A brand new year, and the second year for my Sidebar Art Gallery. You'll find it in the sidebar of my main blog, A Piece of My Mind, to the right of my blog posts. I install a new show every month, along with information on each artist I've featured.
For today's Through the Opera Glasses, take a stroll through the January show, Self-portrait.
My stop on the tour takes us to the ballet that started it all for me, as it does for so many other people - The Nutcracker.
This is the double album that my sister and I discovered under the Christmas tree in the early 70's. The full ballet score - no Nutcracker Suite, no sirree. I can't tell you how many hours I sat crosslegged on the rug in front of the stereo, gazing endlessly at this illustration on the album's front cover while I listened to every note of this magical work.
When I grew up and moved from Canada's east coast to Toronto, I somehow managed to get a job as an usher at the theatre where The National Ballet of Canada then performed. I started work in November, during the run of Swan Lake, so I was just in time for my first season of working the Nutcracker.
During my eight years at the theatre, I watched nearly every performance of the Nutcracker. The other ushers would get sick of it after the initial novelty wore off, but not me. Even when I was stationed somewhere outside the theatre, like the front doors to rip tickets or at the bottom of the lobby stairs to cover a reception, I would spend my break inside watching the performance.
These are my dear friends Alan and Jacquie, who can vouch for the depth of my ballet passion.
We're sitting at the pass door, which an usher would guard and allow only theatre or company members to pass through, while showing - you guessed it - an official pass.
For today's Advent post, I want to share a simply heartrending and exquisite piece of music from the Nutcracker, the adagio from the grand pas de deux which comes near the end of the ballet.
This is one of my favorite pieces of music. I'd always wondered what it was doing in the middle of a children's holiday ballet, but Tchaikovsky wrote it only a few years before his death, with only ten more works to follow. During the spring of 1891 as he worked on the music for Act II, where the grand pas de deux takes place, Tchaikovsky lost his sister, with whom he was very close. This gorgeous adagio so filled with adoration and longing makes more sense when viewed in that context.
Before we get to the Nutcracker adagio, I'll let two dancers from the Anaheim Ballet describe the process of creating a seamless dance partnership which shines during the pas de deux.
The Prince is danced by Laurent Hilaire. I saw him dance in person when he partnered Karen Kain during her retirement season. He was a strong actor, an instinctive partner and had the perfect blend of masculine grace.
Dancing the role of Clara is Elisabeth Maurin. Her technique and balance are absolute perfection.
The ballet was first performed in St. Petersberg, Russia at the Mariinsky Theatre on December 18, 1892.
Note: The volume is very, very low on this clip. You'll have to turn it wa-a-y-y up.
"Tchaikovsky's (initial) skeptical attitude towards a lowly genre was ousted by an attentive interest in its unused creative possibilities.
Given Tchaikovsky's unusual thinking which created dancing poetry, his tendency to portray action in musical-scenic works, and a desire to embody real and eternal feelings in the world of art, this could not but find an outlet in the genre of ballet music." - Olga Gerdt, History of Russian Ballet
To visit the other bloggers posting on the Tour today, visit:
My sister has been staying with us for the past week while she's had her allergy needle from the clinic in Fall River. This is not your ordinary needle or allergy treatment. The allergy shots require her to keep everything in her environment as allergen-free as possible, which used to mean a week spent by herself at her house, eating a very restricted diet, not reading newspapers or magazines, no contact with animals, etc., etc.
But she sold her house since her last needle, and needed a place to crash during this treatment, so home again, home again, jiggety jig she came. It's been fun. Especially tonight, when we watched White Christmas with Mom in front of the newly-put-up Christmas tree.
This is one of those films I'd never seen until tonight.
Believe it.
It was so much fun to watch it with my mom and sister. We love musicals. We loved the costumes by Edith Head, loved the music by Irving Berlin, loved the dancing, loved Danny Kaye (a big favorite of my mom) and loved Bing's lovely voice.
If you haven't seen it before, why not take a breather from all the hubbub and watch this 1954 Hollywood musical? And if you've enjoyed it before, here's a reminder to rent it or pull it off your DVD shelf and settle in.
For lucky TV viewers in the UK, Spooks season 8 has already begun airing. And the latest episode - 4 - focuses on Lucas North's literal torturous past.
For viewers in North America, where Spooks season 8 won't be airing for awhile yet, try this link on You Tube.
In this episode, Lucas (Richard Armitage) faces down the man who was his torturer for four of the eight years he survived in a Russian prison.
Truly the stuff of both nightmares and fantasies, to once again stand before someone who tortured you would take 'mindblowing experience' and totally redefine it.
Torture scenes in films and television put me in a cold sweat. I feel physically sick when I sense one is coming in the story, and sitting through one is an ordeal.
If it's real news footage, like the scene in the Vancouver airport of Robert Dziekański's last excruciating moments after being Tasered by RCMP officers - I can't watch and I have to put my hands over my ears. I can't stand the screaming.
The handling of the Lucas North torture storyline on Spooks thoroughly examines the post-traumatic effects this has on the remainder of that person's life. Lucas is shown as being unable to sleep unless he returns to the hard floor, unable to prevent unrelated stimuli from provoking break-through memories from surfacing, and struggling to prove to his MI-5 superiors that he doesn't retain any Stockholm Syndrome feelings towards his former Russian captors.
Today on my bus ride home from work, I found myself dreaming of The Silver Chair.
After The Horse and His Boy, it's my favorite of the Chronicles of Narnia. And if all goes well, it will be the fourth of the film adaptations of that series.
Of course, in my dreams Prince Rilian and his enchanted persona, the Black Knight would be played by Richard Armitage.
As we head towards Remembrance Day, I'd like to mention a Canadian series we just started watching on The Movie Network.
ZOS follows 'the absurdist reality of living in a violent Zone of Separation, as well as the real costs to the peacekeepers dropped in to police it.'
A Canadian production, this series features top Canadian talent as well as featuring an international cast in the spirit of United Nations peacekeeping.
join Irish Colm Meaney and Slovenian Larissa Drekonja plus many Canadian actors born in other countries such as Portugal, Latvia and the actual setting for the series, the former Yugoslavia.
This is an extremely gritty series with copious amounts of swearing, blown-off body parts in living colour as well as frank depictions of battle zone prostitution and drug dealing.
It paints a transparent picture of the lunacy faced by so many Canadian peacekeepers who served in Bosnia, only to return home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a combination of exposure to gruesome combat conditions as well as the frustrations of trying to serve a mission with contradictory goals and chains of command.
For anyone familiar with the story of Romeo Dallaire and his doomed Rwandan peacekeeping mission, the warning signs of what was to come are woven eerily throughout this series.
Champion of the Arts - I write historical and paranormal fiction, as well as poetry. I love to showcase creative works by artists of all stripes. Blogging from Nova Scotia, Canada
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