Ballet Beautiful

Tonight was what I've been getting excited about for ages....

When I was a child, I had one of those hard backed annuals that were so popular during the mid 70's. My Nanny and Grampi bought it for me, after one of my stage performances at the Town Hall, doing some weird and wonderful ballet or tap moves that made them proud.

Now that ballet annual was my holy grail. It was my most prized possession, and as it was such a prized possession, my mother took great delight in binning it at the first opportunity (sorry Yes I am still bitter about that, even after all these years LOL!)

Anyway, in this most wonderful, holy grail of a book, there were some pages showing beautiful ballet dancers in even more beautiful costumes, dancing to Coppelia......... As a talented dancer who had actually been on stage at the Town Hall, I imagined, as any 10 or 11 year old might, that I could one day be that ballet dancer in those pictures, dancing to that particular ballet.

Needless to say, I became too tall, too gangly and too awkward to continue with ballet and ended up joining the Brownies and Girl Guides when I was older. Those costumes and that particular ballet stayed with me though.

In all of my years attending Ballets, be it the Nutcracker or Swan Lake or any other beautiful performance that I could get to see, I had never seen Coppelia advertised. Until now.

I booked the tickets and Sally Ann and I made our way up there in plenty of time. So much so, that I had time to stop at Tesco for many many many bags of sweets to get us through the evening.

The curtain went up and I held my breath.....

and as it came back down for the final time at the end of Act III to enchantment ended, and I became a 40 year old again.


It was a wonderful evening, and the Duchy Ballet should be very proud of themselves for the fantastic performance they gave us.