We went to the Royal Opera House to see some ballet at the weekend and I thought I’d share my top tips in case you want to seem some exciting ballet yourself as part of a programme of self improvement and culture. We love culture in our house, we’ve dragged the kids round more museums, galleries and theatres than you could shake a stick at in a no doubt stylised ritualistic fashion, and they’re even beginning to enjoy it now.
So without further ado, these are my top tips for attending the ballet with your children. Or without them, it’s entirely up to you. It’s cheaper if you leave them with their grandparents. Should that be a tip? Who knows…
- If you have vertigo, don’t book the upper slips. They might be (relatively) cheap but if you have to spend two hours feeling the clarion call of the void pulling you towards a long drop to oblivion, it’s probably not worth it.
- Take the time to find out how the ballet you’re attending is pronounced. For example Giselle isn’t pronounced like chisel and you’ll get some funny looks if you repeatedly get it wrong in front of people who aren’t in the cheap seats.
- Take some time before you go to read up on the story. Ballet is at best interpretive dance and at worst just people prancing around on a set. What they dance doesn’t give much away of what is actually happening and I’ve yet to decode what a chap jumping up with his arms by his side, scissoring his legs frenetically actually means in the context of story/emotion or anything else.
- Ensure you find out where all the toilets are and make sure any accompanying children have been toileted three or four times before the ballet starts. The seats are quite closely packed and the amount of tutting that will ensue if you have to get up during part of the performance is astonishing but rest assured, if you do have to go out, you won’t miss anything critical to your understanding of the story; it’ll just be some prancing about and funny jumping, which whilst nice isn’t critical to your enjoyment as the whole thing is made up of prancing about and funny jumping.
- The ladies doing ballet get to do all the cool stuff and the men look a bit daft. All the chaps get to do is the aforementioned jumpy thing (like a posher form of Riverdance), some long strides and a few lifts. The ladies get to do all the spinning around, graceful jumping and stand with their leading foot at a funny angle.
- The ballet we saw was around 100 minutes (with an interval in the middle), followed by about 2 hours of applause and bowing, presumably on a pre-agreed rota to give the performers a chance for a cup of tea or a wee, which meant that the troupe had about 45 seconds before they had to do the performance all over again for the next bunch of punters. Try to moderate your applause or your hands will sting and you’ll swear all you can hear is clapping for the rest of the day.
We had a lovely time, even if Ned, 6, asked in a loud whisper at one point when were they going to start talking because he couldn’t work out what was happening. There is also a nice sandwich shop round the corner that’s good for lunch.