janvier

January was mostly consumed by rehearsals for the New York Dances program, where we finally got a chance to set aside Nutcracker and focus fully on Jerome Robbins' Moves and Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs. I had a fantastic time working on both, and loved getting to do Moves every show -- there was something really powerful about performing a ballet without music, a tension that exists between you and the other performers and the audience, where everyone is drawn in by the simplicity of the piece. In just leotards and pink tights (which I don't know that I've worn since I was in school and required by dress code), with a black backdrop and no accompaniment other than the sound of pointe shoes on the floor and the dancers exhaling together, Moves has had everything pared away until only pure dance is left. I was worried sitting in silence for a half hour would be hard for the audience, but most of my friends who came actually found it to be the most engaging piece of the evening. 

Me, Lucille, Juliana and Tanya on stage rehearsing Moves

Sinatra I rehearsed (as second cast) a lot, even getting to do the costumiere in the studio (in Oscar de la Renta, no less), and am going to get a chance to perform in March at St. Pierre-et-Cuisine, an old church turned cabaret theatre. Valerio hurt his back the week before the shows, and so Paola ended up performing with Julian with only 3 days of rehearsals (meaning run-throughs on stage, not real working rehearsals to really get to feel each other). It was hard to see my partner usurped by another woman ;) -- but mostly really exciting/nerve-wracking to watch Julian perform so well under a lot of pressure with almost no preparation. Mostly in consisted of me sitting in the wings watching on the monitor with little bounces every time they got to a hard lift or section, and then a sigh of relief after it went well every night.  

Julian and Paola in "All the Way"

I also got news the weekend before we went into the theatre that Lily Gallacher, an adorable little girl at home, passed away. Lily was the little sister of Nancy, who had been one of the baby mice when I was Mother Mouse in PNB's Nutcracker six years ago, but I have stayed in touch with the family since them, and you couldn't possibly think of a more open and loving family.  There's nothing good about this story, no person to be mad at or long list of a full life's worth of accomplishments... just her beautiful smile and loving presence and gratitude that all of us around her got a chance to benefit by being close to her joyful spirit while she was here. But it is also times like that, of loss particularly, but also the other big moments, of joy or fear or disappointment, that make you realize how far away home is.  Not that it isn't lovely here, and skype is a marvelous invention, but it also is too far to just pop back whenever someone needs you. Those of you working on teleportation devices, step it up, would you? 

the city of lights

Our train arrived at the Gare Austerlitz just after 5 pm on New Years Day, and we headed to our AirBnB to settle ourselves in.  We were staying in the 19e Arrondissement, just off the 7 Metro line, in a room we booked through Airbnb, an online community of people who rent out their extra rooms or apartments to travelers passing through -- cheaper than a hotel, cleaner and nicer than a hostel, and with a local connection in case you have any questions.  The young couple we stayed with, Peggy and Jeff, were great hosts, despite the fact that I'm sure it's a little strange to have strangers traipsing through your home. As soon as we dropped off our bags and got about fifty different recommendations for what we should do with our three days, complete with one of those great huge tourist maps, we headed out for dinner with Mackenzie's friends from UPeace who were also in Paris for the holidays. 

So, the characters: Maeve is English, and currently working as an investigative journalist in London, where she hangs out in an office frequented often enough by Julian Assange that one can tell his recent presence by a lacking of chips -- (in a British accent) "where have all the crisps gone?! Really Julian, again....." Marion, who is technically French but really what we decided to dub a "globe floater" given her constant travels, is working with at-risk youth in El Salvador to try to reduce violence there. Agathe, a childhood friend of Marion's who volunteered to be our Parisian tour guide, works for a French Senator (aka old white men). 

We all headed down to the Palais Royale and frolicked in the cold and the rain down past the lit-up pyramids in the courtyard in front of the Louvre before walking down the Seine to the Marais (the young hip quartier, which is also the historically Jewish district.  Marais means marsh, which is where the Jews were once placed...) where we had some fantastic falafel.  Ironically, the restaurant we ended up going to was exactly the one (Chez Hanna, I think?) that I went to with Lyse and Nina in October, but I was so hungry at that point that I had absolutely no complaints about going somewhere I knew was good.  

After filling up on houmous and fried eggplant and falafel and pita, we shimmied over to the extraordinarily French part of our evening at Le Philosophe, a French wine bar/restaurant with all local organic produce and an ad for a anti-fast-food documentary showing sometime later this spring on the back of the menu. There, we ordered five different glasses of wine -- three reds: a Bordeaux, a Bourgogne, a Gamay, and two whites: a sweet Sauturnes and a dry one, whose name now escapes me. A full lesson on wine tasting and bluffing your way to classy sommelier status followed, with highlights including learning about how most red wines you can describe with red fruits, aka: "mm, yes, blackberry, definitely blackberry" or "yes, this one has a hint of cherry, I think, and a little plum" BUT NOT "well, I was going to say grape, but...."  ;) Too much fun :)

Monday we met back up with the girls at the fountain Saint-Michel, skipped through the Notre Dame, and popped over to the Hotel-de-ville.  There they were hosting a free Sempé exhibit, showcasing hundreds of his drawings, cartoons, and New Yorker covers.  It was so much fun to get to wander a museum full of laughter, it was a very different experience than most stuffy art galleries, and that many of his works together gave you a sense of scale, an idea of how consistently funny he had to be, and was. The little twists on every day situations that force a smile, the sense of scale that he created in many of his drawings, his use of color to draw the eye in a blur of black and white... it was really marvelous to be able to see such a long string of works and really get a sense of the artist who made them.

