Hello all! Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, but I’ve been so busy the past few months, and now I finally have a bit of time to sit down and write. The past few months have been a whirlwind!
Our last program of this season consisted of Square Dance, Sonatine, Tarantella and of course, our world premiere choreographed by Twyla Tharp, costumes by Issac Mizrahi and with new music by Elvis Costello - “Nightspot”. The piece featured a live band on stage with the dancers as well as a full orchestra in the pit.
(Photo courtesy of Joe Gato)
Working with Twyla Tharp was really quite something. At first when we started choreographing, we didn’t have the score from Elvis Costello yet, so she worked with the dancers and believe it or not, we did a lot of our choreography to the Gypsy King’s “Bamboleo!” It wasn’t until later in the year when she came back the 2nd time that she brought a tentative score with her and then we started setting the piece to Costello’s music. It was a bit difficult to imagine what the music was like because the score was put into a program, and a synthesized version was produced (which is what we heard and danced to until the week of the performance).
After our run of program 4, we continued on to wrap up our season with a few shows in Long Island, NY and Princeton NJ. The tour was wonderful, and the audience was very appreciative and responsive. We performed Raymonda Variations, Sonatine, Tarantella and In the Upper Room. I thought I was going to drop dead when I saw the performance casting go up as I was casted to dance Tarantella and then right into Upper Room!
(Tarantella, photo courtesy of Zou Yang)
(Jeanette Delgado and I, photo courtesy of Zou Yang).
We just arrived back in Miami today and we have a few days off before we start some early rehearsals for next season. The dancers are all excited to start working on “Our Show,” which is a show made, produced, and put on by the dancers. It gives us a chance to experiment with choreography (and choreographers) and to also perform different styles of dance if we wish to.
That’s all for now, however I do have last thing to add in - Miami City Ballet will be attending City Center for a week of performances at the end of January 2009!
Hey Wingers! Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, we’ve been so busy with performances and rehearsals that I haven’t really had too much time to organize together a post. Something is coming soon though!
I was however scrolling through the site today and I realized that I hadn’t visited “The Winger Boards” for quite some time!
I think most of us have forgotten the boards are here, but I think they’re a very useful and interesting tool for the readers.
http://thewinger.com/mboard/index.php
Now at these boards, there is a section called “Ask The Contributors” and I just wanted to make myself available for anyone who has any questions about anything! I think most of the contributors don’t get too much time to browse around the boards, but if you’d like to ask some questions or discuss anything, your more than welcome to discuss it under the comments of this post, or just send me a friendly reminder by leaving a comment here to go check out the board and answer some questions!
Sorry for not writing for so long, we’ve been so busy over here in Miami performing Jewels and what not, and now we’re on tour. We just went to Berkeley, California where we performed Nine Sinatra Songs, Agon, In the Upper Room and now we’re in Detroit, doing a similar program, except replacing Nine Sinatra Songs with Raymonda Variations.
We’ll soon be back in Miami, but in the meantime I just thought I’d stop by and post a nice little Haloween picture I took. I know it’s a few days late, but that’ll just have to do! I’ll write more soon!
(Me, Daniel Baker, Maira Barriga and Michael Breeden)
Even though I’m not very religious, I prefer to think that there is someone, somewhere that is watching over me and taking care of me .
Today I was doing laundry (there is only one machine in my complex), and I loaded my clothes, put in the detergent, and then put in my money and the machine didn’t start! I called the company that owns the laundry machines, but they didn’t pick up, so the only thing I could do was to take out my clothes and bring them to a friends building to wash.
Anyhow, while I was unloading the clothes, half cursing at my bad luck, I pull out a pair of new bluetooth headphones that I had recently purchased ($130) stuck within my clothes that I had accidentally loaded into the washer with my clothes!
(These are the headphones. They connect wirelessly to any device that supports A2DP and I can listen to music without any wires! I use it with my phone, or if you buy a separate attachment, you can use it with your iPod as well. This way, I can warm up and jump around listening to music without any wires! And the distance is the span of a large dance studio without losing any quality. I highly recommend them to anyone that warms-up using their iPods, or choreographs and doesn’t like to be strapped down by wires. This headphone is the Motorola S9.)
In the end, I was so happy that the laundry machine ate my money and didn’t work, otherwise would have said bye bye to these headphones! Coincidence? Who knows, but these are the times when I think that there is no way that someone is not watching over me. Thank you to whoever that is
Ok, so this video was actually filmed during last season, in fact, it was in the middle of a performance during intermission after I had performed Balachine’s “Raymonda Variations” (I’m still in costume) and going into Anthony Tudor’s “Lilac Garden”. My fellow dancer Daniel Baker and I made up this um… “piece”… Enjoy.
So this photo was taken a while back, but I forgot to post it. Just having some fun on the beach and doing a knock-off “Apollo” pose with an extra leg!
The dancers are Michael Breeden, Holly Fusco, Maira Barriga, Me and Carolyn Ramsay.
Also wanted to say that I am finally out of my crutches and back to dancing pretty much full out now. Man is it great to be back! We’ve got a jam packed season ahead of us, full length Jewels, Tarantella, Liturgy, Bourree Fantasque, La Valse, Square Dance just to name a few, as well as a newly commissioned piece that we are currently working on by Twyla Tharp with a completely new score written by Elvis Costello!
