Fragmented thoughts....

I kicked the conductor today, pretty hard, whilst warming up in the wings...

'THWACK!'

Fortunately he laughed and passed me his baton

and told me i'd have to lead the orchestra tonight....

i'm a bit nervous about my new partner for pas de trois in Swan Lake,

he's young and new and reckless,

thinks he's Baryishnikov

he is not.

he needs to hold me so i dont fall over.....

I'm not confident he will.

I went out a couple of evenings ago for dinner with friends.

it was the first time this month that i have done any form of social activity.

Realised that having social activities with friends

should happen more often so as to help me keep my sanity.

One year anniversary of the Egyptian revolution....

are things all that different?

hmmmm.....

better not get into Middle Eastern Politics,

its really not my forte.

I dreamed about eating Philadelphia Cream Cheese the other night,

it was amazing!

Better than the dream i had about George Clooney the night before.

Was pretty sad at the grocery store today when

i had to put back my tub of Philadelphia Cream Cheese

as i dint have enough cash on me and had more important things to buy.

I wont make that mistake twice.

Been loving having nightly chats with Captain Tim on skype recently,

it appears we can spend hours talking about nothing.

mini-disclaimer!

(as much as i'd like it to be its definitely not me in the picture....

if only....

its just one i saw on pinterest tonight and loved,

i guess i should probably start sourcing my pictures...

although if you want to think that is me, please feel free to do so....)

Jumanjied....

After having a massive fight with my boyfriend

the other night we came to a new resolution....

We had gotten to the point in the fight where it had gotten

so big that we were pretty much bringing up every fight that we had ever had.

Re-hashing them all....

really not resolving anything....

bringing up old issues and grievances that being years old really should be forgotten about....

we are not the people we were when we had those fights,

so why are we still having them?

So we came up with a code word,

for when we are in a fight and bring up topics that

we have now officially been vetoed....

as in they are resolved (or unresolved but remaining that way)

we are going to say those topics are JUMANJIED...

mainly because i thought Jumanjied was a pretty funny word

Let's see how it works out.....

Remembering to be grateful....

As i shared a video of me doing some of my

dancing in Nutcracker with Captain Tim,

he was quite impressed.

'Oh! its just you on the stage,

i dont have to pretend that i spotted you

out of all the other girls who look just the same'

And he's right,

even though i complain a lot to him about the pain

and the rehearsals

and my Russian Dictator Coach (she is well hard!)

i can be thankful that i'm not still in my last company

where i was constantly the understudy,

or in the back of the corps de ballet.

where i dont feel the need to bring a book to work as

i know that i'm going to actually be dancing in the rehearsals rather than sitting watching everybody else waiting for one of them to get sick.

Although i do miss out on all that reading time i had,

which is what i thought when i saw this picture!

Pointe Skating....

Oh dear,

this blog is starting to show you just how

much of my day is wasted on youtube....

but i have to share this, it's amazing.

She is dancing on pointe on ice,

out of home made ice skates...

there is some skill there i can tell you

I love to watch the figure skating,

at one point i loved it so much i was like

i'm going to learn to skate and go to the Olympics.

and then i got my self a pair of skates and went

ice-skating and realised that even though i can twirl around on my tippy toes

i can barely stand upright on the ice.

I am the worst ice skater ever...

there went that dream down the toilet....

Swan Graduation....

It's finally happened....

i finally feel like i've graduated into a fully fledged Swan

We've started on rehearsals for Swan Lake.....

again.....

My mother always tells me when i was a little girl i

dreamed of doing swan lake and she had to have tutu especially

made for me with feathers stuck to it as apparently

it wasnt a real tutu unless it had feathers on it.

Well after 10 years of doing Swan Lakes (and Nutcrackers)

I can tell you how fed up of it i am.

Mainly because all this beautiful music is being played

and there you are standing at the side of the stage playing musical statues...

wondering how you will be able to dance when

your music starts as you've been standing still so

long your muscles have cramped into that position

and your not sure that you can move them.

But this year for the very first time I'm not dancing in the corps de ballet.

Last year i danced Big Swans and but i also learned the corps de ballet,

but not this year...

this year i get to move to the music,

i get to actually dance to it.

I'm quite excited...

I would also like to berate the Common Joe Blogg

Please....

There are other ballets to be enjoyed than The Nutcracker and Swan Lake

Ballet companies get stuck doing them

year after year as they are the only ballets

that are guaranteed to pull in the punters.

Ballet-Goers of the world and First Timers....

open your horizon, go and see a ballet you have never heard of...

you might just be presently surprised....

then again you might not,

but how will you know until you try.

Stuff Ballet Dancers say....

I love this video which my friend posted on facebook.

its so true....

i must have said nearly all of them at least once!

a few of my favourites...

can we just mark it this time?

how many ibuprofen can i take in one day?

that class did not put me on my leg...

how many more nutcrackers do we have?

is this rehearsal costume/make up?

do you know my schedule?

I thought it was even more relevant when my boyfriend who

before he knew me knew nothing about ballet, also found it pretty funny.

Mainly because he's heard me say a few of them more than once.

Christmas and Cupcakes...

Just one more post about my fleeting trip to the Uk...

I mean who wouldnt be excited by such a HUGE Christmas tree

and GIGANTUOS Christmas baubles

A trip to London is never complete

without a visit with one of my Besties, Steven!!!!

After a lovely lunch we headed over to The Humming Bird Bakery in Soho for some cupcakes.

My sister has their cookbook at home so i was pretty excited...

to be honest i wasn't all that impressed,

sure it was delicious,

but we got there at the end of the day and there were only 2 options of

cupcakes chocolate or vanilla....how dull!

I also begrudge spending so much on a cupcake....

i know its London and its a cupcakes are all hip and in at the moment...

but honestly,

give me a four pack of chocolate chip muffins

from Tesco's any day for 99p and i'd be happy...

A slightly late Christmas Dinner....

As it turned out after my last Nutcracker performance (29th Dec) i had a few days free.

So i hopped on a plane and went to the UKto see the New Year in....

I spent a couple of days with Captain Tim and his family in Bournemouth

and then we headed to London to visit my sisters

(and introduce them to Tim....

nearly 3 years and they still hadn't met him yet!)

I persuaded my Big Sister to cook me a Christmas dinner because i'd missed out on one.

And i'm personally of the opinion that Christmas is not over until you have sat down and enjoyed a Christmas dinner....oh and by the way I LOVE CHRISTMAS CRACKERS!

My sister, the ultimate chef,

Oh here is Joel with the Monk Mug that I picked up at

a crazy ass Antiques shop that we found on the drive over to London.....

(also bought was an owl tea pot for my sister the owl collector)

A visit was also made to Del-Boy....

my lovely little tortoise who is not so little any more....i

n fact he is practically a dinosaur, i couldnt believe how big he has gotten!

I was only in the Uk for 5 days but i cant tell you what wonders it did for re-charging my batteries...and even though i was a little bit late at getting into the Christmas Spirit, get into it i did with maximum enthusiasm....

In fact Tim got a little bit anxious taking me out in

public at my squeals of glee at all Christmas decorations....

i guess i was winding up as everyone else was winding down!

The Essence of Dance....

I came across this video on my friends facebook the other day.

To me it captures the Essence of Ballet.

That part,

that sometimes with all the corrections that i get given in rehearsals,

i forget to focus on.

It's so free!

and i love his 'pirouettes'....

just TWIRL!

maybe in my rehearsal tomorrow

instead of doing pirouettes i'll just twirl,

unfortunately

i think only 4 year olds get away with that....

Backstage At The ballet

Another year over,

Another Nutcracker finished.

The Nutcracker is not one of my favourite ballets to perform,

and this year it seemed more hectic than ever.

I was dancing in the roles of,

Parents,

Soloist Snowflake,

Corps De Ballet Snowflake

Spanish

Arabian

Soloist Waltz of the Flowers

Okay, okay not all at the same time....

but having to juggle so many rehearsals and keep my stamina

(and sanity) was pretty hard work.

Especially seeing this is the time of the year when people get sick,

and if a dancer gets sick or injured,

all your thinking about is

Dang! what am i going to have to re-learn

in order to compensate for one missing person in the performance tonight!

Before one particular performance a girl came into work and quit her job.

Enough was enough.

And so we juggled around the cast,

and it was stressful,

because at the moment we dont have a lot of spare dancers....

and i went on stage dancing a role that i hadn't expected to.

Feeling exhausted and run down.

But,

as i sat on the Metro heading home that evening a girl came up to me

and asked if i had just been in the ballet.

She had her programme and wanted me to sign it.

She told me how much she had loved the ballet.

It was the first time that she had seen one in real life, and not just on tv.

How she thought it was so magical....

She was blown away.

And it made me realise that even though backstage

half the dancers are wanting to kill each other,

and are bodies are falling apart out of exhaustion.

The audience cant see that (thank goodness)

And although at times the magic gets a bit stale for me,

there are others out there who can still see it.

It's also nice to be on stage too.

Dancers spend a majority of our time in the studio

but when i'm on stage and it goes well....

Nothing Beats That.....

w

Behind the times....

Technologically speaking i am a Grandma.

I have a phone that is not even in colour,

and all it can do is make phonecalls...

The other day i saw a Kindle for the first time,

and i'm not kidding my reaction to it was very much akin to

an old lady trying to put a cd in a cassette palyer.

At first i thought it was a toy version of a Kindle.

I could clearly see that it had Kindle written on it,

and i am aware of what a Kindle is,

but it was so lightweight and tiny i thought it was a toy.

I tried to peel off what i thought was the sticker which had the words on it,

ie...the screen.

My sister thought i was joking at first and couldn't quite

grasp the fact that i was really that stupid.

until i started waving it around still thinking it was a plastic toy.

To which she informed me that it really was the real thing,

and that i am a Technology Grandma.

She is right.

But be it 2012

or any other year,

give me a book and a second hand book market any day.

Even if it fills up my whole luggage allowance.

Just a wee quote....

"The greatest battle of life is fought out within the silent chambers of the soul. A victory on the inside of a man's heart is worth a hundred conquests on the battlefields of life. To be master of yourself is the best guarantee that you will be master of the situation. Know thyself. The crown of character is self-control"

Anon.