Parfois j'y considerai, au sursaut de l'archet, comme sur un coup de baguette legue de l'ancienne Feerie, quelque cohue multicolore et neutre en scene soudain se diaprer de graduels chatoiements ordonnee en un savant ballabile, effet rare veritablement et enchante.
In this case, the lighted crowd forms a pattern that mimics, not the luminous ballabiles of the dancers' bodies, but the complex gold shimmering of the music rising from the orchestra pit.
In fact, visiting the exhibition and noticing the many objects and even the ceiling decoration of the fashion salon, Balla remarked: "This is wonderfully
ballabile [danceable, but a play on his name] !
When this production (by Andersen and Bjorn) was unveiled two years ago, one Danish critic wrote, "Is This Bournonville's Funeral Feast?" All of the beauties of the 1992 production's first act, then staged by Henning Kronstam, are gone: its poetry and subtlety (the way the
ballabile bubbled around the act like the sea, cresting and subsiding), the musicality of the mime, the boiling energy, and taut, dramatic action have disappeared.