Social Saturdays

New York really is an amazing place. Even when I am feeling most disappointed and disillusioned, the city manages to offer up sympathy in the most diverse and pleasing ways

Yesterday soothed with a healing medley of opera, dinner, and dancing. Went out with the roomz and a visiting friend to see Barber of Seville at the Met Opera (I love that my work gives me free tickets). This production was SO raucous and hilarious!

It was genius that they built out the stage over the orchestra pit and blocked out acting choices where all of the principal singers came down and interacted with the audience. Talk about literally making opera more accessible! At the end, the Barber even gave out his business cards to a few people in the front row. Wonderful.

Anyway, after a lovely walk through Central Park, my friend and I parted ways for a bit so she could get macaroons with a friend, and I went and worked out. After the gym, the city greeted me with the most cleansing yet light rain, right as the sun was setting. It was serenely gorgeous.

Finally, we went to Le Cirque in Midtown for dinner, via a reservation with this new Groupon-esque company called Savoured. Le Cirque is one of those restaurants rated $$$$ for how good yet expensive the food is, and it has been highly rated by food critics around the world. As you may imagine, I was a cool 2.5% nervous about what our bill might look like. (Especially in the wake of an unpleasantly surprisingly $400 prefix valentine's dinner I recently had at Boulud Sud).

My friend and I ordered the lamb chops and the venison medallions, but SCANDAL they had run out of lamb! The lovely French waiter made up for it by buying our wine, gifting us a lovely little fizzy dessert wine, and then sending out souffle, creme brulee, macaroons, and chocolates on the house. With that and the 30% off your check that Savoured arranges, our meal was absurdly affordable. Another pleasant surprise!!

Those of you who knew me in college probably remember that I was not the most stereotypically adventurous of college youths, but wow have I been enjoying my post college life. Nothing thus far compares with how I ended my night, at this club somewhere in So Ho called South Side. There was dancing, there were smoke machines, there were weird psychedelic lights, and a cuddly but tortured Frenchman. I was a wee bit skeptical at first (I can't help it), but even after getting home at 4am, I'm oh so glad we went. All in all, it was the most cathartic way I've yet discovered to deal with the ennui that's overwhelmed me of late.

The Universe

Don't f&*$ with it.

Because if you do, I can guarantee you from personal experience that it will f%^& you RIGHT back.

Wowza.

Met Opera

Rehearsals are back in full swing. For some reason I'm exhausted... surprising since we're hardly involved in this show any more. But all is well. Oh, and the new cast is almost entirely American. A refreshing change of pace.

Methinks I have some sort of rebellion in my throat/head cold monstrosity brewing. It is NOT nice. Wash your hands, people, it's sickness season!

Updates about my Valentine's Day fashion week date to follow.

Hugs and germ-free canoodles of love,

A Broadway Baby

Friendly Reminders

Like many of my female friends, I've allowed consumerism to dictate my self perception, in that I think I look better with make up than I do without.

Well, I am much pleased to say that a random conflation of factors has begun to make me doubt my thoughts on the subject. At Amy's Bread in the theater district, one of the bakers caught me putting on makeup. In this dear french accent, he said that I don't need makeup because one can't enhance perfection.

I can't even make this stuff up. I do appreciate that New York endeavors to be kind to me after my sink exploded and a can of white paint spilled all over my black stairs and black door.

Win some, lose some.

Happy Valentine's Day, all!

Hugs,

A Broadway Baby

Kick Me, Kate!

Gahh. I'm always trying to be about optimism, acceptance, and forward thinking on this blog, but boy I really dislike it when my fellow dancers are unaware of their space and kick/hit/step on me.

I mean I like to think I'm a nice girl, but I have HAD it with girls in character heels who don't seem to get the concept of windows (that's where dancers stagger themselves in a zig zag formation so that no dancer is directly in front of or behind another dancer).

