I went to see the ballet for the first time this evening. It was a school production of Kate Simmons Dance, which I went to because my housemate Royce Neagle was in it, and also to see what this classical dance stuff was about. I'd been to a contemporary dance thing at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (warning: useless flash-based website) a few years ago because at the time I was living with two of the students there, but that was my only previous exposure to such high culture.
Anyway, it was quite cool. They did Petrushka, which is about these Russian puppets who come alive, although it's apparently metaphorical for the Russian revolution and stuff. Petrushka himself (Alex Addison) is an unhappy clown puppet who fancies The Ballerina, but she prefers The Moor, so it's all a bit sad. Royce was the Rich Merchant, who wears a fur hat and capers around with gypsy girls. The plot in that was a bit baffling at times—there's this bit where The Moor is trying to open a coconut and then starts worshipping it as a god, which is a bit weird, and there were two girls with strange goat-head hats on at the end, which I didn't understand.
The second part was a series of short bits called West End Medley, complete with girls in bowler hats and lots of arm swinning, and some tap bits which were good.
Finally, they did something called The Lady and the Fool, where there's a high-class ball where the Prince of Arragonza (Robbie Clarke, a mate of Royce's I've met a few times) and the Italian Ambassador (Paul Lewis) are dancing with all the lassies. The ‘Lady’ called Capricciosa (Dani Ferreira) meets two ‘Fools’ call Moondog (Royce) and Bootface (Mandev Sokhi) on the way there and pays them to dance for her. They turn out to be pretty funny, so she takes them into the ball, and, after lots of tooing and froing, falls for Moondog. The Ambassador seemed pretty upset at the end, I think because he fancied Capricciosa, but it's quite hard to follow all the details of the plot in these things.
Anyway, all in all an entertaining night out :-)