Ballet Ticket

Moscow.  The Don Quixote Ballet at the Stanislavsky Theater was pree-krah-snah (awesome/excellent).  At the theater, the women wore mostly dresses. So much so, that I was accosted by a female security guard AFTER passing security. I thought she was going to frisk me, but she demanded to know if I had a “bill-yet ballet.” She studied my ticket in what appeared to be consternation and then returned it with a dismissive look. Only then was I permitted to proceed to the woman who was tearing tickets. She seemed very nice and even a bit chagrined about my security treatment after I chatted with her in Russian. I made it to my seat, which was first rate, without further challenge. Champagne at the intermission wasn’t expensive and is pronounced champanskah. (How easy is that?) The intermission was fun. Returning to my seat, I was again drawn to the dresses of the women in the audience. The dresses weren’t fancy, but I felt a somehow familiar feeling…then it dawned on me. I was in a world full of people looking like my mother in the early 1970s. The women were dressed like she dressed for work in the early 1970s, at any rate. I was not dressed like that at all, and the year was 2013. The show ended at 10:35 p.m. As I walked home in the early twilight, I mused that the security guard must have known right away I wasn’t dressed for an audience part. But I didn’t know I was to be given a part to play.  (It would have been pitch dark in New England at that hour. Perhaps that accounts for the varied styles of the audience at the Boston ballet.)

“You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.”—Dr. Seuss

Tattoo—Journeys on My Mind by Tina Marie L. Lamb is available on Amazon and on iBooks and on Barnes and Noble. Get an ebook or paper book now.