Well, I dunno...

It's been all fun and games...

Monday evening was fun; "The Winter's Tale" makes a terrific ballet, although the "game of two halves" tendency of the play was if anything emphasised by the transformation to a purely visual medium.  More of that anon.

Thinking of anons, I seem to have pissed-off my anon from the weekend.  Sorry, cryptic outside-over-there person!  Not knowing who you are kind of throws me, because you clearly know who I am.  Try and put yourself in my shoes, and consider how discombobulating that feels.  I'm happy you seem to have liked my poem & I'm touched that you responded positivly to it.  But I have to be honest; it was written as a response to seeing someone I know walk by looking tired and low.  One particular person.  Now you seem to be taking it personally, and I don't know if you're that person or not;  Again, significant discombobulation here.  I hate not knowing things; makes me feel really inadequate...

So, I'm sorry if I didn't react the way you wanted.  It's probably good for me to feel inadequate, though.  Challenging.

A good few things are challenging just now.  The new ticketing and database system continues to be challenging, bless its digital cotton socks.  We had server issues for large parts of yesterday, which was certainly bl**dy challenging, and reminded me just how painfully dependent we all are on computers these days.  Today we had a fire alarm, and it wasn't a drill.  In fact it turned out to be a complete mystery; so everyone was kept outside the office for a good thirty or forty minutes while it was investigated.  Thirty-forty minutes I could really have used in the office...

At least it was a pleasant afternoon.  There was patchy sun, a fresh mild breeze, goldfinches singing in the trees and big, blowsy golden peonies in bloom.  Compared with some fire alarms I have known, that was okay, I have to say.

Worst fire alarm I've ever been in was a time when I was modelling for an evening class.  In November.  As the saying goes, less said about that, the better.

Then when we were allowed back into the building I got sabotaged in my attempts to do a simple job by the fact I couldn't get it done because something wasn't doing what I expected it to.  Couldn't crack it for the life of me.  Had to email The Man With The Answers about fifteen times in a row, which was both challenging and plain bl**dy embarrassing.  I dislike bothering busy people.  That inadequacy thing, again; I feel I ought to be able to fix my own sodding problems. 

And then when The Man had fixed that problem, I got a different problem and had to give up on the whole thing.  As it was I didn't leave work till six pm.  Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Back to "Winter's Tale".

Firstly; what a cast, what a staging, what amazing choreography!  Between Sicilia and Bohemia the whole physical language changes; so that the first is angular, frontal and formal, full of clenched fists, Graham-technique feet and gripping hands, and the second is all flowing lines and chain dances, leaping and springing and lightness of movement and gesture.

The storytelling is marvellously clear (& scrapping Autolycus makes for a sharper and more fairy-tale-like plot, which works better in ballet).  The homoerotic quality of Leontes' and Polixenes' love for one another is pointed up gently but not over-emphasised - so that one can see Leontes' rage and jealousy are as much over his friend - and first love - as over his wife and second love - but it wasn't egged to the point (which I've seen done on stage) of implying he's never really cared about Hermione in the first place and has only  made a marriage of convenience for the sake of getting an heir.  I loved the way it's shown that, his madness once over, Leontes is practically a broken man; dependent on Paulina, almost helpless at her behest and physically literally in her hands.  The parallels between Leontes' jealousy in the first half and Polixenes rage in the second were brought out perfectly, too.  It's that sort of thing that storytelling through physical language can sometimes do almost better than words.

But ooh, I'm on dangerous territory there; inferring that Shakespeare's words could be bettered if removed is hardly a good line to take!  I can see that argument taking me swiftly off the edge of a precipice if I try to follow it.

I guess it just shows yet again the infinite variability and flexibility of the stories and characters he gave us, though, that they can be retold and reborn even without the text itself, and still come absolutely true...

All the cast are pitch-perfect (though the programme note that says something like "Leontes remarks on Florizels ressemblance to Polixenes" had us all giggling naughtily - ah yes, the ginger tom takes one look at his dark-haired friend's extremely ginger son and that's what he thinks?).  The six principals were all excellent as were rest of the cast, right down the batting order.  In particular Edward Watson's Leontes was terrifying in his insanity, bending and writhing like a sea-creature or a giant multi-jointed invertebrate; and then tragic in his grief, weak and broken in spirit in the aftermath.

