seantime

• I’m not a big fan of the new production. The swan head pieces look really funny. And the backdrops look impersonal/imposing/spare. The entire production just seems a little cold to me.
• First time I noticed that there are more swans in the corps than there are female members of the corps de ballet. Which means I think the apprentice dancers are also there? Or are there like dancers for hire or something? That would kind of suck.
• After having read Infinite Jest (http://www.yourdictionary.com/figurant), my empathy for the corps dancers has increased. Sometimes I wonder what they say or think in those interminable scenes where they just stand there.

• I’ve pretty much done no work this weekend. I did watch 5 movies (courtesy of Stanford library’s media center) though: The Deer Hunter; The Squid and the Whale; Margot at the Wedding; I, Robot; and Meet the Parents. Not a bad bunch, although Deer Hunter wasn’t exactly a pick me up. I thought Margot at the Wedding was hilarious in moments. I also have a headache from staring at the monitor for too long.
• I realized that the red stuff on the bottom of my TKD pants and feet wasn’t blood, but rather the color from the mats that seems to rub off. That’s good news.
• My motivation level has sunk to its low again. I should’ve figured that over a quarter of enthusiasm was already a lot to ask for. Now I just need to somehow survive the rest of this quarter and the next, and the summer, and then another quarter, and then another and another. Then I’ll be done with my master’s!
• Swan Lake is almost upon us. I’m going to try to go to ~4 shows. It’s kind of a lot of time commitment in a week, so we’ll see how that goes.
• I think I’m going to have to expand my beverage repertoire. Water, orange juice, and tea is getting a little monotonous. What imbibement will be the next hot thing? I don’t really know.
• I’m sad, tired, and bored. All’s right with the world.
• There is so much dust in the room.

I don’t know what the problem is, but the water supply here has been somewhat inconsistent lately.  A few months ago, the faucet ran milky white, I think due to some strange aeration problem. Yesterday they shut down the water to “install new meters,” and now the water is a bit milky and also has a strange disinfectant-like odor to it. Something strange is afoot with the water supply here.

So Stanton Welch’s Naked and Val Caniparoli’s Ibsen’s House in Program 2 (Wed, 2/4) were both better than I remember them from last year. At the end of the day, neither is terribly compelling, but both were very pleasant pieces. I think for many works, one can see more details given a second viewing, and that was true for both of these.

Unfortunately, Kristin Long totally bit it during Naked, where by “bit” I mean “fell down upon,” and “it” I mean “the floor.” This isn’t unusual in that people fall down with uncommon frequency during a show, but I think she didn’t finish the performance, since it looked like Elizabeth Miner appeared midway through the piece. I hope she’s okay.

William Forsythe’s in the middle, somewhat elevated was a bit of a disappointment, in that it seemed to me to be like an earlier draft of his Artifact Suite. That is not to say in the middle was not a great piece, but just that both pieces exuded Forsythian style, and I felt like Artifact Suite was more “whole.” Maria Kochetkova is bordering on Marit Larsen levels of cuteness. Sofiane Sylve and Elana Altman were both great, although I had extreme difficulty telling them apart with the somewhat odd lighting. From the bits of online video, neither is really comparable to Sylvie Guillem in this piece, though.

You can probably see this from a mile away, and I think that xkcd is a little overblown at this point, but I just gotta link to this one (it’s kind of great):

http://xkcd.com/539/