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warning! lots of words!
May. 25th, 2003 09:56 amTo begin, a nearly-forgotten story of the harp recital: Sarah's family arrived with an unfamiliar but beautiful Chinese girl in tow. Momentarily thought she must be girlfriend of Travis (who is brother of Sarah). Sudden lurch of terror as have been flirting constantly with Travis since, oh, dawn of time. Have no actual interest in Travis, but would hate to lose pleasant opportunity to flirt with shy Asian boy. Freezing panic rather weakened when noticed on program that Sarah was playing duet with female flutist whose last name was Wong. Came to suspect that random Chinese girl was flutist. Indeed, she was. Can still flirt with Travis without feeling bad. Huzzah.
Now will babble about ballet last night. Damn. I have never and will never see onstage anything as sexy as the opening of Ghost Dances, the fact that it is performed by three men dressed as skeletons notwithstanding. It is fucking amazing. This is also the ballet that consistently makes me question the sanity of those who claim that the oboe is the instrument that most closely approximates the sound of a human voice, because there is some South American pipe-type instrument played on the soundtrack to this thing that makes it clear that the oboe-boosters have been smoking something very unhealthy. Also, I have never before seen a ballet during which no one applauded soloists or anything else. Cannot help adoring people who were tempted to applaud but did not. I hate it when people applaud while bands, orchestras, dancers, etc. are still in mid-performance. Yes, it's sweet, but I hate it.
Etudes was also on last night's program. That's a nice one, too. Supposed to give the impression of a ballet classroom. Really, it does a nice job, especially the beginning. I find that the general concept of being locked in a freezing cold room with mirrored walls, with one hand on the barre, doing things with ridiculous names such as "frappe"* endless times and then being told that you aren't smiling enough or lack energy or something of that nature, is terribly familiar to me. In the beginning of the ballet, the girls are even wearing black leotards and ballet pink** tights and slippers. (The only flaw is that they're also wearing tutus, the stiff ones that make you appear to be wearing an actual mushroom cap, but ah well, the world is not perfect. Also, the men's tights are neither black nor translucent***.) It is really a lovely ballet. It takes so much precision and training for thirty dancers to be able to do the same moves in perfect unison, as they do at the end. Blows me away.
* I say that "frappe" is ridiculous because it is also the name of a smoothie-like beverage. However, there is nothing - nothing - more fulfilling in the world than successfully completing a frappe combination for the first time, unless it's summitting for the first time.
** This is the uniform of the lower grades at Houston Ballet Academy, where I studied. "Ballet pink" is a very unusual color that is actually a shade of white. It can be distinguished as pink only if you hold it up to a sheet of paper. (Yes, white paper, and stop being sarcastic.) When I took up ballet again briefly in high school, I rebelled and wore black tights, black slippers, and a pink leotard. It was coral, though. Ballet pink leotards are hard to find.
*** Yes, black and translucent. This is also a trait of the lower grades at HBA. There was a boy in my class for several years, whose name might have been David or Brian (or, for that matter, Fred, George, Jeffrey, or Thomas, but I think it was Brian), who was utterly unaware that his tights were see-through. He wore Barney underpants to every damn class.
Now will babble about ballet last night. Damn. I have never and will never see onstage anything as sexy as the opening of Ghost Dances, the fact that it is performed by three men dressed as skeletons notwithstanding. It is fucking amazing. This is also the ballet that consistently makes me question the sanity of those who claim that the oboe is the instrument that most closely approximates the sound of a human voice, because there is some South American pipe-type instrument played on the soundtrack to this thing that makes it clear that the oboe-boosters have been smoking something very unhealthy. Also, I have never before seen a ballet during which no one applauded soloists or anything else. Cannot help adoring people who were tempted to applaud but did not. I hate it when people applaud while bands, orchestras, dancers, etc. are still in mid-performance. Yes, it's sweet, but I hate it.
Etudes was also on last night's program. That's a nice one, too. Supposed to give the impression of a ballet classroom. Really, it does a nice job, especially the beginning. I find that the general concept of being locked in a freezing cold room with mirrored walls, with one hand on the barre, doing things with ridiculous names such as "frappe"* endless times and then being told that you aren't smiling enough or lack energy or something of that nature, is terribly familiar to me. In the beginning of the ballet, the girls are even wearing black leotards and ballet pink** tights and slippers. (The only flaw is that they're also wearing tutus, the stiff ones that make you appear to be wearing an actual mushroom cap, but ah well, the world is not perfect. Also, the men's tights are neither black nor translucent***.) It is really a lovely ballet. It takes so much precision and training for thirty dancers to be able to do the same moves in perfect unison, as they do at the end. Blows me away.
* I say that "frappe" is ridiculous because it is also the name of a smoothie-like beverage. However, there is nothing - nothing - more fulfilling in the world than successfully completing a frappe combination for the first time, unless it's summitting for the first time.
** This is the uniform of the lower grades at Houston Ballet Academy, where I studied. "Ballet pink" is a very unusual color that is actually a shade of white. It can be distinguished as pink only if you hold it up to a sheet of paper. (Yes, white paper, and stop being sarcastic.) When I took up ballet again briefly in high school, I rebelled and wore black tights, black slippers, and a pink leotard. It was coral, though. Ballet pink leotards are hard to find.
*** Yes, black and translucent. This is also a trait of the lower grades at HBA. There was a boy in my class for several years, whose name might have been David or Brian (or, for that matter, Fred, George, Jeffrey, or Thomas, but I think it was Brian), who was utterly unaware that his tights were see-through. He wore Barney underpants to every damn class.
