The last day

The ballet. Don Quixote. I think this was my first Ballet experience. I appreciate the technical working that goes into crossing a threshold on your toes and being able to hold your leg at a right angle to the other for any length of time. I appreciate the blood sweat and tears that goes into being a ballerina, after all I did see Fame and a few other movies on the subject. I appreciate the music that accompanies the performances and its ability to evoke passion and other kinds of emotion. I do. I do. I do. But, is there suppose to be a story to keep us interested in all of this? If there was on this one I am ashamed to say that I missed it. As much as I enjoyed my first ballet, I think it would be a long time before I return.

I remember as a child seeing the story of Don Quixote on television and I know it has something to do with a deranged man who thinks that he is larger than life and can pick fights with windmills. He fights against what he thinks is evil, windmills included. I saw nothing that took me back to that. It was about the dancing and that was it. Technique can hold me only for so long.

Oh, and can someone please set me straight, the song, ‘To Dream The Impossible Dream’ was in that Don Quixote movie was it not? That is how I remember it. Not as a Luther Van Ross song but as part of the music of a really great musical.

I think I should set my sights high for my next Ballet. I think Swan Lake (and they better have a little bit of what I saw in Billy Elliot in it!)

My last show of the Gtown fes (I just did not have the strength today to sit through a production that was raw or amateurish or just plain bad) was Stuart Taylor’s Techni-coloured. Apparently this show has been running for two years already. I could not find any other stand-up that I really wanted to see. I have seen Politically Incorrect on DVD and was less than amused, there was some other dudes as well, but thought hey why not see the 'Going No Where Slowly' guy. Should be fun. No it was not.

So all in all the Gtown festival was a bit of a disappointment and I blame it all on myself. Maybe I should not have come alone, although, the thought of having watched the shows that I did with someone else makes me tired. I should have planned better, although I thought the thing about Gtown is to pop in here and there and see where the festival takes you.

I think it is largely aimed at those people that have been coming for years and who know exactly what they are looking for. I met a couple who sold me the Ballet ticket (it was fully booked and just my luck, these to needed to get rid of a ticket), and they had been coming down for15 years. They had their whole itinerary right down to the last hour of the festival and I thought, maybe I should have planned a little better. They seemed to be enjoying the fes but I think they were also not impressed by the lack of a story line on the ballet.

It was good to be back in Gtown but it should have been for a much shorter time, like passing through and needing to kill 2 hours.