The weekend of April 25-27, we did a little of everything. Friday night started with our first tickets to a Salt Lake City Bees game. As I wrote a whole blog on just the Bees, I won't say more about that here. We warmed up at home and watched 3:10 to Yuma before heading to bed.
On Saturday night we went to our second Ballet in SLC. This one was entitled 9 Sinatra Songs, and was actually 4 separate ballets with intermissions. All 4 pieces were dance set to music previously written but which inspired the choreographer to create the dance.
The first was Serenade set to Tchaikovsky's Serenade to Strings. It was a traditional style ballet which showcased the women of the cast and had solos for 2 men. The costumes were the traditional longer ballet skirts for the women and tights and shirts for the men. It was fun to watch the change in expertise of the dancers, with group dances by the youngest members and solos by the principles.
The second was a pas de deux, Hamlet and Ophelia, featuring my favorite of the men as Hamlet, and another of the principles as Ophelia. It was initially performed in 1985 set to Martinu's first symphony. Their dancing was wonderful, with costuming and staging that reflected the Shakespeare play. Wayne thought it was a little crazy and I reminded him that they were going mad in the scene.
The third piece, Continuo, set to Torelli's Trumpet Concertos was first performed in 1981 and was written to show off the athleticism of the men. It was all the men of the company, and it was easy to pick out the principles and the rising stars. The costumes were flamboyant coppery color and added to the festivity.
The last piece was 9 Sinatra Songs and was the only piece that didn't use the Utah Symphony. Instead they danced to recordings of Frank singing his songs. It was choreographed by Twyla Tharpe and first performed in 1982. It featured 7 couples dancing ballet's version of ballroom dance in Oscar de la Renta dresses and tuxes. In the first 3 songs, just one couple danced at a time, and then they all came out and danced to My Way in their own style. Then 4 more songs with a different couple for each and another version of My Way that first had the 4 couples dancing and finally all 7. Each couple had their own character including 2 comical couples and one battling couple. It was amazing to watch and enjoy. The Ballet evening lasted about 2 hours and 15 minutes so by the time we walked home we were ready for bed.
On Sunday we drove up to Ogden to investigate the boulder fields on the east edge of town. There is a section of the mountain, maybe a mile long, where the rock face cracked off the mountain and fell to the hillside below. This left a climbing training ground that brings climbers from all over to practice. Some of the rocks are as tall as 20 feet and others are the size of your fist. They lay all jumbled together where they fell on the side of the hill about 100 feet above the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. We saw climbers carrying mattresses on their backs on the trail, heading up to practice on rock face and over hangs. Once climbers become accomplished on the boulders, they graduate to climbing up the rock face from which the boulders broke off. It is a place where climbers do bouldering, climbing without the use of ropes or other paraphernalia.
We struggled up the desert hillside until we found a trail that brought us to the bottom edge of the boulders. We climbed on a few moving up the mountain maybe 40 feet before deciding that it would be a fun place to bring the girls. Sitting on one of the larger boulders, we spotted the Shoreline Trail below us and climbed down and then hiked along it for a few miles to waterfall canyon and then back to the boulder field and our car. We were tired and thirsty after walking/climbing on the western face of the mountain, always in the sun, and were ready for cool drinks, dinner and a movie, Atonement, by the time we got back to SLC. A great way to end a great weekend!
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