You know why the English National Ballet only released small clips of Ivan Vasiliev in their 2011 staging of Roland Petit’s “le jeune homme et la mort”?

Because he is terrible.  He is trying to sell it with facial expressions and it is ridiculous!  It’s like a German art film escaped from 1920 and landed in overalls on the English stage.

This dude – from what I have read – can’t handle criticism.  Kid, I know you will never read this but – what is wrong with you??  You distract from the ballet, from the dark libretto, from your own fantastic talent as a dancer  with all those Buster Keaton faces and do you know what Cocteau was driving at? 

I’ll tell you because it seems no one else has.

You are obsessed with this woman making a dumb pose in the doorway wearing a fabulous dress but when she gets to your side, you are plunged into sheer terror. SHEER! One obscenely stupid anxious face to the next.

You’re about to get a blowjob from a woman you are dying to have yet your face is..it’s like you look down and its the Commendotore from Don Giovanni come to bite it off and cast you into hell (though, she will, in fact do that at a later point).

I saw a Chosen One fall apart in the first 60 seconds once.  It was a road tour and perhaps she was tired but as her ability to dance faded she tried to compensate with facial expressions.  I was in the 2nd row and fully satisfied already with the corp de ballet of the jaw dropping first act.

I couldn’t watch but I was too visible to look away.  As soon as she was raised by the elders I ran for the door and it slammed before the applause began. What are you gonna do. She didn’t see me. 

And he is an amazing dancer, Tsk tsk. Unlike Jean Babilee and Nicholas le Riche, however, Ivan can’t dance the role because he is acting it. He simply can not do it and I would rather watch that Chosen One for 3 hours straight than to watch him confusing the entire point with his face.

I hear he maintains the expression through the curtain call. Idiot.

And why can’t anyone get to the oral copulation scene without sloppily running into it?   Like Delphine!