Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Mission Accomplished!

Goal 5 - Attend The Nutcracker

Melissa in the ticket line

I was SO JAZZED by this you have no idea!!! ScottieDog said he'd never seen me so happy at a performance. [Actually that might be an overstatement. I was pretty darn happy at Spamalot!] It was SO. GREAT. Scott said it was certainly the best production he'd ever seen, so much better in fact that he enjoyed it thoroughly all over again.

Well hey, it's Balanchine, after all. What I didn't know is that Balanchine essentially rescued The Nutcracker from relative obscurity and established it as a Christmas classic at the NYCBallet in 1954. I had been assuming it always was--like Handel's Messiah--from day one. But apparently when it was first performed in Russia, people kind of went "meh..." Amazing.

All the little kids were great! And the mouse costumes were amazing! And the big Christmas Tree! Oh gosh... And the dancing! And the snow!

I could go on and on.

Here are some random shots of the evening:



Clockwise from the upper left: 1) the David H. Koch Theater, 2) the humongous stage, 3) Melissa by the newly renovated computer automated Lincoln Center Fountain, though it wasn't doing much at the time, 4) two big strong ladies in the lobby who do great things for Melissa's body image.

(ScottieDog has some great pictures on his iPod that I might post later.)

Then we went out to an Irish pub that turned out to be the hangout for the ballerinas and the ballet guys (ballerinos?). Several of the principal dancers came in after us and sat down at the table in the picture. But by then I was not in a picture-taking mode, being busy with my Southern Fried Chicken. It was pretty good, but real Southern Fried wouldn't have had such a crisp eggy crust on it.



5 comments:

Levi said...

It all sounds very fun and those women in the lobby look just like me.

Sbanfnyc said...

I am so happy you had a good time. I glanced at you frequently during the performance and saw you smiling continuously. That was the highlight of my nite.

I am always happy to see you live your dreams.

Melissa said...

Well, ScottieDog, I wish you would make a list of your dreams, so I could watch YOU smile.

carla said...

I love the Nutcracker.

I was also thisclose to bringing the four year old this year till I saw tix here were 70.00 a piece.

I shall wait a year :)

Crabby McSlacker said...

Sounds like a great evening. And I had no idea that the Nutcracker wasn't all that popular at first!

But dang, now you've got me craving fried chicken..