Wednesday, February 20, 2008

play it cool at nycb

Just got home from seeing NYCB's American Songs and Dances program, which concluded with West Side Story Suite and Robbie Fairchild *singing* Cool from the famous West Side story score. As I've always been a fan of the film version and was reinspired by the stage version when I saw Chita Rivera do an excerpt in her brief Broadway engagement 2 years ago, I was so excited when I saw it on NYCB's program...and it made me want to dance!

Formal review to come on ExploreDance, but this and the rest of tonight's works were really different from the traditional evening at the ballet. It was all very Broadway-esque. Of course all the dancing was great.

I ran into Evan and Philip sitting a few rows in front of me in the orchestra, and we chatted and people watched during both intermissions.

As we walked out late (3 hour long program...sheesh) Evan and I ran into a huge crowd staring up to the sky over Broadway. At first we could only see them looking up, but the sky and everything was blocked by State Theater. When we finally got out by the (boarded up) fountain we saw what was going on...the lunar eclipse! Haha cool. But it was definitely a funny sight to see a huge pack of ballet-goers staring up...it was like what, is there a fire, or someone jumping off a building, or what? It actually reminded me of when I was in this press picture thing for Dancing with the Stars where we all had to look up to the photographer atop Avery Fisher Hall. haha

It was a nice night.

Right before running to Lincoln Center I rehearsed with my friend to embark on the process of making audition videos, as I mentioned earlier. She had found a ballet coach to work with but neither of us knew exactly who it was, and when we met tonight it turned out to be a teacher I had a few days back in my early Boston days! Small world! It was nice to have a different pair of eyes on my variation (gamzatti from la bayadere...performance this sunday :) but I'm finding some contradictions between different versions I've learned and what I should be doing. I guess it's all in the interpretation of the choreography...I like working in depth on this thing though, as I don't really get the time or chance to do that much nowadays.

Okay, it's definitely almost bed time...busy day at The New Yorker tomorrow. Keep a lookout for my NYCB review on ExploreDance.

No comments: