Category: ballet

A small preface just to say that this was quite the weekend: rehearsal, what I think was a memorable birthday party for “Kevin”, Don Q. Also watched the first Harry Potter film. I guess I never realized that it was released the same year as Fellowship of the Ring. That’s kind of crazy to think about. It’s probably going to take me a while to watch the rest of the HP series.

Due to a rather late Saturday night, I unfortunately missed the SFB company class viewing at the WMOH. But I did make it to the show on time despite quite a bit of traffic in the city. I think I only missed one show out of the season this year. I feel relieved that the SFB season is finally done, at least from my season ticket perspective. If the status quo is maintained, I’m most likely not going to renew season tickets next year; the commute to sf is just too long.

I don’t think I would have made this post except for holy crap Frances Chung completely blew me away. It wasn’t pristine perfect, but, wow, she’s really proving her mettle as a principal. To say that I was a little miffed when she got promoted instead of Elana Altman would have been an understatement. But FC has been growing on me. There’s something about her dancing that sends shivers up my spine. I can’t exactly place what it is, but there’s a very crisp or fresh quality to her movement that consumes the stage. Maybe she’s developed a lot over the past few years, or maybe I just never noticed it quite so much before. Anyway, her Kitri was fantastic.

Vitor Luiz, who played Basilio, has got some hops. I think after this show, it’s safe to say that he’s a jumper and not a turner. I remember being impressed by his jumps the first time I saw him onstage, and here’s more confirmatory evidence. The guy gets crazy hangtime in his jumps, but some of his pirouettes were noticeably off balance. Still, he got through the Act 3 pdd and variation, even if he did look like he might have been out of gas by the end of it.

Also wanted to give a deserved (and compulsory) shoutout to Elana Altman as Mercedes. I still have a hard time not paying attention to her whenever she’s on stage. She just exudes so much presence and flair.

A final dancer shoutout to Koto Ishihara, who had the leggiest version of the Cupid variation I’ve ever seen. Like, most ballet dancers have pretty(,) long legs and crazy lines, but I nearly laughed out loud during Koto’s Cupid variation. How the hell are her legs so long?

The new costumes were very vivid. I don’t have a great memory of the old costumes SFB used in the last production, but the new ones were nice. The bridesmaids tutus were freaking adorable.

As a final note, it was really weird to watch Don Q after WB did it last year. It just seems so much more familiar now, despite rather broad differences in the (mutable parts of the) choreography.

Yes, this is going to be another depressing post, so you can skip if you want the sunshine and puppies version of seantime.

Last week was the most miserable for me since freshman year in college. It was like a perfect storm of work, shitty weather, and bad dreams, topped with physical pain and general malaise. I thank the capricious gods that it was a nice day weather-wise today — I really needed that.

This mind-numbing headache has been subsiding, I think partially due to the sunshine. I talked with a friend about this a while ago, but I think that everyone who’s lived in San Diego for an extended period of time will have some degree of seasonal affective disorder if they move away. This past week of cloudy days and rain really put a damper on things for me, enough so that I decided to order this blue light thing from amazon (link), which is ridiculous because:

1. I live in the fucking bay area, and the weather here is supposed to be nice,
2. it’s mid-April and it probably will be nice for the next 8-10 months, and
3. it’s a $70 led light.

On the other hand, if there’s even a 1% chance that it works, it’s probably worth it. My happiness is probably worth like $7,500 right now, so the expected value is neutral to positive; variance is high, like all too many things in life.

It’s a little funny what constitutes a nightmare to me these days. It used to be dreams dealing with death; those falling dreams; and those dreams where various body parts fall off or atrophy. (The teeth one still freaks me out every so often.) I had this dream last week where in it my girlfriend (you know it’s a dream because I have a girlfriend) was flirting with someone else, and it went on for like 30 minutes (unclear if perceived or actual time). It was like death by a thousand cuts, and the worst part was waking up alone. Sleep is usually my steadfast refuge; when it fails me, life tends to be quite unpleasant.

On the work front, it seems like I’ve slammed full-on into the two-year slump. The two-year slump is my hypothesized phenomenon when any job begins to become routine after roughly two years, and a high degree of wanderlust begins to settle in. I mean, I’ve been considering getting a new job, despite working at the best company in the world to work for, and with my dream job role.

I think the workload has just been wearing me down. After having finished a major project, I was hoping for a little bit of downtime to work on some of these research ideas I’ve been having, but new projects have been coming nonstop. On top of that, knowing that a friend is trying to recruit me to a certain social networking company, as well as the mental efforts to maintain certain workplace relationships, has really put a strain on paradise: the golden handcuffs don’t seem quite as strong as before.

A number of friends have also been working and living abroad, and I’m beginning to wonder if I need to take a break from the bay area and experience a different part of the world. This voice inside my head that says I’m getting too complacent has been getting louder and louder. Maybe I really should looking into transferring offices (probability slim to none given our org) or just up and moving to Taipei or Berlin or something. I’m hoping all these thoughts will pass because I really do love what I do (truly) and where I am (mostly), but maybe I do have to leave this comfortable lifestyle to find myself.

