the time the american ballet theatre came to seoul

last night, i put up my hair, slipped on a skirt, pulled on some (₩5000) turquoise patent-leather pointy-toed kitten heels, and transferred three subway lines to meet some lovely friends for a ballet.

[the shape and design and cost of the shoes actually have nothing to do with this story, but. seriously.]

the evening
was
magical.

the moment the curtains were raised and the orchestra began its sticky sweet ascent, i surrendered weakly to the delicious fantasy within and let my years of repressed dreams trickle and tumble and flood their way back.
i was gloating. i was four. i was pastels and chiffon and renoir.
so, apparently, was the rest of the audience.



by the end of the third act, we were soaring. we had conquered the world. we jumped up and down in our seats.
the prima ballerina lifted her finger. we roared louder.

i forgot, for a moment, whether we were watching the world cup or don quixote -

only to be reminded, quite audaciously, when at the end of twenty minutes of encore applause and three separate curtain raises, the premier danseur leapt boldly through the curtains and onto the stage, confidence radiating in his taut white tights, hair billowing in his (self-created) triumphant wind.

the applause, at this point, was deafening.
if i had a rose, i would have thrown it. if someone had begun the wave, i would have joined in.

it reminded me a bit of the once upon a time three months ago when i watched the end of rudy. i was running on a treadmill in a dark and musty room filled with similar machines lit by a large cinema screen (which may or may not be known as gold gym's cardio cinema), when all of the sudden i had to hit the giant red pause button and feign breathless sweatiness to disguise the fact that i was gasping with sobs. okay, perhaps to disguise the fact that i was breathless and sweaty and choking with sobs.
to be completely honest, i don't care one whit for football films. and by one whit, i probably mean that i hate them. and yet - the roar of the crowd chanting a single name (rudy’s, by means of a spoiler), the enlargement of a single emotion throughout a group of people until that same idea was beating in a simultaneous rhythm through their hearts -
this moved me.

i’ve been a bit fanatical, lately, with the idea of becoming like a child again. i read my eight-year-old student’s english journal and sometimes copy down phrases when he isn’t looking, wishing i could uproot and replant them deep inside my bones:

Today in the morning I watched TV and played with my brother.
It was fun.
In the afternoon I went to Taekwondo.
I did skipping ropes and it was a bit fun.
At night I watched Jurassic Park and it was a scary movie but I wasn’t scared and I thought it was fun.

a friend wrote a post a few weeks ago that stirred up so much within me, and made me question, so fundamentally, what actually happens to each of us as time progresses.
i wonder if it's more than just growing older, or more than the conscientious and natural and sometimes painful realization that we are not peter pan carousing about an island on a star. i wonder if it might have something to do with our losing a certain charm for life, a certain light-hearted and irrational and maybe even overly sentimental belief that there is such a thing as magic.

perhaps we don't have to stop time or rewind our years to understand this. perhaps we don't have to fly to neverland to understand the magic in a moment when an entire stadium of people are cheering a single name (hello again, rudy), or crying with crazed and uninhibited jubilation at something as traditionally nonpareil as a classical ballet.

i suppose all i really want to say is this:
today in the evening i went to the ballet.
and it was fun.