Afternoon at the Ballet

I have a friend; a senior often offers her theater tickets to me whenever she was not able to attend. Last Saturday, it was the ballet Sleeping Beauty. It was glorious! The costumes and the set had a French influence with lots of gold and warm jewel tones and sometimes highlighted with pastel colors. All the costumes are full of beautiful details and most importantly the dancing was magnificent!
Princess Aurora was danced by Bridgett Zehr and prince florimund by zdenek konvalina both were outstanding and received loud applauds from the audiences. One surprise was Rex Harrington, the former heart throb principal dancer returns in a non-dancing role as King Florestan with few extra pounds from his old dancing days. It must be surreal for him to sit on the throne at stage most of the time and watching someone else dancing the role he was acclaim for.
Another highlight was the elegance and airlessness dancing by Keiichi Hirano of the blue bird. At the end of the performance they received a long standing ovation.

My seat was on the third row centre and so close to the stage, I was able to see the farcical expression and the sweat of the dancers. I was almost close enough to touch the conductor’s blond hair!
I noticed there were numbers of first –timers at this performance: parents brought their little girls with them. Many were dress up in their fancy dresses and one little girl even wearing pearls. However I don’t think young child has long attention for this three acts ballet. Unlike the nutcracker, the sleeping beauty doesn’t offer much amusing things for young child. In nutcracker, there were the dancing bears; the mechanical muse and snow flakes to keep the children entertains. By contrast, the sleeping beauty has a mean witch and her scary helpers. No doubt the little girls were rather fearful as the princess Aurora was picked by the needle and fallen to sleep. The Kingdom got dark by the second act and the little girls had became rather restless and after the second intermission all the little girls and their parents were gone which left me with lots of space to stretch my legs. I guess they will not become the future ballerinas then.
There were some interesting incidents within my seating area at the theater:
A mother tried to snap a photo of her two little girls and her husband before the performance was told there were no photo allowed in the theater and was told to delete her photo! There goes the family memory of the first outing to the ballet.
A woman near me brought back two glasses of beer for herself and her friend during intermission was told there was no glass allowed in the theater. Sadly I think she must dispose them in the washroom as it was not enough time for her to drink it at the lobby.
I was rather outrage all these unreasonable rules and decided to snap a few photos when all the dancers took their curtain call and I was the only one either.