Sunday 15th November
Aside from my trip into Lahndahn tahn on Friday evening I have spend the entire weekend holed up at home hiding out from the appalling weather. Consequently i've not eaten the best food and so I am feeling a bit dissatisfied. Tomorrow food shopping should help alleviate this food woe, which is all the more acute due to the delicious ginger chicken udon and ebi katsu I had at Wagamama on Friday evening pre-ballet.
The ballet was marvellous- beautiful, strange, confusing, wondrous. As i'm not at all educated in the ins-and-outs of ballet I feel very confused when watching it, especially when there isn't a narrative to give me a hand. Most performance art I can understand, with a little information, but watching the dancers work together and apart I feel like I have no areas of reference, so I feel rather weirded out by the whole thing. It's beautiful to watch with feats of unbelievable strength, control and athleticism; it just has me fascinated but going "hmmm" at the same time. Perhaps a good thing to be out of my comfort zone.Limen was the second work I have seen by Wayne McGregor (warning- sound), the Resident Choreographer of the Royal Ballet and was as confusing to me as Chroma was before. The work had a sort-of-narrative - in the loosest sense - of life, love, death and loss; these themes were reflected I guess in the colours used on stage, the contrast between pure colour and loss of colour i.e. darkness. The dancers walked naturally to each other to begin each set of movements, differing from the very controlled, high-falutin' walk seen in the other two productions I saw; the movements were very odd- Like Chroma there were lots of very small movements repeated singly or in pairs or threes with the occasional lift or spin or jump. Everyone mixed with dancers having no set partner and all wore skin-toned or brightly-coloured Lycra; both men and women wore leggings, leotards, unitards, shorts and there was no obvious costuming gender divide. The dancers were there to express and dance and although men were frequently paired with women there was more variety than "strong man lift, lithe woman jump" seen in more traditional productions.
Anyway, I don't understand it but I enjoyed myself, wandering about during the intervals eating my chocolate ice cream and drinking my glass of champagne, people watching and noticing people watch me. I had particularly big hair and metallic purple eyeshadow and the yellow wedges make me stand out even further :) I really should try and go more frequently, especially getting out of my creative comfort zone...
monky posted 443 words at 23:34 on 15/11/09
