Forever After

Earlier this month me and my work girls scored a bargain ticket to the ballet. We managed to score a two course dinner and tickets to see Cinderella by the Birmingham Royal Ballet at the London Coliseum. We were all excited about going to see the show as we were all fans of both the story and the idea of going to the ballet and we were especially looking forward to the night because we were celebrating both me and Claire getting new jobs (more on that later). We had decided to get all dressed up in dresses and heels and make a night of it.

We headed to Maxwells and had our two course dinner and took advantage of their half price cocktails to celebrate the new jobs and kick start the weekend before heading to the show. I was pleasantly surprised when we got there that we had fairly decent seats. Usually when you get last minute tickets they are the ones up in the nosebleed section but we were in the dress circle and had a really good overall view of the stage.

Once the show started I was soon mesmerised as I hadn't seen a ballet live since I used to dance when I was little. I have to tell you this is my new favourite thing to do and hopefully I can go to a few more while I am here (believe me I will try and see the Nutcracker at Christmas!). It was good that we were seeing a story that we knew so we could just focus on the dancing, set and costumes rather then trying to understand what was going on. The show was actually quite comical with the ugly stepsisters providing some comic relief as well as equally dramatic when the evil stepmother appeared. The costumes were exqiusite with my favourites being when the fairy godmother appeared to save the day. She turned lizards into coachmen and the dancers had to dance around the stage in giant lizard costumes which was both skilled and hilarious. The tutu's and shimmering dresses took me back to my ballet days when I was little and made me want to start doing it again. Of course the handsome Prince appeared and they all lived happily ever after.

It was such a good night out - not only because we were celebrating but it is always fun to do something a little special that you don't usually do. Especially when it is something as beautiful as watching the ballet and like I said hopefully there is many more of these nights to come!