The Britney "ballet" has caused much comment. What are your suggestions for "Ripped from the Headlines" scenarios for ballet?

My nomination is Nicolas Sarkozy.

POB could put their special touch on this subject: tons of beautiful, glamourous ballerinas, and the dramatic men who don't look like the typical romantic hero.

Hillary v Barack? More operatic than balletic, probably. How about Hillary and Bill?

I thought of Donald Trump, especially since his fight with Palm Beach over his over-sized American Flag is just one of many chapters involving ego and charges of excess. (There could be a scene in which Trump brings NYCB to the Kravis Center just across the Intercoastal to perform selections from Stars and Stripes.) But the casting such a ballet stumped me.

On the other hand: Les Folies Sarkozy (a great title drawn from the Washington Post article linked by Helene) includes a wonderful title role for an Edward Villella type danseur; a sultry ballerina role for the new wife; a slightly older ballerina role for his former wife Cecilia; a jeune home role (his dashing and currently embattled son, Jean); and character roles for Jacques Chirac and for the spirit of Charles de Gaulle. Sounds like a dream!

Interesting idea, but I think shows ballet's limitations (in the best sense), because I can't think of any public figures that deserve the poetic treatment of a ballet. Nor any movie stars that wouldn't just produce some sense of redundancy. They are mostly all-business, prosaic types with a deep interest in crassness. Margaret and Dennis Thatcher? Mmmm. yummy. They're even passe enough to have had time to become romantic--and still they're not. Hillary and Bill, definitely not. Bill and Monica--perhaps, but not trying to find the physical types so much, please...

Benazir?

That one occurred to me, and she's a complex character, lots of drama, what with beauty, guts, corruption, endless turmoil, and assassination. But ballet may not be the place to deal with the complexities of Pakistan, given that they can't be dealt with anywhere else.

But the Myanmar dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, is the one who might really be an appropriate subject. With her delicate beauty and her courage, something could probably be done for an especially sensitive ballerina. Also, Wei Jengsheng, the Chinese dissident, might also be a possibility for a ballet around a male dancer. But these are not household names at all. I just can't think of any politicians or heads of state I find romantic, although they may exist. And the scandal-names only suggest more inanity.

Oh pitié !

Actually there already is a sort of Sarkozy which has been showing on all the French media for months (and in fact years: it also was like that before his election as president, he also managed to show himself nearly everyday when he was in the previous government) so for me it's far enough...

Moreover, Edward Villella was far better looking

I was going to point that out, Estelle, thank you for saving me the trouble. 'Doesn't look like the typical romantic hero'? Try 'yuck.'

I think Sarkozy is very good-looking, but not romantic in any sense (compare with Louis Jourdan.)

Nobody's still come up with any heads of state or politicians that inspire romantic swooning. Eventually, I think Carbro's and my idea for Benazir Bhutto could make a really great opera perhaps more than ballet, though. She's a very dramatic, and therefore romantic, figure, and much like someone from many centuries ago--noble despite all. No Bin Laden Family ballets, though, plizz...

Estelle, having just returned home from a pre-performance talk given by Villella, I have to agree with you.

On the other hand, I imagine that much could be accomplished with make-up and a fake nose??? As for personality, Sarkozy on tv seems to have an intensity, hyper-mobility, and a quality of being driven by inner demons which Villella, the self-described kid from Queens, could certainly have danced.