Peter Pan: Opening Night!

Attended the opening night of the Ballet "Peter Pan" by Septime Webre @ The Kennedy Center on this past Thursday...

 The Kennedy Center is a wonderful place to take in a show. The Ballet I attended tonight, Peter Pan, was great fun. It was delightfully comic and also sweet. The principles were all well balanced and compelling and the ensemble danced beautifully, too. Upon leaving, I over heard one woman say to a friend, "This was SO much better than it's first staging 5 years ago." And I just thought it was great! It's the brainchild of Washington Ballet's Artistic Director Septime Webre--and we are clearly fortunate to have his creative spirit at the helm. He's created other ballets from classic tales like Alice in Wonderland. Next, he's debuting The Legend of Sleep Hollow, and after tonight, I'm planning on seeing it, too.

The Washington Ballet is an interesting group. I am not a devotee of ballet, so I don't know how it measures up with other companies; however, the thing that is striking is its diversity--a richness that stretches beyond tokenism. Members of the company hail from across the United States but also Japan, Cuba, China, Armenia, Albania, Australia, South Africa, Hungary, Brazil, Belarus, Venezuela, South Korea and Ukraine. I like the intentionality of that.

It was also opening night, and I had an aisle seat in the second row. No one arrived to take the seat next to mine--that's a luxury. And the two seats in front of me were used by a sister and brother who were so adorable I nearly risked being called a pervert to get their picture, but alas, I thought better of it, and so my description will have to suffice.

They were completely unaccompanied by any adult, and as non-chalant by this as if they owned the place. I, in fact, never saw them interact with any adults. She was 9 and dressed up like Wendy with a wreath of flowers in her hair and ribbons trailing. He was 7 with long locks of blond hair that caused another patron in the front row who arrived after them to ask if you "girls" could made room for them to pass. The little girl instructed her brother how he needed to step into the aisle and then she politely, but firmly announced to the women, "He's a boy." And what a boy! A boy who was not intending to grow up!--dressed in complete and impressive Peter Pan costume right down to a brass studded brown cape and green yeoman's cap with a bright red feather. Before the performance started, she read and explained the entire synopsis from the program to him, and he listened intently. To use a phrase I do enjoy, "They were totes adorb!"