The Challenge of "Culture"

[Prudence]

I have kind of a love/hate attitude toward classical ballet. I admire the physical agility and grace, but I'm not a big fan of the physical demands on dancers, the same way I'm not a big fan of the environment around some sports. (I'm all for the best of the best, but I'm don't like it when "the best" is achieved through unhealthy means.)

I like some modern dance that incorporates the techniques from classical ballet without the assigned gender roles (girl looks pretty and twirls en pointe, guy gets to jump and lift.) I dislike modern dance that is allegedly enacting a theme or story so obscure that it has to be explained to me in the program.

Opera -- again, a little love/hate. Recitatives annoy me. Sing or don't sing. I realize this is sort of what makes opera opera and not musical theatre, but it's the part I don't like. But aside from that - it's like musical theatre to classical music and I love it.

Musical theatre -- For the most part, I love musical theatre. But honestly, I prefer the earlier stuff. Once you hit the Andrew Lloyd Webber years I kind of stop paying attention. There are exceptions that prove the rule, of course.

Non-musical theatre -- Hard to describe what I like and don't, except that like modern dance, I don't like the "look at me! I'm modern and avant garde!" plays.

Love classical music. Love renaissance music. Love baroque music. Love early polyphonic music. Love contemporary classical that sounds like it might be one of the above.

Art? not my best subject. I sort of "get it" up through the impressionists. I'm a little skeptical of post-impressionists and by the time you hit cubists I'm totally lost.