Alex as Jeffrey Day

Every year Alex looks forward to Columbia City Ballet's Halloween production. Most year's this is Dracula: Ballet with a Bite. Dracula is a special ballet in our household. It is the show that really inspired Mathias to dance. This is not a fact he is thrilled about...but it's true. In fact, his very first ballet lesson was a private class with Count Dracula himself. At the time, Artistic Director William Starrett was dancing this part.

Alex and I don't generally look forward to the dancing, however. In truth, there's not that much "classical" ballet in this show. There's lots of Gothic touches, very little costuming, stroup lights and smoke effects, fake blood spurring across the stage, and an energtic, sexy 80s club inspired score by Thomas Semanski who unfortunately died earlier this year. Actually, there was better actual DANCING in Dracula than in last week's Columbia Classical Ballet's Snow White (which I might write about later).



Alex and I go to enjoy the campy fun and for Alex to enter the annual Halloween costume contest. Last year he went as MySpace. (Image and entry are found by clicking here.)
He won second place, tickets to Nutcracker. This year, Alex outdid himself. He went as our local art critic, Jeffrey Day.



Jeffrey isn't exactly the most popular person in our small arts community. He has a reputation for being overly negative. He doesn't review ballet though. The judges, however, have strong theater ties. Jeffrey does review theater. Larry Hembree, Robin Gottlieb and Dewey Scott-Wiley awarded him another second place...and they didn't even kick him! This time, the prize was a season membership...now, Steve has to attend the future productions with us! (He stayed at home watching Ohio State beat up on Penn State....rah! rah! rah!)

I went to the ballet on the back of Alex's moped...door to door service...waving Jeffrey's face at all the passing traffic (video is in the post above).

To conclude this entry: JEFFREY....YOU KNOW ALEX AND I REALLY LOVE YOU!