Is anyone else as amazed as I am by the following remark in the New Yorker‘s capsule item on Armida: “…an exquisite ballet fetchingly choreographed by Graciela Daniele“? 

Although I was wholly entertained by Wheeldon’s new “Dance of the Hours” when the Met revived its Gioconda, and have been at worst indifferent to his choreography in Carmen and to Ratmansky’s in Aida, this slap-and-tickle grope-fest in Armida strikes me as the worst-conceived ballet I’ve ever seen in a Met production.

Put aside for a moment the dancing serpentine demons, the Trocadero wannabes, and the high kickers, it’s the idea behind it that baffles me. Would Armida, now that she has seduced Rinaldo in her pleasure palace, and presumably is truly in love with him, be so arrogant as to want to taunt him with an ugly and unpleasant allegorical dance that reflects his own hopeless erotic bewitchment at the hands of the sorceress?

When I wasn’t giggling at the nonsense I beheld on the Met stage, I tried to put myself in Armida’s place so I could fathom the reasoning behind the ballet. And I couldn’t.

Incidentally, I felt sorry for Aaron Loux, the male principal dancer, who wasn’t bad a few weeks earlier when he performed the pas de deux in Amneris’ chambers, though I guess it’s not my place to wonder how a young man was smuggled into the private apartments of the pharoah’s daughter…

[Armida photo: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera]