joyeuses fêtes

So as I happen to be on a different continent from most of you, the idea of sending presents or even cards seemed a little daunting, not quite carbon-responsible, and the end result would be that there would be a lot of people I care about either left out or who got something that didn't come close to recognizing how important they are to me.  What I'd really love is a place on Santa's sleigh, to just pop around the world in the blink of an eye so I could be in many many places at once and get to spend a little time with each of you.  Given Santa's technology hasn't gone public yet, I decided in lieu of wishing my way to each of you, I'd put together a little montage of my life thus far in Toulouse.  


Nutcracker's well on its way, the shows are all completely sold out (including Dress Rehearsal Thursday night), which is nice to have all that excitement and energy coming from the audience.  The two youngest kids, Philippe and Isaure, came with Christine and Olivier to watch Dress, and they were very very excited to see me from their little side box on the first balcony -- Isaure was potentially in danger of falling over the edge craning to see every tidbit, but was very enthralled with the whole thing, and loved my little wink to her during the curtain call.  


Last night a big group of the orphaned dancers all went out for pizza as our big Christmas eve dinner.  Having us all together was a great way to forget just how far away home is... and in case you're concerned about how a bird is going to come by and land on my big lip, I have a bundle of home coming my way right now.  Mackenzie's currently flying over the North Pole and waving to Santa, and arriving this afternoon (eeee!!).  I'm so so excited to have family here for Christmas, and to get to share Toulouse with her.... and Paris for the first few days of January should be fantastic.  Tonight she'll be meeting me after the show, and then we're coming home to make butternut squash risotto with Christine (the mum) and Jeanne (the 13 year old dancer) who are in town just for tonight because Jeanne had the lucky draw of the show on Christmas.  They'll head back to the grandparents' house to join the rest of the family tomorrow morning, but for tonight, it should be a lovely little girls night.  


With Mackenzie here, I'm guessing this will be my last post of 2011.  I'll do my best to take lots of pictures and try to catch myself up once life gets back to "normal" -- whatever that is -- early next year.  Thank you to all my lovely readers (er, that'd be Mum, Dad, and Nana, I think) for giving me an excuse to have all this documented.  Sending you light and love, and wishes for health and happiness in the New Year.  Joyeuses Fêtes à tous!  Bisous!  

 

il y a un chameau dans le parking

So we were mostly very focused on work this week... until we discovered our new neighbour, this lovely camel, tied up next to the parking lot.

 Only at Montaudraun... So in addition to the gypsies camped out in the parking lot across from us, we also now have a full on circus.  There's also a horse to keep this guy company, and as we were driving by, some teenagers hopped out into the street to stop us so there could be a herd of llamas stampeded across the road.  Just to reinforce how I'm at the top of the arts-and-culture food chain over here...

Last week was busy, finally turning all our focus to Nutcracker run-throughs, despite all sorts of injuries and sicknesses and new babies, oh my! that kept us from having a full cast.  I got to work on finishing up my Christmas presents for my French family -- I'll try to remember to take pictures before I give them away -- and hand painted cards for the various Seattle family and friends who are going to see my parents between now and Christmas.  Hurtling towards opening night now, but with Nutcracker, somehow there's the slight feeling that whatever can go wrong, has definitely already somewhere, so there's a little less pressure....


Mmm, but for now, Christmas carols are playing in the background, lights are up on all the trees and storefronts downtown, my grocery bags were mosre than half full of chocolate, the Christmas market with its "bretzels" and mulled wine and rows and rows of gifts-to-be-had is visible from the window of the dressing room at the theater.... and Mackenzie will be getting here on Christmas day, which is somehow impossibly in less than a week! I can't wait for her to be here -- the two of us get to hang around Toulouse while I finish up Nutcracker, celebrate various Christmas-New Years-Birthday fêtes, and then boogie our way to Paris to see some of her UPeace friends, maybe meet up with some Columbia people, and, you know, be in Paris.  Sounds like an okay scenario to kick of 2012. :)

nutcracker is in the air

So all of a sudden it's December, the weather has turned from crisp to cold, and a misty rain has descended over Toulouse.  And, as per the natural order of things, Nutcracker is in the air.  Tchaikovsky's least favorite score is wafting through the hallways, children are running up and down the stairs at Montaudran (our studios), and the whole city is starting to be decorated in red and white and gold.  

So, a quick review of what's happened since Thanksgiving.  Dan arrived on that Saturday, and stayed until early early Wednesday morning (thanks to a strike by the airline crew supposed to get him to Paris...), for a really really wonderful visit.  We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with 10 or so of the other dancers, completely vegetarian except for the roast chicken (apparently turkey was too hard to find in France), lots of really really good food and good wine and great company.  

The rest of his visit was spent rediscovering Toulouse, from coffee at the top of one of the buildings downtown (note all the great pink-tiled roofs you can see in the photo) with Eleonore and Jake -- two friends of friends who moved to Toulouse who I really really like -- to cassoulet at one of the traditional southwestern French restaurants in the city center to working on the lift that Patrick Swazye does at the end of Dirty Dancing in the Jardin des Plantes... in the 60 degree sunshine.  Pretty pretty good.  It was fantastic to get to see his face on this side of the Atlantic, and hard to see him go, but all in all, a really great four days. 

Since then, we've been focusing in a little more on Nutcracker, and continuing to work on Twyla's Nine Sinatra Songs.  Julian and I have gotten a few chances now to actually rehearse in the space (instead of in the back while trying to half watch the first cast and not step on anyone else), and it is really a great pas de deux, full of all sorts of opportunities to make eyes at each other, to balance and pull out long slow movements, to jump and run and be fast and slide, and to embody each movement with the character.  What felt uncomfortably awkward just a few weeks ago is starting to become natural, especially when we have Nanette, Paola, and Valerio all watching with a ton of experience and advice on how to make it all smoother.  Nutcracker is coming along, we're working with the kids in party scene now, and fitting in runs of Snow and Flowers where we can around the other rehearsals.  Michel Rahn, Nanette's husband, is here to set the last ballet for the January program, Benjamin Millepied's Paganini, but I'm not in it, so I'm getting a little bit of extra time to relax and think about Christmas shopping.  

