Am I the only one who is just sort of annoyed that the drawstrings on her shoes aren't tucked in? Anyone? No?
Anyway, very fun combo of talents, here, even if reality TV makes my eye twitch and my gag reflex act up.
I've always wanted to be able to juggle en pointe. So far my juggling is just fine but I would probably break a foot if I tried it for reals. It would be a badass photo opportunity, though.
The olympics are over! Which really just means that I have now missed at
least two olympic cycles with no proper TV, and therefore no ability to
actually watch the figure skating. Because, guys, figure skating is
awesome. When I was a kid I would pretend I was a skater, twirling
around on the slick grass (AKA overgrown weeds) in our front yard at
night, just the porch light on. I could never even stand upright on
skates, and actually didn't really mind so much. The handful of times I
even tried were all on school field trips. We took one trip to a roller
skating rink and one to a super-ghetto ice skating rink per year. I
steadfastly refused to actually *do* anything while I was there. For
years. I would just sit in the stands and have a perfectly lovely time
entertaining myself for several hours. I, mustering determination only
slightly stronger than my omnipresent fear of failure, put on ice skates
ONCE and oodged around the outside edge of the rink while holding on to
the railing desperately. Yeah, that was enough of that. But I love
watching the olympics. I think I am still slightly heartbroken that
Timothy Goebel had to retire after only one medal. Looking at the videos now
he looks so tiny and young! But at the time I could have just eaten him
up! 12 years ago! I lived a totally different life in a totally
different world 12 years ago.
The news coverage this year has
been all Nancy Kerrigan v. Tonya Harding. All. The. Time. Which sort of
cracks me up. I remember watching that year. I distinctly remember
watching them do their free skate while I sat on my grandmother's bed
with the other ladies of the family. The whole scandal had been
EVERYWHERE for the past month, so everyone knew about it. But I was 12?
It's not like I had an opinion. I had never seen either of them skate
before. I remember feeling sort of dreadful for Harding, who skated like
she was terrified and unprepared, and feeling utterly unimpressed with
Kerrigan, who managed to medal (as far as I could tell) simply because
everyone felt sorry for her. The girl who won gold was Russian and
amazing, and she was wearing the ugliest costume on the planet. All
fluffy maribou stuff to match her fluffly 90s hair. It's weird the
things you remember all of a sudden. Things that take you back to a
different time and place. Green paint. A shelf of porcelain cat
figurines. My little white leotard with pink rosettes just below the
chin.
Did anyone else watch Sherlock last night? Did you see him pull off that totally fucking badass pirouette for no discernible reason? Pretty sure it all just reinforces my long-held assertion that Sherlock Holmes (except not the Robert Downey Jr version, he is far too neuro-typical for me) is totally my TV boyfriend.
Meet dancer, actress, and opera singer (triple threat, boo-ya!) Betty Luster, primarily known for her staring role in a weird little promotional film for a musical instrument company in 1956. Mr. B Natural. The film is famous for it's featured appearance (and later running joke) on the cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which was basically a huge part of my childhood). The joke being, of course, that "Mr." B was considerably less convincingly male than Cathy Rigby in any given performance of Peter Pan. Considerably. After watching the short with my hubby recently I was inspired to look her up on the vast and fabulous internet.
When she wasn't gadding about as Mr. B she was actually a very cute ballet dancer. Here she is (in the weird 50s high-low costume and pointe shoes):
And, for the uninitiated, here is the full-length un-riffed version of Mr. B Natural. Just, you know, in case you are aching for a little awkward mid-century surrealism. It also features some pretty darn adorable dance moves of the sort you make pre-schoolers execute in "creative movement" class:
PS: I always thought I would, if I ever went to a comic or sci-fi convention, go dressed as Mr. B. I have the figure for it, and the hair, and everything! Sadly, however, it has already been done. A lot. So never mind. On the other hand: Mr. B Natural pony!
Oh GEEZE, internet! Is nothing sacred? Must there be an active fetish community for EVERY cartoon character ever created? Yeesh. It's gonna take a month of eyeball scrubbing to get over it.
Anyway. The point. I had one, I swear!
Uhmm... back when I first started taking ballet class I told my husband that if I ever went en pointe I would walk around the house like that all day. And he said okay, as long as you dress like Mom from the cartoon Dexter's Laboratory. Because she perpetually walks en pointe, you see. Another character, the annoying sister Dee Dee, always dresses in a pink tutu and ballet slippers, and is known for being a ditz and dancing around at all times. It's possible that back in college my boyfriend used to call me Dee Dee.
