Gone are the days when it was enough for a new strip to look good. Designers are obsessed with spinning a complex yarn
In 1976 the groundbreaking choreographer Peter Darrell debuted Mary Queen of Scots, an attempt to tell the story of the doomed monarch entirely through the medium of dance. “Darrell’s ballet is historically pretty accurate,” James Kennedy wrote in his review for the Guardian. “The events, as here transmuted into classical dance, did (more or less) happen. Why did Darrell and his lively company do it? Well, you can have marvellous historical plays and poignant, if imperfect, historical operas, so why not a successful historical ballet?”
Forty-three years have now passed since Darrell’s ballet opened to the public, a near-half-century of constant innovation in the arts. Attempting to describe historical events through dance is no longer so groundbreaking but a new canvas has been found – and it uses shirts as its stage, and polyester instead of pirouettes. “The right answer as is proved, for the umpteenth time, by this three-hour long misadventure, is that ballet, or any kind of dance for that matter, is no good at telling protracted, intricate stories,” continued Kennedy in his review, but it is as nothing compared to football kits, perhaps the most confusing method yet invented for spinning a complex yarn.
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