At this point Im going to have to act in the interest of self preservation... I have a GOUGE in my foot from homegirl on Saturday! The audition for Kiss Me Kate (in the Fingerlakes?) went well enough, but it put me in a bit of a mood to sustain some damage only two minutes into learning the combination.

Suffice it to say, the stink eye has become well honed and was out in full force. I also seem to have developed this steely, polite voice that I use to whisper, "Please step forward. Now."

In other news, my private tutoring clients are really improving by leaps and bounds. I am le proud of them! A few of my students have crossed over into the Honors realm!

Don Giovanni rehearsals start again Tuesday. Here's hoping for a relatively injury-free next week.

Cheers,

A Broadway Baby

Disney Cruise Lines & Kindness

Unexpected kindness is New York's saving grace, I think.

Over the past two days, I have had just had the most fortuitous of run ins with people who decided to be nice to me for the heck of it.

What a difference it has made!

Yesterday, I auditioned for Disney Cruise lines. I'm there all day long, doing different dances - a ballet combination to type out girls, then a charactery jazz bit, then a super competition jazz "So You Think You Can Dance - esque" bit of wonder. That last routine had a high battement, or kick, and a double pirouette (a turn where you spin on one leg while holding the other up in what's called passe, like a flamingo... errr, well, a flamingo at rest if it's leg was bent in the other direction from what it is below).

So the music for the last Disney routine had space to fit three pirouette turns. I must have been channeling my 17 year old self, because on the first run, I did three turns, and on the second I did four! Oh and I actually kicked myself in the side of my face on the battement kick - with enough fervor that some of the other dancers on the sidelines even said "weerrk" outloud. What an ego boost!

Then of course I get cut at the end of the day, and they keep two 5 foot dancers. Oy vey.

I would have been a bit irritated, had it not been for this wonderful young male dancer who had also been in the room. He went out of his way to say that I looked amazing and that he couldn't believe that the Disney casting people didn't keep me at the end.

After feeling for a couple of weeks like I wasn't a real dancer, that I wasn't serious enough about my "craft" or whatever, it made my day to hear some unsolicited positive feedback.

Oh and my Egyptian cab driver today said he couldn't believe that I was in between clients and working because he thought I should still be in high school.

... An age compliment to boot!!

Moral of the story, just live. Enjoy yourself, do your best, don't outsource your brain space to haters and don't over think, because all that really matters at the end of the day is that you've done something that you can be proud of.

Hugs and love,

A Broadway Baby
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Final Callbacks and Sparkles

Soreness, thy definition is the lower half of my body.

SOooo... honesty time, people.

I haven't been blogging with much heart or consistency lately, because I've been feeling pretty down. However, I've come to the realization that I should have been doing it anyway! After all, the whole point of my decision to embark on this dancing enterprise was to explore all aspects of something that I love, and the whole point of the blog was to ruminate about a dancer's life in a way that could be helpful to others and that would keep me honest about how hard I'm really trying to succeed at this.

Ergo, I'm back. The final callback that has had me really bummed was this audition for Sleep No More, a rather revolutionary new piece of audience participation theater/dance spectacular:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/arts/dance/sleep-no-more-is-theater-embedded-with-dancers.html?pagewanted=all

The audition was a week ago, and I've been trying not to think about it too often. Alas, when this much time has passed without another email/call, it usually means that the casting team has decided to go in a direction that does not involve you. Despite growing a pretty strong backbone after a year in this industry, the heavy feeling that I get when I feel someone or something I really want going in the opposite direction of me never really goes away.

So, I'm dealing with that, and going to another audition tomorrow. It's that whole "if you get off the horse for too long, it's much much much more difficult to ride" thing that I'm trying to avoid.

Thank heavens for my roommate, sparkles, and other lovely people/experiences to make things better:

Can you see me? Or are you blinded by muscles?!?! Gotta love birthday outings for my gay darlings.



Hugs, A Broadway Baby