Memorable Manhattan Trip

Many Filipinos have tried to do their part to help victims of the recent, devastating typhoon catastrophe that, unlike other recent natural disasters in neighboring Asian countries, has been largely ignored by the international press.

In one correctional facility in Cebu prison inmates gave up their rations as a way of contributing to the flood victims.

This foodie and blogger put her cooking talents to the service of her fellow Filipinos during what she described as her "most memorable cooking experience."

And last night, our nation's very own world-class, Tony Award-winning Broadway star, Lea Salonga, who originated the lead role in Miss Saigon and also played Eponine and Fantine in Les Misérables, gave an intimate benefit concert at the Philippine Center in New York which raised about $20,000 (about 1 million pesos) for flood victims.  My daughter and I attended, and we could not have been more proud or more impressed.  

Lea looked beautiful and radiant and was totally spectacular.  Her musicianship is top-notch; her sound rich and moving, more so than ever - both lyrical and powerful; and her rapport with the audience more natural and comfortable than I've ever seen.  She is really at the top of her game - a mature artist whose interpretations are imbued with the depth of her experience as a performer, wife, mother, and woman.  

Accompanied on the piano by Larry Yurman, she sang

Orange-colored Sky

Promise Me

Hahanapin Ko

On My Own

Someone to Watch Over Me

Two Words 

Gone to Soon

I'd Give My Life for You

A Whole New World

Everybody Says Don't

Encore: Imagine

I was blown away when my daughter went up on stage after Lea invited audience members to come and sing "A Whole New World" from the Disney movie Aladdin with her.  Boy, the kid has guts!  I could never do something like that. So my daughter and two random Filipino guys sang the prince's part, taking turns, and Lea sang Jasmine's part.  We're never gonna forget that!

Between this amazing benefit concert and our whirlwind visits to Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and our old stomping grounds in Tarrytown just 40 minutes north of Manhattan, we had an amazing mother-daughter trip that was well worth the missed day of work and school. New York has always been special to my daughter and me, and I plan on making memories there with her as much as I can!

Giselle: the ballet that gives us the Wilis

Last night I took my daughter to see Boston Ballet's world-class production of Giselle. It was superb - one of the best I've seen. The dancing and acting were first-rate, and Ricco Chicorelli's lighting - especially the spooky effects in Act II, in which the zombie-like Wilis really looked like they were specters rising from their graves and flitting eerily through the forest - made this production extraordinary and memorable.

The role of Giselle was danced by the talented Lorna Feijóo, who accomplished exactly what I hoped: a blending of contemporary ballet technique and virtuosity with the delicacy of the Romantic style, surely a result in part of her rigorous training at the National Ballet School in Cuba where, under the tutelage of the great Alicia Alonso, one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century and considered one of history's greatest Giselles, the discipline and artistry of classical ballet tradition has been passed on to generations of young dancers.

Let me try and explain what this ballet means to me. I have been haunted by Giselle since childhood. I have known the choreography by heart since the age of nine or ten, when I would watch a battered video of it at home almost every day and practice parts of it in the studio before and after my ballet lessons. I was quite serious about ballet then and even went to New York every summer for intensive training. Giselle was one of my dream roles - as it is for almost every young girl who wants to be a ballerina. I can probably hum Adolphe Adam's entire score from start to finish.

I had the opportunity to learn parts of the ballet directly from prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn during a master class she gave at the Joffrey Ballet School in 1987, arranged by my mom, who was very good friends with her. One of the last pieces I performed before going off to college was the peasant pas de deux from Act I for a group of elementary school kids, and the version performed by the Boston Ballet was almost identical to the one I performed in my youth - what a nostalgia trip! While I eventually gave up my ballet ambitions, Giselle will always have a special place in my life.

