on the stage, on the road
Dec. 12th, 2005 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonI'm back home again after a week's vacation in a delightfully warm place with 10 of my intentional family/crew of unregenerate troublemakers -- and back home just in time for a cold snap (it's supposed to get below zero degrees F tomorrow night for the first time this winter, brr). More on the trip, as time allows, but we all got to have fun, hear some wonderful music (including one of the best Irish trad. groups I've heard lately), eat good food and drink good wine, dance our feet off, with time for relaxed chats, sipping morning coffee on the veranda, long snuggles, bubblebaths, late-night fireworks, and other delightful pursuits. I do fiercely love my family/clan/tribe/whatever beyond all reason, and it's soooo good both to spend long days of play-time with those I live with as well as some of those I see all too rarely.
And now back to a somewhat more hectic reality. Opening night for the Winter Revels is Thursday, so after we all got back home from the airport about 1am on Fri night, besides general catching up from a week away, my weekend (and Kelly's and Angelica's) was filled with grueling 9+ hour rehearsals, with roughly 4pm-midnight rehearsals every night this week, then the performances start Thurs. night... whee! The production is coming along, but it's that point in the tech rehearsals where everything is happening at once, and it's easy to despair that it will all come together, especially some of the more complex musical pieces which are still rough (esp the Mussorgsky, Svyati Bozhe, and one of the Georgian songs, by no coincidence, the three hardest pieces with non-English lyrics and spots of non-Western harmonies...) This is the time, too, when it's easy for the cast to exhaust and stress our voices, catch colds, etc, so all of us in the house are chugging the water like mad, and trying, somehow, to get enough sleep.
And they're scheduled to break ground on our house addition any day now, and there's everything that piled up while I was away, and a variety of freelance work has poured in over the last couple of weeks. It's good work, and better to be in demand than not, but the timing is tight...for example, at about 6am on the morning after the final performance, the strike, and the strike party, I get to jump on a plane to fly out to the left coast for a short, and very good gig -- still, ugh. December was supposed to be a quiet, relaxing month...still, Jan and Feb look a bit calmer, perhaps.
Oh, yes -- for anyone's who's interested, here's a pic of me in traditional Georgian costume. Also with beard and moustache, for the first time in more than 15 years. While almost all of the company are costumed in various traditional eastern European folk/peasant garb (all gorgeous, by the way)-- Poles, Russians, Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians etc, I ended up cast in a more martial-looking role, one of two members of Georgian nobility, along with one of my female Terpsichorean colleagues. I think I look a bit like a pirate, which I suppose says something either about traditional Georgian garb, or about me ;> And you know, as opposed to the peasant garb, even the fancy stuff, the hoity-toity clothes from almost any period are so damn impractical. I carry the Grand Dutchess/Tzarina (the "princess" in this tale) around in the wedding scene for a while, and thank goodness for very slender dancer-type princesses -- but even 100 pounds or so gets tricky to manage when you've got very slippery (if pretty) purple satin sleeves...
I am terribly, terribly behind on all of my email right now, especially everthing that is non-work-related, and I am impatiently hoping to get a few moments soon to write to those of you to whom I owe replies (you know who you are). Soon as I can :>
And now back to a somewhat more hectic reality. Opening night for the Winter Revels is Thursday, so after we all got back home from the airport about 1am on Fri night, besides general catching up from a week away, my weekend (and Kelly's and Angelica's) was filled with grueling 9+ hour rehearsals, with roughly 4pm-midnight rehearsals every night this week, then the performances start Thurs. night... whee! The production is coming along, but it's that point in the tech rehearsals where everything is happening at once, and it's easy to despair that it will all come together, especially some of the more complex musical pieces which are still rough (esp the Mussorgsky, Svyati Bozhe, and one of the Georgian songs, by no coincidence, the three hardest pieces with non-English lyrics and spots of non-Western harmonies...) This is the time, too, when it's easy for the cast to exhaust and stress our voices, catch colds, etc, so all of us in the house are chugging the water like mad, and trying, somehow, to get enough sleep.
And they're scheduled to break ground on our house addition any day now, and there's everything that piled up while I was away, and a variety of freelance work has poured in over the last couple of weeks. It's good work, and better to be in demand than not, but the timing is tight...for example, at about 6am on the morning after the final performance, the strike, and the strike party, I get to jump on a plane to fly out to the left coast for a short, and very good gig -- still, ugh. December was supposed to be a quiet, relaxing month...still, Jan and Feb look a bit calmer, perhaps.
Oh, yes -- for anyone's who's interested, here's a pic of me in traditional Georgian costume. Also with beard and moustache, for the first time in more than 15 years. While almost all of the company are costumed in various traditional eastern European folk/peasant garb (all gorgeous, by the way)-- Poles, Russians, Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians etc, I ended up cast in a more martial-looking role, one of two members of Georgian nobility, along with one of my female Terpsichorean colleagues. I think I look a bit like a pirate, which I suppose says something either about traditional Georgian garb, or about me ;> And you know, as opposed to the peasant garb, even the fancy stuff, the hoity-toity clothes from almost any period are so damn impractical. I carry the Grand Dutchess/Tzarina (the "princess" in this tale) around in the wedding scene for a while, and thank goodness for very slender dancer-type princesses -- but even 100 pounds or so gets tricky to manage when you've got very slippery (if pretty) purple satin sleeves...
I am terribly, terribly behind on all of my email right now, especially everthing that is non-work-related, and I am impatiently hoping to get a few moments soon to write to those of you to whom I owe replies (you know who you are). Soon as I can :>
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 07:51 pm (UTC)PLEASE ignore my recent e-mail. That can all easily wait until Jan/Feb when things slow down for you.
Great pic. I like the beard and mustache and you do look like a pirate. Aarrrrgghh, matey!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 08:34 pm (UTC)If I don't get back to you, please do feel free to ping me again -- early Jan I'm hosting Thorn and the Feri class, and of course, Jan 1 weekend will be busy! But after that looks much quieter for me for a while, I hope!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-13 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-13 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 09:47 pm (UTC)very wise - since I have a few options to post if it doesn't show. (eveil laugh)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-13 05:57 pm (UTC)