Like I suggested for the opera, opt for an inexpensive seat for your solo subscription, and then upgrade it for the productions you really care about (and add on for anything you want to share with someone else).
Figure out which productions you really want to see particular leads in, check the cast lists a week or two before the production begins, and switch your ticket or buy tickets to additional performances accordingly.
Take the bus there and back. You’ll need to save your dollars for tickets.
Do bring a sketchbook. That way you will have something to do while waiting for the curtain to go up…
… and during intermission…
… and maybe even in the dark while the performance is going on …
This is a swan.
This is two swans.
I don’t really know what this is.
During intermission, seek out magical things that may be on display.
yes, please
it’s fun to draw them sometimes
If you liked the performance, applaud like you mean it. Holler and stand up, dammit! It usually feels good to do, and those dancers worked very hard for your entertainment. Example:
Go home and dream of swans or nobel princes or princesses or whatever beautiful images stay with you from the experience.
Remember that post I did a couple months back about getting the best bang for your buck at the opera? No? Well, that was written before I saw the renew-your-subscription-for-the-next-(unappealing)-season brochure and decided not spend my artsy entertainment bucks and time on opera next year.
No, sirree, instead, I’m dedicating my audienceship to the ballet. One ballet, over and over again, while it is in season. This past weekend I saw Pacific Northwest Ballet’s splendid production of Swan Lake. And then saw it again. And, um, have already purchased tickets for two more performances next weekend. Swan season in Seattle is brief – two weekends every three years or so, so I decided to gorge on it while it lasts.
photo borrowed from PNB’s blog with apologies for any misappropriation
I’ve never seen the full length Swan Lake before this past Saturday, only excerpts, those famous duets (and a quartet) that get performed as part of evening dance hodgepodges, like short stories, and various bits shown in movies. I knew the story: boy/prince meets girl/enchanted swan after being commanded by his queen mum to marry and running off to the lake with his buddies to go swan-hunting with crossbows. Girl is only girl by moonlight; otherwise is beautiful white swan entrapped by spell of evil sorcerer who looks like an owl, with spell that can only be broken by true love. Girl begs boy to spare swans, dances tenderly with smitten boy, while surrounded by the beautiful flock…
… until sorcerer summons her away. The next night boy must attend a bride-finding ball thrown by the queen mum with lovely princesses and entertainment from other countries. Boy rejects all potential brides until the evil sorcerer disguised as a nobleman shows up with his daughter, looking very much like the girl/enchanted swan, but wearing glittery black and seductively strutting her stuff, very unlike the vulnerable girlswan the boy fell in love with back at the lake. Nevertheless, after imposter girl does 32 fouetté turns on one leg,
… and boy does a whole bunch of his own impressive pirouettes, he then proposes marriage to imposter daughter girl. Imposter daughter and sorcerer laugh cruelly and triumphantly and boy realizes his mistake. Boy returns to the lake and apologizes to his true love. Too late. Girlswan dies.* Boy is left heartbroken. Curtain comes down.
So anyway, I finally saw PNB’s version on Saturday afternoon. It was stunning – the entire ensemble and orchestra and sets and costumes – but I found my bargain-awkward-view subscription seat a little frustrating, and was curious to see how other lead dancers would interpret the roles. The cast lists get posted on the PNB website shortly before each production, so it’s possible plan accordingly. So I decided to see it again on Sunday afternoon with a different lead cast: my favorite PNB male dancer as the prince, and a ballerina I hadn’t seen much of before who is featured in a lot of the company’s publicity shots especially for this production. I even splurged on a pricier ticket for a better view (farther away but unobscured).
The leads on Sunday were truly astonishing – at this point my all-time favorite ballet-viewing experience ever – and the different seat made for better viewing of the entire gorgeous flock of swans, beautiful sets, and the dazzling entertainers at the ball. My proverbial socks were knocked off.
Carla Korbes, the ballerina who literally brought tears to my eyes in her white girlswan form on Sunday afternoon, is featured in this 2009 PNB advertisement:
and also appears at the 2:29 minute mark of this:
And her prince Karel Cruz, who seemingly can spin forever and hover in the air whenever he jumps, talks about and rehearses for another ballet with the same ballerina here:
I was so moved by Sunday’s show that I went home and bought a ticket to see Carla and Karel again next Saturday. And because I also really want to see ballerina Carrie Imler’s (another one of my favorites) interpretation, I decided to splurge on Friday night as well. And just in case she and her prince knock my socks off, too (and there are any affordable tickets left), I’m keeping Sunday afternoon open.
*Girl doesn’t always die, maybe even rarely dies … I probably acquired that misconception from that creepy 2010 movie … in PNB’s production, she floats away into the misty lake.
I left two other cards in a Seattle Central Community College building: on the counter where I had lunch (the culinary school’s bistro) and in a vacant slot at the bus schedule kiosk.
One of the people who works in my office building collects the leftover coffee shells and burlap bags from a nearby coffee roaster. I think he uses them in his garden… Anyway, there is often a small pile in the hallway until he takes them home. Today I put a creepycrawly in the mix…
So for a long time I’ve had this idea for a guerilla art thing that I dubbed “poem in your pocket”. The idea being that I would write little poems or pithy sentences or phrases on little cards that I carried around in my pocket and left various places for random people to find. For about two weeks in 2005 or so, back when I was living in Silver Spring, Maryland and commuting into DC by train, I did this on Metrorail trains, discreetly cramming the corner of the little cards into a seam on the armrest or someplace else my fellow passengers weren’t likely to notice while I was there. Problem was, I’m not a poet, and soon ran out of cards and inspiration to make up more. Plus I suspect that the Metrorail custodial crew who found them probably just regarded them as litter left by a weirdo.
So anyway, I’ve started dabbling in watercolor, which means I’ve been wasting a lot of paper figuring out how the paints work and react to different ways of handling. After a half-assed attempt to declutter this weekend, I maI did that this weekend, it occured to me I could use the otherwise wasted watercolor messes to cut up and make into fun little cards. So that’s what I did. Scans of a few of them are posted below.
So I’m planning to leave them in such places as on the table before I leave a restaurant, in ladies room stalls, on the bus, on the shelves of the food coop, tucked into tip jars at coffee shops, etc. Since they are watercolor, I can’t leave them anywhere that, if they get wet, they might damage something (e.g. tucked into a book).
The experiment part is to see if I have the nerve to actually do it (it will need to happen when no one is looking) and whether I can keep it up.
the view from a room 