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Mayerling

Ballet created by late British ballet dancer and choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan.

"From the outset Kenneth MacMillan pushed ballet beyond the boundaries of fairytale kingdoms. Nowhere is this more compellingly successful than in Mayerling. It achieves a nervous balance between sprawling grandiosity and choreographic invention, beginning with the pomp of a royal wedding for Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. MacMillan immediately plunges us into a sordid world of degenerate depravity where sex is both a weapon and a last resort. Rudolf's bride (a cousin he neither knows nor loves), her sister, his mistress and his mother are all tangled up in his obsessions."

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