somewhere around ten years ago i decided i was basically sick of modern hollywood movies (with a few directors i give a pass), and that slowly turned into a realization that i should go to live theater more. then covid happened and i never actually did that. and as much as i've never reached a point of feeling totally great about going outside due to that either, it's slowly hit a point of like "well, i can wait forever and i might never feel totally fine about this, or i can just start doing it." and especially after the sudden storm of "AI art" a couple years ago, i found myself even more drawn to the thought of seeing live shows, and getting to see something raw and human in front of me, unembellished with recording and post-production and all that, whether it was concerts, theater, or whatever else. so a couple months ago we saw fun home, the musical adaptation of alison bechdel's memoir, with a friend of mine from school who before this i hadn't talked to in about 15 years. we were like 5-10 feet away from them at that theater (a really small room in aurora) and i was pretty blown away. then a bunch of stuff happened and we've been really busy and didn't make it out to another show before tonight.
a couple years ago i also watched sumo for the first time. really my only frame of reference for this is the street fighter character "e. honda" who flies forward and headbutts people a lot. and i had a bit of a reaction like "man this is the same reason i feel weird watching the nfl" but i also found it to be something really exciting and compelling...i feel like it's hard not to have a conflicting feeling watching a really brutal sport like this. people devote their lives to something which is a really extreme use of their bodies, and in the case of a full contact event like this there's a possibility you could see someone's career end at any time. but in the end...we'll all die. choosing not to do something so intense will likely keep a person away from pain and poor health a bit longer, and probably nobody really fathoms the consequences when they decide to give themselves fully over to competition or art. can a human really do that at all? i've started to think this is something that transcends logic and morality. it's wrong to force people to do something like this, but is it wrong to do it? that feels like an absurd way of looking at it, as if we could measure how many years someone loses for doing something like that and decide whether they should have done it or not.
i work right now in clinical and scientific motion capture. we work with and study people who have been injured not from intensive sport training but for what i would regard as unavoidable medical factors, and communicate with people who do similar work but with people (generally children) who have impaired movement for even more fundamental reasons. so injuries and movement are on my mind a lot, and it's something that's interested me for a long time even though i'm not sure i realized it. (i was blown away by QWOP the first time i saw it...and i showed my mom and she "got it" right away. i've thought about that moment for years and years.)
adding all these thoughts together, i found myself kind of weirded out and fascinated by ballet when i guess i became aware of...what it is. i really wanted to go, but then i didn't for a long time. denver's performing arts center has a dedicated local ballet company although the runs for performances are quite short and since i don't tend to plan things far in advance, so i missed a couple of the shows i thought of going to in the past. and as mentioned, we were really busy lately, but i suddenly noticed that they were putting on coppelia last weekend and this weekend, so i mentioned offhand to my girlfriend that it'd be pretty cool if we found the chance. i figured i would be really tired from stuff and didn't want to push it too hard, but since my birthday is also this weekend she just...bought tickets and made sure we were available. i don't want to go into the details, but it was a pretty wild move since things were looking a bit precarious after a huge snowstorm thursday. hahaha.
ballet is one of those things like opera where it traditionally involves an orchestra and a bunch of dedicated performers on top of that and understandably has an association as something high-class as a result. it's definitely hard for me to imagine how such a thing could proliferate without disproportionately wealthy and influential patrons. which is part of why it's weird. dancers train from a young age, and i'm hardly unaware of what it takes to be a professional instrumentalist, since i grew up playing piano and violin at a modest level myself. to then perform a show a handful of times for a few hundred people...it doesn't feel proportionate to that. it's almost too much to think about. but at the same time, that's why i wanted to see it.
and i'm so glad i did, god. i really can't speak too much to the specifics since this is something i still really don't know much about (i did watch the first act of a performance of this same work on youtube a few years ago...), but i was stunned and thrilled. the performers have incredible control over their bodies, but they don't speak or sing. as far as i can tell coppelia is one of the absolute most famous ballet performances there is. at the least, it seems to be mentioned and referenced more than almost any i know of, except for the nutcracker (obviously) and maybe swan lake. the combination of extreme physical expression (both for its own sake and to convey the story) synced with musical cues and no vocalizations gives a real sense (at least in this case) of physical comedy that is incredible to watch. and then in the last act the plot wraps up very quickly and there's just 20 more minutes of wild dancing. it's like martial arts movies but instead of punching they're just spinning around and making the most outrageous poses i've ever seen and lifting each other up.
it fucking ruled. i can't wait to go again. i want to take everyone i know to a show. and i'm going to keep going to other stuff too. let's all support the arts when we can. they're something truly special.