Dance Update

Warning! This entry is about dancing and dance-related issues, and some people may find that incredibly boring.

I leave in a few hours to go down to Triesdorf (huh? where?) again for the exciting conclusion of the turban/sword/farm girl/set moving extravaganza. I hope we have an audience!! It's hard for me to believe that people will come to a baroque pantomime in a theater in a tiny village whose main claim to fame is the agricultural college, but the show is part of the International Gluck Festival of Nuremburg, and the promoters are offering a shuttle bus from the big, important theater in Nuremburg to our more rustic digs. At any rate, I am thrilled beyond belief to be participating in this show because I think the work is good, AND it means maybe I can work more with the Euro-baroque crowd.

In other dance news, I have been invited to take company class at the city-funded dance company here, Pretty Ugly Tanz Köln! The company does modern dance, but the class is strictly ballet. The people in the company are pretty friendly (at least the girls are-- oddly enough, the guys are more aloof. Yay Girl Power! Even in the dance world where there are 50 women to one man!), and the classes are challenging. The class meets every day in the morning, but I have still been taking my crazy Cecchetti class some evenings. This means that on Monday and Thursday I take two ballet classes in one day. It also means that if I go to every class, I would be taking 8 classes a week. Big deal, you may be saying. Well, I haven't really danced this much since college, and, ummm, I am a bit older. I've been taking lots of baths and magnesium vitamins, etc. The really incredibly fabulous thing is that I can feel my technique improving, and my body is quicker to do what I want it to do. It is an exhilarating feeling, probably caused by endorphin release into the nervous system, which means I am like a drug addict. More, more!