Tales of Posting and Alice

Wow! This must be some kind of record! Three - no, wait! - four posts from me in almost as many days is a frequency of postage unheard of since my earliest years as a blogger - I must be getting young again ;P!

Anyhow, I figured as I have the time (not really :P) and the desire (more of the reason) I should do my post on Alice now :). WOW! is all I have to say. I'm not usually the biggest fan of Alice in Wonderland. I don't particularly like the story, the movies or anything else related to it. It's just a bit too weird, darkly undertoned and drug trip-y for my tastes. I also saw the English National Ballet perform the Derek Deane's version a few years ago and wasn't that impressed. The new version choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon for the Britain's Royal Ballet and our National though - Stunning! So well done. The story arc he worked out with Nicholas Wright was perfect, linking all the pieces together and allowing everything to really come to life. The sets and costumes were often just right, with an interesting use of the digital projection (funny, while I really liked the mixed media sets in Fumbling toward Ecstasy and Ma really liked their use here, I found it oddly distracting at times, though understandably necessary in portraying falls down holes...). Mostly though, I think it was the story, linking the real Alice from the 1800s and Lewis Carroll to the characters in the story, and further to the readers who enjoy it even today, that made me happiest. That being said. The dancing was phenomenal! I really enjoyed the choreography, but Jillian Vanstone really brought it to life as Alice (I was so impressed with her!! That role must have been exhausting. She never got to stop!! She is quickly becoming my favourite of the newer crop of girls), and Greta Hodgkinson just did a perfect job as the red queen - she managed to be regal, terrifying and hilarious all rolled into one. you could tell how much she was enjoying herself there. So great. Jiri Jelinek also did a wonderful job as the caterpillar and Aleksander Antonjevic was brilliant as the white rabbit! Rex Harrington also did a great job coming out of retirement briefly to play the foppish king of hearts :). Favourite male role though? Hands down Robert Stephen as the Mad Hatter. I definitely lied when I said we had no incomming males. I'd forgotten a number of them had made an impression in Russian Seasons. Robert also caught my eye as Sancho Panza in Don Q - he was such a character. In Alice though, he proved that not only can he act and do ballet, but he is an excellent tapper! Yes, that's right, Tapper :D. Sooo much fun! overall verdict? A no brainer Go See It!!! It's on in Toronto until the 25th :).

Yupyup, other'n the fantastic-ness of that I haven't got much else to report (unsurprisingly ;) ). Though I did have a very dance-y weekend, spending Saturday out at Jess and Sophie's recital - which was great for the record! I think their tap numbers where my favourites of the show!

I also seem to be being assulted by Oxstalgia from all sides. Yuka's show, which apparently went well was last weekend, X-men was filmed in Hertford and, the setting for Alice - Christ Church of course! It didn't really hit me hard at the beginning, when it was 1862 Oxford, but the end made me miss it for sure!

Anyhow, plans for the next little bit consist of getting a bunch of stuff done before heading off to Indianapolis for the WAC congress next week and then Mexico the week after. More posting to come when I actually have something to report again. Much love!

Calgary Continued

After playing about in Drumheller on the Friday,  we decided to stick around in Calgary on the Saturday and take in the Glenbow Museum before catching the matinee of the Alberta Ballet's production of Fumbling Toward Ecstasy (the new ballet choreographed by Jean Grand-Maitre to the music of Sarah McLachlan)  - such a great day! I'm not usually the biggest fan of any museum that's not of the natural history variety (i.e. ones that do not contain mostly bones and stones) but the Glenbow has got to be one of the best I have ever seen!!! I was told by a number of people I had to go, and boy were they right! The layout is well thought out, the displays tasteful, engaging and informative in a fun way that allows you to actually experience what they are trying to portray rather than just see it in a blank case. Loved the Canadian History and Indigenous sections. Honestly, why could we not just have spent our youth in there learning history rather than in class??? :P Seriously though. So well done :). Fumbling Toward Ecstasy was also excellent. Many of the pieces were mostly made up of variations on a theme, but the steps just looked like so much fun and the movements so athletic that you wanted to see them again and again! Definitely worth seeing if they take it on tour!

