Today we saw my sister Christine in the Nutcracker. Or, as my dad affectionately calls it, the "Buttcracker", since the male ballerinas' costumes leave precious little to the imagination.

The high points of watching my sister's ballet recitals, for me at least, are:

1. Watching my sister.

2. Watching the adorable very small children mess up in adorable ways and wander off stage when they get confused.

Today there was a shortage of the latter, since my sister's ballet school was simply supplying the children for a super-famous Ukranian ballet company. There wasn't nearly enough of the former, either.

The performance took place in the Lyric Opera House, a large and beautiful theater, which is certainly a step or two up from Timonium Dinner Theater, where it was two years ago.

The producer for the super-famous Ukranian ballet company sat directly in front of us, and clapped loudly and angrily at all the parts where the rest of us plebeians didn't know we were supposed to clap. I felt like a big old Philistine at first... but I'm going to defend myself here. I'm fairly cultured. When I see a jazz band perform, I clap after all the solos, like I'm supposed to. I have no real appreciation for ballet, so I can't recognize when a particular move is technically difficult or whatever. So I don't really feel like I need to know when to clap.

People who lament the decline of "high culture" in America would tell me that I should know this anyway, even without any background in ballet. I think what these people really miss are the days when there was an aristocratic class that was so idle that they had nothing better to think about than when to clap at a ballet, and this is something that I don't feel bad about not missing.

Anyway, the one useful conclusion I reached was that, were Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky alive today, he would definitely be a prog-rocker. My evidence: "In the Hall of the Mountain King."