Time for a blog on a personal experience I recently had.
Until Tuesday of this week I have never even heard of the American Contemporary Ballet. In fact, anything to do with ballet wasn’t even on my radar. I know that I saw parts of Swan Lake or The Nutcracker at different times in my life, but I can’t remember going to the theatre just for a ballet.
On Tuesday I met someone who is affiliated with the American Contemporary Ballet and this person sparked my interest in seeing a performance. So, I discussed it with my better half and she jumped at the opportunity of going to it so we got tickets for the Thursday night performance of Spectacular Balanchine.
The first surprise of the evening was that we got an email that the ACB had a deal with a restaurant in the complex called the District so we decided lets go for it. What a nice place to eat in downtown LA at a location called the Bloc. The drinks and food were good, reasonable priced but the server was the best. She even mixed special dipping sauces for our fries.
Then the theatre. Can you imagine seeing the ballet on the top floor of a building in DTLA. The 32nd floor with windows out everywhere. We got there a little early so we were able to look at the rooftops below us and just look at the spectacular sunset I took a picture of.
Let’s get to the meat of this blog, the performance. First of all there are all of 90 seats at the performance so it isn’t a stretch to tell you that there isn’t a bad seat in the house. The first thing that I noticed is that when you are that close you can hear when the dancers are on their toes because of the support in their shoes. I knew going in that I would get to see the muscles up close and I wasn’t disappointed, but what really amazed me is all the seemingly uncomfortable positions that the dancers had and to see how effortless it was for them. And the breathing, you were so close you could see how much effort the dancers were putting in just holding poses while others were actively dancing.
The show contained experts of 4 different ballets that were choreographed by George Balanchine (who I have never heard of before) and the performances were excellent. There was a real live (but small) orchestra that played very well. The spirit of the music was light and the dancing matched so well.
How much did we enjoy it, we will be going back and I plan on taking the entire team of Southern California Dental Health Associates with their kids to a Sunday matinee. What a great place to see some marvelous live art.