Ballet? Really?

As it so happens, yes. EDUCO bought everyone tickets to see a ballet at Versailles, quite fittingly, Marie-Antoinette. Around 6:00, at the Place Saint-Michel station, I boarded the train headed southwest for Versailles. It was dark out by this time, and I read Le Roi-Machine on the long ride; when I arrived at the terminal, I quickly found my way to the palace, and found a modest train of mostly elderly people headed in the same direction. The palace was shining with light (see FB for a photo), and, more importantly, warmer than outdoors.

Under my hoodie (which I checked, along with my backpack), I was wearing my nicest short-sleeve white button-down, the pair of shorts without the hole (just like the day before), and sneakers. I'm a student, and can get away with this kind of dress, but the real clientele were, of course, wearing much finer clothes. I had about a half-hour of waiting in the corridor, where rich people were eating and drinking overpriced food and alcohol. I took the advantage to rediscover the gallery of statues, which everyone else was ignoring. Eventually, I found a nook not far from Charles the Reckless, the 15th-century Duke of Burgundy, and continued my reading. Eventually, we were ushered into the theater.

I had lousy seating; there's no other way to describe it. Fourth floor balcony, on the edge, in the back row. In the gap between a pillar and a family of Japanese (?) tourists, I could see about 60-70% of the stage.

This was my first ballet, and I didn't really know what to expect. I was surprised at the dancers' skill and agility, and I know that my Mom would have enjoyed the costumes. In the first half of the show, Marie-Antoinette first appears at Vienna, and then is married to a certain Louis. Everyone at the French court was wearing masks -- a way of showing deceitfulness and spite, maybe? M-A was deeply hated as a foreigner by the rest of the court, even if good old Ben Franklin thought she was beautiful and elegant (no, there was no BF cameo, much to my disappointment). Louis cheated on her, she got upset, decided to leave him, wrote a letter, but then he hugged her and the intermission began. I spotted one other person from EDUCO, but I was pretty much alone: students had the option of attending one of 3 different performances, and mine was the least popular. So, I found a bench and pulled out my book, which was rather good.

After the intermission, the Revolution began. No, I mean it: definitely the best music was the Revolutionary theme, fast, frantic, and violent. In the midst of crowd of black-jacketed men, one dancer, wearing a brilliantly scarlet coat, led the rest, bearing his bare chest. Not Mirabeau, not Lafayette; Robespierre perhaps? A sort of undifferentiated Spirit of the Revolution? You tell me. In any case, he was pretty cool, as was the carrying offstage of scantily-clad noblemen by the men in black jackets. M-A languished in prison, met someone else, but, in the end, got carried, reluctant and struggling, into the red spotlight, where the executioner, in black leather (same dancer as the red-coated guy) tilted her head back. The performance ended with a thud.

So, the Revolution guy gets made props, as do the man and woman who represented the passage of time. I left with mixed feelings: definitely a night well spent, but I think I could have thought of better ways to spend it. I walked back into my dorm around midnight. Thank goodness I had no classes the next day!

~JD

"La depense la plus frequent est consacree au vin, car les fetes sont nombreuses... tout est pretexte pour boire" [The expense the most frequent - among students in medieval Europe - was dedicated to wine, for parties were numerous. Everything was a pretext for drinking] (Jean Verdon, Voyager au Moyen Age, p. 193).