Gimpesha Limpalot!
(Me, in my cast and crutches. Look at that lovely pointed foot.)
Hey everyone! Just wanted to apologize for not writing in such a long period of time, I’ve just been caught up with everything as we all are sometimes! I have been meaning to post for so long, but never got around to it. Well anyways I finally have some news (which is in fact quite old by now) but I thought I would wait a while before I blogged about it.
Well, as all of us dancers know, it’s inevitable that sometime in our careers we will get injured, well I guess it was my turn, last month in the middle of June I broke the base of my 5th metatarsal, so I have been on a cast and crutches (non-weight bearing) for over a month now! I was doing some partnering work and I guess I mis-stepped a little and stepped on my foot sideways and it just cracked. At first I didn’t think it was actually broken, I thought it was fine, so I just kind of walked it off, and 10 minutes later I looked down and saw a nice little golf ball-ish lump on my foot… I decided it was time to get some ice, hahaa.
I’m actually quite thankful that it happened when it did because we are actually off right now so it’ll give me some time to rest before our season starts back up again at the end of July. I’m hoping that I’ll be out of my cast in the next few weeks and hopefully walking again, however I’ve already acquired a special name of “Gimpesha Limpalot” by my dear friends.
It’s not so bad to be in crutches right now (I’m back in Canada at home, and my family is able to take care of my needs, hehe… I’m being spoiled!) but man, is it ever hard when you’re in rehearsal in a cast… watching other people dance… watching other people dance roles that you wanted to dance… it just feels like everything is slipping away from your grasp and you have no control over it. There was still about a week and a half left of work when I broke my foot, and that week and a half was terrible. Going into rehearsals when you can’t dance makes you even want to dance more! And being on crutches in the super hot Miami weather does NOT feel nice, hahaa.
Well I thought I would get really depressed being in my cast and crutches, but for some reason it hasn’t been so bad. Maybe it hasn’t even really hit me that my foot is ACTUALLY broken, but everyone has been very supportive. I always believe that “everything happens for a reason” and all my friends stressed to me that I should really try and enjoy this, well, MANDATORY break. I guess I am enjoying it as much as I can, and I feel like being on crutches and walking a lot with them is maybe helping my upper body strength as well as maybe helping me burn some calories since I’m not getting to exercise as much as I would like to! Haha
Well anyways I’m really crossing my fingers to be in my cast for only about a week and a half more. The doctor told me that it takes anywhere from 6-12 weeks to heal, but since I’m healthy I should hit the 6-8 week mark… which means I’m really aiming for that 6 week mark (July 26th)! Keep your fingers crossed for me! 
Anyhow, I hope you all have a wonderful summer!
An awkward feeling… am I In the Upper Room?
So, I am writing today because I just finished a peformance tonight and had a really funny feeling. I just did “In the Upper Room” today, and as you all probably already know, this ballet is such a marathon. However, today we performed it on a smaller stage (because we tour around florida) and it felt so much easier… now you would think that would be a good thing right? Well this is why I feel strange. Usually I am backstage, leaning forward, hands on my knees, out of my breath, wishing that I wasnt, but today I really actually wasn’t, and it just didnt feel right.
Normally, I am on stage, pushing with all my might, using that last little hair of energy I have left….using my breath to just keep going and hanging on to that… holding on to a cliff with all my strength, but today, it didnt happen for some reason, and I feel unsatisfied. I felt like I needed to be struggling to really FEEL what this piece was about. Since when do you feel better dancing when you are absolutely ripped to bits, dead and out of breath? I think this is what Twyla meant when she called the piece “In The Upper Room”. You get to a point where you are SO tired, SO out of breath, yet SO… high… in a crazy state of mind that you are just “in it”. Things become a blur and you ride along as the music is pounding in your ears, and you just go for it. And now I find that I am craving that feeling again… like a drug… that killer feeling when you are just pushing for it, when nothing matters, but yet everything matters, going for the finish line, that euphoric state of mind - so out of breath but so determined… it hurts, I can’t breathe, but yet I want it, and realize now that I love it, I need it and I want more. It’s a feeling of ecstacy that cannot even be explained in words.
I guess I really am IN The Upper Room”. I’m in it. THIS is what this piece is about. This is what dance is about. This is the real deal.
Jumping in #3.
Ballet in #4.
Stompers in #5.
#9…. this is where you start feeling it…
Almost the end of the ballet. I also need to say that without my fellow stompers Jeremy Cox and Daniel Baker, this feeling wouldnt be the same. When we dance, we dance as 1, I feel their energy and I feel connected to them in some crazy way.
Jeanette Delgado in #6
A picture of me in #9.
