Weird guy at the club or interpretative dance?

Admittedly, I'm not the foremost authority on the "finer" arts. Sidney Pollack's work looks like blood spatters from a violent crime. In a German art museum, they hung a 12 ft by 18 ft white painting. I thought it was a blank canvas. Nope, someone had put on a coat of white paint. They were selling it for $45,000. I still don't get it.

My evaluating skills are no better at dance. I know what I find entertaining, but ask me to explain the difference between a "grande jete" and a "plie" and you'll find me running for wikipedia. I've been to a few ballet's in my day - more than ten, less than twenty. I fall asleep during half of them.

On Saturday night, my wife and I, along with two other expat couples, attended a ballet performance that included our daughter's teacher. There were three "movements". The first one left all of us asking ourselves if we had made a mistake.

In the first movement, a solitary male - the choreographer for the evening - spasmodically jerked, alternated between fear and curiosity, and really just looked like the weird guy at the dance club who believes he is a really good dancer but is really providing comedic material for the rest of the club goers. From the brief article I read about the ballet prior to attending, and my ever improving Indonesian, I understood he was playing the part of a schizophrenic. It was a bad "interpretation". I don't know what he was trying to accomplish, so he may have succeeded - as long as entertaining the audience wasn't his goal. There was little more than polite applause when he finished.

The second movement was better, enjoyable even, though the constant giggling induced an urge to throw something. I'm glad I didn't have any fruit - or a Nerf ball. Two dancers, young lovers. He wanted sex, she wanted to wait. Frustration, anger, convulsions, crying, further rebukes, and finally, reconciliation, played out on the stage with fluidity and grace. If they eliminated at least half of the giggling, I probably would not have had a bad word to say about it. Our daughter's instructor gave an excellent performance.

At intermission - after the second movement - we half seriously, half jokingly, discussed leaving. We'd seen the person we came to see and we weren't terribly entertained. If we had left, we would have missed an excellent third movement.

The premise of the third movement - again, based on my limited Indonesian and how I interpreted the dance - was mortals versus gods. The main character asked his lover to choose between himself and Arjuna, an incarnation in Hindu mysticism. There was a young version and an old version of his lover and I never did quite determine the significance.

To start the third movement the main character and his young lover performed a very erotic dance in the shower. Had I been falling asleep, this dance would have woken me. No nudity, but the woman's costume did an excellent job inferring the idea of nudity. Later, either Arjuna himself, or a chief warrior in his entourage battled the main character in a very compelling battle dance. The movement ended with the demons of hell consuming both versions of the female - the younger one being blindfolded.

Though I would recommend the ballet, I'd advise people to arrive late. Only one member of our party fell asleep - and it wasn't me.

After the ballet we went for drinks at Sky, a bar up the street from our house in Kemang. Sky is on the top floor of an all-glass building and has an outdoor patio with an excellent view of the city. The band for the evening was "Flying Syrup", a British Pop band. They covered several Oasis, Beatles and U2 songs, and did so quite well.

Spending an evening out, with other adults and no kids is a rare treat for us. I hope we'll do it again soon.