Abstract
Imagine a performance of Swan Lake in which Odette waves her arms up and down and runs in circles while a puzzled Prince Siegfried looks on, scratching his head. Eventually the exasperated ballerina simply stops, turns to him, and says, “Don't you get it?—I’m supposed to be a swan!” Few rules in any art form are more stringent than the rule in classical ballet that dancers can't talk. Long ago I saw at Covent Garden a performance of Kenneth MacMillan's ballet The Song of the Earth, in which Anthony Dowell made a megaphone of his hands in front of his wide-open mouth, as if he were going to shout something. As it turned out it was only a mime of a scream, but the strong implication of taboo breaking made that one of the most memorable moments in the whole genre of ballet, comparable to the end of Balanchine's Sonnambula, when the woman picks up the man and carries him offstage.
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