Day 261/365 - Air and Space and Ballet

I've been wanting to visit the annex of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum at Dulles airport ever since it opened years ago, so when my friend Chris said he was taking the day off today to drive his visiting cousin out there and asked me if I wanted to go along I jumped at the chance. It's the quintessential 'boys and their toys' kind of museum, jampacked with stuff they couldn't fit into the Air and Space Museum on the Mall -- commercial and military aircraft, rockets, and even the Space Shuttle Enterprise. No airships, though. We were kinda disappointed in that. Seems like a perfect spot for a zeppelin or blimp.

It's a very cool museum, although the $15 parking fee is a bit absurd given that it's in the middle of nowhere and parking isn't exactly at a premium out there. I finally tried the freeze dried ice cream they sell in the Museum gift shop. I opted for the ice cream sandwich. It's rather dry and hard, but it does taste like ice cream.

After we got back from Dulles late this afternoon I had to upload my photos of the museum, iron my shirt, change clothes, and head off to the Kennedy Center to catch the Royal Ballet's performance of Manon. I hand't been to the ballet in over a year, and this one turned out to be really good. It stems from the same story that served as the source of the opera Manon Lescaut. The plot involves a young girl forced to choose between two suitors -- one a poor student who loves her deeply and the other a rich nobleman who covets her possessively. Dazzled by the nobleman's gifts (and at her slimy brother's urging), she chooses comfort and security over love and passion and of course everything goes to Hell in a handbasket as a result. This was an excellent production with top notch dancers and the music was wonderful.

Ballerinas always amaze me. They seem to belong more to the air than they do to the earth. I love when they float across the stage with a fluttering of tiny, tiptoed steps. I have no idea what that step is called, but it's very cool. I've wondered for some time if there is a way to write down choreography. Can dancers read ballet the way musicians read music? It seems like there would have to be a way to transcribe the choreographic arrangements. Otherwise no ballet would ever be performed the same and great old ballets would be lost or corrupted over time, only the score would remain the same. That can't be what happens.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)