There is something about reaching the end of the year and knowing that Christmas is around the corner that leads to a maelstrom of emotional reaction. There is an overwhelming urge to ensure that the elements that are conjured from a mainly half-forgotten childhood be recreated and then the driving psychopathic urge to share it – or force it on others.
There is also an impetus to attend those ‘getting into the Christmas spirit’ events such as pantomime and the ballet.
Which are bizarre – let’s face it. One is high farce with rowdy, bawdy shouting humour and the other the complete antithesis – silence, elegant and graceful. Reflecting perhaps the two sides of Christmas. The spiritual promise of hope and the other the desperate need to celebrate in the dark in the hope that Spring will return.
Ballet, in itself, is one of the most extreme sports imaginable. They are athletes, and as with all spectator sports, we go and admire the elegance, control and the bodies of those performing. Secretly, we feel we too could do that given the training, hard work and dedication – and those are the altars we worship at the ballet.
Pantomime is the raw crude element of us given a face and a stage.
The first pantomime I ever saw was in my early twenties attending a British Embassy Christmas ball in Africa and remember the rictus of horror as the non-British guests and the locally engaged staff watched the ambassador and staff perform, shouting ‘it’s behind you’ and ‘oh no it’s not’ to the bemusement of the guests. The performers had a great time and a real sense of having purged the ‘Christmas spirit’ bug. The guests departed, having reinforced their collective view that British people cannot hold their liquor. There was no other reason they could see would enable anyone (and I mean anyone) to lose their dignity in such a manner.
So perhaps the difference between the two can be summed up in the word ‘dignity.’
Having made this important distinction, the real pleasure lies in deciding at what point during the run up to Christmas you wish to enjoy the schizophrenia of crude or dignified. You can alternate. Personally, I have always enjoyed the sport of trying to combine them so the shared laughter of the carnival spirit in the Pantomime takes you into the community spirit in an unsophisticated way while the glorious music of the ballet can sweep you away. As it does, there is pleasure in contemplating the thighs and padded mound between of the male ballet dancers. Reminding you of the pleasure of what you could do – playing nutcracker.
Dignified or not, pleasures of the flesh rule.
Indecorous and debasing.
The shuddering physical pleasure of Christmas.