MAY 8, 16 .. THE BALLET.. SLEEPING BEAUTY..

Go Figure!

At age 80 I am ‘getting into’ the Opera and (Dahlings) The Ballet. To do so I had to come and live awhile in Ulaanbaatar Mongolia (УЛААНБААТАР МОНГОЛИЯ). I am getting so much enjoyment over learning the Mongolian Cyrillic Alphabet.

“Wait a minute Captain! This is a program of honesty! “

“Captain tell all of your faithful followers here that you just spelled the word Mongolia above in RUSSIAN.”

Where was I before I just swerved and veered-off-track above. Got it!

Did I just write : Go Figure!

I am also learning fast that the story lines, the plots if you will, of these operas and of the ballet are not always happy and joyous. I did realize basically what was happening in Sleeping Beauty.

My understanding of the plot of Sleeping Beauty was because all week Patti was ‘coaching-me-up’ about the plot. I kept wondering when the seven dwarfs would appear.

“Cap that is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

“Got it .. The wicked stepmother.”

“Cap that is Cinderella.”

I DID realize what was happening when the Prince showed up and kissed Sleeping Beauty and all the castle occupants awoke after sleeping for one hundred (100) years. Talk about a NAP. A one hundred year nap.

That-Is-That. For more than you will ever want to know about Sleeping Beauty turn to our friends ‘Google’ and ‘Wikipedia’.

After you have gotten through this Post you will see why I could have titled this Post : WHAT A DAY!

I will alter the actual order of events and begin with the ballet Sleeping Beauty.

No! I am going to make this basically a two-part post. So tomorrow or Tuesday I will show you what I did (1) before the ballet and (2) after  the ballet.

You can tell you are at The Ballet IF the actors / dancers / ballerinas have on these odd ballet slippers that somehow enable them to walk (both forward and backward if you can believe that) on their tippy-tippy-toes. Like professional athletes who make their sporting activites look easier than they really are the dancers make this act of walking on their tippy-tippy-toes look easy. Patti said they begin learning to do this at a very young age.

This website and internet business is not for the faint of heart. Instantly I got dropped-off-line with absolutely no warning. The problem is that I can NOT always tell I have lost my internet connection. I just did a complete restart and hope I can again connect to the internet. Sometimes I can’t. Luckily I just did. Where was I?

The Ulaanbaatar Opera House.Tonight I sat in a different seat. Instead of sitting in the front row center seat in the balcony I sat in the top row house left on the aisle in the balcony.

“Whoa Captain. You changed your seat Captain?” .. “Yes for two reasons.”
The entire center section of the balcony (100% of it) was filled to capacity with squeeling, hyper-active, busy-children who obviously were on a ‘school outing to the ballet’ so I could NOT get my usual seat even IF I had wanted to do so.BUT! Even before I knew the center section of the balcony was 100% occupied I had already purchased my seat. Instead of my usual front / center seat in the balcony I wanted to be on the aisle beside the opera usher. Then IF there was any cell-phone bright-light usage I could immediately ask her to stop any cell-phone monkey-business. This was going to be very easy since she and I were going to be very close (my right elbow beside her left leg).

How on earth could I have ever known there would be an entire center section full of about 50 young Mongolian monkey-like-children each with their very own smart cell phones and all of them using them all performance long doing ‘cell-phone monkey-business’.

On a pensive note I sat wondering IF one of the squirming mass of children would be so fascinated by the show that a seed would be planted into the mind of a future performer.

YOUR Captain had to let-go of the cell-phone-activity issue during the performance and I mean let-go-right-now!

The house lights dim.Sleeping Beauty the ballet is about to begin.
Because the poor usher was busily occupied with all of the active children she was almost constantly looking off to her right at them.

I your very own MISCHIEVOUS CAPTAIN then reverted back to being a monkey-like-child myself. As such I was busily snap-snap-snapping away on my ushers ‘blind left side’ as she was busy with the ‘other’ children to her right. So I got the below photos.

Suddenly and finally (I knew that it was bound to happen) an usher on the far far-right side of the theater saw me and hit me with a brilliant beam from her ..

Laser (a device that produces a nearly parallel, nearly monochromatic, and coherent beam of light by exciting atoms to a higher energy level and causing them to radiate their energy in phase) red light!

However it was far-too-late because for me to get the above seven fairly worthwhile photos I must have shot thirty or more frames. You have to realize that these ballet dancers are almost constantly twirling and spinning and jumping into the air around-and-around and thus they become blurs in photos.

Smiles .. Cap ..

A two-photo peek at an upcoming Post.

Before The Ballet ..After The Ballet ..
IF you don’t think that I am having the fun time-of-my-life here then : Guess Again!

• ← MAY 6, 16 .. SUN CHICKEN
• MAY 11, 16 .. WINTER HAS RETURNED TO ULAANBAATAR →