I've Never Been to a Professional Ballet

The high school I attended had students from the Virginia School of the Arts come part time. Apparently in Virginia, “The Arts” means ballet so my school was teaming with borderline anorexic females who could also snap my neck with their muscular legs. It is a terrifying combination.

In all that time, the only ballet I ever saw was the local community center’s “Nutcracker.” Even though I had a few friends in it who did very well, I decided I didn’t like ballet. It was boring and slow and no one sang or even talked!

The Virginia School of the Arts

Fast forward 10 years and I fancy myself a cultured snob. I love attending the theatre, I pretend to enjoy opera, and I watch art films and act like they don’t suck. I figured it was time to give ballet another go. Maybe if I saw a professional performance it would be different.

Ballet West in Salt Lake City is, apparently, a well-respected company. I looked at their season online and opted for an original performance of Beauty and the Beast. How can you go wrong with a classic like that?

This was not the show we saw. Unfortunately.

I guess I don’t really know what I was expecting out of the experience, but I know it’s not what I got.

To begin with, the show started at 7pm on a Friday. SLC is 40 minutes away and we left Provo at 5:45. Doing the math, we should have arrived in plenty of time to find parking, make our way to the theater, get situated in our seats, and enjoy the opening of the show.

Turns out, General Conference weekend + mission reunions + Friday rush hour + Utah construction + bad luck = a 90 minute drive to SLC. We missed the first act and I was not a happy camper. Road rage is something I struggle with anyway and knowing that this ballet I paid for was slipping away from me was the cherry on top of my stressed out sundae.

The Capitol Theater in SLC. 

We finally made it to the theater, parked, and rushed inside to find an enormous group of people waiting at the theater doors. Not only were there are fair number of people stuck in the same traffic, but a lot of regulars thought the show started at 7:30. Even a couple friends from our ward were there, having fought the same losing battle we had just emerged from. We waited the 15 minutes or so until intermission and then went in to find our seats.

I’m not sure how we swung it, but we were second row and the view was fantastic. We were not concerned about missing the first act since this is a fairly well-known story, but it turns out our lack of research did not do us any favors. This was not a professional, Ballet West show. This was a second-string and student performance meant for families. What does this mean? Well, it means that it wasn’t very good.

Some of the cast, bless their hearts.

The dancing was, admittedly, beautiful. I’m no expert and I’m sure they weren’t as good as they could have been, but I still enjoyed the choreography quite a bit. What I didn’t like, however, was the narration. In an attempt to make ballet more accessible to children, narration and dialogue were recorded and played over much of the action. Poorly written and poorly delivered, it did nothing but cheapen the experience for me. The three year old behind me, however, seemed to love it.

The best part was the curtain call sequence. Many characters we had missed from the first act came out to do a little jig as their bow and there were a couple who were incredible. I realized that maybe act one was better and we really had missed out on something good.

A disappointment. 

All in all, it was not a great experience. I discovered that I actually do like the dancing, just not cheesy narration. I believe that I will try ballet again, on a Saturday, with the actual professional company, performing a classic like Swan Lake. If I can. 

I've Never Been Pregnant: Guest post by Cat Holt

Guest Blogger: Cat Holt

Four years. 

Four years of waiting for this moment, the one where I can finally shout to the rooftops that I’m having a baby!! But for some reason, the moment doesn’t feel the way that I thought it would. It’s probably because of everything that has happened leading up to it.

My life has been amazing. I have family that cares to the moon and back about my husband and me. I have friends that I count as family because they have been by my side through those fun growing-up moments. I have a husband who only wants to take care of me and provide for my happiness. I have it all! Even a dog whose soft ears could be an entire post by themselves because I am that obsessed with him. But even with all of this, I still wanted more. I wanted a baby of my own.