Sunday was a bit more of a relaxed day (as is fitting for mother's day - though in our case ma took advantage of our lazy morning to get work done *shakes head*). Went out for a bit of a wander to see more of the city - did you know that Calgary has foot placings on their air vents so that you don't get your heels stuck?? Such a good idea! They look like these jumbo massive foot prints :D - Before heading off to the Saddle Dome to catch the Stars on Ice tour. Omg, it was soooo good. Kurt Browning was there (of course!), Jeffery Buttle (He's so adorable - definitely the next Kurt Browning ;) ), Shawn Sawyer (and his inimitable standing centre splits), Sasha Cohen, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier (they were so in synch! It's so hard to believe they are no longer a couple), Joannie Rochette, Evan Lysachek, Kyoko Ina and last, but not least, Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir!!!! We got the tickets not knowing they were going to be there (worlds were the week before after all) and then found out they'd joined the tour the show before. Sooo happy I got to see them live!!! Scott looked a little worn but all in all they were just breathtakingly amazingly ... there are just no words, they were so good!!! They did a slightly altered version of their long program from worlds and another of their gala piece and let me tell you, if they'd skated like that the week before they might have beat Davis & White even with it having been their first comp this season. <3<3<3! I just love them all so much!!! and the group piece was a bunch of Jive numbers! Never been happier!! (How is Tessa such a phenomenal dancer??? I mean I'm glad she stuck with skating but the dance world is missing out! and Scott! *shakes head*). And Sasha, Kurt and David also did this wonderful clowning piece with a balloon. Love. Needless to say, I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day (week) and still am whenever I think about it :). My mom may have gotten slightly sick of hearing me repeat 'they were just sooo good!' after the 20thousandth time... she started to respond with 'I know, I was there too...' ;). *sighs happily* I also got to try bison pastrami that night, which is delicious btw, before heading off back to T.O in the morning so I could make it to circus on time.

After that it was a week to sort my self out before heading back to the grind of writing. At that point Devon had moved out (I miss you!), So I fell into my lovely writing, dance, work, writing rhythym and managed to get a great deal done before moving to my parents floor on the last weekend in May. The last weekend in May also happened to be the circus student show (which I was not in, but did get to see), Brokeh. It was fantastic! John's rope act was wonderful despite my having seen it repeatedly by that point (any time he started to practice I'd stop whatever I was doing and watch no matter what position I was in). Libby and Mary Margaret's hoop act was also lovely, but I think the kids my have stolen the show! there was a triple trapeze act and one with three on separate trapezes. The best though were five young girls on the mobile together which was just incredible. So in synch and visually stunning!!!

And that brings us up to now. Gotta run, have tickets to see Alice with ma tonight and don't wanna miss the talk! More on that later I am sure!

And so comes the crash... (with more updates included ;) )

ugh, you know that exhausted, worn feeling you get after... well, exhausting yourself? *nods* yup.

 I definitely need more sleep than I've been getting. I think my body is rebelling at the absence of adrenaline, sooo tired *yawns*. Speaking of Adrenaline, did you know it was the first hormone to be identified? Way back in 1895? Yupyup. Strange how the body works, I was so excited coming off the post-finishing/finding out I was going to Taiwan high that I began planning extra side trips left, right and centre... now I'm just feeling so drawn that I'm too tired to make attempts to sort everything through and stressed that they won't pan out! Enough about that tho - more on updates instead :). 

Right, so *does a quick peek backwards to see where see left off in terms of actual proper updates * what? March? Oh dear, sorry about that one! (lol. Not that, I'm sure, anyone is suffering too much from not having been updated on the mundanities (nope, not a word. yes, it's staying right where it is ;) ) of my life over the last few months). *Quickly runs to grab calendar to remind herself what she's been up to. yes. she is that old* I did wind up seeing Onegin with Linna and her mum. It was lovely. The new sets and costumes were rather neat and the second and third acts were just amazing! In terms of comparison with the old one, I have to say that while I loved the costumes and thought the set for the first act was really interesting (in a good way!), there is something to be said for the simple romantic country feel of the old one. I also saw Rex Harrington the last time (though Aleksander Antonjevic and Piotr Stanczyk did a phenomenal job, particularly in the third act) so that was a lot to live up to. His ballet talk before this performance was just adorable too! The Mixed Russian Program was also quite lovely... well barring Apollo which, while danced quite well and choreographed by my favourite choreographer, remains my least favourite ballet of all time. Symphony in C was well done (though, of course, did not quite match up to the Bolshoi's rendering of it ;) - I'm not sure how I feel about a number of the younger female dancers who are being promoted in the company... hmmm... I will have to keep watching. And what's up with our huge lack of incoming males? ) *sighs happily* I  just love Balanchine's choreography though. It was Devon's first ever ballet and she quite liked it too I am happy to report :D. Russian Seasons by Alexi Ratmansky was really good. I loved the colours (minus the little box hats all the women were wearing... very odd...) and choreography. So well done. A nice blend of modern balletic styles with the feeling of classical. I was initially worried when I heard that the National was putting on new modern-style Romeo & Juliet next season but now that I know Ratmansky's the choreographer I'm really excited to see it. This one was very contemporary without feeling in anyway disjointed. Loved it :).

