Best bets

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Date: Feb 3-5－7:30 pm

Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts

Price: 220-1,200 yuan

A new full-length story ballet based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, choreographed by David Nixon, is the perfect project for this energetic, enthusiastic ensemble－the characters are strong, the locations distinctive, the atmosphere unforgettable. But Gatsby adaptations are tricky to pull off－witness the ambivalence attending the release of Baz Luhrmann's new movie version－at least in part because the novel, despite its obviously filmic qualities, actually derives much of its effect from an intense evocation of the intangible and invisible: Moods, feelings, suspicions. Moreover, the characters are hard-to-nail cocktails of mannerisms, some of which－like Daisy's murmur－cannot be translated into dance.

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