Things otherwise are falling into place, my days continuing to mostly be full of good friends and food and folly :)  Wishing everyone warmth for the holiday season, I'll try to have some more updates along the way.  

that which we occupy

This is a beautiful video by At The Hop Productions, a sincere call to action, to wake, to think, to question, to energize all the spaces and minds that we occupy with our daily lives.  Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/XtO4vHv_oek

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite concepts for a holiday, with just the right mix of family, friends, reflection, controversy, and great food (even minus the turkey).  None of that religious mumbo jumbo, no gifts that need purchasing, just good company and good food.  Of course, I won't ever forget that year when the mature children (aka stupid stuck up ones) waited to eat until everyone served themselves, which resulted in cold mashed potatoes and microwaved salad... not particularly successful.  This is my third Thanksgiving away from home, but my first not in the States, so my jolly "Happy Thanksgiving!"s at work today (well, the at work part should tell you enough) were met by "oh yeah"s rather than "of course"s.  But not to fret, I have a skype date to Seattle in a few, and I made a pumpkin tart for dinner with the kids tonight, which was really nice.  Who says pumpkin pie can't be dinner? ;)

Dan is coming to visit this weekend, and we're doing a big Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of the dancers on Sunday night, so hopefully photos and stories to come.  For now, sending love and gratitude around the world to each of you.  I feel so lucky to have the support of my family -- the childhood family and the family that we've created together in each of my different homes -- that's strong enough to make me feel loved and looked after even from across an ocean.  It says a lot for how secure I am in my relationships with my loved ones, that I can pick up and run after adventure because I know that I'll always have a fireplace to come home to curl up in front of.  And the dancing, the dancing, you guys.  It's funny, part of how I describe my experience in NC is by saying that the only reason I found myself in Raleigh was for the dancing, so when the dancing wasn't what I wanted it to be, I had nothing going for it to convince me to stay.  That's not completely true of course, I made some really wonderful friends who I can't wait to see again, and am missing the many meals we ate together, but they were bright spots in a place that didn't hold anything for me.

My experience here is different twice over -- first, I'm in France, the weather is beautiful, I love the city, I can hear my French improving day by day, I have adorable children to come home to when I need a hug, I have a yoga teacher I respect immensely....this city has a weight, it's somewhere that I want to be, and second, the dancing is good.  I'm getting better, I have teachers telling me every day (many times a day) telling me what I need to be working on, and I can throw myself into striving for perfection, and learning interesting choreography with a history and a message and a quality that I've been looking for for a long time.  Normally, it would be hard to justify living 8477 km from home, or even 5996 km from New York City, but this... this is what I want to be doing.  It's a chance to hone my craft, to do something really incredibly well, to master a vocabulary and inspire people and find my voice and what I want to say and how best to share that message, in a beautiful place with lovely new people who I'm really excited about.... So I would like to thank all of you, who love me, for giving me the courage to leave you.  I can't wait to come home to you, and hope at the very least the stories of my adventures will help close the distance in the meantime.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

catch-up (no, tomato paste isn't a vegetable)

Somehow I kept thinking I was going to have time to get caught back up on things... now all of a sudden there are Christmas lights in all the store windows and I'm planning a skype call with the family during their annual Thanksgiving Day kickball game.  When did that all happen? 


So, some of the quick highlights: 


As soon as we finished La Reine Morte, we had Jean-Pierre Frohlich come for two weeks from New York City Ballet, to stage MOVES by Jerry Robbins.  It's going to be part of the mixed-bill program at the end of January called "New York Dances," featuring 4 NYC choreographers in different styles.  Firmly in the neoclassical category, Jerry was Balanchine's second in command at NYCB for decades, but is probably better known for his Broadway musicals, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof.   MOVES is a silent ballet, sans musique as we say here, which meant lots of long rehearsal hours in almost silence, with Jean-Pierre's instructions and the sound of pointe shoes hitting the floor, and various slaps and counts to try to keep us all in perfect rhythm to an imaginary beat.  It's going to be really fun, I think, once we get on stage; there's something incredibly powerful about controlling both the dance and the timing.  Not being tied to music raises the weight of each movement, because it has to stand alone.  As it stands we have about a cast and a half, meaning I'll do every show.  It's a ballet with six couples, and lots of smaller sections, so they'll change out the soloists who do the pas de deux's, but keep as many people as possible the same so we can really get used to feeling each other as a coherent group.  Originally done in 1959, there are parts that feel a little dated, but there are also sections that are still brilliant 50 years later.  More news to come on that as we get closer to the end of January.


After Jean-Pierre left, Elaine Kudo arrived to teach the next piece of the mixed bill, Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs.  Feel free to check out Elaine and Baryshnikov in their younger days doing a version for film, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHn7JbamF0U&feature=fvwrel.  They're pretty bad ass.  I grew up watching Twyla, and particularly Sinatra Songs, at PNB and always looked forward to my chance to learn her movement style.  Seven couples in long dresses and heels (new kind of foot pain from rehearsals, great!) embody different sides of relationships from Something Stupid to That's Life to All The Way, the pas de deux I'm learning with Julian.  It's normally a dance for the tall principal couple, representing mature love, with a bunch of tricky partnering and lifts and using each other for balance that has to look easy and natural and smooth. In heels.  ;)  We're second cast to Valerio and Paola, the two Italian principals, which is great, because Paola did it before, and they're both super helpful about guiding us on where exactly to put hands and weight and which way to launch yourself hoping he'll be there to catch you....  We started the second rehearsal by playing a "game" -- take your partner, grab right hands, and squat down leaning out so you have to use the other person's weight not to fall over; come back up and switch hands, and keep going back and forth until you have a good sense of the resistance that the other person gives you, so then you can do all that turning and in heels and with a leg up in the air behind you.  Fun fun fun.  


And naturally, tis the season for Nutcracker, so we're fitting in Snow and Flowers rehearsals around the edges as well.  We don't open until I think the 23rd of December, and do only 7 shows, which for a girl used to 45 shows spread out from the Friday after Thanksgiving through the end of December, is pretty much a dream.  It's nice to have those rehearsals to run the dances a few times a week to keep our stamina up, especially because all the Tharp work is in heels instead of pointe shoes, so it's easy to get out of shape pointe-wise quickly.  Besides, it wouldn't quite feel right if we weren't rehearsing Nutcracker, now would it? 

In other news... US Congress has decided tomato paste on pizza counts as a vegetable, Occupy movements around the states are being raided by police, Egyptians are back in Tahrir Square, and these are some really pretty pictures ;)  
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/11/national_geographic_photo_cont.html

snot. don't say I didn't warn you.

So I had a wonderful week and a half visit with my Dad, and the shows of La Reine Morte were a great success and we're on to working on rehearsing the next two programs, so I have lots of catching up to do.  Unfortunately, Dad's crappy cold he had for the whole time that he was here was one of the lovely things he left behind in France, so for now, I'm surrounded by a pretty pathetic pile of tissues and I'm sure my keyboard is one of the last places you'd want to look with one of those super-science microscopes that makes bacteria glow all sorts of cool colors.

Since I know how much all of you love hearing about my distress, however, I thought I'd make a quick aside to tell you about my day today, and then deal with the backlog tomorrow.  Today was Sunday, so I made my customary trip to the market this morning, which was considerably less crowded than normal because it was rainy and cold.  Efficiency being my middle name, pretty soon my bag was loaded with root vegetables (being considerably denser than summer fruits and cucumbers, surprisingly) and I headed back home walking at a pretty hefty angle to balance things out.

