Ballet

I went to see my first true ballet last night at the Royal Danish Theater -- "Romeo and Juliet." I signed up for it through DIS and got a discount -- and through some mix-up they bumped our seats up; we ended up being in the last row on the floor, under the first balcony/mezzanine, so it wasn't an amazing view but pretty sweet (of course, front row of mezzanine is ideal for any performance, but I think we would have been higher up originally). The balconies went pretty high up in that building too.

Right before the performance started, everyone in the crowd stands up and we're like, "...what?" But then we found out from some Danes in front of us that the queen was there. So everyone had to stand up and wait till she was seated to sit back down. And there were two intermissions, so this happened three times.

It was a long performance -- three hours with two intermission, longer than I expected. But it was entertaining. I think I appreciated the orchestra more than the actually dancing. And the sets! The sets were amazing, moving seamlessly -- I really liked how it was staged. One scene in particular, where the friar details the plan to make Juliet appear dead, etc. was done well. There was this sort of "acting troupe" within the ballet that as Juliet and the friar stood frozen in the foreground, acted out the plan. Thought is was interesting.

And they all made dancing en pointe look ridiculously easy.