Going to the Dogs

The Leningrad ballet company’s Dornröschen—Sleeping Beauty in its familiarly awkward English title—was an enchantment that had not faded in its seventy years. As I walked back to Checkpoint Charlie along the desolately empty Friedrich Strasse in the mist-shrouded autumn evening, the magic remained. What endured had no connection with Lenin; it was the old Petersburg ballet still, persisting through wars and revolutions. Time had preserved its continuity while czars perished and red Caesars were hauled from their graves in disgrace.

Berlin