Culture

Boston Ballet on point with an emotional Onegin

Boston Ballet on point with an emotional Onegin

Mary Hierholzer

Clever choreography and intelligent dancing told the tale of a fiery romance last Thursday at the Boston Opera House. Boston's lead dancers left the audience breathless when the curtain closed on opening night of Boston Ballet's latest production, John Cranko's Onegin. Cranko's 1965 creation transformed Alexander Pushkin's 19th-century narrative poem, Eugene Onegin, into a dramatic ballet set to the music of Tchaikovsky.

The opening scene of the ballet is a lush Russian countryside. Bubbly Olga (Principal Ashley Ellis) gossips with her mother and nurse about men and frilly dresses, while her sister Tatiana's (Principal Petra Conti) undivided attention is devoted to books. But when the worldly gentleman Onegin (Principal Lasha Khozashvili) visits their home, Tatiana is entranced by the mysterious and handsome man, whom she thinks must certainly be the hero from her novels. While Tatiana pines over Onegin, Olga and the romantic young Lensky (Soloist Patrick Yocum) quickly fall into a whimsical romance.

A brief history of sex – with no pictures
history

A brief history of sex – with no pictures

John Farrell

There's a classic Gary Larson cartoon showing two amoebas sitting at home in their living room chairs, with one, holding a beer, telling the other, "Hey, I got news for you, sweetheart! … I am the lowest form of life on earth!"

Part of the humor of this is that these single-celled critters are known to reproduce asexually. They come from a family of single-celled organisms that were around on this planet long before sex. And indeed, from what we know of the history of life, the invention of sex was comparatively late in the game and occurred for multiple reasons (none of them very romantic).

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