I know it isn’t pure classical ballet, but a couple of the moves are astounding.
Also, the German MC, Thomas Gottschalk, says a couple of things at 7:04 that get a small laugh. I thought I heard “tanz” (dance?) and “frau” (wife?), but could someone please translate just that remark? (I also gather some people don’t like him. One of the YouTube commenters calls him a “Halbidiot”. Google translate says “Halb” means “half”.)
“Only my wife surpasses that - sometimes she even dances on my nose” (roughly: “walks all over me”)
To be honest these days watching that show makes me sad. When I was a child that was the greatest show ever. It was simply the pinnacle of the classical big saturday evening show for the whole family. Everyone watched it and everyone would talk about it the next day (in the days of two and a half public TV networks that wasn’t even much of an exaggeration.) Nowadays the show is just a shadow of its former self. Both it and the host are relics from an era that has passed. Back in the day he was supposed to be the rebellious, unconventional funny guy on German TV. Today I watch it and he is pretty much the opposite of all that and I wonder start to wonder: Was TV just shit back then but we didn’t know better? Was it always basically ok but I turned into a TV snob as I grew up? Was it really better back then but Gottschalk turned into a pathetic parody of his former self? Twenty years from now will he turn into Gollum with a bad blond perm and still tell the same bad jokes on that show as if it was 1988 forever?
I think it was probably even more beautiful than this clip can show. I know it is a personal hang-up, but why do editors and filmmakers have to interfere and show off by constantly cutting camera angles as if we can’t sustain two seconds concentration? We lost so much of the overall impression because we were never allowed to watch the entire ensemble for more than a smidgen of time.
If something is produced for the stage, then it is designed to be watched as an entire stage.
The frogs were sensational. The prima ballerina was extraordinary. The choreography exceptional. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to watch it all as a single continuous shot? But we missed so much of the synchronization and effect because the camera and editor guys seemed to think they could improve on it but cutting and pasting. Am I the only way who feels this way?