I'm always happy to see Gary Avis given a decent role, and as Perdita's adoptive father he gets to be both a solid dancer, leading off folk dances and proving he can still partner most of the fellows off the map, and also a gentle and truthful actor.  Valentino Zucchetti was a stunning Clown; please, someone, anyone, give this chap more to do, and stretch him, let him get his teeth into more and more.  He has an astonishingly elastic jump, tremendous footwork, and a frisky, charming, insouciant stage presence.  I can't wait for the day they give him Lescaut to do...

The whole Bohemia scene is simply lovely; where everything in Sicilia was trammelled and tight, and love could only be expressed with small gestures and taking care not to overstep the marks of good manners, suddenly here we get the happy innocent tenderness of young love, the affectionate sibling joshing between Perdita and Clown, the solid loving paternal strength of the father shepherd and all the cheerful flirting and falling-for and delighting of the festival crowd.  Every gesture is suddenly wide-open and free, the lifts are big, the footwork bounding and stomping and joyously natural. 

And it looks tremendous, too.  The designs are gorgeous; clean plain colours, plus sober black, grey and white, in Sicilia, and rich tapestried patterns everywhere in Bohemia, where hems are embroidered or fringed, fabrics brocaded, cushions painted and everything imaginable decorated.

Joby Talbot's score is further evidence that he's become the ballet composer who should be at the top of every list today.  It's less gallumphing than his "Alice" score, richer and subtler and more shimmering; it reminded me of Prokofiev's "Cinderella" and Henze's "Ondine", and one really can't give much higher praise than that.

Problems?  The animatronic baby is bl**dy creepy (one almost couldn't blame Leontes for being freaked out by it) and the bear pursuing Ben Gartside's kind-hearted Antigonus is a bit odd; not as theatrically effective as I'd hoped Covent Garden, with the resources at its disposal, could rustle up.  Darcy Bussell, presenting from backstage (I love backstage stuff!) was wearing a garment with a collar apparently studded with jelly-tots; very distracting...  But that's about all I can find to nitpick over.  The final scenes had me in tears.  The lovers' plea to Leontes; his humbling himself to help them and his reconcilliation with Polixenes; the little touch of the father shepherd being greeted honourably by the kings... Paulina's recognition scene was simple and perfect (my goodness can Zenaida Yanowsky act when she's given the chance) and then Hermione's restoration and duet with Leontes, and the reunion with her daughter, were sad and painful and noble; emotional truth at its clearest.   

Fab-u-lous. 

And now I must go to bed, and be ready for another little wrestle with my new database and ticketing system tomorrow.  I want to learn to drive this thing properly.  I will not be defeated by my tools.

Busy busy bee

...that'll be me, next week.

There's work, for starters.  I think all the issues I outlined in my last long post are ongoing, so yes, pretty busy at work. Progress is being made, and on all fronts, too; but at this time of year there are more tasks coming in every day, so "progress" does not mean "let-up".  No rest for the wicked, ect ect (Molesworth he sa).

At least by the end of the week there may be more information about the restructure.  Even if the news is alarming, it will at least mean being out of the limbo of waiting, and into a place where one knows what is happening and can start to plan accordingly.

Monday evening I'm going out with the Dipgeek and another friend to the Curzon in Richmond, to the cinema relay of Christopher Wheeldon's new ballet of "The Winter's Tale"; hopefully with supper beforehand. Given Dip's dietary issues this will probably mean that nice Persian restaurant on the little pedestrain square just off Sheen Road, since they do lots of gluten-free things.  Mmm chicken with pomegranate seeds mmmm...  Looking forward to seeing my dear Dip again as we haven't met up for several months.

