Nutcracker

This past weekend the gang and I went up to the Bay Area to kind of celebrate my birthday, but mainly to support st in his Nutcracker performance.  The quick birthday blurb is the restaurant that we ended up going to, a Japanese izakaya place called Tanto in Sunnyvale on El Camino, was quite exceptional.  The grilled octopus, the dashi soups, and the crab croquettes were highlights.  The roe pasta was also quite delicious.  But what made it exceptional was the price: definitely great value for the amount of food and alcohol we consumed; the portions were generally larger than I have seen at other izakaya places.

But the main event of the weekend was undoubtedly st's performance.  I hadn't actually seen a ballet performance since high school (which, incidentally was also the Nutcracker), so I wasn't sure what to expect.  Would I fall asleep like I usually do at the symphony?  Or would the visual aspect of the ballet keep me interested?  I did enjoy the ballet in Center Stage, but st repeatedly informed me that the ballet in Nutcracker really isn't anything special.  But would it even matter, considering that st was
performing as the Nutcracker prince?

A little background on st.  Despite his claims of doing tae kwon do, none of us have actually seen him show any sense of athleticism.  He tends to be afraid of the ball in ball sports, and he tends to be very lethargic and sleepy in everyday life.  Not to mention, he is quite afraid of interacting with other people, especially girls, so upon hearing of his casting as the titular character, most of us were quite surprised.  How would an unathletic, somewhat socially awkward, lethargic recluse demonstrate the necessary grace and emotion to connect with Clara and with the audience?

I think that st's willingness to even get this performance opportunity is quite contradictory to his normal character.  He didn't start learning ballet until he went back to Stanfurd for his masters and always maintained that he didn't want to showcase his skills (similar to dk, who still denies the spotlight with his piano playing).  So when he inquired whether to pursue a role in the Nutcracker, actually pursued it, and then actually accepted the titlular role, that showed incredible growth on his part.  And that is what this past weekend was really about.  To be comfortable with our inadequacies, but to try to better them, to try to change.  Maybe st wasn't the most graceful dancer out there, but he showed incredible passion and fluidity in his steps, and in that way, was brilliant in his performance.  It showed a sense of courage to let it all out there for others to see, a sense of vulnerability, and he did connect with the audience because of this, or at least his friends, who may have been skeptical at the begining, but at the end of it, were incredibly proud.  There was an article on Yahoo! Sports where Kobe was describing his mentality toward life, where you can either come out of things better than you are or you can crawl up like a coward into a little ball.  Oftentimes, st does the latter.  To see him do the former was what made the performance special.