Last weekend my sister and I went to the ballet for the first time in at least 10 years. Truth be told, I’ve been avoiding the ballet. Not that I was ever one to buy season tickets or anything, but for the first few years after I quit dancing the last thing I wanted to do was go and watch people who were better dancers than me doing something I knew I’d never be able to do. So I figured, why pay money to torture myself with “what if” speculations?

But it’s been long enough now, and besides, my city’s ballet company has a new director who has been doing wonderful things with classics and new pieces alike. So my sister and I went to see the Nutcracker, and it was wonderful. The choreography was fresh and new, and even the story had been spiced up. (Clara gets the nutcracker, and she and her younger brother, Fritz, do their sibling rivalry thing. But her older sister Maria falls in love with the magician’s nephew, who later turns out to be the nutcracker prince.) In fact, the only disappointing bit was the grand pas de duex, and that was only because it was so conventionally beautiful compared to the rest of the ballet.

But going to the ballet wouldn’t, in itself, inspire an evening of typing. No. It was my seat neighbor. She and her middle aged daughter proved to be endlessly amusing. Darling daughter mentioned at one point that there weren’t as many kids in the audience is usual and wondered if parents weren’t bringing kids to the Nutcracker any more. She also spent quite a few happy minutes redesigning the theater so that fewer people would have to crawl over her to get to their seats (she was on the very end of the isle). And later she thought the viewing experience could be vastly improved if there were fewer kids in the audience.

Meanwhile, dear mama marked time. “Well, it’s 1:34,” she announced when the overture began. “A 45 minute party scene… my, my.” (I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.) It was 2:45 when the first act curtain went down and 2:57 when the curtain went up for the second act. The arabian couple danced for nearly 8 minutes, and it was 4:02 when the dancers took their final bows.

I hope they enjoyed the ballet as much as I did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version I liked more than this one, and the dancers (kids, apprentices, artists, and leading artists alike) were superb. And I thought they were just the right number of kids in the audience, and I’m pretty sure it was exactly the right length. Though what do I know. I haven’t been to the ballet in years.