Swan Lake

First off, a correction.OBT has performed Swan Lake before but this is the Swan song for the lead ballerina.
The day went by in a rush-but without a hitch!!
The dissection was smooth-out of 16 kids signed up for the OMSI lab classes just seven showed up.Queasy?Maybe!
There were two parent volunteers including me and the other mother suggested we dissect too and voila! - there we were, dead frog on a tray in front of us.After all the buildup I gave it, it was kind of an anticlimax-for someone who has helped her dad kill chickens,gut and clean them and chop them up -dissection was actually a let down!
The formalin was distracting,but the only lesson I learnt was to gut whole chickens a little more carefully so you can really pay attention to the anatomy and also open up the pouch that usually has the innards-they are really interesting to see.Also, if I can afford it, invest in a microscope which goes with the iPad..........I need to stop getting carried away! Unless we have a budding doctor in the family(which I don't think we do), OMSI should do.
Emmanuel left for camp uneventfully and Noe's tutor was in control.So it was just the two of us.We got there fifteen  minutes before the program started-so we had a pretzel each,found our seats and settled in.
I recognized snatches of music but the classical music aficionado obviously recognized more.The dancing was flawless,tights notwithstanding.The story was excellently communicated without words and Tchaikovsky - one does not, or rather, can not find fault with Tchaikovsky right?
I people watched as usual-attire being the marker this time-people generally dress up to the nines to attend concerts and such.There were women in swanky gowns and women wearing sweaters and tights.The men ranged from the ones wearing coats and tails(one even had a top hat on!) to the ones wearing jeans and T-shirt casuals.All the little girls had beautiful dresses on and the little guys were all formally donned. Inspite of the warning against using electronic devices,there were a few little kids with ipads and older people with iphones clicking away.Formally dressed people standing with plastic cups of beer in hand before the performance seemed a bit incongruous to me,but hey,so did the catcalls and whistling which accompanied the ovation the performers received.But that made the atmosphere less constrictive I think.
The program however seemed interminable-it was magnificent to watch,but too long in my opinion.I think it is too late to correct that now,but the whole thing could be compressed into a compact hour and gotten over with.Less stress on the dancer's legs right?!But then it struck me, these days we are so bombarded with stimuli-our attention span has considerably shortened.I open multiple windows on my laptop and flit between screens, in my car I channel surf for the perfect song to listen to,I even skip songs on the CD to get to the one I want to listen to,so I guess my messed up attention span was what  made me think such sacrilegious thoughts!!
So all in all a good experience.Memorable because we did something we hadn't done since early October 2000- attend an event as a couple- that one was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and funnily Emmanuel has always been partial to it,that was the first piece of music he learnt on his piano, maybe familiar because he had already heard it in utero?
Here's to hoping to do more things as the two of us -maybe next time it will be my turn to pick something and I will take him to watch a noisy,fight sequence filled, song filled Thamizh movie!!Just returning the favour you know!!!