Escalating Commitments

After my 9-mile run, I headed to NYC Center to try to get the jump on their Fall for Dance Festival. Tickets are 10 bucks and each night is four very different types of dance troupes. After being not too inspired by the shows I saw at the most recent NYC Salsa Congress (and downright horrified when I saw Al "Liquid" Silver put on blackface for his James Brown impersonation-you know that feeling of horror and fear you get when you're experiencing someone doing something incredibly racist that's not aimed at your ethnic group? That's what I felt, I was kind of waiting for him to get jumped by all the black people in the audience, but everyone loved it, go figure. That routine merits its own whole other blog entry actually at some point) the City Center Shows seemed like a good chance to broaden my exposure to dance.

Tickets went on sale at 11, I got there right at 11 and the line stretched around the block.


I was willing to wait about 3 hours and I thought I would wait and get a sense of the pacing and see if it was worth it. The first two legs took about 2+ hours so I thought the final leg down 55th street to the box office wouldn't be much more than an hour. I don't know what the hell happened but I didn't make it to the ticket booth until 4:00. The final block was a backbreaking 3 hours. I can't figure out why it took so long, but at that point I had committed too much time to back out and I kept adding to the amount of time I had originally been willing too wait. Flashback to grad school and sunk costs and escalation of committment. But in my case I'm sure the dance shows will be all worth it and my behavior was completely rational.