Thanks to a friend's good luck with tickets, tonight I got to see the otherwise-sold-out Beckett Shorts program starring Mikhail Baryshnikov with 3rd row seats!
It was so cool to be up close and personal at New York Theater workshop and to see him in a non-dance environment. He's incredible in so many ways, but I think it's particularly good that he has branced out from his fabulous dance career into other art forms. It takes a true artist to succeed outside of their normal realm, especially as such a legend, but he absolutely does!
Though Beckett's work itself was nothing all that special, Baryshnikov was so interesting to watch. There were 2 shorts without words, followed by one where he and another actor had dialogue, and the last in which he sat almost entirely still and silent while another actor spoke. I preferred the non-speaking parts by far - maybe because his non-verbal presentation skills from ballet translate best in this kind of work. He was good in the piece he had lines in, where he was supposed to play a blind homeless man, but it wasn't my favorite.
It was so exciting just to see him live though! After all the hype in the dance world and his appearances on Sex & the City and such, it was an honor to see him work in real life. I would love to see him act in something else that exhibits his artistry better. Beckett didn't really cut it.
Anyway, went to class before going to the show and it went pretty well. I'm a lot less sore today - THANK GOD - so it wasn't quite so painful. It's weird that I was more sore after only 3 hours of rehearsal Thursday rather than dancing a total of 8 hours yesterday (the most in quite a while, even though I used to do crazy days like that all the time...).
So much work to do this next week...I start my spring semester grad school classes on Wednesday, and I officially graduate from Marymount on Thursday! No time to waste :)
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