An evening at the ballet

[alobear]

Lindsay and I were discussing the fact that neither of us had been to the ballet in a while, so I went online to see what was available. I discovered that the Bolshoi is in town, doing "Don Quixote", which I had never seen - but the last performance is on Sunday and the few remaining tickets were very expensive.

I mentioned all this to Dave, who immediately bought tickets for tonight's performance - how great is my boyfriend? :o)

We didn't have a sausage of a clue as to what the plot was meant to be, but I didn't care - it was glorious, and also unexpectedly funny in a lot of places. I think Dave actually enjoyed it even more than I did, which was brilliant, as I hadn't been sure he'd like it at all. He says he's been rather spoiled now, since his first experience of the ballet was one of the best companies in the world.

However, I would dispute that the production as a whole was of the highest quality. The principles were amazing, but the main corps had no precision. Their dancing wasn't ever quite synchronised or uniform - it was still glorious, though.

I had been a bit worried when we learned we had to get the lift to our seats, but the view was fine, even without opera glasses. The only problem was the elderly man sitting behind us, who complained a lot very loudly about the people sitting in front of us, and got up to leave the second the curtain fell. I guess he didn't feel the performers warranted any applause, since his only comment on the show was half way through the third act, when he said something about the dancing being "pretty good".

One thing I will say about ballet dancers is that they sure need a hell of lot of applause. They expected the whole audience to erupt about every five minutes, the number of curtain calls they made at the end was bordering on the ridiculous. They deserved it, though! And they got rather fanatic appreciation from a young German lad who shouted "Bravo" a lot and seemed to be enjoying the show a great deal more than his very sweet girlfriend.