I’ve always been a fan of dance, in particular the ballet, and have been fortunate enough over the years to have seen a number of excellent performances in Australia. The idea of telling stories not with words but with movements and music is awe inspiring to me.
So how could I resist when I saw a poster at Edinburgh train station advertising Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty? I couldn’t, of course, but I was coming to the end of my trip and money was in short supply. I had another week in which I needed to feed myself and Katy without food at least every three hours is not a happy Katy.
So what to do?
My Italian bred, Scotland-living host, Beatrice, and I went to the magnificent Festival Theatre to assess the situation for that evening’s show. It was my last night in Edinburgh and Beatrice had never been to the ballet before, so our fingers were crossed.
Luck was with us that day as it would seem, when we were told we could not only get tickets but, being after noon on the day of the performance and being the students that we are, tickets would be 10 pounds. TEN POUNDS I TELL YOU!
On receipt of our tickets, we saw the words ‘restricted view’ stamped in bold at the bottom, but were not at all disheartened. Did I mention they were 10 pounds?
The performance was beautiful and the costumes were outstanding. Visually, it was a masterpiece of a show and Tchaikovsky’s music never fails to disappoint.
As for our seats, well, I’ll leave it up to you to decide how restricted our view was:
Curtains closed before the performance
Probably the best seats I’ve ever had in my life!
I leave you with a trailer for The Sleeping Beauty so you can see some of the production in action.
storytelling nomad 