Dancing, Other Stuff, And More Dancing

Finally, a day that feels like Spring!  It's been such an odd year.  Generally it's fairly safe here to plant your garden after May 1, but we've had frost at least three nights a week until this one.  Then today it's been in the 70s and gorgeous.


I have at last finished my work for the costuming, (I think) with two weeks left until the show.  This may sound like cutting it close, but I have known years of being sewn in the dressing room on performance day, so I feel pretty good about it.  We're having photos taken the next three days, then we're doing two of our pieces for another dance group's show this Friday, so I'll be in slicked-back dancer mode, going through copious amounts of hairspray, until Saturday, then of course again next weekend.  Then I'll wish I could do it all over again.  Not the hairspray and the slicking so much, but the dancing certainly.  I'll try to get some of the photos up on here as soon as I get my hands on them.


The writing has rather taken a back seat to all this lately, but things have been moving in my head, so I'd like to think that once life slows down again I'll be ready with a rush of inspired prose.  The PNWA Conference is coming up in August, and I'd like to have something more to show for my year's work before then, but we shall see.  I do still, at least, have a complete novel to peddle.


Side note: yes, I have been raving endlessly about Alicia Alonso and the Cuban Ballet, but I do so with reason.  I searched and searched for a DVD of one of their performances, and at last came up with their 2007 performance of Don Quixote in Paris.  I own two performances of Don Quixote: this one, and Baryshnikov's.  Notwithstanding Baryshnikov's undeniable charisma, and the excellence of American Ballet Theatre, I have to say the Cuban production is by far my favorite of the two.  The two leads dance with a wonderful passion and obvious enjoyment, and the same extends to the corps, who have much more meaty dancing roles in this performance.  If there is one ballet DVD worth owning and watching over and over again, it would be this own.  It amazes me every time.

Alicia Alonso

Interview with the founder of the Cuban National Ballet, Alicia Alonso. I know I've mentioned her before but I cannot say enough about how she inspires me with her artistry, her strength and her determination.

Below is a video of her dancing the White Swan Pas de Deux in 1977.  She was 58 years old.

Cuban National Ballet

My first introduction to the Cuban National Ballet was a small mention given to the company's founder, Alicia Alonso, in a documentary. Since then I have read her biography and any other material I could find, and scrounged YouTube for videos. I recently found this production (performed in Paris in 2007) on DVD. What I love most is the passion with which they dance, even the corps, and their musicality. Alicia Alonso founded the company in the 1940s, and in those early days they toured the country performing in factories and army bases, among other unlikely places, and sharing the history of ballet as they went. As a result of one woman's vision and persistence, ballet is now as popular as soccer in Cuba, with audiences cheering and screaming unrestrainedly during performances. She still directs the company at the age of ninety.

Artists

The dancers of American Ballet theatre are visiting Cuba for the first time since 1960, to honor ballet legend Alicia Alonso, who still directs the Cuban National Ballet at the age of 90.  I've attached a link to an article.  I love seeing this, artists going where politicians fear to tread.  In Alicia Alonso's own words:


"We need beauty inside, we need peace inside of us, I think through art.  The more we advance, the more necessary it is, and the more we can touch each other -- if not the same language, at least the same feeling of humanity."


This from a woman who danced into her seventies in spite of being nearly blind, and does more to promote relations between Cuba and America than a legion of diplomats.  I can think of no better example of the triumph of the human spirit.

American dancers in homage to Cuban ballet legend - Entertainment - MercedSun-Star.com