Apologies for the delay in getting this post out, I wanted to find time to be able to sit down and really capture all of the fantastic stories I had from Nutcracker and Mackenzie's visit and celebrating New Years in Paris.... which meant that I never actually had a chunk of time where I was motivated enough and free enough to do it justice. I'm learning to break down such long daunting tasks into mini-chunks, which is how the words below will happen themselves into being. So, without further ado, we travel back in time....
Mackenzie in Toulouse
So Christmas evening I got one of the most wonderful presents a girl could dream of -- my sister waiting for me at the "Entrée des Artistes" as I came out of the show. Jeanne (the 13 year old dancer in my host family) was in the show on Christmas as well, so along with Christine (the mother) we had a wonderful girls-only Christmas dinner. I made butternut squash risotto (it's possible Mackenzie flung some of it across the room when the pressure cooker released some steam, but we'll blame it on the jet lag) and we stumbled our way through the language barrier, Mackenzie fearlessly tackling her third language and then going promptly to bed around 8 o'clock.
Boxing Day became our Christmas morning, full of Laura Kastner's home-made cinnamon bread (yummmm) and poppycock from Mum, and a whole suitcase full of presents from family and friends in Seattle. Sending out infinite thank yous to everyone who sent me little pieces of home -- bonus points to the Lehmans for the homemade cookies. ;) The afternoon we spent having a really lovely coffee with Eloise, who is a Toulousain singer, who also worked for two years for Amnesty International here, again mixing French and English. Mackenzie ordering a "cafe au lait, s'il vous plait" was a grand success! From there we sped off to Vanessa's birthday gathering, where we introduced our European friends to the genius that is The Big Bang Theory -- the television show, not the cosmological event.
Tuesday and Wednesday I had shows, so Mackenzie came and saw her first non-PNB Nutcracker ever. After 10 years of the same version, I think it was a little disappointing to not be able to say exactly what was going to come next, but she liked it anyway. She also got a chance to see us rehearsing "Moves" for the January program one afternoon, so she has a bit of an idea of what's coming next. Crèpes also featured prominently -- naturally -- of the savory and sweet variety... I'm proud to report there was no chocolate-sauce-from-the-plate licking, but I think the dishes were about as clean as we could leave them without resorting to such tactics. We also wandered around the last days of the Christmas Market in the Capitole plaza, picking out gifts -- beautiful handmade journals and silk scarves for Mackenzie, a wooden toy train for one of the new additions to our Ballet du Capitole family, and some vin chaud, naturally.
Thursday we had the day off, so in the afternoon we went over to Julian's apartment overlooking the river and happily ate a fantastic meal he cooked for us. He got a new Italian cookbook about a month ago with very precise pasta recipes (things are done Just So) that he's been trying out, so I've been a willing guinea pig quite a few times now. It's fun to get to share Kenzie with my friends, and vice versa, get to see my worlds blending a little :) She and I stopped at a bar on our way home to have a Kir and an Armagnac, so she could say she'd officially tasted the drinks of the region, and to talk about all sorts of mad plans we have to save the world.
Friday morning Mackenzie spent doing Physics reading while I took class, and then we went out to a nice lunch at O3C, the restaurant/salon de thé where Julian works most Mondays. Their specialty is their crustades, which is basically a scrumptious tart that takes 3 days to make because of something to do with all the layers in the pastry and comes in all sorts of fantastic flavors like cheese, carmelized carrots, or pumpkin (not to mention pear and apple and other sweet things). From there Julian took us to Palais de Thé, the bulk tea leaf shop where they all know him by name and tea preference for a little bit of tea shopping, and then I headed back to the theater for that night's show.
New Years Eve -- and the closing show of Nutcracker -- was great, with everyone excited to be done and on a real vacation. There's always a little bit extra energy when you know there's a bottle of champagne waiting upstairs in the dressing room to help make packing out easier :) It's a little weird to think that that could be my last Nutcracker for a while, and given how little I've been able to predict my life so far, maybe ever. In the States Nutcracker is such an omnipresent feature of ballet life, imagining really getting away from it is exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Kader is French though, he didn't grow up with such deep rooted Nutcracker traditions, who knows when the next time we will bring it back will be, or where I'll be over the next few years. Unfortunately, that it might be my last Nutcracker wasn't really what I was paying attention to during the final curtain call of the run, because Raffaele, the new Italian boy, tore something in his knee during the coda at the very end of the ballet, so mostly I was trying to smile real big at the audience and see what was going on in the wings to see if we could tell how bad it was. They got a doctor there minutes after the show ended, and he's alright, but I think facing surgery and a long recovery, which sucks. I dislike those reminders, both because it's obviously hard to watch your friends get hurt, but also because it makes you think about how short this career is, and how you never know when you'll come down from a jump a little bit wrong and have it change everything.
After the show we hauled bags of pointe shoes and makeup, champagne and tapenades over to Julian's to ring in the New Year. Good music, good friends, and flutes of champagne topped off with some dried strawberries (being winter and all) made a truly wonderful evening. A few hours of sleep later, Mackenzie and I were up in time to skype into the Pacific Northwest New Year before hopping on the train to Paris.