After a quick respite for a pain au chocolat and some southern French olives (lunch of champions) I went back out into the elements -- all of this drizzle being the perfect remedy for the cold working its way through my lungs -- and out to meet some dancers at the museum for a little injection of culture into our artless lives.  ;)  We have a new dancer who just joined this week, so naturally I got down to being welcoming and organized a get-together for everyone so he could meet some more people (now, if I could do that when I'm new and need to meet people, sheesh).  After a lovely walk around the ancient convent which now houses some beautiful medieval paintings and sculptures, we had a great lunch at a cute little crèperie name Le Sherpa.  I had Nepali tea in honor of the poor guys schelping bags up mountains, and wondered if it'd be wrong to ask for three cups of it.  Not sure anyone else at the table would appreciate my Greg Mortenson references, but it's nice to know you can still make yourself smile.

So while I was trying to be discrete about the rapidly expanding pile of sandpaper-masquerading-as-napkins next to me under the table, it became clear pretty quick that the cold was descending.  Post lunch and a home-made chocolate sauce and peach crepe (it's a hard life here in the south of France, have I mentioned?), we all started to work our way back home, me with three measly little napkins surreptitiously smuggled into a pocket to accompany me.  Naturally though, it's Sunday, so the buses are much less regular than normal, so I catch the sooner one with a little bit of a further walk home (these are the kind of important details you care about, right?).  Unfortunately, the snot isn't joking around.  There's only so much pressure inside the cranial cavity that's generally advisable for one weekend, so I'm trying to gage the walking faster vs breathing heavier vs rate of snot vs time to home ratios, and let's just say that it was looking pretty bad for a while.  Some of the leaves of passing trees became Kleenex-mirages before my very eyes.  Certainly the ivy half a block away from home was incredibly tempting.  I'm happy to say that (clearly) I made it home, and no arboreal mutilation or violation occurred at any time in making of this blog post (actually, that's distinctly untrue, given tissues are made from trees, although that occurred well before this blog, so we'll give it a pass).  I hope you all are well, and will excuse me now as I go try to replace my fluids.  Also, let's chalk up all the snot references to passing fever-induced delirium, and promptly forget they ever happened.

dad and the dead queen

Dad and I are curled up watching an episode of the West Wing, so this will be short.  He arrived Tuesday afternoon, bearing all my winter clothes and jet glue, a most welcome sight.  Since then our days have been mostly full of the theatre, with shows of La Reine Morte every night and rehearsals every day.  Even with the many hours I had to be sitting around backstage, we've managed to fit in lots of lovely breakfasts and little walks around Toulouse that usually end up with a glass of wine somewhere or some quite excellent French food.

A Wine Bouffon with a Ballet Bouffon :)

The shows all went smoothly, minus the fact that during class Saturday morning (our one day with two shows), the first cast principal woman injured her ankle, just badly enough that the entire second cast ended up having to perform both shows.  The principal couple in this ballet had I think seven different pas de deux (as opposed to normally one or three in most ballets), so we were all a little in awe that they were still standing at the end of the second run -- luckily, the first cast woman was healthy enough to perform Sunday's matinee, so they didn't have to perform again on beat up legs.

Dad in Albi 

Today (Monday, my one day off while Dad's here) we hopped on a little train through the French country side to Albi, about an hour away.  The Saint Cecile Cathedral is the largest brick building in the world, and stunning, the town was charming and cosy, and the Musée de Toulouse Lautrec was fascinating.  The museum had 4 or 5 large rooms of his paintings and lithographs, including his portraits of his mother, many anonymous women from Paris' brothels, and some of his most famous posters advertising for the Moulin Rouge.  Plus a fantastic South-Western French meal of Cassoulet Toulousain for Dad and Onion Tarte and veggie soup for me, with frites that came with an ancienne sauce de Roquefort, and a little Pastis, of course.  All in all a splendid day.

More pictures and stories to come, mostly it's just wonderful to have Dad here to share in all my little French moments and get to see the little corners of life here.  :)

little sunbeams

sunshine on my walk in to the ballet

My days are getting fuller, stretching out in some really nice places, little pieces falling more into place.  So while I'm sure there are more political outbursts brewing, today I'd just like to share some vignettes of a day in my life here.

Mornings are settling into a wonderful routine, with bright crisp sunshine and bus drivers who know my smile and will stop my second bus as it's passing so I can dash across the street and save myself half of the 20 minute walk to the studio.  The Seattle girl in me is still trying to make up for the years of sun deprivation, though, so I find myself walking down the middle of the street grinning and wanting to fling my arms out wide to the sun.  Mid-October, and we've had maybe 3 days of rain in the two months I've been here? I can deal with that :)

my new teapot, and "Lets Mots" by Jean-Paul Sartre

The men at my vegetable stand at the market know me enough now to have me help them force their wares on unsuspecting passer-bys (oui oui, the mangos are great!)  and ask about how the dancing is going, when our next performance is.  I went back to the book seller where I'd searched unsuccessfully for Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo last week, and he remembered me and what I'd been looking for.  I picked up Sartre's Les Mots and so we had a quick conversation about Camus and Sartre (I was in way over my head) and I promised to report back as I worked my way through it (I'm sure it will continue to be over my head for a while).  And at long last, the pottery man was back, and I couldn't resist getting a tea pot to match my hand-painted cups.  I'm learning quickly that no matter how much cash I bring with me to the market, I can find ways of spending it all (bring less bring less!).

for chateau quatre bouffons, and their infamous bastard

Errands are getting more and more efficient, I'm finding really lovely comfortable spaces talking to strangers and getting compliments on my French, letting conversations pick up where I'm not at all invested in the outcome, so I can afford to be open to saying what I really think, and to listening to the advice they have to offer me.  Time spent wandering skinny little French streets lined with brick, and sitting at cafés people watching -- little kids being my favorite: some little ones in Halloween costumes tottering by the car that stopped to let them cross with the cutest little "merci monsieur!" you've ever heard in your life from an almost 3 foot tall knight, a wide-eyed "c'est froid!" ("it's cold!") from the little girl sharing orange juice and a croissant with her mother at the table next to me -- reminds me that I'm really here, really living my life in France.  The novelty of that hasn't worn off, and I'm excited about what more I can do to take advantage of being here as my comfort level continues to grow.  I passed this street sign as I was wandering yesterday, and couldn't resist taking a picture for my quatre-bouffons... :)

Evenings at the yoga studio are unfailingly calming and fulfilling, usually with class being followed by lovely conversations with Christine, the teacher, and Julian, my Norwegian dancer-by-day-yogi-by-night friend.  Julian is moving to a new apartment, so we spent Sunday with a few other dancers hauling the first load of stuff over (the new apartment has 3 huge floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Garonne River through the trees on the bank, it is possible I'll be moving in with him if he isn't careful) and cooking dinner and watching a movie making fun of the French northerners' strong accents and nasal quacks...  And dinners with the family are increasingly wonderful, Christine (the mum) walked in to Philippe's room the other night to catch us in the middle of a story, me and the three littlest ones piled into Philippe's little twin bed under the covers.  Tonight actually, Philippe spent a while talking just to me for the first time, (though he's always been good at just crawling into my lap when we don't have enough chair space) telling me about the comic strip they read in English class about a Jack-in-the-box and "who are you?" as a question they learned.  Super precious.  Isaure showed me her little lunchbox-sized suitcase of "Il était une fois..." stories -- once upon a time -- and I got to tell her about how I was a bird in the ballet version of Hansel and Gretel, eating up the bread crumbs.  There isn't a whole lot better than a warm cuddly little body curled up next to you reading bed time stories...

