I Took My Girlfriend to Future’s ‘DS2’ Ballet for Date Night

Where ya ass was at when Future hosted an ornate, trap-ified ballet in Brooklyn?

On Friday night, the Atlanta rap kingpin took over the opera house at Brooklyn Academy of Music to celebrate his masterpiece, the 2015 album DS2. Ten years removed from dropping the 18 songs that minted him as a forever legend, Future teamed up with five adroit ballerinas and an award-winning choreographer for an evening that took everyone in attendance to Pluto and back. The dirty Sprite-fueled ballet was many things: an ambitious creative vision come to life, a beautiful display of Black art, and an awesome date.

My girlfriend is, let’s say, less familiar with DS2 than I am. “When I told my friends I was going to the Future ballet, they all thought I meant a futuristic ballet, and in many ways it was,” she told me afterwards. But she was intrigued by the idea of classically trained ballerinas grooving to southern rap, and since the dress code was “theatre chic,” it was the first time we’d seen each other in even slightly formal attire—an exciting milestone in any relationship. We were game for whatever the evening had in store. Since we were coming from different directions and she beat me there, she gave me a preview of the scene via text: a photo of the room, illuminated in Grand Marnier red. This is already hilarious, she wrote.

Once properly settled in, she and I were served the Grand Marnier signature cocktails and guided to an opera box, providing a sharp vantage point for the three-act performance. Right behind us, a woman was stationed with a cello, occasionally getting spotlighted throughout the night. The ballerinas wore costumes from LaQuan Smith and floated around the stage to choreography by Ebony Williams, one of the dancers in Beyoncé’s unforgettable “Single Ladies” video. While I associate the tracklist of DS2—especially the up-tempo bangers like “I Serve the Base,” “Stick Talk,” and “Fuck Up Some Commas”—with driving really fast down the highway, my exercise playlists, and generally getting turnt, I was blown away by how well they also lent themselves to a form of dance that dates back to the fifteenth century.