(11/21/12)
Back in October, I wrote about how I was going to see the Dracula ballet. Despite that a few weeks have passed since I saw the ballet, the show is still fresh in my mind; I couldn’t possibly forget all the confusion I suffered from while watching the performance.
It was a Wednesday night and, being the commuter I am, I drove over to Stockton and arrived with only about five minutes to spare before the show began. I parked my car, killed the engine, and hurried to the PAC, optimistic about seeing my first ballet. In all honesty, I felt pretty classy going to see a ballet, even though we don’t live in the seventeenth century anymore. As I entered the PAC, a woman tore my ticket and told me which row my seat was in. It just so happened that I actually had a pretty good seat, that is, if there wasn’t a group of chatterboxes sitting next to me. However, at this point in time, I had no idea how bothersome these forty year old women were going to be.
Just as I sat down, the lights dimmed and a dark, instrumental piece began to play as fog began to creep across the stage. The atmosphere the stage crew set was great. The curtains opened and revealed a man in a vest in front of a backdrop of a desert scene. I was already lost in what was going on. More dancers pranced onto the stage, leaping, twirling, and running in circles as they moved rhythmically to the music. During the whole play, the choreography was simply stunning and I deeply respect those men and women who are so graceful and fluid with their movements, especially in front of a large audience.
As the ballet progressed, my hopes of hearing some voiceover, or some sort of singing, or anything at all that would help me understand the storyline, had swiftly diminished. I was so lost in what was going on in the play that I developed a headache, which doesn’t happen too often. On top of that, the three women who sat to my right wouldn’t stop commenting on the tiny mistakes the dancers had made. Their snarky remarks about how their daughters could do better was starting to make me sick. I was impressed by the array of dancing that was happening on stage, the people behind me were impressed, as were the people in front of me. What made them think it was so bad? The girls who sat to my left were well-behaved, but they were honors students of course. It was painful, in a way, to see the eighteen year old girls to my left act more mature than the forty year old women to my right.
Right as I was about to leave, the ballet took a ten minute break for intermission. I took this time to read the program that I was given when I walked into the PAC. In retrospect, reading this first would have helped me far more than anyone could imagine. I read about what happened and what was going to happen after intermission, which made things a whole lot easier for me once the ballet started again. While the program helped me understand some of what was going on, a lot of it was still fuzzy. After about an hour, the ballet had ended and I left the PAC utterly confused as to what I had just watched. As I said before, the choreography was beautiful and I really enjoyed that aspect, but from a storyline standpoint, it was completely incomprehensible. I’m not sure if I would go and see another ballet, since this one was hard to follow, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a ballet without a plot.