Thursday I'm off to another cinema relay after work, this one at Westfield; the National Theatre "King Lear" with the brilliant Simon Russell Beale, one of my big-time acting heroes, playing Lear.  I've been trying to ages to get a ticket to see this in the theatre, but tickets are like the proverbial gold dust and in the end I gave up and said a short prayer of thanks to the gods of live broadcast, and accepted that I will have to spend an evening on board the good ship Axiom...  At least I can have gambas al ajillo and patatas bravas and a glass of Mahou at Tapas Revolucion first.  I suspect I will need to be fortified with garlic and beer; if Mr Beale is not a harrowingly good Lear I will be very, very surprised indeed.  He was easily the best Hamlet I've seen, when he did that some (good grief) fourteen years ago.  Somehow every familiar line and speech and scene in the play seemed to come fresh, with him, as fresh as if never experienced before, so that it was almost painful to watch events unfold.  For the first time since I was twelve I wanted the ending not to be what I knew it was going to be.  It was like seeing one of my brothers going through Hamlet's torments and miseries.  Perhaps that's a bad metaphor (neither of them has any inclination to the stage, after all!) - but it all felt so real, so immediate, so like the struggle of a real man.  An actor who can do that earns a small piece of my heart, and I don't think I've ever seen Mr Beale give a duff performance; so I am, in a slightly "brace for impact" way, looking forward to his Lear.

Then next Saturday I'm going to an engagement party.  TCI and her other half the Lovely G got engaged at Christmas and are now having a proper bash to celebrate.  Looking forward to catching up with them, too.  I expect that will be a fairly lively evening.  Cor-lumme, it's in a posh bar up in the west end and all.  I think I need to try and be smart for this one (scurries around trying to think of something dressier than my usual jeans-and-blouse combo).  Not that my hair will ever let me be truly smart; it has a disreputable tendency to look messy at any and all occasions. But I can try, anyway.

So, I imagine that by this time next week I may be crashing out and spending my Sunday vegetating under a tree at Kew, or if it's raining then slummocking at home in front of the dvd player watching soppy movies, drinking tea and eating fudge.

I've managed to book some time off, hurrah; a week at the very end of May (hopefully taking me to somewhere in Greece), a long weekend for WOMAD in July, a fortnight in late September (hopefully Greece again) and the week of my birthday (hopefully not having gastroenteritis again!).  Having annual leave booked and being able to contemplate the possibility of a holiday is tremendously cheering when one is feeling under pressure.  Of course, if (God forbid) I do find myself out of a job then annual leave arrangements become academic...  Oh well, one can only wait and see, hope for the best; and have an up-to-date CV just in case.  Maybe I should get an actual trip booked for one of those spells of leave; booked and paid-for, so that I can't very easily get out of it if life turns pear-shaped.

But I hope it will not.  I hope very much it will not.

What else to report?  Bills are stopping making Garlic Pachadi, drat them!  It's become a staple in my cooking since I discovered it.  I've cleared the nearest store out of their last supplies (four jars) so I'm good for a couple of months, but then...  Harrumph harrumph, not fair.  I protest, I refuse.  I wonder if I can learn to make my own? 

Kew Gardens is looking beautiful; it's odd to look back and see that this time last year the snowdrops had only just finished and most trees were still in tight bud.  Now we have horse chestnuts in glorious bloom, all the hawthorn family coming out everywhere, rhododendrons in flower and even the earliest roses, like the lovely yellow single-flowered Rosa hugonis...  The Rock Garden is an absolute picture, full of asphodels and peonies and alpine tulips...  For all its quirks, I work in paradise.  Please don't let me have to leave paradise.

Now I must go and get on with some writing.  This was going to be a writing day but as always I have got distracted.  By thoroughly frivolous things like painting my toenails blue and writing this.  Come on, Ims, get a shoofty on!

Busy happy bee...

It's all go.  I love it when it's all go; at least until I fall apart with tiredness.  Haven't reached that stage yet, though.

Finished writing "Gold Hawk", first draft, and have begun on revisions.  Went to a terrific Royal Ballet triple bill and a terrific play.  Went to the first rehearsal for the Kew Christmas choir.  Had a blood sample taken (actually that wasn't much fun, but then it never is; c'est la vie).  Booked a week in Cyprus for my birthday. Discovered that the delicious vegetarian dish called Civilised Swede is better if you don't put it through the blender. Had a cool idea at work and got the go-ahead to work on it (to start with it involves compiling a large spreadsheet, which is boring boring boring, but I hope it will be worthwhile in the end).

