We went to the ballet - A Midsummer's Night's Dream

A few weeks ago, Kelsey and I made the relatively short trek to Nashville to see A Midsummer Night's Dream Ballet at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center downtown. She had asked for tickets to the ballet for her birthday in March, and these were the ones I could arrange closest to her actual birthday. We were running a few minutes late from dinner and parking, but we were seated about 10 minutes into the performance. I could definitely live with that.

I remember thinking that it was a good thing that I knew the story of this particular play, otherwise I might have felt a bit lost at the ballet interpretation of the action. Kelsey loves Shakespeare and remembered the basic story line too, so it was nice to talk about how the version of the play in our mind matched the one that we saw performed for us. 

Our seats were not fabulous, but we could nevertheless see the stage and the dancers quite well. Our tickets were roughly $40 each, I think. Here's a shot of the stage during the performance intermission.

And here's a shot of my beautiful girl during intermission.

We had a nice view of the orchestra pit too; the music was amazing.

A light drizzle was falling as we walked back to our car, but neither of us seemed to mind it much. It was still a bit chilly outside too, so that at least encouraged us to walk briskly.

Kelsey even managed a quick photo of me before I insisted on getting dry and warm in the car.

And here's a shot of the outside of TPAC; the facilities really are quite lovely. I was surprised it wasn't even close to a sellout crowd, particularly since there were only three performances of this ballet scheduled. I hope more of their shows are sellouts,  so they can continue providing quality art and performances for their guests.

As we left the theater, Kelsey pointed out that she'd really like to do something like this a few (or several) times a year. I think she might be getting to the point in her life where she'd rather have experiences instead of things for gifts. Who am I kidding? She probably wants both. (She takes after her mama in that way, I suppose. Haha!)  I'd love to be able to take her more often, but the cost for the evening really was quite prohibitive. It looks like it'll be a once or twice a year sort of event for our family.

Here's the breakdown of the cost:

Dinner $118 (more on this to come in a later post - not a happy camper about this)

Parking for dinner $10

Ballet tickets $80

Ticket change fee $14

Ballet parking $26

Glass of wine at ballet $15

Total ballet expenditure - $263 

I had a lovely evening with my girl, but that's not the kind of money I usually spend for about 3 hours of entertainment. At least she loved it, and we were able to spend a lovely evening together just the two of us. I'm feeling quite cultured now too, although I still giggle on the inside when I see guys wearing tights. ;)