SOUTHERN EXPOSURE: BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS FINDS DONKEY-MAN AT BALLET

I had my first ballet experience this month, and it wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be.

In fact, some of it was downright entertaining.

I think it was appropriate that my first experience with the ballet should be an adaptation of a play by William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I didn't really understand the play when I first read it so I wasn't too upset about not really understanding the ballet.

There was one part that I understood all too well though. There's this scene where one of the performers is placed under a spell by the mischievous wood spirit Pan. It seems that Pan puts a donkey's head on the guy while he's rehearsing a play with three actor friends.

How? Why? Give me a break, it's a ballet.

He becomes this disfigured, monstrous, hulking half-man half-donkey who apparently smells pretty bad because his friends run away from him holding their noses.

He wanders around looking forlorn until he runs into a beautiful fairy queen who instantly falls in love with him.

It seems this fairy chick has been placed under a spell by her boyfriend, the fairy king, to fall in love with the first person she sees after coming out of a deep sleep. She sees the donkey-guy, whose name incidentally is Bottom, and -- it's love.

Let me sum this up: A fairy king wearing green tights and butterfly wings whacks his wife's eyes with a blue flower while she's sleeping so she'll fall for the first Tom, Dick or Mule she sees. Then he disappears. Why does he do this? He's a fairy king; that's what fairy kings do. Anyway, this beautiful woman wakes up; sees this donkey-man, who has big floppy ears; doesn't look real bright and smells kind of bad; and falls in love. Typical.

It's always the men who are half-jacks that get the great women. I see it every day, and I had to sit through it while it was played out on stage.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for a guy who doesn't mind braying, who eats lots of greens and knows a good looking jenny when he sees one. But let's face it, what are they going to talk about?

I can tell you why she falls for him too: It ain't the flower; it's his attitude.

There's this one part where she's fawning all over him, stroking his ears and kissing his snout, when he notices a particularly choice patch of grass. She wants to talk, or snuggle, but he wants to eat. She's trying to use her womanly charms, and he only has eyes for the chow. Now he is all man.

Soon enough they're getting married, even though he looks like he has been taken to the altar on a lead, and they retire to the honeymoon suite -- well it's more like a patch of comfortable-looking grass. What's he got in his hands when they settle in? Is it her? No, it's food.

That's why she digs him, because he ignores her. He's got the attitude. Of course, she comes to her senses and goes off with the guy in the green tights again. But I'm sure that's only temporary. Guys in tights never get the girls.

So in a way, ballet mirrors life and life is like a ballet. My problem must be that I'm dancing disco while all the women around me are doing pirouettes. Where do I get one of those blue flowers?

David Angier is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.