In other incredibly exciting news, my Dad's coming next week, for a week and a half, to see La Reine Morte and me, and Toulouse.  I can't wait to get to have him here, and to have a partner in crime to explore even more.  Oh, and for the next two weeks we're rehearsing and performing in the theatre, so when I say that I'm going in to work, this is what it looks like :) -->>

occupy with love, part one: life

I can't help but feel as if this year has been one of the ones that my children will ask me about; the same as people will always remember where they were on September 11, 2001, I think it will be important in the future where you were during Arab Spring, how you were participating in the global upheaval that has spread from the Middle East to Europe to the streets of Lower Manhattan. So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to spend some time talking about what I think of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and our general political and corporate landscape in the States.  Apparently something has gotten into my blood recently (slightly possible I went into a small "why I'm a vegetarian" rant at the ballet over lunch the other day...) and this turned into a post with some serious length.  For ease of reading (and because I only have so many hours to sit here at once), I'm going to spread out my fighting words over a few posts over the next few weeks.

For some context, first, I'd like to place my own little life within the greater scope of the American arts scene. I was incredibly lucky to have parents who not only raised me with love and support and creativity and high expectations, but also the financial means to offer me the ability to take advantage of the opportunities that I had in dance. That being said, I worked through high school, and spent two years dancing for Carolina Ballet making less than minimum wage because in the middle of a recession, the arts are not an industry with money. I could -- and did -- make more tutoring AP Calculus at night for an hour than in a whole day working at the ballet in a career that I'd been training for actively since I was 8 years old. I am finally -- in my almost fifth year dancing full time -- making enough money to be completely independent, which is true simply because I moved to Europe, where I'm quite officially an employee of the "Marié de Toulouse" (the Mayor's office). So when I talk about how I believe government has an obligation to provide for its citizens in a few concrete arenas, I'm literally living my dream while making a living due to the support of arts organizations by a government, though turns out I had to move to France to find it.  So, without further ado:

Government is not something to be scared of; instead, democracy's original form is one of hope, one where people willingly enter into a social contract in order to preserve and protect their essential rights and use collaboration to its best advantages.  Most of the reasons that I'm proud to claim the American side of my heritage have to do with our ideals -- that people have the power of self-governance, and can create a system in order to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens, designed to continually give individual citizens the ability to actively participate in their government.  Of course, the reality accompanying those ideals has never been perfect -- "all" used to be only rich white men, and we've progressed slowly from there over the past few centuries, and still have a ways to go.  Because the length of this post is quickly getting out of hand, I'm going to look at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as broad categories to guide the next few posts... 

Life
I believe that providing life to your citizens means a deep commitment to ensuring that people have access to clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care.  We've had a fair amount of success with getting clean drinking water to almost every corner of the country (bravo), though I'm sure there is lots to be said about the state of many of our rivers and lakes due to pollution, and hydrofracking is raising a new threat to the groundwater of surrounding communities.  Luckily I don't know much about this, so I'll refer you to Gasland, the documentary about the natural gas industry that I haven't seen yet, and call it a night.

Healthy food is another issue -- the industrialization of farming has completely changed the landscape of food. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are widely used on huge fields of one crop, depleting the soil of nitrogen and without diversity, opening ourselves up devastating consequences of disease. In a 2007 study put out by the University of Michigan, organic farming has been shown to be equally productive to conventional methods in developed countries, and much more productive in developing ones, without exposing farmers to crushing debts incurred by buying fertilizers and seeds that aren't natural to the region. Ivette Perfecto, one of the leaders of the study, was clear about how organic farming could produce enough to feed the world, while also limiting the damaging effects of conventional farming, such as "soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity" (see http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936 for the summary of the study).

In addition to going organic, of course, is the dramatic need to eat (and consume in other forms) more locally. The number of miles food travels to our dinner plates is huge, making the whole industry more inefficient, expensive, and illogical than it needs to be. Government subsidies of some of the largest crops (ie corn and feed grains) make it easier for corporate farms to buy up smaller family farms, encourages a lack of crop diversity, and makes high-fructose corn syrup abundantly cheap, which in turn has shaped the processed food industry. Instead, people need to be actively participating in their own diets, taking responsibility for what they put in their bodies and what their money is supporting. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution takes a look at the American food industry and education surrounding food, and is frightening -- elementary school kids who don't know what broccoli is, or a tomato, let alone where their meat comes from (hint: live animals, not the freezer section). The amount of meat that we (er, Americans, not me) eat, for that matter, is also incredibly unsustainable (and has ripple effects due to the methane gas produced by cows contributing to global warming, the huge amounts of grain going to feed cattle rather than humans, and the environmental impacts of the massive feedlots). So there are lots of cultural changes in how we eat and think about food that need to accompany legislative shifts toward supporting smaller independent farms and suppliers of local produce rather than massive farm conglomerates. (To learn more about the things we need to do, please check out Jamie Oliver's fantastic TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html about obesity and food education).

Obesity then can be our transition into talking about the healthcare system. I also believe that our society, through government as our collaborative commitment to supporting each other in mutually beneficial goals, benefits tremendously from healthy citizens and should be making every effort to support public health. Diet-related diseases are the biggest killer in the US, hands down. Around $150 billion a year is spent here on health care for diet-related problems, and that is set to double in the next ten years. Incredibly though, we have a cure for obesity, it's not cancer or AIDS or countless other diseases where there's nothing yet we can do to get rid of it completely.  What we eat is killing us, and bankrupting the country -- in the whole debate about the national debt (which clearly included how the current social support programs have rising costs), was anyone talking about how to make people healthier, and therefore less expensive to care for?  If so, I missed it, but surely there are some serious dollar amounts worth investing now to campaign for a healthier nation (keep at it, Michelle Obama).