From there, a hankering for crèpes settled over us (what else to do with Maeve's last few hours in Paris?) so we tucked ourselves into a corner creperie for lunch.  I think Mackenzie even got fancy with the French and ordered something with a variation in it (actually, I'm pretty sure she just said she'd have the exact same variation as the girl before her, but shhh). I was also lucky enough to be nearby to Mario, one of Sophie's good friends from Columbia, for his last few hours in Paris, so he joined us there and for our tea-shopping afterwards. I love that I can have friends of friends all over the world -- Mario and I had never met, but it turns out I loaned his cousin a book for our history class together during my one semester at Columbia. It was one of those really lovely easy meetings where technically we didn't know each other, but because Sophie's been in both of our lives, it becomes infinitely easy to imagine a world where we're great friends, even after only a few minutes squabbling over who could buy the other coffee.  

So a little wandering and a few books of French poetry later, we put Maeve and Mario on trains back to London, and Agathe went off to buy some furniture, so Mackenzie, Marion and I wandered around the streets to a fondue restaurant for Mackenzie's first ever cheese fondue. Gooey melted goodness :) Again, Mackenzie was working her French language skills with the waiter like you wouldn't believe, and the whole evening was full of great food and superb company (and some more good wine).  

The next morning dawned collllllddddd on Mackenzie and my day set out for just the two of us to wander the streets of Paris. Our first stop was MontMartre and the Sacre Coeur.  Despite the low clouds, there still managed to be a pretty spectacular view of Paris from the top of the hill, as well as the last day of the Christmas market (aka vin chaud!!). Despite how horribly touristy all the shops around the Sacre Coeur are, we actually found some great post cards and nice Paris-artwork posters for Mackenzie to bring home (you know, one step up from "my sister went to Paris and all I got was this crummy t-shirt"). We wound our way down from the top, stopping at a FANTASTIC little bakery with its own "Pain" recipe book of just bread and beautiful photographs.... that I can't remember the name of. Besides bakeries, we allowed ourselves to duck into More walking through winding streets, to a cute little local recycled-leather shop with beautiful bags and wallets that Peggy recommended for us, and then on to Galleries Lafayette and the Opera Garnier lit up at night... pretty spectacular.  Mackenzie and I just frolicked in the rain in front of it for a while, jumping over puddles and imagining what an incredible sensation it would be to perform in a building like that. Not that Theatre du Capitole isn't beautiful, but... there are no golden angels in the ramparts....  Is it so bad to dream of golden angels?

For our last day in Paris, we spent most of the day with our good friends Monet, Rodin, Renoir, and Degas at the Musée d'Orsay. As per usual, the line outside wound around the square, meaning we had a 45 minute or so wait, which luckily was made infinitely more fun by having a beautiful 8 month old baby right behind us.  Naturally, because I have no qualms about kidnapping, we played pattycake and peek-a-boo and all sorts of fun games to pass the time together; though it's possible my favorite part was glimpsing people's smiles when their part of the line happened to pass by close enough to hear her giggle. Once we were inside, of course, it was marvelous... Some of my favorites:  Monet never ceases to take my breath away. There were also a lot of paintings by Camille Pizanne that I really liked, which captured a similar feeling, just slightly more human, slightly less magic.  The curator put two tall Renoir portraits next to each other on the center wall of the room in the impressionist section -- "Danse à la compagne" and "Danse à la ville" -- each showing a dancing couple, captured waltzing in the country with a straw hat on the floor in the lower corner, and in full coat and tails and above-the-elbow gloves in the city. Sculptures hold a special allure to me, given that I work in a three-dimensional art-scape myself, and I really loved the marble "Pan et les Orsons" of a young faun watching two bear cubs play, and of course the Rodin.  The North Carolina Art Museum just opened a whole wing of Rodin, so it was fun to see a few repeat sculptures that felt familiar (though familiar maybe isn't the best way to describe the Gates of Hell, oh well).
With the little time left before meeting up with Sasha and Lauren (good friends who are a Russian-American pairing, both dancers who arrived this year) for our train back to Toulouse, Kenzie and I dashed back to the Opera Garnier to go inside (well, the bookshop, anyway).  It's really just gorgeous, and by chance they had a video of the Paris Opera doing Jerome Robbins' The Concert playing, which I'd been telling Mackenzie about to try to explain how dance could be more things than just pretty. One last kiss blown over our shoulder and we were off to the Gare Montparnasse, laden with cider, bread and cheese to get us happily all the way home.

le fin de 2011

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. 

 

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