Portrait of Heidi

Before I put up the shots of Luxembourg, I thought I would treat you to a few kitty pictures.

We think she may be part monkey, but that kind of evidence is hard to capture on film.

This week (ok, it has really only been a half-week since I got back) has really gotten away from me. The Varieté 1770 show is in full-blast mode. I had a fabulous meeting with the musicians on Friday in which they recorded all the music (so I can rehearse without them). I love having Beate choose the music for the shows. Without Beate, I would have never used Haydn or the sons of Bach, and the music is so funny and charming! And hooray for not having to do everything myself!!

Today I am rehearsing my dances, going shopping for costume pieces (a puffy golden blouse and Turkish jacket---Me: "Ummm, do you have something that looks more like a French 18th c. painting of a Turkish lady?" Store Owner: "Huh?"), rehearsing the minuet with Beate, and then going to the meeting of OriginalKlang Köln: Alte Musik Initiative (Alte Musik=Early Music).

I better get started.

Watch Out!

The Luxemburgers are going to try to kill you with their food. At first you will think it is charming and tasty, but in a week they will stuff you so full of butter and cream and ham and salad drowned in some kind of mayonnaisey disaster that you won't be able to move.

In desperation, I fled yesterday to Luxemburg (The City). The city is indeed charming, and they do serve vegetables there.

More Random Luxemburg Info

In the Luxemburger Post there are some articles in French and some in German! I had never seen that before-- in Belgium, the newspapers tend to be either in French or Flemish, I think.

Dudelange is decidedly not a culinarily health-conscious place. I am starting to go through vegetable withdrawl among the schnitzels covered in mushroon cream sauce.

We have the afternoon off today, so I am going to hop over to Luxemburg (city) to see the big town.

Luxemburg

Hi Everybody!

I am right now in the moderately tiny country of Luxemburg preparing to dance in an Organ Festival (the instrument-- now I am imagining stomachs and lungs and spleens flying around everywhere) choreographed by Klaus Abromeit for Berlin, one of the wackiest baroque dance choreographers.

First of all, you should know the town is called Dudelange. And we are staying at the home of Herr Dondelinge.

The town itself is quite small, but the church where we are performing is amazing. It was built in 1927-- the town was founded around a steel mill at that time. It has gothic ceilings and every inch is beautifully frescoed. The dance piece will be performed there, and it is based on the frescoes of the saints in the church with videos from the steel mill around the turn of the 20th century. So far, I am embodying Eve, Sarah (yay!), and Elisabeth the sister of Moses.

We are eating lunch every day at the restaurant next to the chruch, a charming place with what the Germans call "Hausmanns Kost" and the Americans would call "Down-home Cooking". It is filled with the older citizens of Dudelange, and they all turned to stare at us when we walked in the first day. That felt a little strange, but the food was incredible-- ham, mashed potatoes and saurkraut.

More later!

Soup and the Kitten

The pumpkins in Germany are quite small, designed for cooking rather than carving. My friend Beate had a small dinner party last night where she cooked one of these luscious pumpkins with coconut milk and chilis.
(This was after our Varieté 1770 preview talk at the theater. I spoke in GERMAN. On stage. Whatever was lacking in my vocabulary or grammatical structure was compensated by my vast face-making ability)
Americans! To your dutch ovens!
The other member of the dinner party was a modern cello player, and not a hour into the dinner a ferocious debate ensued about music "authenticity". I felt bad for poor Jeremy sitting at the table, but he later said it was actually interesting.

Our kitten, Heidi Fluffernutter, is growing and maturing in her ability to alternately annoy and charm us. At night, she loves to swipe-- WITH claws!-- at our feet moving under the covers which leads to me repeatedly removing her from the bed and Jeremy mumbling about needing a squirt bottle. But sometimes she sits on my lap or snuggles up next to me when I am reading. And she really is adorable.

Not-everything-is-perfect-in-Germany Note:
There is already Stollen in the grocery store. These people have no holiday speedbumps before Christmas, so this is what happens. I seem to also remember pine wreaths last year in October. Yuck.

Drottningholm!

relaxing in the boys' dressing room in between our swirls on stage

The set for the end of Act III (minus the statue of Mars that rises out of the floor)

close-up of the legs

backstage

in the gardens

The Gang in Stockholm: me, Caroline, Jason, and Rachel

The pensive Fire

our dressing room

me, vainly posing in my mask and costume

The palace at Drottninghom

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby offer my meager description of the delight of performing with The New York Baroque Dance Company in the opera Orlando at Drottningholm.

First of all, you should know that the Drottningholm Theater is one of the very rare 18th c. theaters in which many parts are still original. The set designs are faithful copies of the sets found in the theater when it was rediscovered in the 20th c. (before that it was used as a storage house), and the stage designs are flown in and out of the stage using ropes, according to the way it was done in the 18th c.

We had 17 stagehands flying any number of sets and objects in and out, and in the last aria of the 2nd Act (Orlando's "Hello everyone! Now I am completely Mad!" Aria) we made them pull practically every rope in the theater--- the set itself changed a couple of times, the cloud machine came down to whisk the lovely Angelica away, a boat glided across the River Styx (with waves, thanks to our Supers!), and a chariot carrying our magician, Zorastro, flew across the stage as the curtain came down.

Everyone on the stage and in the orchestra pit spent most of the time at the theater in amazement at how different doing a baroque opera in a baroque theater really is. The acoustics of the theater were stunning, and it was fantastic to really hear the orchestra.

Orlando was directed by our charming leader, Catherine Turocy, and she is brilliant at coaching the singers in a natural and historically-informed performance. The mix of comedy and tragedy in Orlando is particularly highlighted in this production, and all of the singers brought new depth to this aspect in their performances.

The dancers played the genies of Zorastro with Caroline as the genie of fire, myself as the genie of water and air, and with Jason and Alan as the Salamander genies. Although there is no dance music per se in this opera, we helped maintain the magical element of the plot. I really enjoyed the quasi-grotesque nature of our roles, exploring the off-kilter spirals so beloved of 18th c. gesture and relating to my fellow dancers in a more exaggerated way than when we are "people" onstage.

Our dressing rooms were the actual rooms where the performers lived in the 18th c, with even 18th c. wallpaper on the walls! Since Drottningholm was the summer residence of the royal Swedish family, the performers lived there the whole summer season with their families and pets. They were paid in wine and given free room and board--- typical of the aristocracy to not actually pay! I heard that Gustav III loved novelty, and the performers were not allowed to do the same show more than twice in a month. Whew!

The people who worked at Drottningholm-- the dressers and makeup artists and production staff-- were all very helpful. We made ourselves right at home and hope we can go back sometime soon!

This week in general craziness

1. We have a kitten, as yet unnamed. We started to call her Sylvia Plath for reasons perhaps best left unsaid, but our neighbor is named Sylvia, and we realized that would be strange yelling "Sylvia come here!" and " Ooh, that's a bad little Sylvia" or "Who's the sweetest little Sylvia". Our neighbor might get the wrong idea. Then we thought we would call her Nosferatu because she only came out from under the bed at night and seemed to genuinely shun the sun. But now... I would like to call her Coco. Suggestions?

2. I am working on TWO shows now for The Punks Delight-- one perhaps/hopefully insane show called Varieté 1770 for Oct. 15th (I'm looking for a clown who can act and sing a little this week), and one perhaps more "normal" postmodern baroque show for November. Both are in Cologne! AND we are still trying o get money for the group--- my only hope is that the organizations will be impressed by the big SPLASH we are making.

3. Jeremy has committed himself to the lab hard-core this fall. Even so, we should still see each other more than we did this summer!

It's so nice to be back...