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
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
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!
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!
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
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
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
Sunday, November 6, 2011
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.
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.
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