La Verita

​We went to a show, La Verita. We didn’t know what to expect. It could be anything, we said. La Verita means truth. The curtain rose and dancers ran to the stage, a confusion of legs and tutus and feathers. They ran from here to there, following no particular sequence, and they murmured as they ran, high-pitched murmurs punctured by a squeal or shriek when one dancer bumped another. We watched, puzzled but willing to be amused, willing to believe this was part of a joke. As it went on, though, a sense of disappointment crept over us. The man in the red tutu hobbling on pointe lost our interest, even as we began to question the noises that seemed to come less and less from the dancers and more from the air itself. They are only human, we reminded ourselves. Perhaps we have grown jaded. Perhaps we have lost our capability for awe. They ran offstage, finally, and after we endured a brief interlude with a painting of two gnarled, faceless creatures reaching for each other in the desert and a man with a thick Spanish accent shining a bright light into our eyes, the dancers returned. Something had changed, though, and this time they were very good. They juggled and performed acrobatic feats with rings and ribbons and swings, and the contortionist twisted his spine so that he looked at us from where the back of his head would normally be, and we breathed a sigh of relief. This is what we paid for.