Star Wars - the Ballet!
Yesterday, in conjunction with pre-birthday celebrations, we went to see Star Wars - the Ballet! It turns out that this was the final concert for a local ballet school (which is presumably why it received so little publicity) and was 45 minutes of home-brew choreography for children of all ages against the classic John Williams score.
The first thing we noticed about it was that it was not a reinactment of the original trilogy. It was an "original" plot in the Star Wars universe using the Star Wars characters. I can't quite recall the precise wording, but the premise that ran across the screen at the beginnng in big slanty letters was something like this:
Darth Vader's family is falling apart! Jedi Master Yoda uses the power of time travel to help save this most disfunctional of families, by making it so that young Luke and young Leia can exist at the same time as adult Luke and adult Leia.
I kid you not. This is the plot of the ballet. I'm not sure what having little Luke and little Leia around was supposed to accomplish, but then, it's ballet.
So, the main conflict is that Vader has captured Princess Leia from her palace...somewhere...with his band of Storm Trooperettes. Okay, the Storm Trooperettes were actually pretty awesome: white body-suits and visors with black belts, and really choppy military movements. Artoo, Threepio, and Leia's bevies and bevies of attendants try ineffectively to ward them off. Vader actually gets some pretty awesome force-choking in. Artoo gets knocked over a lot, Threepio flails wildly, and eventually Leia gets kidnapped.
As a side note, words periodically flash across the screen to let you know what's going on. The next such narration words are:
"Yoda brings Hans Solo and Chewbacca back in time to show them the kidnapping."
1. Hans Solo [sic]
2. Yoda goes back in time for some reason
And then we watch the entire kidnapping scene over again in slightly sped up motion, while Yoda, Chewbacca, and Hans [sic] stand around and go "hmmm." My question - if they're back in time, why don't they stop the kidnapping? But whatever, it's ballet.
And then. (more words on the screen).
"Hans Solo flies his spaceship to find the Princess while Chewbacca goes off to raise an army of Ewoks." [Emphasis mine]
Raise an army of Ewoks. Yes. I don't really have words for this.
Well, okay, I have a few. The Ewoks were actually rather brilliantly done. So the ballet included all the levels of instruction from the Ballet School, ranging from their Intensive Training Students (Luke, Leia, Vader, trooperettes) through their Ballet this and that students (Leia's attendants, chorus of unexplained Jedi Knights, swamp creatures of Dagobah), through their preballet (floor cleaning droids stars, itty bitty attendants, Yoda and his Jungle Helpers) all the way down to their creative motion class: the Ewoks.
Creative Motion is the level of dance for two and three year olds, who are still having trouble with concepts like sitting still, or doing the thing the person next to you is doing. But the stroke of brilliance is that a bunch of three year olds haphazardly moving around and being, well, three-year olds in a dance class is perceputally indistinguishable from a group of perfectly acted and interpreted Ewoks. So what we've got is 20-odd 3-year olds in fuzzy shorts and fuzzy ears and little Ewok cowls, being herded by their teacher the Ewok's Hot Mom. And then Chewbacca shows up and "trains" them in the arts of war, like standing up and sitting down pretty much all at the same time as each other. It works about as well as you would expect training three year-olds Ewoks in the art of war to work. It was possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen.
There were some confusing scenes around then where Yoda and his Jungle Helpers (that is, other Yoda creatures) trained Little Luke to...kill frogs or something. There were all sorts of critters, and they used The Force to make them sit down and shut up...or something. but then Big Luke came in and levitated Little Luke, which was just kind of cool.
There was a great big battle, replete with as many Jedi, swamp creatures, ewoks, stars, and trooperettes as one small stage could hold. And they managed to rescue Leia from Ann Arbor. Huzzah? Oh, and somebody had just learned how to use powerpoint, because pictures of various folks kept popping up on the back screen and then, like, spinning around and stuff. It was a bit odd.
For a while in there it looked like they were going to forget about the Leia/Han romance (ahem, *Hans*). That is, she and Luke danced around a bit, then Hans came in, and they acted like they hated each other, and then she left with Luke. O...kay... And then the big screen said something like "and so, everybody found who they were supposed to be with...except one."
1. So Luke and Leia end up together? Not really okay...
2. Does that mean that Chewie makes it with the Ewoks' Hot Mom?
But no, the thing that looked like a curtain call was actually the Grande Finale, and Leia and Hans got together after all...after apparently going joy-riding in the Falcoln a bit (which apparently has a steering wheel?). And then Vader stalks on...OH NOES! And then he takes off his mask and hoists Little Luke (lightsaber and all) onto his shoulder. Awwwww. It was actually quite adorable. And then everybody gets to be one big happy family with hardly any force choking at all.
The careful reader will have observed that the role of Obi Wan was played by Sir Not Appearing In This Ballet.
All in all it was hilarious. The Ewoks were super cute, and time-travelling Yoda makes everything better. It was also pretty thoroughly ridiculous. The costuming was really very good. The dancing was about what you would expect, but I really enjoyed the Luke/Little Luke parallel numbers they did. Some of it was awful (did they really need Michigan Jokes? really?) and some of it was brilliant. But I think I can sum up everything relevant in just two words:
Hans Solo.
