The Brides I spent a Sunday afternoon recently at the California Ballet's performance of Dracula. I attend the ballet because my Significant Other's lovely and talented daughter is a member of the troop. I admit otherwise I would not go to the ballet, but most of the time I really don't mind it. The female members of the show often wear little more than body stockings or other dancewear that shows off their toned physiques, and in this enlightened age, it is not necessary to have one's masculinity threatened by being in the same room with bisexual guys jumping around in tights and codpieces. And if the ballet lags, I can always admire the crowd, which is usually peppered with ballet-capable looking young women in short skirts and dresses. The eye-candy banquet is almost as good as the one at a ballgame on a hot summer night. I am with my Significant Other, of course, not with another middle-aged guy, so I am denied the pleasure of pointing out the most spectacular or lightly dressed examples of young leggy girl beauty with a nudge to a fellow enthusiast, which I then usually follow with a complaint that the girls didn't look this good when we were their age.
Of course, I usually go to ballgames with my S.O., too, so I am getting used to this deprivation.
Despite all of these balletic distractions, I nonetheless turned to my date during the second intermission and said "Imagine the life of a vampire, wandering through the endless night, alone and immortal, your only pleasure being your only curse, an unslakeable craving for mortal blood."
"What about it?" she said.
"I don't think it would seem half as interminable as this," I replied.
You see, the creators of ballet Dracula, who were only inspired to cast the old bloodsucker in a dance drama in 1987, after the book had been around for almost a century, failed to realize that there is no dancing in the original storyline, which is pantomimed faithfully and almost in its entirety by the cast. The story, a typical colonialist fantasy, is that Dracula, who has fed merrily on a bunch of ignorant Eastern European peasants for centuries, decides to emigrate to England, where he is promptly staked through the heart by superior, science-minded Englishmen with a minimum of casualties.
It's almost as convincing as Tarzan, which asserts that if you drop the unprotected baby son of a white English noble into the African jungle, he will naturally rise to become king of it instead of turning into snack food.
Dracula is a long enough story, but because we are at the ballet, numerous dance numbers have to be inserted into it. Gypsy women swirl at the beginning, stealing the watches of and confusing our English lads briefly. The Brides of Dracula, of which my S.O.'s daughter was one, made two appearances, although they weren't in the book at all. And whenever Dracula claims a female victim, they do the neck-bite boogaloo.
Other than that, the cast just walks around in uninteresting Victorian costumes, overacting strenuously. There is one guy who plays a madman in a transparent cell, who writhes in solitary insanity whenever the plot heats up. Near the end, he hangs himself.
"Can't blame him for that," is what the audience is thinking..
When the third act begins, Dracula does a solo number, just him and his cape, leaping from one side of the stage to the other. It's his way of letting the audience know that the approaching climax of the show is going to be just as somnambulistic as the rest of it, was my analysis.
"What's he doing now?" my date whispered.
"Just Drackin' off," I told her.
Of course, I usually go to ballgames with my S.O., too, so I am getting used to this deprivation.
Despite all of these balletic distractions, I nonetheless turned to my date during the second intermission and said "Imagine the life of a vampire, wandering through the endless night, alone and immortal, your only pleasure being your only curse, an unslakeable craving for mortal blood."
"What about it?" she said.
"I don't think it would seem half as interminable as this," I replied.
You see, the creators of ballet Dracula, who were only inspired to cast the old bloodsucker in a dance drama in 1987, after the book had been around for almost a century, failed to realize that there is no dancing in the original storyline, which is pantomimed faithfully and almost in its entirety by the cast. The story, a typical colonialist fantasy, is that Dracula, who has fed merrily on a bunch of ignorant Eastern European peasants for centuries, decides to emigrate to England, where he is promptly staked through the heart by superior, science-minded Englishmen with a minimum of casualties.
It's almost as convincing as Tarzan, which asserts that if you drop the unprotected baby son of a white English noble into the African jungle, he will naturally rise to become king of it instead of turning into snack food.
Dracula is a long enough story, but because we are at the ballet, numerous dance numbers have to be inserted into it. Gypsy women swirl at the beginning, stealing the watches of and confusing our English lads briefly. The Brides of Dracula, of which my S.O.'s daughter was one, made two appearances, although they weren't in the book at all. And whenever Dracula claims a female victim, they do the neck-bite boogaloo.
Other than that, the cast just walks around in uninteresting Victorian costumes, overacting strenuously. There is one guy who plays a madman in a transparent cell, who writhes in solitary insanity whenever the plot heats up. Near the end, he hangs himself.
"Can't blame him for that," is what the audience is thinking..
When the third act begins, Dracula does a solo number, just him and his cape, leaping from one side of the stage to the other. It's his way of letting the audience know that the approaching climax of the show is going to be just as somnambulistic as the rest of it, was my analysis.
"What's he doing now?" my date whispered.
"Just Drackin' off," I told her.
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