And then comes the insurance debate.  Many of our healthcare problems are preventable, but are early treatment and diagnosis is inaccessible to the poor or uninsured. We end up spending many times more money treating a disease later (or in the emergency room) rather than preventing it up front (75% of all health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions, many of which can be prevented, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, lung disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. Source: Health Affairs). The US spent $2.5 trillion dollars on healthcare in 2009, the most per capita in the world, yet is 43rd in infant mortality rate (approximately 30,000 infants die in the United States each year. The infant mortality rate, which is the risk of death during the first year of life, is related to the underlying health of the mother, public health practices, socioeconomic conditions, and availability and use of appropriate health care for infants and pregnant women. Sources: CDC and National Center for Health Statistics), and 47th in terms of total life expectancy.  There are a lot of countries that you need to list before you get to number 43...  For the home of many of the best medical care facilities in the world, we're clearly not doing things quite right.  While our citizens are spending more time being sick, less time being productive, and missing chances to treat diseases early using less money and less time, the private insurance companies are taking home a hefty profit -- more than 20% of every dollar goes to insurance overhead costs, while simultaneously driving up hospital and physician administration fees (http://masscare.org/health-care-costs/overhead-costs-of-health-care/).  Personally, I prefer the money that I spend on health care to be going towards making sure that I'm healthy.  Surely it doesn't have to quite so complicated.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, read any articles you have to send my way, or hear more generally about how things are in your lovely lives.  Thanks for indulging me, apparently I've been having some trouble expressing myself as fully as I want to be able to in French, because this can't have come out of nowhere ;)  

la pleine lune

Sunday morning it was still cold, so I put on my winter coat and scarf and headed out to the St. Aubin market.  The vegetable stall I went to two weeks ago had moved a little bit around the corner, but the man still very cheerily recognized me as the American dancer!! and was super helpful with making sure I got the local tomatoes (even though they didn't look quite as pretty, they taste better and were cheaper, and I hadn't seen them in their far-away row).  I'm getting faster at going through the market, honing in on which stalls have the best produce, the bakery stand I always visit, the cheese-and-egg cart... :) pretty wonderful to have that be part of the weekly life here...

My spoils

A few hours of online French history lectures later (with a few fresh from the market snack breaks), Olivier (the father of the family) and I went down to the apartment of Juliana, one of the soloists in the company who is redoing her bathroom, and therefore has a big mirror she doesn't need anymore.  Olivier was a life saver, hauling the mirror down the three flights of stairs, and, you know, owning a car so we could get it back here.  I can't wait to get it hung up (in the kitchen part of my bitty studio, opposite the window so it reflects the light back) to open up the space.

Then off I dashed downtown, to one of the few English pubs in town, "The Frog and Rosbif" (roast beef), for trivia night with some of the other dancers.  Spectacularly failing at trivia, we had a good time drinking some of the pub's own microbrews and debating whether or not Steve Jobs deserved quite all the attention he was getting (if only he'd stuck around long enough to come out with iTeleport, then maybe he'd be worth some serious mourning, but alas, he went too soon).  

Today was sleepy, in a wonderful way, full of beautiful sunshine and reading my book and catching up on news of the world and a long afternoon nap and a great yoga class.  Ready to start next week, refreshed and restocked, with all sorts of yummy produce in my fridge :)  It's a full moon tonight, bringing a reflective twist to a sleepy Monday, but now it's late, so I'll save some of my ponderings for another time. 

autumn

Today was a spectacularly beautiful second day of autumn.  It's almost the middle of October, and the temperature finally dropped to crisp bright mornings and just the right amount of chill in the air to feel like fall, with none of the gray or wet I'm so used to as harbingers of the colder seasons to come from a childhood in Seattle.  Bright sun, white clouds patched across a brilliant pale blue sky, a real breeze that started to blow only a few days ago... It's lovely.  As much as I love the lazy days of summer and spending months on end outside in the sun (as a sun-starved Pacific Northwesterner, a day with sunshine is always and forever something to celebrate), there's something so wonderful about fall.  Fall has always come with new beginnings, new energy and motivations, and I'm starting to feel that spirit in the wind that's blown into town.  The season's first pot of soup is on the stove, to help guard against the chill coming in with the evening light from the open window...

All week we've had a guest teacher, Tom, who's originally from Belgium, who danced with the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the Joffrey Ballet in the States, and is now I think working in Germany... what all of that really means is that he has a ffffaaaaantastic accent.  Basically he sounds like a Scotsman trying to speak French, or some mix of French and English (English is his preferred of the two), with German thrown in occasionally for our German speakers... And he teaches a very different style of class than our normal mix of Nanette and our ballet masters, much more movement in the arms and upper body and making "figures of eight!" rather than being placed and correct and square... which naturally led to some really wonderful attempts this morning at making "figure of 11! of Z! of W! of 5!" with our bodies in the back of the studio while we were warming up before class.  Tom is funny, energetic, and smiles back at me while I'm laughing at myself, so I like him :)  And it's only two weeks, so whatever is missing from his class in terms of placement/preparation for the rehearsal day, it's not long enough to lose technique or anything anywhere near that drastic, and throwing yourself into trying to take class in his style opens up a new versatility that you'll never get if you don't at least try to do what he's asking.

It's also nice to have some juxtaposition to Nanette's constant refrain to anchor your shoulder blades down your back in order to place your whole body correctly -- she's right, of course, it's how you initiate movement from your back rather than your exterior limbs, but in my attempts to "pull my shoulder blades down harder than I ever have before in my life" I feel myself getting stiff in my movement quality.  Tom's classes, with their twists and turns and movey-dancy-gorgeous-spin feeling, are forcing me to not be stiff, and then I can remember on my own that my shoulder blades need to be down, and make some of those brain-muscle connections for myself while preserving the breath of it.  Not sure if that's way too much technical dance exploration for my laypeople, but thought I'd at least give you a glimpse.

Nutcracker has also started, despite the many months between now and Christmas.  Snow and Flowers are taught and rehearsed, in around 4-5 hours each, to be picked up again sometime in November or December.  Meanwhile, La Reine Morte is getting closer and closer to done, with one week left in the studio.  Working with Kader (who will take over the directorship next year) has been really great, with a ton of attention to detail and work on finding the style of each dance and character.  Tuesday afternoon we have only half a rehearsal day, with the rest of the day scheduled as an "Essayage (Tutti)" -- Costume Fitting (for everyone) -- so we'll see how the final workings of the costumes come out.  They should be pretty wild, with long ball gowns in various metallics for the Cortisans, men with large collars and hats, a full skullcap-to-fingertip white mesh connected to a some version of a white tutu for the Second Act Mariées (again with the dead women ghosts), the Jesters (bouffons) in brightly colored full-body unitards covered in tumorous bulges in contrasting colors and with pointed (for the boys) and spherical (for the girls) attachments to go under the unitard on top of their heads... yeah, that one might just need to have a picture, words can't quite do justice to the mayhem of the fabric...

As always, more to come.  Sending out good wishes to all of you --  happy fall everyone!

paris

10 o’clock Saturday evening:  

I arrive in Paris, the city of lights, the city of love, the city with a history stretching back to the Roman empire, the city that has inspired artists and intellectuals and philosophers and revolutionaries for centuries.  Not such a bad place to be.  I’m here to stay with Lyse, my second cousin who's here studying for the fall at Science Po and tomorrow, and see Nina, my friend from Seattle who's on a European exchange from her Swedish Masters in Anthropology program to study here until December.

