Since the last blog post, my life has been a blur of boring academics, cooking and baking adventures, and a lot of ballet--both watched from a red velvet chair and done on a mylar dance floor.
During my spring break (which may have actually been winter break), I opted to stay in Paris, since
I hadn't done anything in Paris yet. I actually didn't do much anyway, even without classes, and instead I got a lot of rest and caught up on the readings for all of my classes. One afternoon, I did head over to the Louvre and walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, spending some time on a lawn chair by one of the little ponds, reading Arabic poetry. I got flack from some for not going into the Louvre, but I don't even care--it felt good to get outside and even better to crack open a book that I brought here and hadn't yet started reading.
On the Saturday before classes started again, I found myself at l'Église de la Madeleine, which is immense and impressive. I was there to listen to Mozart's requiem, which was performed there for the first time at the funeral of Chopin at his own request, even though women were not allowed to sing in church at the time (they just hid the soprano and alto sections behind black velvet curtains). I have heard the requiem before, but it was the "rock-iem", a reimagined version with a keyboardist and a drummer and an electric guitarist. It was truly moving to hear it performed classically with an orchestra in a building like that.
I have also now been to the Paris Opera. Along with several people from my program, I attended a production of Faust, which was good because I'd never seen it, but I did study it with Sr. O'Dea in high school and I still remember most of that entire class. Opera is a little too much for me, what with the staging and then the little screens above your seats with the libretto--I was just flickering in between watching and reading and also listening, because you can also just listen to opera with your eyes closed.
And yes, I've been cooking and baking a lot. I moved away from Russia with the medovik and pierogi and pirozhi, sustained myself off of one pot pastas for a while, and then transitioned to Shakshuka. It's a Tunisian/Israeli/etc in the region dish, with bell peppers and tomatoes and onions and eggs and it's delicious and now I'm living off of that. Pi day was also an adventure for me, because I decided to progress from the apple pies directly to lemon meringue. My first try was a little bitter and weepy, but today I found that I had two more lemons, so what could I do but make another pie? This one was excellent, in my own humble opinion, and I am going to need to restrain myself from eating the whole thing in one night.
This past week, my evenings have been monopolized by three trips to see the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre's Paris tour, featuring their prima ballerina, Irina Kolesnikova. Tuesday, I saw Swan lake--the second performance I've seen of it in Paris. It was incredible--the company is enthusiastic and talented and the costumes and scenery were just what I wanted from Swan Lake--vaguely medieval and extravagant. Irina was excellent, and while her extensions are clearly capable of grazing her ears, she does something that I've rarely seen ballerinas do--she limits their height in order to preserve the alignment of her hips and therefore the line she presents is very clean. That sounds a little nerdy/snobbish but I found it very lovely. Also, the corps was so in sync for the whole performance that it was a little unnerving. Thursday night, I saw La Bayadere and got all excited when the corps performed the sequences that we learned at Sun King Dance in Richmond during the summer! I've never seen La Bayadere before, and it's quite a different type of ballet than I've usually seen because there are multiple scenes where three characters are on stage but none of them really dance--if you want to see a ballet that really showcases why your dancer friends sometimes talk about mime classes, you should see La Bayadere. Also if you want to feel bad about yourself and your workout routine, go see La Bayadere, because the corps dancers will likely be wearing costumes that show off their midriffs, and all of them will probably have six pack abs that are clearly well defined while they are delicately twirling about the stage. Friday night was Romeo and Juliet, another mime-heavy ballet with tons of fencing and incredibly satisfying amounts of folk dancing. The scene changes were a little disorganized and I was seated next to someone who was upset that people were applauding the dancers, but it was still excellent.
I will be seeing the Paris Opera Ballet in Swan Lake next, and Victoria is coming to town in two weeks, which means I may finally explore Paris as a tourist, after having lived here for two months!
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