Anyway, I was just trying to find a little video of Mom walking around on tiptoes to post here. I was NOT looking for creepy-ass cartoon porn.
I ran out of thread halfway through my work day on Wednesday (can't walk, scooter is dead, husband has the car...) and ended up watching a documentary about the Joffrey ballet that my teacher had encouraged us all to watch when they played it on our local PBS station. It's been sitting in my Netflix queue for a while now so I figured I'd give it go. After all, I was done with the dishes and was in no mood to deal with anything as exciting at cleaning the bathtub.
It was fine. You know. A documentary. The snips of performances were interesting and the account of Joffrey's company-saving smash hit featuring the songs of Prince was certainly amusing.
The cat, who is determined to snuggle, by force if necessary, anyone who sits on the couch for more than ten minutes straight, joined me. She enjoys watching TV and in the past I have managed to get her really excited about nature documentaries about bats, but usually she would rather watch humans talking, moving around, and interacting with one another. Well, she was completely captivated by the ballet. Sat there on my lap the entire time, eyes glued to the screen. Maybe she thinks those tiny humans are juuuust about the right size to catch and eat.
In a totally unrelated note I was propositioned by a possibly-homeless guy on my way to ballet class this evening. Aw, yeah. I still got it.
PS: don't envy my ability to take half a day off in the middle of the week to watch TV. I now have to spend part of Saturday and Sunday finishing that work so it can be mailed on Monday.
So, how are the holidays progressing for you? My family gave me several ballerina-related gifts and we all got together in the bay area to visit my sister and her children. On Christmas eve we all piled on the couch and attempted to make an eight year old girl and a six year old boy sit still long enough to watch the Maurice Sendak version of the Nutcracker (it's on Netflix, FYI) which I hadn't seen since I was a little girl. At one point I picked up my nephew and rolled him bodily on to my lap and tried to pin him to my chest so I could watch the TV rather than him. This worked for about five minutes. You do what you can.
When the first "doll" hops onto pointe my niece said "wo, how did that happen?" and I said "magic". My mother offered "practice" but I insisted. No. It's magic.
I remember watching this version of the Nutcracker on TV with my mother and being kind of confused because the story is so different from the usual Nutcrackers. Clara morphs in to a grown-up and then lots of weird things happen with Drosslemeyer wearing a series of great big hats. But, you miss out on the best stuff, like the candy canes, Mother Ginger, and the Arabian dance. And, in my opinion, the Sugarplum Fairy is not a suggestion, it's a requirement.
Clara's tutu seems so strange to me. Unreal. It looks like it's injection molded. Totally unmoving. I am sure it's just a condition of the plate/overskirt being so wavy (like a cartoon tutu) and the whole thing being tacked very firmly together. But still, weird.
Also, I'd forgotten that the mouse king in this one has a varying quantity of heads, a nod to the original. I am pretty sure that this company is still doing a variation of this production.
Next year we're hoping to get all the girls in the family together for a trip to San Francisco's production. They aren't shy about declaring themselves the best in the country, and you have to admit: it is certainly shiny!
Okay, okay. So maybe I have strange ideas, sometimes. Recently our local professional ballet company was playing around on Facebook and asked it's fans to throw out ideas for any story they would like to see translated in to ballet. No matter how crazy! And so I said "OOH OOH OOH The Prisoner!" because the Prisoner is probably my very favorite TV show of all time ever in the whole history of the entire world. I don't mean that horrible mini-series thing that ran a couple of years ago and was awful, terrible, stupid, horrible, and also crap. I mean Patrick McGoohan reveling in the pure masturbatory pleasure of being allowed to do whatever you want with a beautiful location and an audience that was probably taking a certain number of mind altering substances. Amazing. And hear me out, here. Because I think it would be a really awesome showcase for a strong male lead. I am always a little sad to see male dancers relegated to standing around in unflattering tights holding on to a ballerina while she does all the interesting stuff. Really *good* ballet uses both sexes really well, you know? And when was the last time you saw a ballet that was about a DUDE, am I right?
And the costumes would be all mod and adorable and the sets would be neo-classical-slash-crazy-drug-trip and it would have all manner of ridiculous, dramatic, carefully planned music (note how the music for the final act paraphrases "Dem Bones" at appropriate moments). And the ending would just be a total trainwreck and there would probably be a gorilla suit, and no one would leave the theater having any idea what just happened. IT WOULD BE SO GREAT, GUYS.
And so that was what I commented. And you could pretty much hear the crickets chirping before someone broke the awkward pause and suggested yet another Alice in Wonderland.
Pssh! People have no imagination!