Coming out of the subway stop to meet Lyse, I was greeted by the center of the traffic-round-about of six lion statues spouting water out of their mouths, (not so bad) and her smiling face.  Seven stories up her apartment building’s wooden spiral staircase, we reach her absolutely adorable Parisian home – two rooms plus a kitchen and bathroom, bright colors, a deep bathtub (but no place to stand and shower), and a view of the whole neighbourhood.  We stayed up late catching up and swapping French bureaucracy war stories.

 Sunday, Day 1:

  

Today was lovely, sunny and warm and full of beautiful wanderings and good food and catching up with friends.  We slept in, had tea and breakfast in Lyse's sunny top floor apartment, and set off to wander.  Starting at the Louvre, we worked our way up and down the Jardins de Touilleries, passing statues and tourists and locals taking in October sunrays.  From the Louvre and Palais Royale, we walked down to the Mirais (the Jewish quarter), which is the one humming neighbourhood on a Sunday, to meet Nina.  Having found my long lost Swede, we honed in on a falafel restaurant (craftily following the trail of happy people with street food) and had a fantastic lunch.  They seriously knew what they were doing with that kitchen. I was planning on taking a picture, but… I was hungry.  It disappeared very quickly....

We were in Paris, so some shopping may or may not have happened.  Sizes are different in French, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.  Lyse went to go pick up her boyfriend, Simon, from the airport (he’s here for almost two weeks to visit Paris for the first time) and Nina and I went on a lovely date, splitting a slice of cheesecake and sitting on the bank of the Seine people watching for a little before meandering past the Notre Dame… I sent Nina home, to rest up before her first day of real French classes, and made my way back to Lyse’s to meet Simon, where the three of us helped him combat jetlag by staying up until past midnight talking politics, comparing American, Canadian, and French customs and policies, and figuring out all the basics for saving the world.  Lyse is taking some history courses here, as well as being well-informed about the major monuments and events of Paris, and talking with her all weekend got me re-excited about history.  I’d love to do some investigations into the history of the churches of Toulouse – from her guidebook, we have the most pure Romanesque church in Europe, built in 1049, and another one that exhibits a mishmash of architecture styles from throughout the two centuries it took to build it – and the history of the region in general.  My efforts to figure out the best way to do that (French vs English? For credit vs not? Online vs In-person classes?) are continuing, but the motivation is much higher.

Monday Day 2:

Sunlight streaming in through the windows signaled the start of another slow morning, today with fresh pastries from the bakery downstairs and tea, before we headed out to Notre Dame.  Simon, Lyse and I hopped on the Metro, switching to some combination of French and quiet English (gotta love Canadians) and smiling to ourselves about the lovely Frenchman in a suit eating his baguette sandwich and éclair.  Sooooo French.

So, Notre Dame.  Again, I think all of us caught the history bug – seeing a building that old, that huge, and that intricate, forces you to wonder about the people who watched it getting built and whether they knew it would continue to compel people to come visit it this many centuries later.  What were the stories of the designers, the craftsmen, the quarrymen?  From whose imagination were the faces of the gargoyles born, who first dreamed of a stained-glass archway on such a massive scale?

Emmanuel

We climbed the stone spiral staircase up and up and up to the first landing, at the north-west corner of the building, with a view from Mont-Martre to the Eiffel Tower.  Inching past gargoyles and stone demons in the Galerie des Chimères along the western façade of the church, we took in Paris from above.  From there, we ducked through the hobbit-sized door into Quasimodo’s domain.  Up dark, age-smoothed wooden stairs, the bourdon, the church’s largest bell, hung silent, rung only on the major Catholic holidays.  They have four smaller bells in the north tower that mark the time, and the layer of dust on this one – christened Emmanuel – begged for someone to duck under the flimsy rope to commit what I’m sure must be some kind of horrible crime.  I contained myself, though as Lyse said, once it’s rung, it’s not as though they can un-ring it….  Now towards the top of my to-do list: read Notre Dame de Paris in Victor Hugo’s original French. 

Up another spiral staircase equally long, you reach the top of the church.  The stone is worn down in the middle of each step, a smooth indent in each stair from millions of feet making the trek up to the height of the southern tower for a full panorama of the city. 

As nice as the view from the top is, the inside of the church is where its scale becomes more dazzling.  The size of the arches, the many alcoves for prayer to individual saints, the walls themselves… throughout the entire building you can feel the history, the weight of centuries of people’s desperate prayers and joyful hopes and searching questions… Even as a very clearly not-anything-close-to-Catholic, the stories in the stones of the building are compelling.

From Notre Dame, we went to a café near the train station to meet up with Nina for a late lunch before I hopped on the train back to Toulouse.  Five hours of reading and journaling later, I made it back to my now ”normal” life – renewed and ready to dive into a week full of rehearsals all day everyday for La Reine Morte and Nutcracker.  It was great to have gotten the chance to be in Paris without having any strong tourist-y agenda, so I could focus on just being where I was and who I was with instead of trying to race through a checklist of Must-See's.  I can't wait to go back and continue exploring more of what Paris -- and all of France -- has to offer.  All in all, a very successful weekend!

trace de pas

St. Aubin

Sitting in the shade of some trees at the base of the church St. Aubin, finished with my shopping at the market and listening to a really talented street musician on an instrument I don't know the name of.  Really, just a wonderful day.

The silhouette of the musician, and all his admirers

Sunshine streams down around me, illuminating the deep brick colors of the buildings and roofs across the street and putting in a serious bid that we're not quite done with summer. Pain au chocolat from my usual market-baker, and some dried mango make the perfect early Sunday afternoon snack, and finally, I'm peacefully content. There's something so wonderfully French about renting one of the city bikes (free for the first half hour) and riding into the city to do my shopping at the Sunday market (organic tomatoes, fresh fruit, dried mangos, almonds, candied ginger, fresh garlic)...   Makes the harder days seem far away and reminds me of some of the reasons I decided that to pick up and move to this far away continent.

Back home: It's nice to just find the little things -- the bookseller who has an open bottle of wine, the pleasure of having a clean apartment, painting while sitting and drinking my cup of tea, talking to family and friends on skype -- are starting to be incredibly reassuring, rather than strange.  Friday night I went over to Emily's apartment to help her with her internet -- Emily's one of the other new Americans, but she's 18 and this is her first company, neither her nor her mom speak any French -- so I called to find out that there is a mouse on their line (not so sure if that's literal or a French turn of phrase) and set up a technician to come on Monday for them.  It makes me grateful that of all the places I could have ended up, the country where I already spoke some of the language is where I ended up -- the helplessness is really a huge factor when you can't even say "can you please send a technician to fix my internet, it's been a few weeks now and I neeeeeeeeed to have contact with the outside world!" or some such thing.  

Saturday night was Flavian's 18th birthday (one of the youngest dancers in the company; he grew up in Toulouse), so we went out to dinner at an African restaurant.  I still am somehow astounded by the number of languages spoken at the table -- Russian, French, English, Spanish, Armenian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Italian -- and those are just the native speakers, with all sorts of crossovers in between.  It just brings a whole new dimension to discussions, with points where you're limited by your lack of knowledge, and where your communication base is broadened by getting to pick expressions from each of many languages that fit the situation the best.  

