Breaking A Leg

 

Ray and I were lucky enough to get tickets to the Lumenocity dress rehearsal this summer. I knew there would be a lightshow, but other than that, the only thing I knew about it for sure was that we needed to get there early.

So for two hours we sat in Washington Park with nothing really to do but shovel pasta salad into our faces and look at Music Hall as we waited.

But waiting was so worth it, and the entire event was so uniquely Cincinnati.

Ray’s favorite part was the Charlie Harper tribute. All of Harper's stylized animals - cardinals, mallards, lady bugs, flamingos - all playfully making their way across the building.

We giggled as alligators snapped up from an invisible swamp and looked on amazed as flocks of Harper’s birds flew 5 stories tall across Music Hall.

It was a whimsical and loving tribute to Cincinnati's favorite artist.

But it was the Cincinnati Ballet that took my breath away. Principal dancers Janessa Touchet and Cervilio Miguel Amador were staggeringly beautiful and graceful projected onto Music Hall.

When it was over, I looked at Ray and said, ‘That was delightful.’

It was understatement.

In truth, between the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras’s beautiful rendition of Nimrod, which I had never heard before, and the dancers elegantly pirouetting across the building, I debated tearing up it was so beautiful and lovely and sublime.

It all reminded me that I don’t see nearly enough classically trained dancers, musicians or artists.

It also reminded me, listening to the talented, hard-working musicians of the CSO, that I haven’t done anything with my life.

I do not play an instrument. I cannot dance with the poise of a Cincinnati Ballet ballerina. I couldn't have even run the light show. At best, I could have written the program for Lumenocity. (And I’ve have gladly written that program!)

And in truth, I saw Music Hall really for the first time. If there is a better way other than Lumenocity to expose people to our own unique cultural arts in Cincinnati, I don’t know what would be.

Bravo, Cincinnati.