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.