And my relationships with the family are continuing to deepen.  I've been alternating reading bed time stories to the kids with playing multiplication flash-card games (great for me to practice my French numbers), and Colombe came home this week with cinquante sur cinquante (50/50) on her multiplication times table.  They also taught me my new favorite French word, "trace de pas" which means foot print, or the trace of a step :)  Again, it's the little things that are the ones that make you smile :) 

wildfire

This week the future has been stretching out in front of me in a peculiar way, either the inverse or the continuation of my musings about my New York shadow self, I haven't decided yet.  Now I'm starting to actually feel the decision to not go back to school not only as missing those people and that place, but also as the rest of my life opening up. The freedom that we all have to choose our lives is feeling particularly tangible, in a good and scary way.  Now I get to start thinking about how long I want to stay here, what I want to accomplish with my dancing, what I want to be in my life while I am dancing, what I want to do after.  Not that these are new questions, they're just being addressed in a different time scale now, which changes the answer some.  Most of the dancers here have been here for many many years--six and you're given an indefinite contract, meaning you need to be fired, rather than hoping each year to be rehired, and you can apply for French citizenship.  That seems very far away, and certainly things are going to change when Kader takes over, but it's also an idea I can entertain, at least.  What would it look like for me to actually live here for a while? And the other big question is of what comes after.  University, I think, almost certainly, but in what?  Do I want to do something that continues on a path related to dance, or something completely separate?  Over lunch yesterday I had a great conversation with Julian, my Norweigan yogi, and Valerio, one of the principal men who I really like, who is going to be a new father in the next few weeks :) So while Valerio was plucking away at his little travel guitar, we talked about how to deal with the entrenched power structures of society, and the tragedy of the American dream, and how all the world is trying to emulate the soulless consumerism of Hollywood. Of course, there are all sorts of wonderful things that we could be exporting, but endless work and never being satisfied with what you have... Not the mindset the world needs, not with all of what we need to accomplish. But then, how do we change that mindset?  Is living your own life in as a healthy, modest, aware, empathetic human being enough, or is setting an example not contagious enough?  The most powerful people in this world are reaping the benefits of the current system, they are not the ones who are going to change it.  So how then does the wildfire start, where do we light it, and how do we sustain the flame?

elena

The shows this weekend went wonderfully -- everyone stayed on their feet, Nanette was happy, the principals were all beautiful, I felt good.  The theater was in a casino, so slightly smaller, and outside of the city unlike our other two theaters, but still very nice, just modern.  There was a really nice sense of camaraderie among the dancers, and lots of people made sure especially to say "merde" and "toi toi" (the French equivalent) to all of the new dancers before the shows.  Performing again is fun, and feels like a nice little night cap on my return to the daily routine of dancing;  I love getting to see the little kids in the first few rows of the audience, getting to channel characters that I don't normally embody, getting to share my art for a few hours... It feels good.

Doing Giselle has such a lovely tradition behind it, a weight of years that is almost palpable once you've put on the costume and painted yourself into a pale pale ghost.  And there are actions required of you in the true classical ballets, like standing perfectly still on the side of the stage for thirteen minutes, with the exception of getting to switch the one foot you're standing on every few minutes, that create a) lots of muscle pain, b) an effect that's magical to watch, and c) lots of time to be held slightly hostage to your thoughts.

Sunday was the two year anniversary of the day that Elena Shapiro was killed by a drunk driver, three weeks after I joined Carolina Ballet.  There are many people who knew her and loved her better than I did who can speak to her loss better than me, but losing someone always leaves a mark.  I've been thinking about her a lot this past week, remembering the Sunday two years ago after we found out about the accident when we had to run Swan Lake twice with no one to dance her spot, where all of the swans were actually crying during the "Sad Song" and where the act of dancing while feeling that emotional was both heartbreaking and cathartic.  Somehow that afternoon broke an artistic barrier inside of me, and tied my grief to dance on an almost subconscious level -- one that I wasn't quite aware of doing happy children's ballets or Balanchine.  But these tragic classics... Putting on the white practice tutu even, narrating a story of loss and tragedy and magical powers controlling the fates, it brings me right back to when it was all fresh.  Not so hard to cry over Giselle's body in the first act, or to become a man-hating Wili when I start thinking of the idiot who killed her.

More happier thoughts soon -- I've been doing lots of thinking this week, had a couple really wonderful conversations about saving the world and what is going to be necessary to change the collective consciousness to one that appreciates quality over quantity and how to really truly create beauty... My kind of lunchtime small talk ;) More on that next time, and on La Reine Morte, the new Kader ballet we're working on for October's program :)

a corner turned

A corner has been turned, I think.  The beginning of the past week was a little hard, with something between culture shock and just normal loneliness creeping up through the first few weeks.  My frustration over my limitations with French was mounting, I'd spent a few too many hours by myself in the apartment, I didn't yet have a phone (let alone really know what there was to do) so I couldn't particularly make plans,  I had to walk up hill both ways to get anywhere...   Hopefully I'm past that now.

Monday morning (day two of our weekend) I put on Sophie's feather earrings, and picked myself up all the way to the city center, and commenced with my long to-do list.  The prefecture (yeah, going again next Monday, by 11 am they closed the ticket machine, because there were already more people waiting than would be seen by 3 pm), all of the major French mobile carriers, an interior furnishing store, a little "artisan" bakery for lunch, a dingy phone store to unlock my iPhone, the Capitole square while I was waiting for the phone to be unblocked, back to the best of the mobile offers, and home!  Incroyable!  So, the longer summary:

The home-furnishing store left me mostly with art supplies -- I'm excited about my cylindrical cardboard boxes and painting supplies in order to be little storage bins for my desk or closet.  I also have lots of drawing paper -- decoration ideas any one?  The phone situation, despite being quite the run around, was eventually successful!  I had to go back the next day to the unlocking-hacker-guys after I'd accidentally synced my phone a little too much with my computer, and had Apple get mad about my newly acquired international abilities, but NOW, ladies and gents, I officially have a French phone.

In the lovely phone-hacking store, however, I was reminded about quite how small this little world is -- also waiting for their new phone was a lovely couple in their 20s from Victoria, BC.  The girl is studying at the Toulouse Business School for a semester, and her boyfriend just graduated from the UVic MBA program, which, it so happens, is where Mum is helping design the new Sustainable Development program, and why yes, they do know who she is.  Got to love Canadians ;)  So we exchanged facebook information, and will be going out for dinner some time soon, lovely lovely.

My French feels like it is just barely peeking its nose around the corner of something new, where I'm understanding more and more and there are starting to be French words on the tip of my tongue when I need them.  The kids spent a while during our story time trying to get me to make that lovely French "ooouuu" sound that just doesn't quite happen in English.  I've been reading chapter books for 7 year olds out loud for bedtime stories, which are about at my level... Lots of phonetic reading, relatively good comprehension, tons of laughter.

