"The ballet, now."

I saw my first ballet, The Nutcracker, with my mom and grandmother when I was 6 or 7 years old. To this day, I can remember what I wore and where we sat in the theatre. One wonderful thing about being a Real Adult with a Real Job, along with getting a Real Paycheck, is that my company gets a corporate discount to the ballet. Because of this wonderful combination, I got tickets for my parents and me to see The Nutcracker before Christmas. A week later, one of my oldest friends from junior high invited me to see The Nutcracker with her. So, I went a second time!

Allow me to note that I am one of those people who loves to rewatch and reread, because even if the story doesn't change, the experience and the meaning will for me. This is especially true with live performances because there are always differences. For example, another ballerina dancing Clara, a mouse soldier's tail falls off, or the Russian Dance danseur performing 12 consecutive jumps instead of 8.

Of course in ballets like The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and La Fille Mal Gardée, that have been performed for over 100 years, there are similarities that have run the course of the history of performance.

I had only seen these older, classic ballets until a few weeks ago when I went with CT and our moms to see Marie, a brand new ballet in the Houston Ballet's repetoire about Marie Antoinette. The ballet begins in Austria, Marie Antoinette's home country, on the day she learns she will become the Dauphine (crown princess) of France through marriage to the Dauphin (crown prince) Louis and ends with Marie and Louis' daughter, orphaned after her parents are beheaded during the French Revolution, arriving in the very room Marie learned of her engagement. Besides being a beautifully choreographed performance with wonderful costumes set to Shostakovich, I loved getting to see a new ballet with a mixture of classical and modern stlyes.

The only bad thing about going to the ballet is it is always a bittersweet experience. I took ballet from the time I was 4 up through 2007, from before elementary school up to my second to last semester in college. Although I was probably in junior high before I realistically gave up on being a professional ballerina (hello, do you know how expensive professional training is? was not going to happen), ballet has been a major influence in my life. In fact, when I tried out for cheerleading in junior high, I was told that I moved too much like a ballerina to be a cheerleader. Going to the ballet is bittersweet for me now because this is the longest I have ever gone without taking ballet, or indeed any dance class. A 9 hour work day, adult choir practice, children's choir practice, Bible study, and now taking care of my own apartment leave very little time or money for ballet, aside from the occasional improvisational outbreak.

Not like that's going to stop me from going, though. Swan Lake's up next!

(If you know where that quote came from, you are now one of my favorite people.)