And I've got on fine so far with the "500 calories a day, 2 days per week" diet.  I'm finding it's surprisingly easy to make it work and it doesn't lead to horrible feelings of deprivation.  I was very happy to see this post on Helena Halme's blog, outlining exactly the same eating system and giving some useful tips to make it work.  Clearly I have a way to go, but unlike every other diet I've ever tried I am not already thinking "wtf am I doing, life is too short for this misery..."  So am hopeful, for now.

The ballet was a mixed bill of new + fairly-new pieces by wunderkinds Liam Scarlett, Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon.  Three fantastic young choreographers, all at the top of their game.  Three fantastic modern-but-deeply-rooted ballets; each one abstract but with a core of emotional sincerity; each with a fine pas de deux, or a series of them, as the central image.  The middle item in particular, a revival of McGregor's best piece "Infra", absolutely knocked my socks off.  And a host of my favourite dancers were in action the night I went.  Good to see the RB get off to a fine start this season, then!

The play was the revival of "Constellations", transferring from the Royal Court to the dinky little Duke of York's Theatre in St Martin's Lane.  Wow.  A really fascinating, thought-provoking play, both funny and deeply moving - but moving without being simply press-your-buttons-emotive.  I'm still toying with it in my mind and taking delight in remembering the skilful and touching performances of Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins.  It's a gift for the actors, though I'm sure it would be horribly tricky to learn!  Have a dream US cast in mind, of course!  >sigh<

Choir practice went well, and it looks as though I'll spend the carol service in my usual state of nervous tension, wondering if I can keep to my own vocal line and not digress up into the soprano line (which does sound v odd in an alto) or down to join the tenors (which seems to take them aback badly).

And feeling really rather happy and excited about making steady headway on the latest magnum opus.  I'd like to finish revisions before I go to Paphos if possible, so that I can relax and do s*d all for a week; just walk and swim and look at archeological sites, and drink brandy sours!

Alice in wonderful-land

Last night I went to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Christopher Wheeldon’s new two-act ballet at the Royal Opera House. It was something like the third performance – but then, they are only doing six. My mum is gnashing her teeth, as there were no matinees, and she would have loved to see it. Now I’ll be going to see her this weekend and I’m afraid I’ll ratchet her frustration up a notch - because she’s bound to ask how “Alice” went, and I’ll have to be honest. “Alice” is brilliant.

It’s mad, too, of course, but then “Alice in Wonderland” ought to be. It's very funny and great fun. It has amazing design and staging, looks stunning, and manages to graft a moderately logical story onto Carroll’s original tale without crippling it in the process. And it is packed with lovely, expressive, true classical dance. Mr Wheeldon can feel very, very proud of himself; he’s given the Company an out-and-out winner. This should stay in the repertoire for a long time, or I’ll eat my hat.

The design is a major element, it’s true, possibly more so than in an older, more established piece. It’s hard to imagine the Cheshire Cat sequences, for example, being done with other designs – but then, if it is a success and supposing another company wants to acquire it into their repertoire in ten years time, Mr Wheeldon will still be a young fella then, and can tweak things if necessary to accommodate a different designer’s vision. In the meantime, well, Covent Garden has the technical facilities to do something that requires complicated sets, multiple drop curtains, forward and back projections, marionettes and butoh-style puppetry and so forth, so why shouldn’t they use what they’ve got? Just as they have the means, in casting terms, to fill the stage to the brim with dancers (looking at the curtain call I was thinking “good grief, am I dreaming or is practically everyone in the Company on stage right now?”) and to field performers of the calibre of Sarah Lamb, Federico Bonelli and Tamara Rojo as the second cast…

I don’t want to just write a string of superlatives (I think I do too much of that as it is), so I’ll shut up now and finish by saying, if you possibly can, get a day ticket for one of the three remaining performances next week. You won’t regret it.

Some kind of wonderful...

