Coppélia is a sweet and light-hearted ballet ideally suited for a festival setting – and the performance yesterday by American Ballet Theatre (ABT) at Emirates Palace, part of the Abu Dhabi Festival (ADF), transmitted its delightful core through an exuberant display of technically impeccable dancing.
Coppélia has been in the ABT repertoire since 1942, but the company had, as its artistic director Kevin McKenzie told The National last week, taken “a lot of liberties” with it over the decades. In 1997, however, the company revised and restaged its production, creating a piece more in keeping with the original from 1870.
The story is simple: the lonely toymaker Dr Coppelius surrounds himself with life-size clockwork dolls; his favourite is Coppélia, who at the start of the ballet is posed on his balcony as if reading. Franz (the vigorous, virile Herman Cornejo), a young townsman, catches sight of her and becomes infatuated, forgetting his fiancée Swanilda (a divine turn by the supremely talented Misty Copeland).
The ballet is in three acts, and the middle act is easily the best – not least because its narrative is the most immediately understood; the first and third acts are extended celebrations of impending wedding and marriage achieved, and do contain some of the night’s most captivating dancing, but their actual narrative content is small.
In that second act, Swanilda and her friends break into the Doctor’s workshop and set his clockwork creations in motion – a Chinese doll, a Harlequin, Spanish and Scottish mannequins (Léo Delibes’s melody-stuffed score breaks into charming clichés for each nationality, and elements of national folk dance infuse the steps, the Scottish being particularly amusing). But the Doctor returns and chases them away – except for Swanilda, who hides in an alcove beside Coppélia.
Meanwhile, Franz has climbed a ladder to the balcony, in pursuit of the beauty who he does not yet realise is merely a dummy. The Doctor detains him, then plies him with a debilitating potion; when Franz falls unconscious, the Doctor attempts to cast a spell transferring Franz’s soul into Coppélia’s body. But the figure who emerges from the alcove is of course Swanilda in Coppélia’s clothes; she distracts the Doctor until Franz regains consciousness and they flee.
It’s heartening to see how seriously ADF takes classical dance, especially in its outreach programme to local children – and heartening how gladly the audience, which included a goodly proportion of youngsters, responded to this joyous performance.
kmcc@thenational.ae
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Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
The Penguin
Starring: Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz
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Rating: 4/5
The struggle is on for active managers
David Einhorn closed out 2018 with his biggest annual loss ever for the 22-year-old Greenlight Capital.
The firm’s main hedge fund fell 9 per cent in December, extending this year’s decline to 34 percent, according to an investor update viewed by Bloomberg.
Greenlight posted some of the industry’s best returns in its early years, but has stumbled since losing more than 20 per cent in 2015.
Other value-investing managers have also struggled, as a decade of historically low interest rates and the rise of passive investing and quant trading pushed growth stocks past their inexpensive brethren. Three Bays Capital and SPO Partners & Co., which sought to make wagers on undervalued stocks, closed in 2018. Mr Einhorn has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the poor performance this year, while remaining steadfast in his commitment to value investing.
Greenlight, which posted gains only in May and October, underperformed both the broader market and its peers in 2018. The S&P 500 Index dropped 4.4 per cent, including dividends, while the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index, an early indicator of industry performance, fell 7 per cent through December. 28.
At the start of the year, Greenlight managed $6.3 billion in assets, according to a regulatory filing. By May, the firm was down to $5.5bn.
Did you know?
Brunch has been around, is some form or another, for more than a century. The word was first mentioned in print in an 1895 edition of Hunter’s Weekly, after making the rounds among university students in Britain. The article, entitled Brunch: A Plea, argued the case for a later, more sociable weekend meal. “By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday night carousers. It would promote human happiness in other ways as well,” the piece read. “It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” More than 100 years later, author Guy Beringer’s words still ring true, especially in the UAE, where brunches are often used to mark special, sociable occasions.
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The specs: 2018 Nissan Patrol Nismo
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Gearbox: Seven-speed automatic
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THE APPRENTICE
Director: Ali Abbasi
Starring: Sebastian Stan, Maria Bakalova, Jeremy Strong
Rating: 3/5
The Perfect Couple
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor
Creator: Jenna Lamia
Rating: 3/5
Mina Cup winners
Under 12 – Minerva Academy
Under 14 – Unam Pumas
Under 16 – Fursan Hispania
Under 18 – Madenat
