The Babcock Building 1907 is in the process of being extensively rehabilitated from its former glory to its glory to come. I'm not sure what will happen to the fights that used to be a weekly feature at the theatre.
Oddly enough, now that I look closely at the picture, it looks like someone is still living on the 2nd floor at least from what can be seen through the windows. Or maybe the plants have just taken over.
On the way to The Soup Place I noticed a couple of decorative
nutcrackers on the light poles so it must be sometime after Halloween
and before Christmas.
Seeing these decorations sometime last Saturday was what reminded me to get some tickets for the annual Nutcracker Ballet at the Alberta Bair Theatre.
Both Carol and I found the performances last year—I think it was the Eugene OR company for one and I know the other was a muscular almost brutal performance by some trained Russians—a little wanting in a lot of ways but we thought we would give it another go this year.
We were very pleasantly surprised this year at the Sunday matinee by Ballet Idaho, a young regional company that puts on a great performance and adds a lot of kids, both dancers and singers from the Billings area. This combination led to a sell-out performance both Saturday and Sunday.
About the only problems were the snow fall sometimes turning into a mini-blizzard, and some disagreement amongst the trombones in the lower register, unusual I know, as the rest of the orchestra was as lush as it normally is. We are certainly lucky here in Billings as we have some really fat woodwind sounds.