Giselle is one of the great classics - right up there with Swan Lake (1877) and The Sleeping Beauty (1890) - but is in a class by itself among the great ballets of history in part because it is the oldest of these, though not the oldest of all. It's like a living relic of an artistic period we can only imagine from its surviving music and poetry. It premiered at the Paris Opéra on June 28, 1841; ballet companies around the world have been performing it for the last 168 years. In addition it's been featured prominently in the films The Red Shoes, The Turning Point, and Dancers.

On the surface it is about a young girl named Giselle who has a weak heart but who loves to dance. She is in love with Prince Albrecht, who visits Giselle's village disguised as a peasant and keeps secret his noble identity and the fact that he is betrothed to another aristocrat. Hilarion, a villager who is in love with Giselle, exposes the truth in a dramatic confrontation; Giselle goes mad and dies of a broken heart. This is Act I. The fairy tale has gone horribly wrong. What else can there be? Why, ghosts, of course.

In Act II we meet the Wilis, the spirits of young maidens who have been betrayed by their lovers and who die before their wedding days. They lurk in the forest and take their revenge on the opposite sex by luring men into the woods to dance to their deaths. They murder the hapless Hilarion, who has come to pay his respects at Giselle's grave, and would do the same to Albrecht but Giselle protects him with her love and forgiveness and dances in his stead. Dawn breaks; the Wilis disperse; Giselle must go back to her grave; and Albrecht is left alone with his remorse.

It is quintessential Romantic Period stuff, complete with a score that would almost sound like the melodramatic soundtrack to a tragic and spooky silent film if it weren't so glorious. But the love story and ghost story are just part of what makes this ballet a classic; another beautiful facet of Giselle is that like the film The Red Shoes, it's a dance piece about the consuming power of dance.

Giselle is full of "classic" moments that ballet audiences recognize, and indeed look for, when they go to see it - Giselle's entrance and first dance with Albrecht; the hops on pointe across the stage during her solo; the famous "mad scene" - Alina Cojocaru's is the best I've seen; the crossing of the Wilis in Act II - a show-stopping moment (see here, time index 6:03) that usually garners applause for the corps de ballet, as it did in last night's performance; Giselle's high-speed promenades in arabesque for her entrance dance in Act II (see here or here or here); the pas de deux and Albrecht's two dozen entrechats toward the end of the ballet.

How is it that despite the fact that I know this ballet so well, and have seen it literally hundreds of times, I was still on the edge of my seat not only awaiting these classic moments but also at every thrilling turn of the story, as if I were seeing it and worrying about the characters for the first time? I KNEW Albrecht would get found out, but still my heart beat faster when Hilarion was about to blow the hunting horn and expose the truth. I KNEW Giselle would grab the sword during the mad scene and try to stab herself, but still a voice in my head warned the other villagers, "Uh oh, don't let her take that! Better get it away from her!"

I think Adam's expressive score (which, of course, has lots of great oboe parts in Lanchbery's arrangement of it) has a way of pulling us into the story time after time, allowing us to forget for a moment that as adults we're probably inclined to consider this a silly story. Instead, with the open-hearted suspension of disbelief children like my daughter still have - children who can believe in falling in love in a flash, in dying of a broken heart, and in being haunted by Wilis - we enter into the story and identify with the characters: Albrecht who wants to have his cake and eat it too; Hilarion, for whom life is not fair; Giselle who wants to believe in true love, but whose disappointment literally kills her; the Wilis who, having been betrayed by love, both fear it and hate it - two sides of the same coin - and allow their bitter vengefulness to destroy their very souls; and again, Giselle, whose love protects her beloved and whose forgiveness is redemptive.

I was browsing old ballet footage on Youtube a few days ago, rekindling my Giselle obsession, and one of the oldest clips I found was of Olga Spessivtseva dancing the title role in 1932. This is just a little bit past the halfway-mark between the first performance of Giselle and today's, making it a link to the Romantic Period, a clue to how not only this ballet but also ballet itself have evolved over the last several decades. What I wouldn't give to transport myself back in time for a while to watch Carlotta Grisi in the 1841 premiere! Giselle has withstood the test of time, and I have a feeling it will continue to haunt us for centuries to come...

