Out of Touch

(warning: this post is random, has no semblance of order, and rambles on for a while...apologies...)

Since the show started a month ago (has it already been that long? wow time flies) pretty much my entire life consists of being onstage, eating, sleeping, and making it to ballet class once in a while. And I love it that way.

But I seem to be waaay out of touch with the rest of life, haha. So many other performances are going on that I would have loved to attend/review, other things to do, people to see, and so forth. As I head into this next (and last :( ) month of shows I'm really going to try to maintain some semblance of an outside life besides the walls of Radio City, haha. Starting with, um, school...which will be officially done two weeks from today! Tons of work to do before then. Finals and Nutcracker season have always collided every year, but this is my FINAL set of finals, haha.

Enough of that.

Plans for the next few weeks to get back in touch with the world include seeing Misnomer Dance Theater at Joyce Soho this weekend, Liza Minnelli on Broadway (!!!), Nutcracker Rated R (which a friend of mine is in), Alvin Ailey at City Center, and some others. It's an ambitious list for my free time right now, but...

Anyways.

Some highlights of things that are happening...

The other day the buzz backstage was that Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas were in the audience with their daughter! It was so funny - any time we were onstage it was like a Where's Waldo search for the celebrities in the third row, while we were dancing! That theater is so huge and beyond the orchestra in the dark you can barely see past the third row or so, and there is rarely a moment in the show besides the curtain call when we can have the time to actually LOOK out and pay attention to what we see.

But after many rumors of the location of Catherine and Michael I finally caught a glimpse of them by the end of the show. I have to say, it made the repetitiveness of the show a lot more interesting, haha. And once it was confirmed that they were indeed there, it gave added excitement...just to know that important people like that are coming to see something I'm in! Cool!

If that weren't enough, I actually RAN INTO THEM backstage after the show! Like, literally almost bumped into Catherine Zeta Jones. I was giving a tour to friends who came to see the show and on my way out the door to get them, the "Chicago" star was walking in with stage managers for a tour of her own (well, for her daughter I suppose). It was so cool, I have to say. And I'm not big on the whole celebrity craze thing.

Besides that excitement, shows have been running pretty much smoothly and tiring-ly as usual. It's so automatic now that I don't even have to think - and I love that. In life I think too much. In dance, I can let it go. I'm very thankful my body is holding up through 16-show weeks (though not without its aches and pains).

What else...oh, we started having 9am shows. Yes, in pointe shoes in a bear head at 9AM. Oy. I was talking to my super-Balanchine teacher a few weeks ago about these early shows and she told me a story of how she used to do a Nutcracker guesting tour around the country with her partner before NYCB's season, and she remembered waking up in her hotel room and having to put on fake eyelashes before her eyes would even open. I thought it was a funny story at the time she told me, til it came true for these 9am shows, haha. Luckily my sleep schedule has kind of adjusted enough so that I'm semi-awake by the time our Santa number rolls around, haha.

We've also had some more 4 show days, which are getting only slightly easier, haha. Well, more manageable anyway. Again, we have a potluck so that we constantly eat all day. I finally got to actually enjoy it this week, because last week was the day after I was sick and I barely could eat a thing. Also, between our third and fourth shows, the final home stretch of exhaustion, all the guys in the ensemble had a fashion show in our lounge area. It was SO funny. I took tons of pictures, but they might murder me if I posted them here. They are one funny crew.

In other news, Claudia (NY Times dance critic and WNYC blogger) has started a performance club, which you may be interested in if you're in the city. Check it out. I'm hoping to attend the first performance event next week. She's also trying to arrange to see one of my shows and interview me :) Fun.

And while we're going down the random path, my ballet teacher's e-newsletter for December is out. I'm the webmaster/editor for it, so check it out here.

Okay, enough rambling about a thousand and one unimportant things, haha. My mind right now is so scattered, hence the disorganization of this post. Forgive me, it's my day off and I need rest, haha. Planning to post on The Winger this afternoon and that might make more sense :)