The Hobbit: Men in Tights

On Saturday, french_toast and I made it up to Spartanburg to watch her 7 year old cousin perform in a play. It wasn't until I got there that I realized it wasn't a play, but it was in actuality a ballet. At that point, I was having a few mixed emotions about how this whole experience was going to pan out.

The ballet was the Hobbit and our cousin was a fairy. Most of you familar with the Hobbit may be scaratching your head now? I mean there are no fairies in The Hobbit, right? Well in this version there were. For those of you who have not been to a ballet, let me give you my interpretation of how the whole concept of a ballet works. We are all familar with the prancing the ballerinas do. So now but a narrator opening each scene to tell you what is just about to take place. Then everything happens without words just dancing out the scenes. In college I went to an Opera for a class, and let me tell you the ballet is much much better. I like the theater, and a good play is very enjoyable. The ballet is something everyone should do once, perferably when you are a child. These little kids around us were mesmerized by what they were seeing.

As for The Hobbit itself, the ballet was pretty good. It was two acts, each made up of many scenes. I have to say that when the fairies came out in the beginning of the second act, it was funny watching our cousin and all of the second graders. They only were out there less than a few minutes. Before all of this during the intermission, the man in charge of the Spartanburg Ballet came out to make a plug for donations. He laid down a statement about the dragon that would be coming out near the end. I leaned over to french_toast and whispered something to the effect that the dragon was going to be "bad-ass." Well, the dragon really wasn't that bad-ass. It was someone on stiltswith this giant dragon head and a giant tell coming from behind. I guess in the grand scheme of things it was pretty cool, but when movies have desensitized us to the point where our imaginations are essentially removed, it's hard to get into non "realistic" dragons.

They also had lots of other interesting characters and ways of presenting the story. In the end it was an hour and a half of supporting family and experiencing my first ballet. I reccomend it. That night after our Saturday matinee we headed out to dinner with the whole family. One of the Cousins who is in tenth grade was asked whether he had enjoyed all of the girls in tights. He basically replied that there was only one hot girl in the whole thing. Immediately, I cut him to begin to guess who he was talking about. Of course, this opened a whole can of worms. But, I did in fact get on the first try: the queen of the goblins. She had some tight leather outfit, was the only one who didn't look like an 11yo girl (though who knows how old she is).