seantime

• I don’t wanna start classes again tomorrow.
• These sectionees are kind of brutal in their evaluations. But I guess I’m not a terrific TA. I’ll just have to try harder next quarter, or something.
• New Lene Marlin album!
• My ankles and knees kind of hurt. I think I’m going to start trying to swim instead of jogging to the gym. The pools at Avery Aquatic Center are heated, which is pretty sweet.
• I think I’m losing hearing in my left ear. When I’m asleep, somehow I can’t hear anything through it. Usually, I regain hearing after an hour or so of waking, but I think it’s getting worse now. Not sure if it has to do with swimming, but it started before I swam, so I’m probably going deaf.

In accord with boringest spring break bylaws, I watched many movies over the past few days: Australia (kind of weird and unfocused; not Baz Luhrmann’s best), The Seventh Seal (interesting), Let the Right One In, Ghostbusters (not exactly how I remembered it), The Wizard of Oz (never saw the whole thing in one sitting; Judy Garland is kind of pretty in it), Metropolis (Lang, pretty incredible especially for its age). I’m still trying to work up towards watching Match Point. Maybe tomorrow. A good bunch of films overall, though.

Let the Right One In is a great movie, pretty much the most adorable yet creepiest vampire movie. Oddly enough, I’ve had a bloody nose the past few days due to the dry weather. Also, I learned that eating spaghetti while watching scary vampire movies makes one lose one’s appetite rather quickly.

A lesson I learned is to never attend the ballet when sleep deprived. Or maybe it’s that I shouldn’t go during finals week. I pretty much had no idea what was going on in Program 5 (Wed, 3/18). “Joyride” made less sense this second viewing than the first. Oh well.

Program 4 (Wed, 3/25) was pretty amazing, at least in part due to the fact that I actually got enough sleep. “On a Theme of Paganini” (Tomasson) I enjoyed a lot more this time around. Its simplicity and beauty resonated more this season than it did last, at least partly due to Maria Kochetkova’s stunning performance. She pretty much tore shit up on the stage. It was a little incongruous to see paired with Frances Chung, who while technically adept never seems to me to be very graceful. And also the height difference between Kochetkova and Tiit Helimets (also fantastic) was a bit disconcerting. Maybe that’s what made the pas de deux seem that much more emotional. Somehow it all worked out.

“Jardin aux Lilas” (Anthony Tudor) was an emotional masterpiece. It sent shivers down my spine. Sarah van Patten (or “SVP” as I like to call her; I need to stop thinking so much about matrix decompositions) and Elana Altman both have great stage presences and are among the better actresses in the company. The tension on stage was palpable. It was a treat to see them in their roles for “Jardin.”

“The Concert” (Jerome Robbins) was actually quite hilarious. Very blatant and also nuanced in its humor. I can see why it has stood the test of time. I now wish I had gone to see this program again.

While normally I don’t condone reveling in the misery of others, this website is great, even if most of them are fake.

http://www.fmylife.com/

(I think this is like 2 years old, but I don’t remember.)

As I lift this misty veil
To see those doeful eyes well
With joy or sadness who can tell
This marriage of inconvenience will show them
No song comes forth from these bitter lips
Parched of loving saturation
Blessed neither with will or heart
Devoid of destination
Your angelic arms shelter me
Bleeding from these vicious blows
Walking down this narrow road
Neither knowing where to go

• I’m pretty much braindead after this last round of homeworks. Just 2 more weeks until spring break woooooooo.
• I lost my thermos. I hate losing things. And now I have no container to keep my beverages piping hot in class. This makes it very difficult to burn my mouth while listening to lectures.
• These statistics classes seem to love Taylor series. Also, the Newton-Raphson method. Also, the product rule. All things I didn’t think I’d ever see again after that first year calculus class.
• Neural networks make no sense.
• Curved exponential families make no sense.
• I’m a little worried about my fantasy basketball team. It’s teetering on sucking, and playoffs are just a couple weeks away.

Maria Mena – “All This Time”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1xZogpmYRU

Although I don’t really condone her beating Marit Larsen in the Spellemannprisen this year, Maria Mena sure has some catchy songs. I think I’ve listened to “All This Time” on repeat for 6 hours.

Going to 4 showings in 4 days (Wed, Fri, Sat afternoon, and Sat evening) was a bit excessive. It’s pretty exhausting trekking to SF and back, and the double header pretty much takes up 12 hours all told. But it was pretty awesome to not think about all this homework that I now have backlogged.

I think the headdresses don’t look quite so bad with multiple viewings. The Odile one still looks a little strange, almost mannish, but it kind of works. The backdrops don’t seem quite so bad with multiple viewings as well.

The 4 cygnets were pretty much spot on in all 4 showings. That type of uniformity is actually a little disturbing if you think about it, which is why I try not to. Elana Altman is still pretty much amazing whenever she’s on stage. I’d be a little surprised if she’s not promoted to principal soon. Frances Chung was kind of show-offy in her solo in the Act I pas de trois, which seemed out of place.

In terms of the principal role, I think Tina LeBlanc was the best Odette. Neither Lorena Feijoo nor Vanessa Zahorian really seemed to capture the essential swan-like essence of Odette, though this might just be interpretations of the role. Maria Kochetkova definitely was the most technically brilliant, and definitely graceful, but in parts seemed to veer out of character (I think she’ll be unstoppable after she’s mastered the acting/emotionality part of dancing, but that’s generally the part lacking in the younger dancers). For Odile, I think Vanessa Zahorian was best; her Odile just seemed so sadistic. LeBlanc’s I would rank second, not too far behind.

Zahorian was the only one who did triple pirouettes during the fouettes, but seemed slightly out of balance when doing them. Feijoo and Kochetkova did doubles, and Kochetkova’s were exquisitely clean. LeBlanc did the “standard” package, which I admit I’m beginning to appreciate a lot more over the “embellishments,” which add virtuosity but detract from the hypnotic nature of the fouttes passage.

Not too many mishaps in the performances. I only saw a corps member fall in an Act I, but I overheard someone saying that one of the swans fell down in one of the Act IIs.

So I didn’t get to see Yuan Yuan Tan or Sarah Van Patten in the Odette/Odile role. I’ve heard good things about their performances. Come to think of it, Van Patten would probably dance a great Odile, although with her level of intensity, I don’t know how she would express the vulnerability of Odette. For Tan, I would think the opposite: infintely graceful, but lacking that evilness.

Since LeBlanc is retiring after this season, this was her last performance in a full length ballet. It was kind of sad, but I think that emotionality showed through during the performance. I think I saw her mouth “it was fun” at the end when she got her standing ovation.