Pinocchio

Today we went to a ballet production of Pinocchio.  It was put on by the local ballet school, so it was not a full-length ballet, although it was still in the ballet venue.  Naomi got tickets for her birthday, and all of us went, including Sim.  He didn’t go to the recent Cinderella (or Cingorilla, depending on your pronunciation preferences), although he claims to have done so, and tells, with great accuracy, the stories that he’s heard the girls tell from that adventure, only as if he had been there.  Needless to say, he was thrilled to go today.

Naomi, being Naomi, was skeptical about the story.  It seems that it’s been a while since we’ve read her anything about Pinocchio, so she spent a good deal of time trying to extract all the details from us so as to be SURE that there wasn’t anything scary or sad in it.  I was fairly certain we’d be safe, despite the fact that there are some not-so-happy parts of Pinocchio, because ballet is sometimes a safer medium for that sort of thing than stories are.  I was right.  The sad or scary parts were understated, and the dancing was underscored, so it was right up Naomi’s alley.

Hannah was funny afterwards:  she wanted to know everyone’s favorite part.  And then she wanted to know what our next favorite part was.  And then she wanted to know who our favorite character was.  We’ve had some fun discussions about the props and sets.  She really liked the effect they used for water, which was long strips of fabric held by dancers across the stage and moved up and down in time to the music and the dancing that was going on.  It was pretty neat to watch. 

Naomi’s favorite costume was the mermaids.  (Umm…yeah…don’t ask how mermaids come into the story.  I didn’t remember Pinocchio meeting Neptune and his court, either, but I suppose they took some balletic license.  That was a really cool part of the show, too, so I am not going to complain about it.)  She elaborated a bit, though.  Turns out that, if she’d designed the costumes, she would have made them have their legs in the tail.  I mentioned that this might lead to tripping or other difficulties.  Naomi was unconcerned by this:  “Oh, no, they would practice a lot until they got good at it.”  Enough practice will make dancing with both your legs in a tail costume easy as pie, I’m sure. 

We have made it a tradition to go to a ballet school production of The Nutcracker in December, and the kids all love it.  I was somewhat concerned this past December, because I opted to take Simeon along.  He hadn’t ever been to a show of an hour (and he’s 2 for crying out loud!), but he sat through the entire thing on my lap, only asking a question one time.  When the curtain went down when it was finished and I said it was over, he cried and cried.  He wanted to see it again!   This was repeated with Pinocchio today.  He burst into tears when I told him it was over, and spent most of the ride home asking if we could go back and watch it again.  It was useless to explain that they weren’t actually performing it again, so we wouldn’t be able to watch it even if we went back. 

Hannah and Naomi, having been to multiple ballets by this time, were much more philosophical about the ending.  They moved right on to asking if we could go to the gift shop.  Nobody had brought spending money, though, so we were spared.