sugar plum faeries

We went to the Nutcracker at the Grand last night. If you'd like to hear a lively and intelligent discussion of the Nutcracker (and Tchaikovsky), please visit the first link here. If you enjoy a somewhat less informed opinion, then keep reading.

Of course this was C's idea. Of course I don't understand ballet, and why a certain subset of people would dedicate their entire lives to perfecting the ability to dance on their toes without showing the slightest amount of effort. Like synchronized swimmers in the air. And why are so many of them Russians? Strangeness.

But we had good seats (what *should* have been the front row, only the Grand cheated and added three more rows) with room for my limbs to slacken and extend a bit (the only empty seats were right beside us, dead centre, which C told me had been bought first, as she'd been second in the online queue, and yet there they were, not there at all), and I could see all the dusty magic of the production, the incredibly hard work of the dancers, and that certain vitalizing dauntlessness of the classically spectacular. O, the mice were great. And yeah, to hear all that familiar music in the second act is nearly surprising, how much of it has already come into you, and is still quite welcome.