Whatever it is that stirs your soul, listen to that. Everything else is just noise.
Nicole Lyons
Ballet is one of the most beautiful art forms. You see athletic dancers on their peak of their physical level telling a story without words, but with movements, gestures, and expressions. And all that to beautiful music.
So it might sound strange to recommend taking ear plugs with you to a ballet performance, but they can be surprisingly useful. Not to deal with the music you want to hear, but with the noise you don’t. Because personally, for me, the other audience members are the bane to every great ballet performance.
I can deal with the occasional cough, I’ve got a chronic one myself (although I suppress it during performances). But the frequent rustling when people look for something, or worse, talk to others, that’s really distracting. And it turns out, if you cut off the tips of ear plugs, they still allow you to hear the orchestra, but remove the noise of the audience almost completely.
And that’s just heavenly.
P.S.: It also helps if you are in the first row of a «Black Sabbath Ballet» performance, directly in front of a small speaker.