July 19
Whooo, what a TREAT! Ben and Bonnie’s friends couldn’t use their tickets to the American Ballet Theater’s Romeo and Juliet and I Got to Go!
It’s an amazing marvelous thing, these big productions of ballet, opera, and the like. Such passion, hundreds of people having devoted their lives to bring themselves up to this standard of performance.
Especially the dancers, who are in a separate class. They are literally starving themselves, crippling themselves, suffering pain every day, to rise to the demands of classical ballet. On the one hand I’m ambivalent about encouraging such a sacrifice and on the other hand what they do, when it’s good, it’s breathtakingly gorgeous.