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!