Desiree, me, and Amy

So our journey began. My husband and I had already been married about a year and a half, and we thought that the time was right to expand the family. However, after a few months and still no baby, we decided to go to the doctors to see what we should do. Thus began the next 4 years. Those years started with, “Oh it’s common for it to take up to a year to get pregnant. We will run some blood tests, but there is no need to panic yet.” Then came the, “Well, we have run lots of blood work and everything looks great. Let’s make sure that your husband is okay.” When all was well with him, the confusion started to kick in. “Hmmm, maybe an ink test will reveal any blockages.” Nope, all clear. “Well, maybe your hormones just aren’t quite right. Let’s try birth control for a little while to see if that resets you. By the way, next few months after this are your best shot of getting pregnant.” Months came and went, no results. “The next step is a fertility drug, let’s give it a shot…OOPS, we overdosed you. Your next few days are about to be really painful.”

Me and my husband with some of our child-rearing friends

And on it went. Never anything new, just more confirmation that nothing was wrong. Nothing was ever wrong. But my life had turned into a guessing game. It got to the point where I almost wanted them to find something wrong so that we could have an answer. Do this and you will get pregnant! At one point, I even (almost) wanted to hear that it just wasn’t possible, and that I should adopt. At least that was an answer. It’s a hard answer and a scary one, but it’s something solid to hold on to. Plus, my husband and I were considering adoption anyway, even if we had our own children. There’s always room for another in a good home. Basically, I needed the monthly emotional roller coaster to end. Some months were unbearable, where I wasn’t sure I could handle this again. Others I just went numb. Why even try to feel? It doesn’t change the answer.

At around the 3.5 year mark of trying, my husband and I moved away to Florida so that he could go to Chiropractic school. We left all of our family and friends behind, and went to a new city that we had never even heard of before. We were hopeful that this was the fresh start that we needed. Maybe if we shed the stress of before, then we could have some positive results. Well, life set in and became crazy. Between my new job and his new schooling, we decided it was best to put the baby plans on the back burner. I didn’t even find a new doctor because I didn’t have time. Now, people say that when you just stop trying, that’s when the miracles happen. I want to clarify something. Yes, we put it on the back burner instead of center stage, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a single day that went by that I didn’t think about having a child. When something like that enters your mind and you have spent so long hoping, you don’t just forget about it.

Our pregnancy announcement

But it worked. After 6 months of living in Florida, I became pregnant. For a split second I thought that all my worries were now over! But then my over-analyzing brain kicked in. Why now? Is it the change in atmosphere? Stress change? Eating different? What was it, so that in case we ever want another child, I can know what to do!

Just starting to show

Then I went to the doctor. For the first time in 4 years, I was one of the girls that got to sit in the waiting room with my bottle of water beside me and a baby pamphlet in hand. But when I looked around the room, I realized that I didn’t relate to all of the other pregnant women around me. I related to that one girl in the corner, the one with her eyes downcast trying not to look at anyone. The one that can’t even bear the sight of the newborn beside her but hears every sound they make. Even though I had now joined the throng of soon-to-be mothers, I didn’t feel like one of them. I had spent so long as that girl in the corner, and only a few months as one in this new group.

But I didn’t know what to do...I still don’t. I know the pain of having someone come up to you and say that they understand what you’re going through, and it will all get better. How do they know?! They are pregnant! They have kids! They don’t know this feeling, right here, right now. Although I understand now how naïve I was, I still know that going up to a hopeful mother is difficult for everyone. We all react differently, and sometimes those reactions vary for a single person depending on where they are in their trial. I know that sometimes all I wanted to hear were success stories from strangers. But other times I just wanted to be left alone in my misery.

26 weeks

So now that I have a foot in both worlds, I want to help anyone I can. I’ve never been great at knowing the right words to say, but know this: I am happy that I went through those 4 years. They changed me in ways that I’m not sure anything else could have. My perspective on life is different now: I’m more patient and less judgmental. I listen to others’ stories instead of just trying to say my bit.

31 weeks

Although I have reached one milestone, I know that this is just the beginning of my story. I have no idea what the future holds, but I’m sure it is full of ups and downs. All I know is to just take life one day at a time, and always look for the good.