Ballets have long been associated with flowery music, movements, pink tutus and impersonations of flowers. I picked three today, for our viewing pleasure; rest easily, the flower waltz from The Nutcracker is not among them. The first is Giselle, with a scene where Fonteyn plucks the petals of a daisy to find out if she’ll be loved or not (shall I give away the ending? No. Bad enough that I myself always read the end of a book first…..)  I did not have daisy petals, so plucking a peony had to do.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1HmL2JQT-c

The second is one that I wished I had seen Nijinsky in, but no. It is called Le Spectre de la Rose, showcasing a phantom apparition with a spectacular derrière, if I may say so. I know, I should describe Manuel Legris’ elegance and kinesthetic intelligence instead. I leave that to people more knowledgeable than I. I picked a slightly unfocused image of roses around a beautiful old trellis to match this ghostly dream sequence.

 

And finally there is Don Quixote, danced by the Mariinsky Ballet.  

We see the the Queen of the Dryads, a wood spirit in yet another dream, this time by the unfortunate Don Quixote. She is surrounded by numerous attendants, all could be flowers of some kind of another, but in the clip below they were arranged as if in a tableau reminiscent of Degas’ paintings. More than that, though, the scene reminded me of one of my favorite children’ books, The Story of the Root Children – a tale of Mother Earth waking the children under tree roots where they slept all winter, making them sew their flower and grass costumes, coloring the bugs and beetles. Then, come spring, they emerge in graceful lines to the surface, dancing into the meadows and fields. It had beautiful art nouveau illustrations and was just what a child prone to fantasy needed.

(One who was later the proud mother of a 7 year-old boy who collected Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairy Books, gender stereotyping be damned.)

Sybille von Olfers Die Wurzelkinder: