For some sports fans, the time from January to March can be awfully dark.  Football is over and baseball is still hibernating.  Which leads me into the realm of creative and fantasy thinking.  After seeing their excellent performance of Don Quixote, I got to wondering what the Alabama Ballet would be like if its news coverage rivaled Alabama Football’s…

First of all, I imagine that the Birmingham News and our local TV broadcasters would devote a whole section to the arts.  Every day, there’d be some sort of piece which mentioned every upcoming show.  Interviews and press conferences with the dancers and coaches.  No real need to spend the organization’s money on advertising – almost everyone who’s anyone already knows the schedule.  A waiting list for season tickets.  Weddings and fishing trips get planned around important days on the ballet calendar.

Kelly Walsh & Gauen Alexander

As the local dance fanatics “X” off the calendar days before the performance, Head Coach Tracey Alvey could barely go to the grocery store, leave the ballet compound, or make any public appearance without fighting off a stream of standard questions.  “Do you think the team is confident and ready?”  “Are Jennifer and David fully healthy?”  “What’s your gameplan for the tricky table dance in Act III?”  “What do you think about what the Atlanta Ballet did with Don Quixote last year?”  The public would collectively GASP if anybody strayed from the acceptable list of cliches.  “We’re just taking it one day at a time and hoping that everyone gives 110%.”  Those all work for the ballet, too, I guess.

Catherine Garratt & Kelly Walsh

Photographers and reporters might lurk around the practice facility, hoping to discover up-to-the-minute injury information about the dancers. Fans would collect promotional and behind-the-scenes photographs of popular and favorite dancers like trading cards.  Daniel Moore would paint and profit from the most important onstage moments at the Alabama Ballet.

Can you imagine season ticket holders tailgating outside the Leslie S. Wright Fine Arts Center?  Drinking beer, grilling hotdogs, and socializing before every performance?  Girls with spectacular hair walking by in new dresses – seeing and being seen?  While the guys pretend to ignore the girls and kill time by dancing in public – pretending to be just like their heroes on the inside?  Can you imagine a world where being the principal dancer could be cooler than being the quarterback?

In fact, people might get so excited that they’d gather with family and party for the whole day of the performance.  Rather than just go to one game a year – errr, performance – they’d follow and discuss a dancer’s full career.  “Isn’t he incredibly talented to just be a junior?”   “Do you think he’ll be back next year?”  “Don’t you think she’s getting better every week?”  “Isn’t it a shame that he’s leaving us for Dallas after this year?”  “I hear they’re recruiting this great new freshman from Pennsylvania for next season.”  “She was good last week, but she was so good the show before that.”

Something like 90,000 people would show up – or maybe would want to – over the course of the weekend.  Once inside, the room would buzz and there’d be spontaneous cheering even before the curtain.  Almost everyone’s been to the ballet before, of course, so they’re familiar with the choreography of being a spectator – knowing when to sit quietly and when to applaud.  There might be a drunk guy behind you who’ll get overzealous and shout.

Everyone walks out with that jubilant, top-of-the-world feeling of watching your home team win the big game.  Your infectious excitement spills over and you can’t help but make friends with strangers in the parking lot.  You discuss the spectacle of all those dancers.  Everyone’s talking about Coach Wendy Gamble’s beautiful costuming and brags about the experience to their friends who couldn’t go.  For the next week, everyone’s talking about the working windmill, how funny it was, and how the dancers tossed around guitars, fans, drums, and even the other dancers.  For the next month, everyone is still talking about the charismatic pairing of dancers David Kiyak and Jennifer Ferrigno.  And for the years to come, people will still think back on that moment – whenever it was for you – when you knew that they’d won.

And maybe the football score gets just one little paragraph.

Thanks to Leslie Cooper and the Alabama Ballet for the chance to root for the team and support them at this big game – errrr, exhibition – errrr, performance.