June 4, 1992
Dear Everyone:
The Season is Spring, a time of year when a young
man's fancy turns towards…Basketball?
Yes, basketball, once a sport specifically created
for playing in the winter, when it was too cold and wet outside to play
baseball, has "graduated" to virtually a year-round activity.
The time has come for
all the professional teams to
start playing each other to determine, once and for all, who's the Best
Basketball Team in the Whole, Wide World…this year.
Two weeks after this is decided,
of course, they'll start playing for next year.
Now, some
people might feel that, what with civil unrest, global warming and
children starving in Africa, an unholy amount of time and money is being
devoted to professional sports. Nevertheless,
last week NBC preempted regular programming to bring us yet another
interminable basketball game during prime time.
(Of course, some people could
argue that, what with civil unrest, global warming and children starving
in Africa, an unholy amount of time and money is devoted to prime time
television; and they’re probably right.)
Ordinarily, NBC's little maneuver would have
annoyed me as I would have liked to see what's usually on; but in this
instance, I was glad as it gave me the opportunity to switch over to the
Arts & Entertainment Channel and see
Swan Lake.
Sister Mary Patricia,
choir-mistress at Our Lady of the Lake School, made certain that we
little tykes got some exposure to the classics (Wednesdays were
"classical music days"); but I confess that, up until now, the only
ballet I had ever actually seen was the inevitable
Nutcracker Suite.
So I was looking forward to doing some exercising
and watching a real ballet.
Ballets are a little tricky to follow if you don't
already know what's going on. But
I was willing to give it a try, even without a playbill.
It starts out with a lot of
people wearing quasi-Renaissance garb. This
was comforting as it made it sort of like Shakespeare, only without the
words. (C’mon, admit it:
Even
with the words, you're not always sure what's going on in
Shakespeare. Not
always, right? Be honest!)
There's a guy in brown tights, whose name might be
Siegfried, or it might not. And
there's another guy in green tights. The
guy in the green tights seems to be some kind of a prince.
And he walks kinda funny.
Actually, they
all walk kinda funny.
Anyway,
the Prince is unhappy, presumably (you pretty much have to presume just
about everything here) because his mother, the Queen wants him to get
married. You can tell this by the
way she keeps pointing at her wedding ring.
Various members of the court try to cheer the
Prince up, entertainers are brought into dance their ducky little hearts
out, and everybody gets drunk before dancing off stage with lanterns to
let us know that it's night time now. Now
only the Prince and his buddy in the brown tights are left.
Siegfried, or whatever, gets a great idea:
Let's go hunting!
He hands the Prince a crossbow.
Right.
Let's go dancing and leaping
through the forest, in the dark, with the fog machine turned on full
blast. I can hear Dorothy Paris
now: "How many times have I told
you not to go dancing in the forest with sharp things in your hand?
You'll put your eye out!"
In no time, the guy in the brown tights and the
Prince are separated (big surprise). Along
comes The Swan. You can tell that
she's The Swan because she has a shorter skirt and more sequins than
anyone else. (She walks funny,
too. But then, probably so do
most swans.) The Prince falls in
love instantly, blissfully unaware that, in real life, swans
bite.
Then a bunch of ladies come out in white dresses
and make like swans. More ladies
make like cygnets (young swans), dancing hand-in-hand in
very close drill.
They must have kicked hell out of
each other during early rehearsals. The
Prince and The Swan dance a pas de deux, giving rise to the age-old
question: Why don't they just
hire taller dancers?
Meanwhile, the brown tights has made his way back
to the palace where he does some more dancing.
The Prince comes back.
The Queen still wants him to get
married. Many likely ladies dance
around the court, but he will have none of them.
Face it, the guy’s got the hots
for the big bird.
Swanie shows up, this time wearing black, but still
with more sequins than anyone else. Since
no one freaks out, we presume that she has been magically transformed
into princess-material. Another
pas de deux, although this time, the princess seems to be playing hard
to get. Might have something to
do with that guy she came to the party with; the one wearing all those
black feathers.
Of course, the Prince wants to marry the princess,
but there seems to be a catch. Maybe
it's the guy in the feathers. Back
to the forest and more swans dancing (to give The Swan time to change
costumes). The Prince shows up
and--get this--decides to take a nap in the middle of the stage.
(Oh, Lord, just like
Dallas,
it's going to all turn out to have been a dream!)
Exit swans, flapping. More pas de deux, more of the
guy in the black feathers (who is
this guy?) And the Prince and The
Swan just sort of walk off into the forest together.
That's it? Do
they live happily ever after? Which
one has to change their religion? Do
they have children or cygnets?
Afterwards, the host,
Stacy Keach,
comes on, not to explain anything, but to note, sadly, that when the
ballet was first performed, it was a complete flop, and didn't become a
classic until after
Tchaikovsky died.
Gee, I wonder why.
Love, as always,
Pete
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