from elegance to vulgarity: the death of a dying swan

In 1830, the English poet Alfred Tennyson(1909-1892) published a poem named The dying swan:

---

I.
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.
II.
Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.
III.
The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd
Thro' the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.

Camille Saint-Saens(1835-1921)

The music score of le sygne (the swan)

---

In 1886, the French romantic composer Camille Saint-Saens(1835-1921) created a music suite called Carnivaux des animaux ( Carnival of the Animals) composed of 14 movements, with the 13th called le sygne (the swan), written for cello accompanied by two pianos.

In 1905, the Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, after reading Alfred Tennyson's poem The dying swan, asked Russian dancer and chreographer Mikhail Fokine(1880-1942) to create a ballet solo for her, he decided to use the movement of le sygne (the swan) from Saint-Saens's Carnivaux des animaux ( Carnival of the Animals) as the music for this ballet , which will be named by Anna Pavlova The dying swan after Alfred Tennyson's poem of same name, and it will be danced by her more than 4000 times in her life time.

More than 100 years later, in 2007, some man named IDA NEVASEYNEVA with the real name Paul Trockadero, of Les ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo performed a funny but ugly parody of dying swan and it went viral. As if it was still not enough, another man called Lil Buck performed another robot like parody of his own choreography with the accompany of Yo Yo Ma's Cello. 
If what IDA NEVASEYNEVA did was BAD TASTE in capital letters, what Lil Buck did was like...raping--a piece of delicate and defenseless artwork devinely created by two artists of highest caliber with their body and soul, with Yo Yo Ma as his complice. 

The dying swan finally was dead, killed by the insensitivity and cruelty to beauty. And she is not the only victim. The Mona Lisa of Leonardo Da Vinci is suffering the same terrible fate.

If Anna Pavlova saw what Lil Buck did to her beloved swan, would she kill herself? Would Leonard Da Vinci want to live in our time?