Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
Putin's enemies are keeping a close eye on a bird in pointe shoes, because a broadcast of "Swan Lake" may reveal his demise.
The ballet—a more-than-century-old staple of our own highbrow culture—is one of Russia's most famous contributions to the arts. It is a work that contains all the pathos and depth of the modern Russian nation, a dark story with a tragic ending. (Or a happy one, if one delves deeper in the ballet's evolution.) It's also a secret key to the state of things in the Kremlin.
When Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, state-run television broadcast a full-length Swan Lake in lieu of a death announcement. The same footage was aired after the deaths of Yuri Andropov in 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985. In her book Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia, Janice Ross suggests that these screenings of the Russian ballet were used as a stalling tactic, allowing Soviet leadership time to plan while "soothing the masses." Ballerinas would dance and the public would wait, calmly, applauding the screen.
The same technique was used in 1991 when communists attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. Swan Lake aired for three days straight while the public waited it out. In 2011, the Russian national television channel Kultura aired a rebroadcast of Swan Lake to commemorate the attempted coups' 20th anniversary.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...2?ocid=&cvid=6b97b42c0aa347288eabd79ad4a8b33f
The ballet—a more-than-century-old staple of our own highbrow culture—is one of Russia's most famous contributions to the arts. It is a work that contains all the pathos and depth of the modern Russian nation, a dark story with a tragic ending. (Or a happy one, if one delves deeper in the ballet's evolution.) It's also a secret key to the state of things in the Kremlin.
When Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, state-run television broadcast a full-length Swan Lake in lieu of a death announcement. The same footage was aired after the deaths of Yuri Andropov in 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985. In her book Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia, Janice Ross suggests that these screenings of the Russian ballet were used as a stalling tactic, allowing Soviet leadership time to plan while "soothing the masses." Ballerinas would dance and the public would wait, calmly, applauding the screen.
The same technique was used in 1991 when communists attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. Swan Lake aired for three days straight while the public waited it out. In 2011, the Russian national television channel Kultura aired a rebroadcast of Swan Lake to commemorate the attempted coups' 20th anniversary.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...2?ocid=&cvid=6b97b42c0aa347288eabd79ad4a8b33f