Thanks for reading!
-Alex
Busy, crazy, exhausted & exhilirated!
SO! Let me first of all just say Happy New Year to everyone and hopefully this year is a great year for all! I’ve been super busy with non-stop rehearsals and performances for the past few weeks, so it’s just been crazy! I went back home to Canada for my short 9 day christmas break, which was great! Ate lots of food, did lots of nothing… lots of those days where you can be “nowhere at no time”. Anyhow, knowing that I had a hard program coming up basically right when we returned to work in January, I needed to take a few classes while I was back home to keep my body in shape so I wouldn’t rip in half the day I got back to work!
Now that I’m long back from the holidays we’ve already started performing Program 2 which consists of “Agon” (Balanchine), “Afternoon of a Faun”(Robbins), “Liturgy” (Wheeldon), and “In the Upper Room” (Tharp). In The Upper Room seems like the ballet of the past 2 seasons like every company has been doing it! ABT, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Washington Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pennsylvania (I believe…) and probably some more! Well let me tell you, this ballet is psycho! I’m sure you all heard from David that this ballet was absolutely insane, in which he is very right. The ballet is just a freaking marathon.
Let’s see, ok there are 9 sections in the ballet. It is all set to music by Philip Glass (which is absolutely AMAZING by the way, if any of you get a chance, you can pick up the cd at your local Barnes & Nobles or something, however it will be missing a few tracks). There are the Stompers and the Ballet people. The stompers wear sneakers, and ballet is well… ballet. The ballet consists of…
3 Male Stompers, 3 Female Stompers, 2 Ballet Women (Bomb Squad), 3 Ballet Men, 1 Ballet Woman, 1 Crossover Woman (Stomper & Ballet) = 13 Dancers
Simply put, section 1,3,5,7 are basically stomper sections and Section 2,4,6,8 are pretty much the ballet sections and in #9 we all dance together. The piece runs about 40 minutes long and let me tell you, by the end everyone is just crawling on the floor. This is one of those ballets where you are SO tired that many of the dancers actually feel sick afterwards. You push so beyond your limit that you cant even see straight anymore. It’s insane… and before every performance of this ballet, I’m thinking to myself… “in 25 minutes… I am going to be so exhausted, almost to the point of dieing… yet I’m going to continue with this…” haha, it’s almost incomprehensible. Like you know when you do things that you know are wrong… yet you do it anyways? That’s almost what I feel like with this ballet, not that I think it’s wrong, because it’s crazy, and I LOVE dancing it, but it’s SO tiring… but yet I go back for more everytime… why? hahaha
The reason why this ballet is called “In The Upper Room” was because after Twyla choreographed this, it was evidently so hard on the dancers that they were so called “in the upper room” after they finished dancing this piece. Like so “in shape” that they were “in the upper room”. Get it? Haha, we always joked that we felt more like we were in the basement after dancing that, hahaha, but let me tell you, anyone who does this needs to be in top shape! Back in the day when Twyla choreographed this, she was very into the Yoga/aerobics sort of thing, so you’ll see alot of the choreography being influenced by those organic movements.
Here in the photo are the 2 Bomb Squad women who dance (during #4). This picture was taken during a dress rehearsal.
Here is the stompers dancing in #5 which I would call the “jogging section” or something like that. We basically jog around the whole time, have near misses and dodges, and do some triple partnering where the girls are all holding on to each other. You can’t see it too clearly from this photo, but there is ALOT of haze. The lighting for this piece is amazing. To start off there is haze everywhere, 50% of the entrances from the back so therefore the “backdrop” is really a curtain with slats, so we all slip through. It’s sort of a secret of upper room, because you cant really see the slats with all the haze and it looks like we appear from nowhere.
These 2 pictures are #7 where just the 3 stomper men dance. This section is insanely hard and well, simply put… “fierce”.
Also on this program was Afternoon of a Faun, Liturgy and Agon.
I didn’t manage to get any pictures of Liturgy, but it is a wonderful pas de deux choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon set to music by Avro Part. The shapes and suspense this ballet creates is wonderful and breathtaking!
Agon is one of Balanchine’s most famous pieces set to music by Igor Stravinsky. The work has 12 dancers who interact in both symmetrical and asymmetrical arrangements of the number 12, and the music, which is composed on the 12-tone scale, develops its own 12 sided patterns. The heart of the work is an extended pas de deux where tension builds offering images of a bond that is tested but no broken.
2 little pictures of me doing agon this weekend!
