I agree. Moving across the ice is the main thing. That's the glory of figure skating -- using your blades to move swiftly and gracefully across an almost frictional surface. This is what no other sport/art form can offer.
I guess I'm just not a story-telling sort of guy. For me, reading a book is more satisfying. Plus, the "stories" told by most ballets are pretty silly. An evil magician transform some ladies into swans. OK.
A toy Nutcracker comes to life.
Same with Opera. One waggish critic famously offered this definition of operetta: An operetta is a musical production whose plot is not quite silly enough for it to be called an opera. For me, what matters is the singing. In ballet, , as in figure skating, it is the demonstration of mastery of the appropriate skills. Musical compositions? It sounds good.
I must say, big jumps were my initial motivation into Ballet and the Dance Theatre of Harlem when I had the occasion of having a glimpse of their dancers' jumps on French TV, impressed me even more than the Paris Opera Ballet had, I wanted to jump like them!
May I say that my interest changed with age? With Leonid Sarafanov you had quite a safe bet by the way, carriage, unreal balloon, deport and all.
Regarding moving on the ice, there WAS a Ballerina at the Bolshoi in the early 1990s, alas the video seems to have been removed since and didn't even mention her name which I forgot... In the Giselle Pas de Deux paysan she was literally flying on the stage. In 1992 with her BF they got a double job offer from an US Ballet (which I don't remember!) but his temper made him fire by several ballet and she resorted to coaching.
The over layer of a Ballet story has to be exceedingly simple and, let's say it, often silly. But the underlaying meaning can be quite deeper and the best dancers manage both to tell children the simpler story and maturing ones and adults, a more complex one (because there can be different interpretations). All Tchaikovsky's Ballets are coming-of-age stories (with Nutcracker, from childhood to teenage). Swan Lake may dwell more on his own doubts and fears during his years of realisation in my opinion.
To take his third Ballet, Sleeping Beauty, it's the first part of a fairy tale told by French Charles Perrault, from an old folk tale, quite useful to little girls, mind you. The first part, which can be seen in the Ballet and in the Disney animation, is rather a cautionary tale to girls' parents, don't breed them in a too protected way ignorant of the World, you won't prepare them for life and the too young marriage you were afraid of, is more likely to happen if they know nothing else than their hormones, than if they're aware of some realities.
In the sleeping part, in the original tale she has two children with the Prince Charming and her slumber means that she's not self-aware yet. Then they live some time together in a remote place, but he has to go back with her to his Kingdom, where his mother is an ogress; and when he has to go wage war, his mother asks a hunter to kill Aurora and her children and to prepare them as a meat for her. The hunter pretends to agree but instead, warns Aurora who flees in the forest and lives there with her children until her husband comes back. This isn't the usual ogre representation, it's rather a warning that a too young bride will have to find her own self with children, that
she is their mother and educator, that she doesn't have to leave her in-laws to "absorb them" as their own under the pretext of her young age and inexperience, that she can rely on some external help, that she doesn't have to rely on daily help from her husband, good as he is, against his own family... Haven't we left fairy world for so frequent reality at the time? Or even today.
Actually isn't it the whole aim of most artistic representation? Isn't it so with the deeper Figure Skating programs too? Or, simply, a distraction from too harsh reality. With the comparative inconvenient that with Opera or Ballet, an aria or a variation can be cut from the rest and given a whole different meaning, or sung/danced into its meaning in the Opera/Ballet. This gap is, I believe, being bridged somewhere.
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I have no problem with Charlie Chaplin. Physical comedy is a legitimate (if somewhat low class) art form, and "Ice is Slippery" is a legitimate theme for a skating program. Frick and Frack are both in the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame for such Vaudeville-type hoke.
So as an example, if a single variation from a ballet only takes a few minutes, you wouldn't consider it story telling?