Hmmm... what else have I seen lately? Ooh, got tickets to Calendar Girls with Jess, Devon and Tacha for Jess' birthday. Thoroughly enjoyable :).Some of the accents slipped a few times but overall very well done and highly recommended. Also saw Alan Shonfield int the Scarborough Players Production of Much Ado - I love that play! Definitely my fav Shakespeare comedy. It was well done and definitely good value for money. Also Alan, you make a wonderful drunk ;). Other than that, spent most of April dancing, circus-ing, seeing the fam for Easter, working at Indigo and marking papers - with a little bit of writing fitted in on the side. I will not mention the election other than to say... well... it'll be interesting to see how well our country's reputation survives. Just remembering what 8 years of Bush jr did to that of the States makes me shudder.  

Best part of April though was definitely the visit from the French branch of the family. I got to host the girls at my place and the rest at my parents just across town. It was loads of fun to have them here :). Also, the return to full fledged French immersion for the week was great mental exercise for my brain - completely shot my ability to speak english at work the day after they left though! Got Ma to help me take them on a tour of the old parts of the city - which by their standards was brand spanking new of course. Went up the CNTower, explored ChinaTown and Queen street, headed out to Niagara for the day - where we not only got to go behind the falls - Thank you Fabien - and stay for the light show in the evening but, met up with a troop of Star Wars re-enactors who had a real working R2 unit with them!!! So awesome!!!. Met up with the rest of the family for the day on the Sunday and had a blast playing bop-it and introducing the French cousins to Rummy-cube (to which our family is addicted and at which we are uber competitive). Apparently they are now training so we can have a real tournament next time they come back to visit ;). And just generally had a great time :D. Can't wait until either they come back or I make it over to Normandy for a visit.

Had a crazy few weeks there as I went back to work for two days right after they left before I took off to visit Ma in Calgary for mother's day. This was my first time back there when it wasn't winter in about 12-15yrs so it was rather nice to get to see the city again. It really is beautiful and there are so many art and culture initiatives that it's hard not to get jealous - Mayor Rob Ford take note, you can be conservative and cultured - who knew?! So many awesome things got packed into that weekend that I couldn't even choose a best part to that trip if I had to! Headed out to Drumheller and the badlands on the Friday (the town looks exactly like the one in Pixar's Cars. No joke. I couldn't stop laughing) to see the dinosaur museum - Dinosaurs :D!!! The collections at the Royal Tyrell Museum are incredible and soo well presented. I loved all of the displays and the fact that many were interactive. Plus, Dinosaurs! The badlands themselves are pretty awesome too. We got to go for a wander and the geology is just wonderful. Multicolored layers of chalk, ironstone, coal and shale set against the backdrop of a cotton-puff cloud sky. The drive up to it is really impressive too. It looks this massive rend in the patchwork quilt of the prairies that just comes out of nowhere. So cool to see. We also went on a bit of a hunt and managed to track down some mini-hoodoos. Nothing like the size of those in the Grand Canyon or Cappadocia but very cute all the same!

Uh oh! Time to head off to ballet. More on Calgary later!

