Wild Applause, Secretly Choreographed
By ELLEN BARRY, NYT
MOSCOW — In the crowd that enters the Bolshoi Theater before the ballet, it is not hard to spot Roman Abramov and his team, as long as you know what you’re looking for.
They are not the nouveau riche ones wearing gold brocade harem pants, or carrying hobo bags made out of tiny puffs of chinchilla. Their faces do not display the juicy satisfaction of officials’ wives collecting what they are owed. Nor are they the tourists in hiking boots, gaping up at the vestibule, with its gold-leaf-and-cotton-candy glow.
Mr. Abramov’s people are ordinary-looking middle-aged Russian women in cloth coats, and their expressions are all business. They assemble on the stairs, and as the first curtain approaches, they break up into formations, like synchronized swimmers, and vanish into the stream of people heading to their seats.
Watching over all this is Mr. Abramov himself, his dark, intelligent eyes scanning the lobby. His job is to engineer applause and ovations, on the basis of secret agreements with dancers, using associates planted in the audience. These collaborations — part passion, part commerce — can go on for years; they can also occasionally sour into nasty, revengeful dramas.
(More here.)
MOSCOW — In the crowd that enters the Bolshoi Theater before the ballet, it is not hard to spot Roman Abramov and his team, as long as you know what you’re looking for.
They are not the nouveau riche ones wearing gold brocade harem pants, or carrying hobo bags made out of tiny puffs of chinchilla. Their faces do not display the juicy satisfaction of officials’ wives collecting what they are owed. Nor are they the tourists in hiking boots, gaping up at the vestibule, with its gold-leaf-and-cotton-candy glow.
Mr. Abramov’s people are ordinary-looking middle-aged Russian women in cloth coats, and their expressions are all business. They assemble on the stairs, and as the first curtain approaches, they break up into formations, like synchronized swimmers, and vanish into the stream of people heading to their seats.
Watching over all this is Mr. Abramov himself, his dark, intelligent eyes scanning the lobby. His job is to engineer applause and ovations, on the basis of secret agreements with dancers, using associates planted in the audience. These collaborations — part passion, part commerce — can go on for years; they can also occasionally sour into nasty, revengeful dramas.
(More here.)
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