Category Archives: Ballet Friendships

I was there & even I don’t believe it!!

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Guys, I don’t even know where to start!! I went to Shanghai last week to attend Patrick de Bana’s All Star Ballet Gala. I’d been excited about it from the very second I heard about it. Patrick de Bana, Manuel Legris, Svetlana Zakharova, Matthew Golding, Maria Eichwald, Fan Xiaofeng, and, holy moly, the return of Isabelle Guerin!!! Patrick de Bana was choreographing a new piece for Isabelle and Manuel, for that alone I was determined to go to China.

You might remember a while back – at the last Manuel Legris gala in Tokyo – I got some sort of abnormal surge of bravery and talked to Patrick de Bana at the stage door after the last performance. He was incredibly nice and more than a little surprised that I traveled all the way from Los Angeles to Tokyo just for a ballet performance. Since then we became “friends” on Facebook but let’s face it, being “friends” on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

In January of this year I went to Paris to see the homage to Manuel Legris gala. Manuel and Patrick both danced at that gala as well. I went to the stage door but didn’t have the bravery to stay. Apparently in Paris it’s not cool to go to the stage door the way it is in Japan. I felt silly standing there by myself, stalkerish. Plus I was positive that neither Patrick nor Manuel would remember me or worse that they would remember me, the mute girl who suffers from temporary strokes and loses the ability to speak whenever they are around.  Either way I could safely assume that I would have a temporary stroke, go mute, stand there without brain function and thusly assure myself a place in the dork hall of fame. I didn’t even have the safety of a crowd to get lost in. Turns out there’s great security in the anonymity of a whole bunch of ballet fans. But on the plane ride home I got a really sweet message from Patrick asking why I didn’t come by to say hello. I was shocked and amazed that he not only remembered who I was but actually thought of me.

So when I couldn’t find a way to get information and tickets online for the gala in Shanghai, I took a chance and sent Patrick a message. Next thing I know I’m having a lovely conversation, I’ve got an offer for comped tickets and, good grief, I’ve got the man’s cell phone number and instructions to text him when I get to Shanghai!!!

If you want to read about the AMAZING and GORGEOUS gala, Isabelle Guerin’s triumphant return to the stage, how Carboy spent an evening talking cars with Matt Golding over Chinese food, how I got turning tips from the Director of the Shanghai Ballet, and how I took this photograph…

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you’ll have to stay tuned and come back as the Shanghai saga unfolds!!

 

Blogger Awards & Seven Things

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So, guys, remember I told you that I was nominated for a couple of blogging awards – this is one of them. The Versatile Blogger Award is an award shared between bloggers. I think that’s fantastic. As bloggers, this award gives us the opportunity to share a happy thumbs up with our favorite blogs and to network and share our favorite blogs and bloggers with others. I think our blogging community of adult dancers is truly amazing! The information, the support, the pure joy that dance blogs share is a wonderful extension of the adult dancer world! Every now and again, I contemplate shutting down the blog – it takes time and energy that I don’t have a lot of extra of – but being part of the dance blogger community is as part of my dancing experience and I wouldn’t want to lose that ❤

I want to thank the beautiful Bush Ballerina for the nomination! I love her blog and have so much love and respect for her journey to embrace dance in the outback of Australia!

The deal with the Versatile Blogger Award is that you get to nominate up to 15 other bloggers for the award. Also I get to post 7 unknown things about me.

So let’s start with the 7 things:

1.  I have agoraphobic tendencies. Public spaces and crowds make me uneasy. People never believe me because I travel so much and I’m always out and about but I’m usually dealing with some level of anxiety whenever I’m not inside my house.

2.  I can’t wear flip-flops as shoes. I can wear them only when the occasion really demands it – the beach or the shower at the gym. I can’t wear them because I have anxiety about germs or other nasty things touching my feet. So I also rarely wear sandals. The idea that any kind of foreign object would touch my toes gives me the heebie-jeebies.

3.  I love Scrabble, Boggle, and other types of word related board games. I’ve been known to play them all by myself. I do not like electronic games.

4.  But I do love electronics, mostly Apple products. Interestingly I really hate to shop for them though! The idea of having to go into an electronic store to deal with sales people in order to buy a new phone or a new computer is beyond stressful.

5.  I don’t like J.R.R. Tolkien novels. Most people assume that library geeks love The Hobbit et al but I do not. Never have. I’m missing that particular geek gene on my DNA.

6.  My cat broke a tooth and I had sympathy pains for weeks.

7.  I always carry hand wipes, antibacterial hand cleaner, and disinfectant spray. Sometimes I can actually feel the germs… I can feel them! But if you ever need to clean your hands and I’m around, I’ve got you covered!

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Here are the blogs that I would like to acknowledge and recommend!

My number one choice for adult dancer ballet blog will always be Johanna at Pointe Til You Drop. Johanna’s commitment, passion, and love for ballet – not just watching ballet but DANCING! is incomparable. She is always helpful, inspiring, and right there in the grown-up ballet class fray. If you don’t follow Pointe Til You Drop, you are truly missing out. Get on it!

Robin at These Lovely Things.   Robin’s blog is not entirely about ballet and Robin is a ballet teacher, not an adult ballet dancer but I’ve always found great wisdom and support from Robin. She’s an awesome photographer too.

Blogs that I’ve more recently discovered and am loving include All Round Girl, Poets and Pirouettes, This Life and Times and Tia Paulina Flamenco. Funny, inspiring, and full of the reality of grown ups enjoying the strange world of dance, these are blogs that I truly enjoy reading. For me, it’s all about sharing experiences and less about being too cute and flippant for the sake of gaining followers. I like to think of us as a community rather than a popularity contest. Despite the fact that we are scattered all over the world, I think our growing community is beautiful and vibrant, filled with laughter and passion, and, most of all, lots and lots of dancing.