In Which I Go To A Ballet

Just got back from seeing the Pennsylvania Ballet Company perform, and I thought I'd share with you what goes on inside my head when I see a ballet. See...ok I'm a dancer and I LOVE dance and I can pretty much watch any kind of dancing from any part of the world and be mesmerized. But for some reason, ballet and me...we just don't see eye to eye. It's kind of over my head. But my aunt LOVES ballet and she has season tickets and I love getting to spend time with her and while me and the ballet aren't in love, we have a mutual appreciation for each other. So I attend the shows.

So perhaps this is because my knowledge of ballet comes from one year of classes when I was five and the movie Center Stage. But when I'm watching the ballet, I find I can't concentrate on the dancing itself or whatever storyline is being presented. All I can think about is...I wonder if the male principle dancer is sleeping with the female principle, or has he already gone through the chorus.

Is that horrible of me?

So while they're up there twirling around and prancing, I'm trying to decide if the blond girl on the left is a total prima donna and tried to outdo her best friend, the red head on the right, by practicing for an extra hour everyday without telling anyone just so she could be placed one row up in the chorus line.

And before I know it, there is a veritable soap opera in my head going off about how that one guy in the back row has a crush on the girl to his right but he is forced to lift the girl on his left and nobody wants to lift her because she has some superstitions about wearing deoderant on opening night, while the girl in the middle won't talk to anybody EVER because it messes with her craft, while the guy on the far left row is furious that the choreographer placed him back there because they stopped sleeping together a month ago and if the female lead could just stop being so perfect all the time, maybe someone else would have a shot at fame. OMGzzz. Suddenly the ballet becomes a lot more interesting in my mind.

Now this is probably a horrible side effect of the writing life, you literally CAN NOT STOP making up stories about everybody, no matter the situation, all the time. I mean ALL the time! So yeah, it was quite the spectacle this evening -that ballet company is one sordid lot and nobody even knew!