I was at the ballet last night. It was a triple bill, with two pieces I’d seen before, one of which (Christopher Wheeldon’s “Electric Counterpoint”) I love and the other of which (Mats Ek’s “Carmen”) worked a lot better for me on the second viewing. The third piece was new, and terrific; Liam Scarlett’s “Asphodel meadows”. One of those occasions when you come out of the auditorium thinking “Wow!” because your expectations have been so greatly exceeded. “Asphodel meadows” is full of images of love and loss, yearning and rejection, grief and death but also of life being held to and entered into with joy (being danced to Poulenc’s gorgeous, jazzy, haunting Double Piano Concerto is a plus, too). On this evidence, Mr Scarlett will go far.

His work is deceptively simple; lyrical, nuanced, emotionally truthful and visually delicate. Traditional in layout and content, it is profoundly not deracinated, but draws on tradition and moves forward in its company without either sneering at it or cringing to it (oh dear, please excuse that ugly metaphor).

I suppose it's partly the result of five years at Art School, but I am deeply suspicious of iconoclasm. So often it seems to me that the iconoclast has nothing else to say beyond their challenge to convention; they are relying on the deification of the rebel in contemporary culture to make their name and swing their fame. But challenge without content is ultimately meaningless, and is dependent on an acceptance of the (crass and false) notion that the past must, by its very nature, be no good.

Mr Scarlett takes the harder but infinitely better path, not denying the worth of his antecedents but developing his work from the roots of what has come before, unafraid to be himself and to use his own ideas and language, as these grow out of that rootstock. With young choreographers like him and Wheeldon around, contemporary ballet can look to a future both secure and deeply exciting.

As regards the other two pieces, I’m still a bit distracted by the recorded voices in “Electric Counterpoint” (Ed Watson doesn’t like his hands? Silly him. He has very nice hands) but the dancing is simply thrilling. “Carmen” remains a bonkers, but surprisingly effective, distillation/revision of the Carmen story. Interestingly, it is a good contrast to Liam Scarlett’s work, illustrating almost exactly the point I was trying to make about tradition and iconoclasm. The least interesting parts of “Carmen” are the most deliberately challenging elements; all the shouting (boring idea), the image of Carmen pulling a red silk ribbon out of Escamillo’s crotch, the comically overt sexuality (all those men rolling around the floor playing with their giant cigars – oh please [not, I hasten to add, that I’d object to Gary Avis rolling on my floor playing with his giant cigar] – it’s just so childishly obvious as a theatrical metaphor). But on the topic of José’s violence and his neuroses, Carmen’s passionate wilfulness, Micaela’s mixture of possessiveness and idealistic romanticism, it hits the spot. And the cast were top notch. Tamara Rojo just is Carmen, Thomas Whitehead’s José is appropriately scary, and it’s good to see the lovely Bennet Gartside getting to show off his bravura chops as Escamillo – and to wear gold lurex, which probably also doesn’t come his way every day.

In the foyer on the way out I saw Edward Watson talking to Christopher Wheeldon. I’m afraid I did a double-take and grinned at them both like an idiot. Mr Wheeldon noticed (he got that “oh sh*t do I know this woman?” expression for a second), so I hurried off before I embarrassed myself any further.

It reminded me of the thing I’m always touched by about great performing artists. They do their thing, and knock my socks off, and then they shower and put on street clothes, go and get a bite to eat and go home on the tube, and feed the cat, or take the dog to the post box for a late-night pee; and so to bed, just like anyone. Yet up they get in the morning and go to work, and prepare to knock my socks off again. What can it be like, to have that sort of talent, and for that astonishing ability to be just part of one’s normal life, the way working at Kew is part of my normal life these days?

This morning I had to queue for ten minutes to vote. I’ve never queued before, and nor had any of the other people in the line – we were all talking about how unexpected it was (in between cooing over a very sweet dog who was accompanying his mistress and heaving huge theatrical sighs while he waited). Everyone said things like “This time it might matter” and “I want to make a point” and “I think this could be an important election”. I find this pleasing. I realise thirty ordinary Chiswick citizens is hardly a representative section of society, but they all seemed to be quite fired up about people-power. If nothing else, this sort of feeling may mean a slightly better turn-out than in recent years.

The results, of course, are in the hands of god. As is the question of whether I get a Greek holiday this year, what with volcanoes and general strikes and all… We live in interesting times.