Two Saturdays ago, I was dragged... check that... was escorting my wife and Julia to the Nutcracker ballet performance at the Orpheum. It was supposed to be a daughter-mother-grandmother show, but Grandma couldn't make it to Omaha. Her excuse was something about an ice storm that supposedly caused Interstate 80 to be closed down for a while. I guess some people just can't handle driving on black ice...
Obviously, I'm kidding. I was, however, looking forward to my several hours of solitude at home while the ladies went to the ballet. When I was informed by my wife that her Mom couldn't make it, I assumed that the show would go on without her and not include me.
"So I'm assuming that you're still going to the show, right?" I asked.
"Well, yeah." Laura said. "I already paid for the tickets."
"So who's going with you instead of your Mom?"
"You are!" Laura exclaimed.
"Oh, I'M going?" I asked.
"Yes, you are." Laura said matter-of-factly.
"I guess I assumed that you were going to go without me."
"Why would you assume that?" Laura asked.
"Because it's the ballet," I said.
"So?" Laura asked. "You'd think that a liberal like yourself would appreciate the ballet."
Laura always contends that I'm a liberal. I contend that I'm a moderate with liberal leanings. I also contend that Laura only thinks that I'm liberal because we don't always see eye to eye on certain topics, like health care. I'm in favor of universal health care. Laura, on the other hand, seems to hold that conservative line that those people can just go screw themselves if they're stupid enough to not have health insurance. Besides, they should be pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and getting a better job. At least, I think that's the way the conservative line goes.
“I'm a moderate and not a woman,” I said.
I had only seen an actual ballet only one other time, and I knew a little of what to expect. When I was in college, I worked for the catering department of the university. We would cover the intermissions for the performances at the Lied Center. During the Acts, we would either sit around and talking while we waited for intermission, or we could go into a private room and watch the performances behind a glass.
One such performance was for a ballet. I had never seen one before, so I sat down to watch. It was a Western ballet. The dancers were dressed as cowboys, farmers, farmer's wives, fair maidens or ranch hands. I watched with initial interest and then confusion as I couldn't figure out what was going on. There was a lot of prancing and gesturing, but I couldn't figure out the storyline. Someone would attack. Someone would cower. There seemed to be something about a bad guy coming into town.
I muttered, “I have no idea what's going on.”
One of my co-workers, a dance major, informed me of the plot. Something about the loss of innocence, something about passion and something about heroism, among other themes. One little gesture meant something completely different at any time. Maybe I'm not made for this because I was not getting it.
In the end, I had to go see the Nutcracker.
I had never seen the Nutcracker. I do know some of the songs, though. For example, when I was in grade school. One year for the Christmas pageant, we all had paper flowers around our necks and sang a song called, “Song of the Flowers.” Of course, this was actually the instrumental from the Nutcracker called “The Waltz of the Flowers.” It's very recognizable to me because it was featured in the movie “Caddyshack” during the swimming pool scene shortly before someone mistakes a Baby Ruth candy bar for a piece of poop.
Saturday came and as we went through entrance, the lady that took our tickets looked at me and the frowning expression that was on my face and commented, “Well you look like you're thrilled to be here.”
She laughed and I laughed.
Before we entered the auditorium, we showed our tickets to the lady at the door. She pointed out where the seats were. As we walked by her, I asked her a question.
“How long is this the show?” I asked, trying not to give off a hint that I was asking so I would know how bored I was going to be. It's not just the ballet. I have a hard time staying attentive for anything for very long. Years ago when I was a student, I went to see Les Miserables, and while I liked it, the last hour of the bloated musical was very hard for me to sit still for. Even Spamalot, as much as I liked it, had me looking at my watch during the last 30 minutes.
“90 minutes for Act 1, a 20-minute intermission and 90 minutes for Act 2,” the lady replied.
I thanked her for her time and mentally noted that it wasn't as long as I thought, so I had a chance to get through without squirming. As it turned out, I had a hard time staying awake during Act 1. I had taken a muscle relaxer prior to leaving for the show, and it was starting to kick in. Several times I caught myself nodding off near the end of Act 1. Laura said after the fact that she had heard me snorting a couple of times. She looked over at me to see my eyes half-closed and my head nodding up.
We found our seats in the sixth row. I opened the program and read the synopsis for the Nutcracker. If you've never seen it, the story goes that a big Christmas party is being prepared. The guests arrive and watch some entertainment from dancers. Then presents are given out. The main character, Clara, is given a nutcracker toy. Later that night, she sneaks downstairs to check on her nutcracker. Getting spooked by the dark, she grabs the Nutcracker and falls asleep with him. Then something about a mouse king that for some reason invades the house. The Nutcracker comes to life and leads a small army to fight the mouse king and his mouse soldiers. Just when it looks like the Nutcracker is going to lose, Clara hits the mouse king when her slipper.
Then it gets even weirder as Clara is taken to the Sugar Plum Fairy, who hears how she saved the Nutcracker prince. She is rewarded with a dance celebration. After a series of dance segments, she is taken back home. She wakes up with the Nutcracker back to toy form in her arms.
Ballet isn't my cup of tea but I was mildly impressed by the first act, the Party Scene. The plot was easy to follow, the dances were neat and the scenery was impressive. For me, it started to go downhill when the party ended and the dream sequence started. Some of the performances were interesting, but it seemed like variations of the same thing. Seeing how there is no dialog, but just a lot of facial expressions and lots of gesturing, I was quickly bored.
As much as I was bored, there were several things that distracted me about the second half of the show.
For one, Clara is given a bench to sit on near the back of the stage to take in the show that's being presented for her. Because she is sitting back there for the most part of the second act, all she has to do is to smile, nod, clap after each dance and then smile some more. I was constantly looking back at her to see if she would lapse into a yawn. She didn't, but that didn't stop me for constantly checking to see if she would break character.
Another thing were the men. I was trying to decide which guys were on my team and which guys played for the other team. I thought I had one pegged, the one playing the Nutcracker Prince, but Laura informed me that the guy was married to the lady playing the Sugar Plum Fairy.
I was also distracted by the outfits the guys wore. More specifically, the area below the belt that seemed to show every detail. Now I like seeing a guy's package as much as the next guy, which is very little, but I think if I was ever a ballet dancer that I'd either show some modesty and cover that area a little or stuff it with a sock to enhance that feature. Even Laura admitted that she was distracted by it. I was reminded of the ballet scene in the spy movie parody called “Top Secret” in which Val Kilmer is watching a performance and all of the male dancers have gigantic packages. They are so big that the female dancers can walk across them.
On a tangent, I've noticed that high school wrestling suffers from nearly the same problem. I've seen a few matches and it's pretty obvious that many guys go commando, if you catch my drift. For me, it's hard to take a supposed masculine sport seriously when it involves two guys going commando that take turns hugging and straddling each other. Maybe I notice because I've almost never met a person that wrestles that wasn't a total asshole so I'm looking for excuses to hate them. I've had a few issues with them in the past, but that's another story. But I digress...
I ended up concentrating on the technique of the dancers. For the most part, the dancers were fine, but a few times, I noticed a couple of the men's arms shaking as they were holding and spinning their partner. I also noticed a few flaws in the costuming. One dancer had a small hole in her black leggings, which I noticed every time she appeared on stage.
All in all it was a decent performance, but not my cup of tea.
