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Boris Lermontov: Don't forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.
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[Describing the ballet of the Red Shoes]
Boris Lermontov: The Ballet of the Red Shoes is from a fairy tale by Hans Andersen. It is the story of a young girl who is devoured with an ambition to attend a dance in a pair of red shoes. She gets the shoes and goes to the dance. For a time, all goes well and she is very happy. At the end of the evening, she is tired and wants to go home, but the red shoes are not tired. In fact, the red shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the red shoes go on.
Julian Craster: What happens in the end?
Boris Lermontov: Oh, in the end, she dies.
Alan Carter
Extended Reading