All week we've been running all the way through Giselle during the first half of the day, and then continuing to choreograph Kader's new ballet, La Reine Morte, after lunch.  We're in the theater tomorrow for staging and dress rehearsal, and then shows Saturday and Sunday.  I'll be back soon with pictures of the theater and news of how the shows go.  I spent a wonderful evening last night going to yoga again with Julian and Vanessa, and then dinner afterwards.  Because the yoga with the teacher they go to is very traditional, lots of holding poses for a long time while you do mental work and let your muscles sort themselves out, I can't help but feel I'm missing a fair amount by not being able to really understand what the teacher says.  I get the gist, but there are lots of little pieces (I can understand "elbow" but that doesn't really tell me what I'm supposed to be doing with said elbow) that escape me, and it's not really like flow where I can just follow along or look around, it's mostly internal work.  We'll see, as my French gets better it will be more worthwhile, I think.  Til then I have some yoga podcasts I'm excited about getting to try out.


I have had the strange sensation this week of watching shadows of myself living out the life I didn't choose...  Haunting the brick pathways of the quad and the 116th St. subway station on the Upper West Side is a mirage of what I would be doing now in this first week of classes, the people I would be with, the things I would be learning.  I ache, deeply, for my loves there, and for the inspired, articulate, loved self that exists there.  It's not regret though, I think that I did make the right choice -- I had a moment sitting on the floor in the side splits with my head propped up on my elbows today watching a section of Giselle and remembering that that isn't exactly how most people spend their work day -- and I'm not really sure I'd recognize regret if I was feeling it, it's not an emotion I'm particularly in tune with.  Being able to dance all day is just as much of a luxury as getting to spend all day learning about everything that interests me.  And this particular luxury isn't one I can return to later...  Being here, in this company, in this city, is an opportunity for me to grow in ways I can't envision yet.  There will be people here for me, experiences that will thrill me and shake me and inspire me.  And I will dance, dance beautiful works in historic theaters, and there is something magical about that chance.  I will get to see just what I can do with this instrument of mine, what beauty I can bring to this world of ours that is so often focused on the broken and the ugly.  Maybe it's alright to focus on making something perfect and whole and inclusive, for a little while at least.  For now, this can be my place.  It's new still, but I think I could get used to it.

yoga

I went with Julian to take a yoga class tonight, which felt absolutely splendid.  So nice to be back in a yoga studio, even if the type of yoga is different than what I've done before -- lots of holding poses and breathing exercises, so your body has time to adjust to each position and sort itself out before you move, not a lot of (read: any) flow -- the community and general philosophy is the same.  It's very different in French, with a lot more of my attention being captured by trying to understand the teacher, rather than focusing that energy inwards, but that will get easier as my French gets better.

Julian and I met up with Guillome, another dancer, for dinner afterwards, and turned around to find Estelle, yet another dancer, with a bunch of her friends, so we all got together at the base of a Cathar church for a wonderful evening of tapas and wine.  I'm much less funny in French, which is something I still need to get used to, mostly because my timing is all off with the trying to understand piece of things... Slowly slowly, my French is coming along though, which is exciting to watch.  Bonne soirée, mes amis, il y aura plus demain!

de saint-exupery

I just met the family who I will be living next to and with for the next year -- any doubts at all that I had about this cute little (itsy-bitsy) apartment are instantly gone.  The parents, Christine and Olivier, are darling, and all five kids are pretty much the essence of adorable.  My bribery worked splendidly, with a little blown glass puddles made with Mt. Saint Helens ash for each of the kiddies, along with some playing cards with Seattle mountains and skyline pictures and a picture book of a Native American legend.  The parents got the same blown glass company's beautiful "Seattle Raindrop" ornament :)  Five kids, four girls and a boy, who are all absolutely mignon (cute en français) -- polite, welcoming, excited to meet me.

figs and farmer's markets and le fou

Mm, for lunch today, I celebrated my spoils from the big farmer's market at the base of St. Aubin church:

Olive Oil

Half an Onion, diced

Balsamic Vinegar

1 cup of vegetable broth

6 Fresh Figs, washed and cut into 1/8ths

Tofu

Fresh thick bread

Good goat cheese

Sauté the onion in the olive oil until it begins to soften, then add a large splash of balsamic and let it reduce for a few minutes.  Add the broth and the figs, and stir as it continues to reduce.  Add the tofu after another few minutes, and keep boiling off the moisture until the sauce becomes almost thick. 

Slice the bread, and layer the goat cheese on top of each slice.  Spoon the fig-tofu-balsamic mixture over top, and enjoy as the cheese gets gooey from the heat. :) 

Yum.  I had a lovely morning, walking around the market and looking at all the incredibly fresh produce, spices, and baked goods.  I also found a vendor selling beautiful hand-painted pottery, which I'm worried I'll have to visit again (he assured me he was there almost every week) because I'm not sure I can only buy two mugs...  I hovered around the stall for probably at least 10 minutes, trying to envision my someday dream kitchen, and pick out the colors that will fit in best. Hm hm.  Green for things that grow, yellow for Sophie's birds, red for the scarlet-colored walls.... :) 

Unfortunately, my high from speaking French so very successfully, communicating how I wanted exactly that sort of cheese, pretty please and yes that size is perfect, was squandered at the bus stop.  Waiting with my groceries, and a few other people, I was about to sit down at the bus stop when a crazy homeless man wandered up with his cigarette and explained how he was going to sit down, if it didn't bother me.  I let him sit, no harm done, and was looking down the street when he tried to ash his cigarette down the back of my leg into my boot.  I was so upset and confused that it probably is a really good thing that my French wasn't prepared for such a situation, because I sure as hell was yelling at him in English in my head.  I mean, I guess it's not his fault that he is insane, but you also don't flick cigarette ash down someone's boots. Hmph.  The other ladies at the bus stop were very supportive of me standing at the other end from him, and as one was getting on the bus, she shrugged at me and something along the lines of "il est fou" -- he's crazy.  Well, I guess I can't have left all the crazies behind, but it was amazing quite how angry it made me not to be able to actually give him a piece of my mind.  Trust the homeless guy to be the one to remind me how, in so many ways, I'm very far from home.  

I'm going out to dinner tonight with most of the other new dancers and some of the ones who have been here a while, to the one real vegetarian restaurant that they recommend.  It'll be nice to get a chance to get to hang out with people (well, actually, I could stop that sentence there and it'd still be true) away from the studio, get to hear more about their interests outside of dance, what they think about Toulouse, all that.  I have tomorrow off as well, and then rehearsals next week for both Giselle and La Reine Morte, the ballet by the director-to-be.  Kader Belarbi is taking over the company next summer, but is choreographing our October program as well.  I'll keep you posted on how working with him is, it should be interesting to get a glimpse into how he runs things.