Giselle at the Paris Opéra, 1867

Back to Orchestra!

At last, at last, I have returned to the little orchestra of adult beginner musicians I had started to play with a couple of years ago.  Our first rehearsal was tonight, and we worked on a couple of really enjoyable pieces:  Vivaldi's Concerto in C Major for Violin, Strings, and Continuo, and Ginastera's evocative Impresiones de la Puna - a challenging work filled with "crunchy chords" and interesting rhythms and moods.

I can't describe adequately enough how healing it can be to make music with others.  There's something almost hypnotic about it - the way we have to listen to each other and to ourselves, blend our rhythms and harmonies together, use sound and time, mathematics and physics, to evoke images and feelings and give life to a composer's musical ideas.  It's a kind of consubstantiation; there's something almost sacramental about it, a moving of breath and light through the small community we form every Thursday in our little room at a local college.

There was such disharmony at work today that I really, really needed a rehearsal like that to recalibrate my mind and spirit.  Opportunities like these confirm for me that despite my inability (for various reasons) to make the progress I would like playing the oboe, the effort to stay connected to it is entirely worthwhile.

Fine Art Friday: My First Guest Post

I have long admired my friend K.'s blog and was so honored and delighted when she accepted my post for her wonderful series, "Fine Art Friday."  

This week I expanded a small piece I wrote for my "shadow blog" (Sundays in Paris) about the artist Suzanne Valadon, mother of Maurice Utrillo, model for some well-known paintings by Renoir and other famous French artists.  If you enjoy fine art, or are fond of "all things French," please come on over to K.'s blog and check out my post for Fine Art Friday!

Top image:  Nude with Striped Bedspread, c. 1922

Photo: Suzanne Valadon, c. 1926

Photo source: http://www.aloj.us.es/galba/MONOGRAFICOS/LAUTREC/Valadon_obras.htm

Hello, October!

October is one of my favorite months.  

October is cinnamon and allspice in the kitchen,

pumpkin bread in the oven,

a pleasant chill in the air with the smell of snow or firewood on it,

weather still warm enough to let us walk without coats to school

(which is well under way and off to a good start),

fiery colors emerging on the trees,

Christmas coming,

apple picking,

cookies and pies,

orchestra starting up again,

festivals and fairs,

scrapbooks and writing projects in front of a warm fire on weekends,

the promise of visits with family and friends,

a season filled with lovely sights and smells and feelings and sounds.

I love October.

Can't Write

I've been blogging less lately, but with no less desire to write.

Sometimes, though, even if I want to, I just can't write about what's on my mind.

I can't write about how worried I am about the city of Manila.  How I think to myself we Filipinos are #12 for population in the world, and an eighth of that population is soaking wet in that city, and now dealing with sewage, trash, loss, and disease as the waters start to recede but more rain is on the horizon. Yet here I am safe, warm, dry, and comfortable enjoying a quiet night with my husband and kids.

I can't write about how deeply I disagree with some opinions that have been expressed about faith, medicine, politics, and other related matters on various blogs, news articles, facebook posts, etc.  It's too tiring.

I can't write about bad cross-cultural experiences that still leave me feeling sour.

I can't write about people I've been reminded of lately who really, really, really bring back unpleasant memories and sentiments.  

On top of all this, I have an outside writing project I really want to work on, and I can't seem to believe in it enough to move forward.

Am I depressed?  

But I don't feel depressed.  I'm actually quite happy these days.  Work is fine.  Kids are doing great.  Husband's a sweetheart.

And my thoughts, my swirly thoughts, continue streaming around my mind in colorful, noisy little ribbons, like the decorations for a barrio fiesta in my home city.  Lots of thoughts. Those are all still there.

Yet I can't write right now.  I wonder why.  I miss it.

Disaster in Manila

Tropical storm Ondoy/Ketsana has been devastating.  Please click here if you are able to help.

A street in my neighborhood:

People trying to get by:

Photos courtesy of Kathy E. Zablan.  More photos here.