At least the first spring performance is done. I do wish that Linda comes back soon, because one of the substitutes gave a meanass frappe combination which I think is at least partially responsible for my right calf feeling kind of hurt. The 60 seconds of performing is probably also taking its miniature toll — it’s entirely possible that I’m not landing my jumps correctly. In some ways I’ll be a little sad when I don’t have rehearsals every Saturday, but I’ll also be a little bit glad. I’m still trying to power through this plateau. Maybe I should re-up some private lessons; I guess the other thing to do is to quit if I think I can’t improve any more.

On the plus side, I saw some friends this weekend and had a much-needed chat with them which brightened my mood. Given that most of my communication with friends is done online these days, it’s nice to see people face to face. I’m getting more and more excited about the vegas trip with these guys.

Also, I saw Ballet San Jose tonight and was pretty impressed with the program overall. I was a little apprehensive about Bruch Violin Concerto just because it’s one of the canonical pieces that’s near and dear to my heart, but it seemed to work. Clark Tippet’s choreography didn’t blow me away (not quite like what Forsythe did with Bach’s Partita No. 2’s “Chaconne”), but it was more than serviceable and danced quite well. I agree with others that Splendid Isolation is quite the beautiful piece. Having a long-ass dress really focuses the attention on the upper body, and Maria Jacobs-Yu’s epaulment and ports de bras were breathtaking. It’s good to see her back in action, and also always fun to see el maestro Ramon perform.

And tomorrow I get to see SF Ballet. It’s a very ballet-heavy weekend, even by my standards, but the good news is that I get to see Elana Altman and Nicole Ciapponi, both of whom I haven’t seen much of this season. I’m also interested in what I think about Divertimento No. 15 this time around; it’s one of those ballets that’s been growing on me, but I don’t think it’ll ever be up to Symphony in C in my books.

Plus! I might buy a TV tomorrow if Costco gets their shit together and doesn’t have the TV I want to purchase behind a bunch of other boxes and will have moved said other boxes by tomorrow morning. I’m still a little baffled by my interaction this afternoon, where the guy was basically refusing to take my money on a purchase, and furthermore would not put the TV on hold for me to pick up tomorrow. If I can’t buy the TV tomorrow, I might refuse to shop at Costco forever, just out of principle.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m really glad about this weekend and looking forward to next week.

It’s been a very uneventful Sunday to end a whirlwind workweek and a wonderful, if rainy, Saturday. A confluence of project deadlines made the early part of last week quite busy. On the plus side, the report that was the culmination of one major project is now complete. I feel as though a burden has been lifted. On the other hand, I never really feel all that great after having something completed: there’s always that empty space and time that needs to be filled, an awkward, reverberating void that persists in the mind. Maybe the next big project will come soon and I’ll regret these words. At least I hope the users will appreciate the project.

A lot has happened in the past few weeks, although perhaps not nearly enough. I’m glad that my roommate survived his kidney stone: it seemed like quite the battle. I’ve never seen him out in the hospital for more than one day before. If things look bad, at least I know I haven’t had to suffer through kidney stones. I sometimes say that life sucks, but it really could be a lot worse.

A lazy Sunday has got me thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know). It’s strange how we think we need to fill every hour with activity to lead a satisfying life. I feel a little bit guilty about having “done nothing” for the entire day. But I was able to catch up on sleep and do a few errands. I think the main problem is that idleness is when the demons of doubt creep in.

Rehearsals have been going… well or not, I can’t say for sure. That our first show is in less than four weeks is kind of scary: I have most of the choreography down now, but absolutely none of the nuance. The reason I’m not in a full-scale panic is because I’m only onstage for approximately 90 seconds. This, at least, is the benefit of being by far the worst dancer who is performing. I’m actually really grateful for these opportunities because it forces me to get better and work on technique. Things always work out in the end, but imposing a deadline sure makes things work out a little faster.

Went to see SFB’s Romeo and Juliet last weekend. I was surprised that the show was basically sold out — it was a stroke of luck that I was able to secure two tickets. Now that I’ve realized that some SFB dancers somehow actually chanced upon visiting my blog (hi, Ms. Olson!), I’m a little frightened about writing anything that could be remotely interpreted as critical. All I’ll say is that VZ and DK were a pretty cute R and J.

The show reminded me of how Romeo and Juliet is like peanuts to me: I don’t like them, but I pretty much love everything about them. This probably requires a little bit of explanation. I don’t like peanuts as is, but I love peanut butter, peanut brittle, reese’s peanut butter cups, those trader joe’s chocolate-covered pretzels with peanut butter inside them, etc. There’s just something about plain peanuts, though, that kind of turns me off.

Same thing with Romeo and Juliet. The plot itself is a terrible, terrible love story. People complain to me how ridiculous and unrealistic Serendipity is, and I feel the same way about Romeo and Juliet — at least Serendipity had a happy ending. There’s so much death in R&J. Yet, I pretty much like every work derived from it: the Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky scores, the ballet, the Zeffirelli and Lurhmann movies, the Dire Straits song, even that crazy French song that we heard on European radio stations and Darren was able to re-discover 10 years later (“les rois du monde” is pretty damn catchy).

That’s how Romeo and Juliet is like peanuts.

I seem to always lose faith in myself at the last minute. She’s perfect, and perfect is scary.