ballet: NY Export: Opus Jazz, Sun. June 3, 2012, at the Merriam
When my mom got the tickets, I was all on board with going to this ballet, but when the day actually rolled around I felt tired, gigantic, and not very excited about going downtown on a Sunday and cramming myself into a tiny theater seat. Thankfully the ballet was well worth seeing.
The program started with the Barber Violin Concerto, which we'd seen before back in June 2009. It was just as good this time around and had a whole different feel seeing it with different dancers. We really enjoyed it. Next up was Beside them, they dwell, a new piece from Matthew Neenan. Usually we really like Neenan's work but we weren't all about this one.
Last was the title piece, NY Export: Opus Jazz, which was wonderfully fun. It had the casual feeling of a bunch of dancers messing around in a practice room while still achieving a professional and beautiful level of artistry. Dynamic, full of energy, great music. (My mom also loved that the dancers were wearing keds/bobos that perfectly matched their shirts, an effect she goes for just about every day.) The whole piece was just really fun to watch, and we were glad we'd come.
Unfortunately, our good experience watching the actual ballet was tempered by our poor experience at the Merriam Theater. First, their elevator was broken. During a heat wave. And you know most of the Sunday matinee crowd is going to be elderly. I had to haul my eight-months-pregnant self up two flights of stairs to get to our balcony seats. And the ladies room is up another flight of stairs, so by the time I actually got to my seat, I was exhausted and the show hadn't even started yet. The ladies room up in the garret is pretty ghetto for what's supposed to be one of Philadelphia's best theaters - there are only two stalls, and one of the stall doors has no lock and swings open, rendering the stall unusable. It was like that the last time we were at the Merriam in February, which is unacceptable. Putting a lock on a bathroom door is something that any handyman, or reasonably handy regular human, could do in 15 minutes. Finally, at the end of the show, we had issues getting out of the building. We used the ladies room and then, instead of walking all the way across the theater to the stairwell we used to come in, we just kept on going down the stairs from the ladies room, figuring they led to the same place. We got more than halfway down before an usher came yelling to tell us we couldn't go that way because it was a fire exit. Apparently you can't exit through a fire exit. There were no signs indicating this whatsoever. The stairwell itself was less nicely painted and carpeted than the other stairwell, and one small sign on the wall at the top of the stairs said "fire exit", but it did not say "no exit" or "emergency use only". I told the usher that the stairs should be chained off if no one's supposed to use them, and he said that would be a fire hazard, which I understand, but what about putting a sign on a pole at the top of the stairs? There are a lot of ways this could be better marked so that people who are eight months pregnant don't have to climb a lot of extra stairs. The usher was not apologetic at all even when he saw my condition. Overall, major fail for the Merriam, which makes me not want to go there for anything again.
The program started with the Barber Violin Concerto, which we'd seen before back in June 2009. It was just as good this time around and had a whole different feel seeing it with different dancers. We really enjoyed it. Next up was Beside them, they dwell, a new piece from Matthew Neenan. Usually we really like Neenan's work but we weren't all about this one.
Last was the title piece, NY Export: Opus Jazz, which was wonderfully fun. It had the casual feeling of a bunch of dancers messing around in a practice room while still achieving a professional and beautiful level of artistry. Dynamic, full of energy, great music. (My mom also loved that the dancers were wearing keds/bobos that perfectly matched their shirts, an effect she goes for just about every day.) The whole piece was just really fun to watch, and we were glad we'd come.
Unfortunately, our good experience watching the actual ballet was tempered by our poor experience at the Merriam Theater. First, their elevator was broken. During a heat wave. And you know most of the Sunday matinee crowd is going to be elderly. I had to haul my eight-months-pregnant self up two flights of stairs to get to our balcony seats. And the ladies room is up another flight of stairs, so by the time I actually got to my seat, I was exhausted and the show hadn't even started yet. The ladies room up in the garret is pretty ghetto for what's supposed to be one of Philadelphia's best theaters - there are only two stalls, and one of the stall doors has no lock and swings open, rendering the stall unusable. It was like that the last time we were at the Merriam in February, which is unacceptable. Putting a lock on a bathroom door is something that any handyman, or reasonably handy regular human, could do in 15 minutes. Finally, at the end of the show, we had issues getting out of the building. We used the ladies room and then, instead of walking all the way across the theater to the stairwell we used to come in, we just kept on going down the stairs from the ladies room, figuring they led to the same place. We got more than halfway down before an usher came yelling to tell us we couldn't go that way because it was a fire exit. Apparently you can't exit through a fire exit. There were no signs indicating this whatsoever. The stairwell itself was less nicely painted and carpeted than the other stairwell, and one small sign on the wall at the top of the stairs said "fire exit", but it did not say "no exit" or "emergency use only". I told the usher that the stairs should be chained off if no one's supposed to use them, and he said that would be a fire hazard, which I understand, but what about putting a sign on a pole at the top of the stairs? There are a lot of ways this could be better marked so that people who are eight months pregnant don't have to climb a lot of extra stairs. The usher was not apologetic at all even when he saw my condition. Overall, major fail for the Merriam, which makes me not want to go there for anything again.