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                William Shakespeare through interpretive dance

Spring [1], Wlofie [2], Bunny and I went to the Bankatlantic Center Frank
Sinatra Theatre [3] to see the Russian National Ballet perform “Romeo and
Juliet” (thanks to complementary tickets Spring obtained from a fellow cow-
orker).

We arrived at the theatre well in time for the performance, and we used the
time to avoid paying $20 to park at the Bankatlantic Center Frank Sinatra
Theatre and instead parked across the street at the Sawgrass Mills Mall [4].
It was amazing that parking cost so much, considering that every flat surface
of the Bankatlantic Center Frank Sinatra Theatre was covered with advertising
and sponsor logos (even the urinals were covered!).

They had curtained off one third of the arena and set up a stage area. Our
seats were halfway up the nosebleed section, almost opposite the stage, so we
had a nice view of the orchestra pit and the stage.

The dancing was good. It's not hard to be impressed with how effortlessly the
dancers leapt and pirouetted across the stage. The lighting—for the most
part, the lighting was okay but the people working the spot lights could have
been much better. Late cues, not spotting random parts above the stage,
overshooting the dancers and generally very poor workmanship with the spot
lights. And the music? Let's just say that it wasn't much better than a high
school orchestra (say, a C-). Very disappointing.

But more annoying (maybe) were the kids just behind us—the oldest might have
been five years old. Constantly asking questions and kicking the back of my
seat (and Bunny's, and Spring's). They definitely distracted me from my
enjoyment of the dancers, and only slightly from the inept spotlights. And it
turns out, they were in the wrong seats anyway and after intermission had
moved on to annoy some other section of the audience.

Overall, I'm glad we didn't pay for these tickets (retail value: $56 per
ticket). I think I had more fun watching Incubus [5] (at least at home, we
could heckle the movie).

[1] http://www.springdew.com/
[2] http://wlofie.dyndns.org/
[3] http://www.bankatlanticcenter.com/
[4] http://www.sawgrassmillsmall.com/
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2007/04/12.2

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