Operas and Balls

Winter brings the much-awaited “plesy” (ball) season to the Czech Republic, a season of dancing, drinking, and dressing up to celebrate everything from the dancers association to the fire department. Every group has their own ples, but the most important of these is your maturitni ples (graduation ples). Think of it as a combination between American graduation and prom, except there is no confirmation yet that you will indeed graduate and you bring along all of your immediate and extended family to celebrate with you. And, as proud teachers that love their students and love to take credit for the fact that they will hopefully graduate, that is the one that we look forward to the most as well.

In Prague, of course, the most fashionable place to host a ples is the Lucerna, a beautiful, 3-tiered ballroom that served as the setting for the popular 90s dance movie “Swing Kids”. Once you enter the golden room flanked with red banners, parquet floors, and intricately decorated walls, you feel are swept into a different century, one where people actually went to balls in their finest gowns and danced the waltz and foxtrot with perfect ease… until you realize that this is still quite common in many parts of Europe and that you are immediately singled out as an American once you step foot on the dance floor.

Sokolov, on the other hand, is a bit more… well, intimate, let’s say. Surrounded by the faithful crowd that attends every ples, for lack of anything better to do in a small town, as well as everyone who can claim any relation to the graduating students, the 6 American Sokolovers again claimed their precious table alongside the blaring speakers at the Communist-grey Hornicky Dum to get the best view of the lone Sokolov band, playing renditions of “YMCA” and “Eye of (the- omitted) Tiger” at every ples I’ve ever been to.

Since the venue is so small, the Gymnazium has 2 plesy, one for classes 8A/4E and another for 8B/4D. I fought tears as my students processed into the candlelit ballroom wearing their carefully selected and relatively mature ples gowns and tuxes. As each was announced, the cheering fans above pelted them with Czech coins and blizzards of confetti from the balcony that mostly ended up in our wine glasses and hair. Following the maturant announcement, all the students and teachers danced around the room toasting each other with flutes of champagne and singing the academic anthem that most don’t know the words to.

Last weekend’s ples was also a bit different from the previous one because Milena came without her husband, Ilona came with her husband, and Marcela’s husband was drunk, which meant that they were all willing to dance and be crazy with the rest of us! We stood in a circle of black, as was the popular color of the evening, and boogied right alongside our students, who occasionally swept us away to join conga lines or other such antics.

After a night of partying until 3am, I slept in and then returned to Prague to join Lena at the National Theater for the opera Carmen: a French opera, set in Spain, and viewed in the Czech Republic with English subtitles. Operas and balls all in one weekend… I felt like royalty!