DONE!!! :D - And the Promised Update

Guess what??? Guess what???  (you know what the best part of this moment right here is??? That I have so much to say and so many updates to do that I could put nearly anything right here *grins* and so many exciting ones too!... hmmm... I suppose I could start every paragraph of this post off with a wondrous thing I have to tell... but that seems overly complicated... and I don't think I could possibly decide what should come first! ... also, as it's getting pretty late and I'm pretty low on sleep (thank you crazy-writing adrenaline!... also sleeping on a mattress on my parents floor in a (teeny-tiny, I might add) room which, in addition to having an absolutely stunning view of the city & lake Ontario (sooo gorgeous!), gets the early morning sun *shakes head*), I'm not sure how coherent this post would wind up actually being. Example, my brain just got very excited about the fact that I used brackets, in brackets, inside brackets! And then proceeded to view my sentence like the math equation it isn't. See, clearly time for bed. :P. ... but not before some updates of course (wouldn't want to leave you hanging! I now how nasty cliffhangers can be ;) ) <--- Oooh, more brackets! <--- teehee! on a complete and utter side note, until last year I'd never realised just how fun putting in footnotes could be. Nor how addicting... I totally just spent a good number of seconds trying to figure out where the footnote button was so I could put the previous comment as one *shakes head* clearly writing has gotten to me... also, I am such a nerd!  - right! definitely bed time! not only has this digression taken on a terrifyingly expansive life of it's own, but I'm sure anyone reading it right now is pitying themselves horribly. Or they stopped reading it. Either way, I sound like I'm fourteen again - not a bad prospect to be sure - ahh, to be as young as once we were and smell the flowers of youth! - okay then... I'm not even gonna pretend I know where that one came from *shakes head and takes a moment to allow the slightly more lucid portion of her brain to regain control* )


I finished writing :D!!!! Well, I still have to edit, and write the presentation for the conference later this month. But those shouldn't take too long and other than that I am good and finished *grins widely*. lol, you'd think I had been writing for far longer than a month and a bit with the amount of weight that feels like it's been lifted off my shoulders! Still though, I did spend nearly every waking hour (and many of the sleeping ones) not spent at work or at dance typing non-stop (and my hand keeps spasming because of it too! Funny, one would think circus-ing on it right after having broken it would cause it to react far more than would typing... that having been said, I have been doing an awful lot of it :P!) But it was soo worth it :). I just love it when something wants out of your head so badly that it basically writes itself (oh, great, now I sound like I have an alien occupying my skull...). All 20,000words/80pgs of itself that is - phew! Seriously though, I'd forgotten how calming it was to wake up absurdly early in the morning type until noon, dance, shower, work, come home type until two, sleep for a few hours and repeat... such a soothing rhythm... until of course you crash... but that is totally allowed once you've finished ;). *Sighs* I love living. ... I hafta say, writing at my parents place up on the 17th floor (really 16th... what is up with people's total fear of the number 13 anyhow? It's just such a lovely number! and good luck too. Not to mention my birth date :D - yeah, yeah, I know. Not helping :P) with all the windows/sliding glass doors open and the sounds of the city floating in is in no way bad either!

But yeah, all of this self directed learning has definitely made me pine for Oxford. That and the nice weather. Oh how I'd love to be a-lounging on the quad lawn! (With all of my England people of course!) That way I might have a tan too :P. Sooo pasty (for me) due to an extended & rainy spring and my sequestering during this productive time. Speaking of Oxstalgia (yes that's a word. no you wont find it in a dictionary. yes I made it up...), you know what else brings it on? X-men! Saw it on Sat with Devon, Tacha & Jess and I have to say it was pretty good. I still prefer Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart of course. But they are a little hard to beat ;). *shakes head* If only I'd know that door into NBQuad from under the bridge that was forever locked was locked because it contained a space-time portal leading into a KA-like pub! Just think of the potential for study! Also... darnit! Why weren't the mutants there when I was??? ;)

Possibly more exciting than x-men though (what could be more exciting than x-men you ask? well.. I have to admit I'm kinda excited for Transformers 3.. no Megan Fox though so... oh... that wasn't what you were asking...), and arguably more exciting that the fact that I've finished writing (if you are anyone but me that is), is that I AM GOING TO TAIWAN IN AUGUST :D!!!!! I'm one of two Canadian youth, joining two youths from another approximately 124 countries, headed to the RoC to participate in a Homestay celebrating their Centennial - soo excited!!! You can bet I will be Blogging about and uploading loads of photos of  my experiences there :). More details to come but I will definitely have a (non-rambling) travel blog up and running before I go in which will be documented all of the adventures, cultural forays and food discoveries that come my way. Prominently placed link will go up sometime soon, so keep an eye out for that!


And with that, I am off to bed!
Until the morning, when I will endeavor to provide some actual, and possibly even coherent, updates ;).
'Night'night!