...sorry, I just can't get enough of that. Too consistent to be a typo, too funny to forgive.
The first thing we noticed about it was that it was not a reinactment of the original trilogy. It was an "original" plot in the Star Wars universe using the Star Wars characters. I can't quite recall the precise wording, but the premise that ran across the screen at the beginnng in big slanty letters was something like this:
Darth Vader's family is falling apart! Jedi Master Yoda uses the power of time travel to help save this most disfunctional of families, by making it so that young Luke and young Leia can exist at the same time as adult Luke and adult Leia.
I kid you not. This is the plot of the ballet. I'm not sure what having little Luke and little Leia around was supposed to accomplish, but then, it's ballet.
So, the main conflict is that Vader has captured Princess Leia from her palace...somewhere...with his band of Storm Trooperettes. Okay, the Storm Trooperettes were actually pretty awesome: white body-suits and visors with black belts, and really choppy military movements. Artoo, Threepio, and Leia's bevies and bevies of attendants try ineffectively to ward them off. Vader actually gets some pretty awesome force-choking in. Artoo gets knocked over a lot, Threepio flails wildly, and eventually Leia gets kidnapped.
As a side note, words periodically flash across the screen to let you know what's going on. The next such narration words are:
"Yoda brings Hans Solo and Chewbacca back in time to show them the kidnapping."
1. Hans Solo [sic]
2. Yoda goes back in time for some reason
And then we watch the entire kidnapping scene over again in slightly sped up motion, while Yoda, Chewbacca, and Hans [sic] stand around and go "hmmm." My question - if they're back in time, why don't they stop the kidnapping? But whatever, it's ballet.
And then. (more words on the screen).
"Hans Solo flies his spaceship to find the Princess while Chewbacca goes off to raise an army of Ewoks." [Emphasis mine]
Raise an army of Ewoks. Yes. I don't really have words for this.
Well, okay, I have a few. The Ewoks were actually rather brilliantly done. So the ballet included all the levels of instruction from the Ballet School, ranging from their Intensive Training Students (Luke, Leia, Vader, trooperettes) through their Ballet this and that students (Leia's attendants, chorus of unexplained Jedi Knights, swamp creatures of Dagobah), through their preballet (floor cleaning droids stars, itty bitty attendants, Yoda and his Jungle Helpers) all the way down to their creative motion class: the Ewoks.
Creative Motion is the level of dance for two and three year olds, who are still having trouble with concepts like sitting still, or doing the thing the person next to you is doing. But the stroke of brilliance is that a bunch of three year olds haphazardly moving around and being, well, three-year olds in a dance class is perceputally indistinguishable from a group of perfectly acted and interpreted Ewoks. So what we've got is 20-odd 3-year olds in fuzzy shorts and fuzzy ears and little Ewok cowls, being herded by their teacher the Ewok's Hot Mom. And then Chewbacca shows up and "trains" them in the arts of war, like standing up and sitting down pretty much all at the same time as each other. It works about as well as you would expect training three year-olds Ewoks in the art of war to work. It was possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen.
There were some confusing scenes around then where Yoda and his Jungle Helpers (that is, other Yoda creatures) trained Little Luke to...kill frogs or something. There were all sorts of critters, and they used The Force to make them sit down and shut up...or something. but then Big Luke came in and levitated Little Luke, which was just kind of cool.
There was a great big battle, replete with as many Jedi, swamp creatures, ewoks, stars, and trooperettes as one small stage could hold. And they managed to rescue Leia from Ann Arbor. Huzzah? Oh, and somebody had just learned how to use powerpoint, because pictures of various folks kept popping up on the back screen and then, like, spinning around and stuff. It was a bit odd.
For a while in there it looked like they were going to forget about the Leia/Han romance (ahem, *Hans*). That is, she and Luke danced around a bit, then Hans came in, and they acted like they hated each other, and then she left with Luke. O...kay... And then the big screen said something like "and so, everybody found who they were supposed to be with...except one."
1. So Luke and Leia end up together? Not really okay...
2. Does that mean that Chewie makes it with the Ewoks' Hot Mom?
But no, the thing that looked like a curtain call was actually the Grande Finale, and Leia and Hans got together after all...after apparently going joy-riding in the Falcoln a bit (which apparently has a steering wheel?). And then Vader stalks on...OH NOES! And then he takes off his mask and hoists Little Luke (lightsaber and all) onto his shoulder. Awwwww. It was actually quite adorable. And then everybody gets to be one big happy family with hardly any force choking at all.
The careful reader will have observed that the role of Obi Wan was played by Sir Not Appearing In This Ballet.
All in all it was hilarious. The Ewoks were super cute, and time-travelling Yoda makes everything better. It was also pretty thoroughly ridiculous. The costuming was really very good. The dancing was about what you would expect, but I really enjoyed the Luke/Little Luke parallel numbers they did. Some of it was awful (did they really need Michigan Jokes? really?) and some of it was brilliant. But I think I can sum up everything relevant in just two words:
Hans Solo.
...sorry, I just can't get enough of that. Too consistent to be a typo, too funny to forgive.