Finally, one of my favourite pieces in the program is Afternoon of a Faun choreographed by Jerome Robbins. This piece is a pas de deux set in a ballet studio, and is about a fleeting encounter between a young man absorbed by his reflection in a mirror and a woman who enters the studio and interrupts his reverie. It’s set to wonderful music by Claude Debussy. Throughout the whole piece they are dancing facing the “mirror” which is in reality the audience.
What I love about this piece is how 2 people can do this piece so completely different. There is a kiss at the end of the pas de deux and although it is just a kiss on the cheek, certain casts give me the biggest goosebumps ever as a tear rolls down my face… (weak moment!) hahaha
Those 3 pictures are just pictures from Afternoon of a Faun with Jeremy Cox and Katia Carranza dancing. This has to be one of my favourite ballet’s! I hope everyone gets a chance to watch this in their lifetime! And one more thing I think I might add is that it was Edward Villela (The artistic director of Miami City Ballet) that inspired Jerome Robbins to choreograph this piece while he was still a student (about 14 or 15 years old) in SAB, one day when he was just futzing around facing the mirror. This is what Jerome said:
“My eyes were caught by the marvelous strange figure of a very young chap who was exploring some inward dream. He was leaning relaxed against the bar. He seemed like some animal: young, beautifully shaped, and ready at any moment to develop into a young man. Then something happened. Slowly, he pushed his arms against the bar and stretched his legs backwards carefully, slowly, not paying any attention to the exercise given to the others. He stretched way back, first one side then the other. Then he turned around and slowly stretched his back fully. Then he twisted his body around himself from side to side. I was caught by the sight of a 14-or 15-year old kid who had lost himself or found himself in a kind of stretching… ‘Where are you?’ I asked him when his eyes settled down once more and he recognized the lay of the land again. His eyes wandered around and he grabbed the bar again. ‘I dunno, just futzing around.’ He didnt know anything. But it was truly wonderful voyage to me who was already an unknown choreographer, he was just trying out, not consciously - just making up something really - just playing with it. Finding his way around. Well, I thought, I’m going to keep an eye on him.”
Anyways! I think that’s enough for today! We’ve got loads of performances coming up soon, and loads more of upper room. I’m quite certain I will be dead by the time this program is over. Hahaha
-Alex
Nutcracker!
So, since it’s christmas time and everything (although it definitely doesnt feel like it down here in Miami since it’s still about 75 degrees and I’m sweating walking on the street…) I thought I would post some tidbits about Nutcracker!
Here at Miami City Ballet, we’re doing Balanchine’s version of the Nutcracker and thankfully we only do about 25 shows a year (which can be considerably less than what some other companies are doing!) It’s great because then we dont get AS sick of it as most other dancers might!
I had a show off the other day, so I decided to take some quick snapshots of our Nutcracker and what’s going on backstage!
This first picture here, is how we organise our accessories for the upcoming shoes. Tights, gloves, headpieces
and other things are placed in our “boxes” before every show. Every dancer then goes to their “box” and gets the
things that they need for the show.
Here is the specialty make-up room. We go here for wigs, doll make-up etc etc
Here are 2 pictures of snow. I think it’s really gorgeous that it’s snowing the whole time when they’re dancing. I also think it’s hilarious becuase from the audience it looks so graceful, but really, the dancers are in fact spitting the fake snow out of the mouths (and choking a bit at the same time!) because there is SO MUCH on stage flying everywhere! You can’t help to inhale a few chunks while your running around out of breathe!
There are also 10 men backstage pulling these huge ropes throughout the whole piece to make the snow fall down.
Above the stage, the snow is held in a cloth-like scrim with holes. Everytime the ropes are pulled back and forth
backstage, the scrim moves and “sprinkles” snow onto the stage. Towards the end of the dance, they have to pull
really hard to make it snow harder. I was watching them today and it’s definitely not an easy task!
This is them shovelling up the snow. Although there is a filter in the box that they keep the snow in so that big things don’t fall on the dancers the next time it “snows”, I have to admit, the filter has pretty big holes! Therefore, if someone loses for example and earring during snow…. they might expect to see it come down on them the next time they dance!
Here are just some dancers warming up on stage before the 2nd act starts.
And these final 2 pictures are just little thumbnails of me dancing the parts “Chinese Tea” and “Candy Cane.”
Merry Christmas everyone!
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| Posted by Alex
Mr. Alex Wong
One more announcement for today
I’d like to welcome another new member into our happy winger family, Mr. Alex Wong.
I suggest checking out his profile… pretty impressive for someone only a few years into his professional dance career.
Alex is currently dancing with the Miami City Ballet… so he can constantly tourment us northern contributors/readers with his pursuits in warm sunny Florida.
Welcome Alex!
