oh, but with the castanet music, that places it no earlier than 17th Century) divertissement I’ve ever seen in any of the above-mentioned ballets.

It all boils down to this: I guess there’s a reason why one doesn’t often see a full-length Raymonda. It is the most generic of ballet stories; every story element is more eloquently enacted in some other ballet. This particular production is merely a collection of generic classroom ballet steps assembled with no particular thought given to the dramatic impact of any particular sequence of steps: Ballet, ballet, ballet, dream sequence, ballet, ballet, and then the national dances, some more ballet and then the ballet finale. ZZZzzzzzz…

Not that I’m terribly upset by all this. Marcelo Gomes is always quite handsome to look at, and he never actually dances badly—he’s just not up to the task of making something out of this nothing plot. And Julio Bocca is far more interesting to me now than when he was the Young Gun of the company—Mr. B can work a cape, he can seethe, he can arch an eyebrow (my only complaint remotely related to his performance was that his death scene wasn’t long enough… you got a veteran who’s got the chops to work 64 counts of dying, give him 64 counts to stagger around the stage and die!); Martine van Hamel was in it, for goodness sake! (It was only after I read the program notes later that I realized that she was just some countess with no apparent reason for being there—other than that it was she who carried the story line and without her, I REALLY wouldn’t have known what was going on!)