Much ballet-hoo about nothing

Some time ago, I happened to go to the New York City Ballet Theater's production of Romeo and Juliet. What's worse, I actually paid for it.

It all started while, on a visit to NYC, I discovered the TKTS stand on Times Square. Now the square itself is a never-ending parade of entertaining sights and sounds (in season: a naked *black* cowboy). The best strategy to buy tickets is to go late, when the tourist flotsam has been turned away disappointed at not getting a cheap ticket to Spiderman or some Disney crapola, and try your luck with the less popular shows. Not because you are cheap, but because your tastes are eclectic and oh-so-not-mainstream. 

Bullshit. You get good discounts this way, but it teaches you that you shouldn't buy something just because it's cheap.

Anyway, managing to snag a pair of tickets to the Ballet (motto: "Early Onset Arthritis") the Company - which insisted on being called the Date - and I set off in our flip flops and jeans. 

The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts is always a wonderful thing to walk by. And there is your lesson of the day - walk by, especially if it is showing men in tights. Like lamb to the slaughter, the Date led me into a subterranean labyrinth of overdressed young yuppies and barely-ambulatory seniors, dressed as if to a debutante ball. Complete with pants that started at their chests, bow ties and other such fashion items no doubt prevalent when they actually had things like debutante balls.

Shortly, the show started. Various people scurried about on stage on their tiptoes, and that was just as well because when half the audience was asleep - either because ballet was boring, or because they were out past their bed time in their adult diapers

We were sitting way back in the first level, which I believe may have been an "orchestra pit" or something. Just as well again, because the last thing I wanted to see was men in tights up close. Seriously, that should be a public offense.

But I did get the gist of Romeo and Juliet, which much to my grandfather's consternation, I failed to finish unabridged by the time I was 9, as he and his forefathers before him all had. What can I say, the book stopped with me. 

Now Romeo is your garden variety dog, flirting about town gayly - and the way he was cavorting with his mates-in-tights, rather very gayly - when he falls in love with a girl. Fast forward: they both die, after other people die. The end. 

But not before a number of people do unnatural things on stage - walking on their toes, jumping on their toes, leaping and pirouetting on their toes and wearing tights (only applies to the men). I really do appreciate the skill here, but it is sort of like synchronized swimming - very demanding, no doubt, and hard to do, but so is being able to touch one's nose with one's tongue or armpit-farting the national anthem. So what? Art must move the uninitiated, not just allow the technically expert to snigger smugly in their exclusive club of appreciating technicalities. And let's face it, ballet is a statement - "my child learns the ballet". Not getai, that would be too gauche.

Now two things to note about Romeo & Juliet:

1. Anyone waxing eloquent about "The Bard" while also complaining of the mindless triviality behind every romance in every Indian movie can shut up. 

2. Statutory rape - it seemed from the screening that the girl was still being nannied by a... well nanny.

I really liked the villain, Tybalt - he had a little skirt which thankfully covered his crotch. Thus arrived the day when I appreciated a man in a skirt. The woman playing Juliet (who looked like a little child) was also very entertaining, with great facial expressions that lent a lot to her performance, past the no-doubt-sublime tip-toeing. 

We streamed out, the Date and I, into the open and down onto the subway stop after the show. The characters there were far more entertaining than the ballet.