My Not-so-Formanesque Experience

One of my favorite Czech films is Fireman's Ball, directed by Miloš Forman. If you haven't seen it, you can follow the link for more information. However, since I've been here, I have been hearing about the Czech proms or balls. Now, we aren't talking about the really fancy balls like you see in Vienna. These are less formal and apparently a big part of Czech culture, although it might be dying. Friday night was St. Thomas' parish ball. It was for all three communities – Czech, English and Spanish. When I bought my ticket, it was mentioned that it is a dress up affair – not white tie, but nice. So, I put on my cocktail dress, curled my hair and headed out into the slush.

The dance was held at the Archbishop's Palace, in the castle square. When I arrived, I saw that I was dressed pretty much in the middle of the fashion scale. Some women were more casual, some were in full ball gown. The men were in at least button-down shirts if not a suit or full tuxedo. Most of the teenage girls and boys were in very formal dress. And one older woman was in full kit – ball gown, flowers in her gorgeously curled silver hair, elbow-length gloves…(Since I only had my evening purse, I only had my mobile phone camera, so forgive the poor photos.) I soon began to think of the Czech ball in my head – Forman's Fireman's Ball and make comparisons.

The music was provided by the Czech youth group band – a group of young men who looked very hip. They played primarily Beatles' songs, but threw in a few Czech polkas, a tango, and some harder rock music. People danced accordingly but I had 2 favorite couples. One was a young couple – they looked like brother and sister, and I hope they weren't romantically involved because she was kissing on one of the band members during the break. These two knew how to dance in a ballroom. They had the proper form and glided around the room smoothly – or at least as smooth as they could amongst the less serious dancers. The second couple was an older one. They danced to everything, including the "rock" songs. I want to still dance when I'm their age.

We were also promised "wild raffles," which I admit really put me into the Fireman's Ball mindset, since the disappearing raffle items are a thread through the entire film. I'm pretty sure none of the prizes disappeared here but the question is what are they? My mother and sister and I have some ideas about small charity raffles…and past experiences at St. Thomas events kept me from buying tickets. At the Thanksgiving Dinner, the prizes were the centerpieces which were nice for the dinner but not something you necessarily wanted to take home. My friend Zdenka reminded me of that when I mentioned that I hadn't bought any tickets. These were a better though. First, Father Juan, a tri-linguist, would call out the prize number in all three languages. We did catch in a mistake or two, saying for example 83 in Czech but 89 in English. When someone indicated they had the winning ticket, one of 2 girls about the age of 10-years-old would run across the dance floor to give them their prize. The people around us who won received a book about Australia, in Czech and autographed by the author, a 200 koruny (about 10USD) gift certificate to Bohemian Bagel (I would have liked that one!), and a book about St. Nicholas church in English. Overall, not so bad, although the people who won the English-language book would have preferred, I believe, a Czech version.

After the raffle, Fr. Juan called everyone to the floor for a "special" dance. As the band played, Fr. Juan sang "La Bamba" and everyone danced. Yes, that would be our parish administrator and Augustinian monk. Gotta love it.