So, last week I saw a coworker post on our internal for-sale list that she had two tickets to tonight's performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for sale. The price seemed reasonable, and Eric and I try to go to at least one theater performance each year, so we thought we'd make this year's a ballet.

Now, I'll be honest - I've been to exactly one ballet in my life, and it was "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and I was about 9. All I really remember was that in the forest, there were many stage ninja holding these DayGlo blinking eyes, and they creeped me the hell out. Needless to say, I know next to nothing about ballet. Eric has been to several ballets (insert shocked looks here), but it had been several years.

I mentioned to one of my coworkers that we were going to the ballet, and he looked utterly confused and said that he didn't think we were ballet people - he couldn't reconcile "gamer" and "ballet", apparently. Telling someone else about this at work got them very angry on my behalf, because the first coworker was trying to pigeonhole me. Personally, I thought it was kinda funny, but that's me.

As for the ballet itself...I felt like I had gone to a play done in a language I don't know very well. I know that I missed things, because ballet strikes me as fairly...I don't want to say formulaic, because of the connotation that has, but ritualistic. And I don't know the rituals. I've been going to the theater since I was a kid, both straight plays and musicals, and this was the most confused I've ever felt leaving the theater. It was beautiful, and the music was glorious, but I was left with a desire to see a stage or film version of the play, because at least then I would be back in my element.

Maybe my first coworker was right after all - maybe I'm not ballet people.