Ballet Friendships | THE 109th BEAD

So last week was The New Universe of Manuel Legris III gala in Tokyo. It was fabulousness and I plan on telling you all about it but here is a quick preview of some of the ballet goodness…

There were two programs and four performances in all. I attended all of them – hey, after a 12 hour flight, it makes perfect sense! The final performance was on Sunday and I was excited not only for the performance but for the Twitter meetup, that is, meeting up with friends made on Twitter. Now, normally, I’ve always been a pretty reserved person and I’ve long eyed these sorts of things with much suspicion. Let me also say that people in my line of work are notoriously suspicious of everyone and everything – we can’t help it, once you’ve seen the crazy, there is no going back to not realizing that you are almost always standing in what was once a crime scene. Sorry but it’s true. Also, I’ve never been one to have a ton of friends. But ballet friends are a whole different and wonderful species! That’s another blog post for another day, but let me just repeat that ballet friends are a magnificent thing to have, even when you’ve just met on Twitter or Facebook. So after the AMAZING, WONDERFUL, GORGEOUS, TEAR JERKING performance, I met up with Carboy and Twitter friends, Naomi and Yuko.

My usual with stage door situations is NOT to go UNLESS it is Manuel Legris because then I’m just inexplicably drawn and can’t help myself. I usually go on the opening night performance as it seems to be the fewest people since it’s usually a weekday and in Japan, there can be quite a crowd. Let me also say that I am not a crowd person. I have no sense of aggression in a crowd and will pull back from a surging crowd of people – particularly women and if you’ve never been to a sale in a women’s section, particularly shoes, you just do not know about fight or flight survival tactics! And Manuel Legris in Japan is like a size 37, 4-inch, black patent leather Jimmy Choo stiletto at 50% off. Get what I’m saying? Muy popular. Muy. I didn’t actually go to the stage door as my usual pattern and I wasn’t sure that I was going to go at all this year – I’m still recovering from the “year of the dissertation” and look and feel pretty awful.

But with Carboy, Naomi, and Yuko by my side, we went off to the stage door and promptly had a GREAT time!

By some miracle of the ballet gods, when Patrick de Bana was coming by for autographs and photos, I suddenly found some bravery. He’s always been really sweet with everyone, stopping to talk and for photos and despite the fact that I’m a big fan, I’ve never asked before. But this time I not only asked for an autograph but told him how much I enjoyed the performance. I’m not sure if it was my American accent or what but he asked where I was from and upon hearing that I fly from Los Angeles every year, he was quite amazed and we continued to talk for a few minutes and I ended up hugged by Patrick de Bana not once but twice and several handshakes and Carboy was even high-fived!!!

I spent the rest of the evening asking, did that really happen??? Yes. Yes, it did. See the above photos as proof.

Unfortunately there was only a few moments before Manuel Legris was in my vicinity and my daze from Patrick was still in full effect. I almost got jettisoned by another fan and I stepped back away from him but he saw it and very sweetly stayed and stepped forward so that I could hand him my program. Then he stopped for a moment and looked from Carboy to me and just stood there and I thought, oh crap, does he recognize us? Carboy does have a look that’s hard to forget. And I just stood there – deer caught in the headlights, I was roadkill. Not only did I forget how to breath, this year I actually forgot how to blink. It was like I had a 30-second stroke and lost all ability of speech and movement. He was there long enough for me to ask for a photo or to tell him how great the performances were or how awesome he is or something – anything! But no. I was completely and utterly frozen. Great. I cringe with embarrassment every time I think of it. BUT – I did get my Manu Marker for the year and I this year I even got a Patrick Pen!

Well… there is always next year. Maybe I’ll come up with something to say or at least an ability to breath or to blink. Well, at least I didn’t drool on myself. Boy, I hope I didn’t!

So my ballet class has been threatening to all get together to go see a performance. A few people did it once before, a venue here in LA set up a link so that you could buy group tickets on your own. That way you could buy tickets as a group but not necessarily sit together. They went to see NYCB. I didn’t go because that was the night that I was going to go see boys in tights, hot men dancing, you know… Kings of the Dance. At any rate, the Los Angeles Music Center doesn’t do the link thingy. You can buy group tickets that aren’t together, but you have to buy them from the box office all at one time. FYI, in case you ever want to do that, they are very nice and very efficient and the savings is substantial. Anyway… I posted a “hey let’s do this” onto Facebook and got enough positive interest that I asked the Awesomest Ballet Teacher (formerly known as the Awesome Ballet Teacher) if he wanted to organize a field trip. You know how when you suggest something you end up being in charge of it? Yeah, that happened. Long story short, we got a group of 16 people together for an evening at the Dorothy Chandler Theatre to go see some ballet!

It was the second performance by the Bolshoi Ballet of a four night run. Our cast included Ekaterina Krysanova as Odette-Odile, Rusian Skvortsov as Prince Siegfried, Vladislav Lantratov as the Evil Genius (known to us as Von Rothbart, doesn’t translate into Russian perhaps?), and Denis Medvedev as the Fool (who we more magnanimously refer to as the Jester). It was a gorgeous production – luscious costumes, beautiful sets and lighting, good tempo, and nice storytelling. The dancing was pure Russian, high jumps, torso’s pulled up to the sky, wicked fast footwork and meticulously perfect corp work. That’s not to say there weren’t any mistakes but that’s something that makes live performances so awesome. When Ekaterina was doing her 32 pirouettes she started to lean over somewhere abound the 12th one or so and bam like a warrior, pulled back up straight and finished them coming forward on the stage. Gorgeousness. To see that kind of strength was just so amazing. Then during the swans sequence, one of the swans bit it, she fell right on the floor. But instantly she bounced back up and within seconds, literally, seconds she was right back in synch and we completely forgot which one almost ate marley floor. It’s really inspirational for a ballet student to realize that ballerina’s don’t always get it perfect, but they fight for it and they can win!

And when it was over, we all stood around sharing that goofy smile that only yummy ballet can give you and we chatted in the plaza with a ballet glow that rivaled the twinkle lights in the trees and fountain. It was a great evening and one that I hope we repeat and often. I’ve said before that I believe watching ballet to be an important part of studying ballet as a dancer. I think it’s another plus in learning to attend the ballet with the people that you study with! We had some great conversations, the Awesomest Ballet Teacher talked about it in class today, and I’m sure that we’ll be talking about it for weeks, months, to come!