Swannee

Tonight I haz got teh culture. Sharon and Linn Marie had tickets for the Vienna Festival Ballet doing Swan Lake but unfortunately they couldn't go. Shame to waste them so I took our friend Christopher along for a spot of self-improvement.

I don't mind watching rhythmic dance but I have to say I'm not the world's greatest fan of the interpretive stuff. Dance, to my mind at least, does not readily lend itself to intricate story-telling. I can remember prancing about at primary school pretending to be a tree or a farmyard animal - surely it's a bit more involved than that? I'm also a ballet virgin and although I'm familiar with Tchaikovsky's music, I didn't have a clue about the story. Being too broke to get a programme, I was going to have to trust the skill of the choreographer and see if I could work it out. Couldn't. Didn't have a clue. I've just looked it up. Right, needless to say, the VFB's typecasting department worked overtime - the only black bloke in the company played von Rothbart, the baddie. But I'd worked that one out, to be honest. And pointing in an exaggerated fashion at your ring finger meant something to do with getting married, yeah? And those tights don't hide much, do they. And aren't those shoes noisy in the quiet musical bits. And are they always that wobbly? I was completely thrown by the ending; didn't realise it had finished at all until they all lined up and everyone started clapping. Wasn't there meant to be a dying swan bit? Must have been when she was on the floor near the end. Honestly, I don't think I'm that much of a philistine but I must be missing a plug-in.

Still, I'm glad I had the opportunity to go, it's been something I'd promised myself I'd see ever since I was a kid and I'd go again. And I'd like to see Swan Lake again but done by a dead famous company, just to compare. I think though that I prefer noisy rock and roll. Or opera. Never been to a proper one of those either. One last thing, and this pissed me right off: is it really that difficult to go just under an hour each side of the interval without needing to eat? We were on the end of a row but the family to my right crunched, slurped and unwrapped throughout. At one point I had to forcibly steel myself not to grab the bag of Minstrels that was being passed around and stamp on the bastard things. What is this thing people have with being in a cinema or theatre and needing to eat? I was having a hard enough job trying to work out what was going on without the noises off. DON'T BLOODY DO IT!!