I've been back to the ballet twice since I last updated. Last Tuesday night I saw Balanchine's Walpurgisnacht and Liebeslieder again (which I saw with my parents last week) along with Robbins' The Four Seasons. This piece is not set to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, but to ballet music from Verdi's opera I Vespri Siciliani. It's wonderful music and Robbins' ballet is very inventive, theatrical, funny, and filled with bravura dancing. My friend Benjamin Millepied danced the principal role in Autumn (beautifully, I might add). I usually sit in the orchestra section, but this night I got a seat right in the middle of the front row of the first ring. It was great to see Walpurgisnacht from a different persective, but I missed being "up close and personal" during Liebeslieder.

On Friday night I went back to see an all-Balanchine program--and it was sublime. (Side note: my friend Laura is always making fun of me, saying that I refer to every single ballet night I go to as "the most sublime night!"--well, this time it's true!). The first ballet was La Valse, which is a strange, dark ballet of a dance with death. Ravel's music for it is also strange and dark and wonderful. I don't own any Ravel orchestral music, but this is now certainly on my list of music to buy. The second ballet was Episodes. I haven't seen this ballet in years--maybe five years or longer, and I must say that watching it Friday night was a revelation. There were moments that were so exciting I thought I'd jump out of my skin. It's a "pure dance" ballet in four distinct sections, with music by Webern. I always love watching Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans dance together--they did the third movement and were terrific. Whelan's ability to flex her body in ways that should be impossible never ceases to amaze! The last ballet of the night was Vienna Waltzes, which I've seen so many times over the years that I usually aim to go on nights when it's not on (I think I actually got sick of it a few years ago, having seen it too many times). But I fell for it again this time--in the context of this remarkably varied night of all Balanchine, it represented one of the kinds of ballets he did best: ballets that are at once extremely entertaining and romantic and yet remain extremely accomplished as art.

Not a whole lot else to report from this weekend: a little shopping, a little celebrating of my cousin Christopher's birthday, one slow-motion hangover from that little celebrating of my cousin Christopher's birthday, and today, a quiet sunny Sunday spent alone. I wandered, I ate, and I saw two movies: The Mudge Boy, a coming of age story about a farm kid (3 out of 5 stars), and Young Adam, a bleak, soggy Scottish film starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton (4 stars). This coming week begins a marathon run of ballet nights for me--I'm very excited I'll have so many wonderful memories to think about in the poor house!