The Snow Queen

I went to the ballet. Big advantage to taking the GF's disabled mother as you get great seats with legroom! So we will be taking her again in Feb to the next production I want to see. No... its not ballet.

So... Biggest packets went to the 'animals' with the snow queens entorage of white wolves being pretty well endowed and the reindeer that guided Gerda up north could have pointed out the snow queens castle without using his hands.

I think there was some dancing as well.

Heres the original story.

Overall I enjoyed my first ballet experience. The second act was better since I had read the story in the program by then so I wasn't spending half the time trying to figure out what the hell they were trying to say with all the poncying about across the stage.

The third act was better still as there was a big 'scene' with the sort of evil gypsies (you could tell they were evil as they wore black) where the dancing was slightly less poncy and faster paced. In act one where the gypsies came along to the village where our hero and heroine resided it reminded me of a cheesy movie where the 'good' blokes in their green tights fought the bad gypsies who looked cooler in black tights and red bandana's. Dance off dude!

The whole thing felt very Disney. As in it was lovely to look at, the costumes were very nice (Particularly a sort of ballroom dance in the Snow Queens palace) but it was all a bit twee and you couldn't really tell which were supposed to be the scary bits. I mean Hans Christian Anderson hardly wrote cheery childrens tales, but I found it difficult to get the darker emotions by watching people in tights flinging themselves across the stage even though the music at these points was very dramatic and dark. Talking of music I spent quite a lot of time nosing at the orchestra and watching the conductor - what a great job that is!

So... Was a ballet fan born last night? Well... no, but I did enjoy the spectacle of it all and the dancing was wonderful to watch. I'm just not sure its the story medium for me.

In February I get to experience my first opera....