Disappointing Evening...

One of my pet peeves is when people don't live up to their potential. That feeling just permeated my thoughts last night as Jeff and I ventured downtown to the new Knight Theater to watch the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater perform. 

Side note: The Knight Theater is the new smaller performance larger venue of the Blumenthal Center. It is really nice! And what's even better, it's located in the same building as Charlotte's modern art museum (which I had no idea we even had). It looks really cool too. Jeff and I decided that's our next artistic outing. Can't wait!

I've heard such great things about Alvin Ailey and they're so well known. We got there 20 minutes early and I read all of the dancer bios, which just got me even more excited (lots of American Ballet Theater folks and Juilliard grads). The show was called The Best of 20 Years and included their most-outstanding/memorable pieces. 

And the curtain rises...

And serious mediocrity ensues. About three dances in, Jeff leans over to me and whispers, "Am I missing something? This doesn't seem that good to me."

No no, you're correct my friend. I literally almost left after the first intermission. And, I've never wanted to do that at a dance performance...ever.

I was just soooo disappointed. There were maybe 3 dances I thought were decent. The dancers themselves were reallllly talented! But, the choreography was just so overdone and outdated. It was too literal and the music selections were bizarre. 

And, what was even weirder to me is that the rest of the crowd was LOVING it. I'm talking "cat-calling in the middle of a lyrical number" loving it. It was just one of the oddest evenings at the theater ever. 

This morning, I decided to look up some reviews and see if I'm losing my mind (because there was literally a 15-minute standing ovation at the end from rest of the crowd). And, the first thing that came up was this. Thank you Roslyn Sulcas of the New York Times for summarizing my exact feelings from last night and validating my argument that a grand show doesn't always equal great art.