Give Me Your Hand if We Be Friends...

My friend Jessica kindly offered my sister and myself two free tickets to see the ballet, "A Midsummer's Night's Dream." I absolutely adore this play (gotta love good ole Bill Shakespeare) and add a ballet and Mendelssohn? You've got quite a powerful combination. So this afternoon, I gallantly gave up by Sunday afternoon nap and drove Shelby and I down to Beale Street to the Orpheum. Now, Memphis is famous for Beale Street, but I've only actually been there a handful of times, and I'd never driven there. Thankfully, we got there without much trouble and were briefly victims of extortion, which masqueraded as a parking fee. No matter how many times I go, I never get tired of the Orpheum. It's so beautiful-it's a tangible piece of the past that we can see and touch and experience. I always find myself wishing I could see it back in the old days, with all the people dressed in their finest and so excited. But I digress. We sat down in amazingly good seats (I could actually see, which is amazing, considering how bad my eyesight is) and the show began. The ballet was absolutely amazing-the sight took my breath away when the curtains first rolled back. There was this giant flower on stage, and fairies danced around it. Petals floated in the air, and the audience truly felt like they were in Fairyland. The choreography seemed a little odd in places-sometimes the arm movements looked like something out of "Thriller." However, Jessica and I sat on the edge of our seats, and I found that I remembered more than I thought from the old ballet days. We critiqued the costumes, the performances and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The guy that played Puck did an especially good job. The program said that he had been born and raised in the Bronx-I couldn't help but wonder what his friends thought when he started running off to ballet school every day to wear tights and jump around. But he undoubtedly made a fabulous Puck, very humorous. In any case, if you ever have the chance to see that ballet (or any ballet, for that matter) I highly recommend it. I don't understand why people think that ballet is boring-it's just as lovely and expressive an art form as movies and plays.