I went to Swan Lake on Sunday with my wife. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about ballet – in fact, I’m completely ignorant about it. You will probably be able to figure that out by reading my synopsis.
Curtains open.
Dancing. Seems to be a fancy party, like a ball. Nice costumes – especially that jester. He’s a good dancer. Oh, here’s the main character. Oh, here’s another main character – I think. Those guys have a drink. Those tight white pants sure are tight. That court jester is pretty awesome. That guy has great balance. That’s some good ballet.
Everybody ballets.
An old person who doesn’t do so much ballet comes out, the jester gives him a stool. He sits. (Maybe he’s the king? Or something.)
Dancing. Everybody dances – except the king.
Curtains close.
Curtains open. Cool backdrop of some rocks at a beach – I bet this is Swan Lake. Yup. There’s alot of swans (dancers in white tutus and feather headbands).
Prince dances with a swan. I think the prince is falling in love with this swan. Or is she a swanlike woman? There’s a bad guy, in an awesome costume. He dances with the prince. (Why?)
Curtains close.
Intermission.
Curtains open. Hey, they’re back at the palace.
A parade of hot ballet girls ballet for the king and the main character (prince?) Prince isn’t impressed. Hey, is that the swan? She’s dressed in half-black/half-white, so I’m not sure. Hmmm. I should’ve followed through on my plan to check this out on wikipedia. I feel like I’m missing alot of the subtleties. I think I should loosen my tie a little bit. Chiara sure looks beautiful when she’s watching ballet. Hey what’s happening now? Ah… high court protocol. And ballet dancing.
Those girls are all getting dissed. I guess he really likes the swan. That one chick in red is pretty cute. Oops. She fell down. Now she’s back up, what a trooper.
Wait. Here’s the bad guy. He and the prince are dancing. Again. Here comes the swan.
Curtains close.
Curtains open.
Swan Lake. It’s night. I don’t know what’s happening. Those swans are doing some beautiful synchronized dancing, and composing geometric swanpatterns. Cool. Here come the leads… Everybody is dancing violently. The bad guy, the swan, the prince, the swans. The prince and the swan dance, then she dances with the bad guy. Why does that swan keep dancing with the bad guy, I mean, doesn’t she love the prince? Isn’t the bad guy bad? The prince dies.
Curtains close.
Curtains open.
Bowing. More bowing. Everybody bows. Just some of the people bow. The other people bow. The two leads bow. An old guy comes up on stage. He bows (director?). Leads bow. Swan bows. Everybody bows together.
Curtains close.
Two leads leap out in front of curtains. Bow alot.
More bowing. Return behind curtain.
Come back again. More bowing.
Bowing seems to be finished…
More bowing.
Done.
Wikipedia gives a synopsis that shows just how much I missed. In my defense, some of that stuff is pretty hard to figure out through the medium of dance. Sometimes spoilers can be a good thing. One example of this is ballet. I probably should have at least bought a programme.
