Everything was beautiful at the ballet, graceful men lift lovely girls in white

I love, love, love the ballet, as perhaps only an utterly uncoordinated girl with a decidedly unballerina-like body can love it. There's just something magical about seeing the dancers leap and soar through the air. Ballet really has it all: passion, grace, and men in tights.

So I'm delighted that the National Ballet of Canada is finally coming out with a youth discount ticket program. Now I'll be able to see the performances for $20. Though it's more than the $3.50 I paid in Tallinn, it's still pretty good. On right now is West Side Story Suites. Now regular readers of my blog know that West Side Story is one of my favourite movies of all time, so you can imagine how excited I am to see it on stage.

Fun fact 1: Did you know that Jerome Robbins, who conceived/directed/choreographed the original Broadway show, testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities? And that he named names? Lots of names? More names than anyone else? See, that's another reason to love West Side Story -- it's anti-Commie. (I was surprised to hear that because I always heard about Elia Kazan, but never Jerome Robbins).

Fun fact 2: West Side Story was supposed to be about the love story between a Catholic boy with anti-Semitic friends and a Jewish girl who survived the Holocaust and had just immigrated from Israel. Yup, that's right, Maria should have been Malka. But when they realized that no one would believe that a bunch of Jews would get into a gang related knife-fight, they ditched that idea.