Christmas pleasant

Press, 29 December 1980, Page 15

Christmas pleasant

r 1 AFTERNOON TV Liz Harvey

Having slumped after an excess of food, one of the pleasures of Christmas Day was watching “Aurora’s Wedding," Act 3 of Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty,” performed by members of the New Zealand Ballet (One, Christmas Day). All the principals were excellent and, as always, one was filled with envious admiration by the sequence of Russian dancing. Friends have been known to foolishly attempt those kneebends and leg-kicks with the result that they’ve hobbled around for the next week with pulled muscles. The dancers, on the other hand, made it look so easy that one might be tempted to try again. However, good as the other principals were, they were somewhat oversahdowed by a truly outstanding performance by Jon Trimmer. He and Pauline Tronson performed the dance of the Bluebirds and even the least lethargic of viewers would be deluding him or herself in thinking that your average dancer could achieve such brilliance.

“Aurora’s Wedding” was so good that let’s hope some time we will be afforded the pleasure of seeing Acts 1 and 2of the ballet. . Saturday shopping notwithstanding, getting organised for Christmas tends to make one’s daytime TV viewing somewhat intermittent and I must confess to having missed the Southern Ballet Theatre’s offering of “The Story of Babar the Little Elephant” (one, Christmas Eve). Having seen the programme trailer for it, I say this with considerable regret. Given TV’s fohdner* for repeats, let’s hope that there will be a rescreening of it soon.

Regret of another kind surfaced at having wasted a pre-Christmas hour watching “Ice, Palace”. (Two, Tuesday) True, there was soipe graceful. and skilful skating to be

enjoyed but one can’t escape the feeling that the whole idea emerged from some desperate script conference where they were trying to come up with a fresh idea to disguise the fact that this was just another, rather dull, variety show.

One of the artistes brought new meaning to the phrase “dolly-bird” . » . she was the Ice Queen model from the House of Barbie. It was very clever, really, because she played the guitar and sang almost like a real person. And then there was the Dean Martin model that told old jokes and crooned a bit. It didn’t drink much but then you couldn’t give one of those to the kiddies for Christmas, could you. More striving fo‘ that extra something was evident in “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” (Two, on Saturday). Liquid water this time, instead of the frozen variety, and some aquatically balletic ladies. AH very clever, no doubt, but somehow only on the ho-hum level. Perhpas Jon Trimmer could imbue it with something brilliant and exciting. Perhaps.

The chorus dancers were something else, as they say. There was an entertaining disparity between their gaudy, vulgar costumes and the three Brady girls with: their glittery but “nice” clothes and their Free-and-Lovely hair. Actually, costumes were a problem throughout and it was something of a relief to see the men (and boys) in traditional evening dress —. it worked rather better than the innovative numbers. - :