May 12th --Our Anniversary

Mark and I went to see our first ballet for our 7th anniversary.  We saw Swan Lake at the Bob Carr Centre.  I can’t believe I’ve never taken the opportunity to do this before.   I’d always been a little apprehensive to see a ballet, afraid that I would find a 3 act ballet rather boring, like I did with Tosca in Rome .  Even though I completely appreciate dance, it would be hard to watch even that much figure staking.   Not to mention 3 hours of Tchaikovsky would be a significant challenge for me. 

However, I’m happy to report that I'm now thoroughly hooked on ballet. I can only imagine that the NY, Chicago or Russian top ballet companies are breathtaking .  Mark really liked it too.   We had heard that the Orlando Ballet company has made many improvements in the last couple of years, new direction and talent from South America. We had the extremely fortunate happenstance of getting 2 10th row seats from Suzanne and Mike. They had an unavoidable event and offered us their tickets. They are season ticket holders.

I have to believe that Mark and I will attend another ballet in the not so distant future. The catch is that you have to have good seats to really "feel" it. Just like skating, it's not enough to just watch it from afar, you need to be up close to feel the jumps and lifts. In ballet, being up close, you really can appreciate the difficult movements, and the jumps and lifts completely enthrall you.

Swan Lake-Orlando Ballet

Principles:

Odette: Zoica Tovar

Prince: Andres Estevez

Jester: Logan Learned

On to my review. So this being my first live ballet I don't have a whole lot to compare it too. However as a 20 plus year figure skater who has coached and judged, a jazz student and "for fun" dancer I do know what I am looking at. So here is my lame attempt at a review.

The most pleasant an unexpected surprise was the company's timing. It was obvious that this show had more talented direction than it did actual talented dancers. Now, the principles I listed above were great, however Zoica and Andres didn't really have the level of talent that you see from the top ballet company dancers on TV. But overall everyone was so clean and perfect. No noticeable timing errors, no missed queues and everyone was very much in sync. Zoica and Andres were always dead on. The same can be said for the cyngets and the swans. When all 24 swans were out on stage and all perfectly in sync, landing at just the same moment it was very powerful and moving. I was constantly surprised when every arm perfectly aligned, and every spin moved at the same exact rate of rotation. I know how hard that is with 2 pair skaters, and to get 24 girls to do that seems amazing to me.

As far as talented individuals, Logan, the jester was my favorite. Excuse the skating jargon b/c I just don't know the proper ballet terms, but his Russian split jumps were amazing. Andres did a couple of double axel jumps and I loved the height and distance. Dancers always make those jumps float where skaters just rotate too fast to really enjoy the beauty of the move.

I have to also take a moment to comment on the costumes. Act III in the palace was just beautiful, the costumes so colorful and evocative of the time period.

My only disappointment was in what I would consider the level of difficulty. When you go to the Swan Lake Wiki site, there is a picture of a ballerina doing a flexibility move, I didn't see really anything of that level from this company. These are ballerinas and they are supposed to be more flexible than skaters, but skaters today can spin while pulling their leg straight up over their head, when are the ballerinas gonna show that level of strength and flexibility.

In the end, it was a great show and we will be back next year. We're going to try a couple of the shows and see if we still like it before opting for season tickets. What I would really like to do, is get tickets to see a top ballet company in NY or Chicago. I'll have to work on that.