Edward Scissorhands Ballet: Dancing With Scissors

It's rare for me to get a little culture, like an opera, play or circus without animals, so when I read about a British production of Edward Scissorhands in dance and ballet form, well, gosh darn call me there. I caught a matinee show of a two week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which guaranteed me a nice alternative to watching basketball or Japanese horror films. It also guaranteed me to be annoyed by parents who wouldn't shut their kids up or check their blackberries every five minutes. So fricking annoying.

Also in attendance, Doris Roberts from Everybody Loves Raymond was sitting in front of me. On Saturday, Timothy Hutton was sitting a table near me. Must have been random celeb sighting weekend for me.

Anyway, $80 bought be a spectacular interpretation of Tim Burton's work and Danny Elfman's best score. The dancing is more Jerome Robbins/West Side Story rather than the Nutcracker, so it's a little more "butch" than the usual "fro-fro" dance troupe. The set design perfectly matches the tone of the film. It made me realize how great the film is and how it was pretty ahead of its time with a story of a goth outsider in a cookie-cutter 50s suburban world.

This post gives me an excuse to polish the apple of Danny Elfman, former lead singer of Oingo Boingo. I actually had a cassette copy of Dead Man's Party when I was a kid. Oingo Boingo had to live in the shadow of Devo in the 80s, but Elfman's band still holds a little soft spot in my heart. Every song was some sort of ska, funk, new wave, Halloween, theatrical-based story.

Here's a Top 5 Best Danny Elfman Scores. Looking at his filmography, he's done all his best work with Burton. And please, someone give this man in Oscar within our lifetime.

5. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

4. Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

3. Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

2. Batman

1. Edward Scissorhands

I'm thinking the best he's done outside of Burton might be Spiderman, Dick Tracy, Men in Black or Mission: Impossible.

While, we're at it, here's "Dead Man's Party"...