Sunday, April 15, 2007
William Shakespeare through interpretive dance
Spring, Wlofie, Bunny and I went to the Bankatlantic Center Frank Sinatra Theatre to see the Russian National Ballet perform “Romeo and Juliet” (thanks to complementary tickets Spring obtained from a fellow cow-orker).
We arrived at the theatre well in time for the performance, and we used the time to avoid paying $20 to park at the Bankatlantic Center Frank Sinatra Theatre and instead parked across the street at the Sawgrass Mills Mall. It was amazing that parking cost so much, considering that every flat surface of the Bankatlantic Center Frank Sinatra Theatre was covered with advertising and sponsor logos (even the urinals were covered!).
They had curtained off one third of the arena and set up a stage area. Our seats were halfway up the nosebleed section, almost opposite the stage, so we had a nice view of the orchestra pit and the stage.
The dancing was good. It's not hard to be impressed with how effortlessly the dancers leapt and pirouetted across the stage. The lighting—for the most part, the lighting was okay but the people working the spot lights could have been much better. Late cues, not spotting random parts above the stage, overshooting the dancers and generally very poor workmanship with the spot lights. And the music? Let's just say that it wasn't much better than a high school orchestra (say, a C-). Very disappointing.
But more annoying (maybe) were the kids just behind us—the oldest might have been five years old. Constantly asking questions and kicking the back of my seat (and Bunny's, and Spring's). They definitely distracted me from my enjoyment of the dancers, and only slightly from the inept spotlights. And it turns out, they were in the wrong seats anyway and after intermission had moved on to annoy some other section of the audience.
Overall, I'm glad we didn't pay for these tickets (retail value: $56 per ticket). I think I had more fun watching Incubus (at least at home, we could heckle the movie).
