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.

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.