Been to the ballet again.

Cycled back with, as usual, my head exploding with observations and questions and frankly trails of wonder.

There follows a selection of these.  As you'll see, there is no way that this lot can be edited into anything resembling a coherent narrative, so I'm just going to leave them roughly as they were...

Dear god.  HOW is it possible that we share the stage with such surefooted, gracile creatures?  I mean, we literally tread the same boards.  We look down on the same people waving their batons at the same orchestra.  We even on occasion share the same composer (tonight was Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake - as of March next year I shall be singing Filipyevna in his Eugene Onegin in the same theatre).  We are all surely doing our best to interpret and communicate the music...  yet, oh yet, we are such worlds apart.

There's all these people knowing to a millimetre where they are in relation to the staging and to each other, and I have been trodden on more times than I care to mention and have had to resort to tripping the tenor over in order to remind him he's meant to be speaking to me.

I wonder if  I could learn to do that with my hands.

Ouch.  I DEFINITELY could not learn to do that with my legs.

Interesting how no-one ever goes up to a dancer at a party and says "Come on then, give us a quick pirouette", whereas we opera singers get asked to "oh go on, just sing something" all the time.  How come it's assumed in all these TV talent (haha) programmes that anyone with a decent voice could be an opera singer, whereas there is pretty much no evidence that anyone has ever said of a bloke with a decent sense of rhythm and who managed not to fall over whilst getting on down at his aunt's wedding, "Oh I bet he could make it as a ballet dancer"?  I am the first to be totally in awe of the physical commitment and hours of practice that the dancers put in.  However we singers are also usually the product of several intensive years of study.  Weird.

Actually I am not totally averse to modern dress on the dancers (this generally means the poor buggers leaping around in not much more than their knickers).  Being visually aware of the demands made on the musculature of the body, especially for the ballerinas, who, hidden by the traditional tutu and tights, can seem to float in a preternatural manner, brings them firstly closer to us humans (yes, the tautness of that muscle betrays how much effort she has to employ in order to hold that leg up there) and then of course takes them immeasurably further away (no, damn it, if I attempted to bring my leg up halfway there it would, with reason, go on strike and probably never work the same again).

Except I rather like tutus.

Even when the blokes are wearing them too.  And both sexes in certain scenes of this production look topless, the men being actually so and the women wearing flesh-coloured tops.  

Interesting how homogenous the dancers look when all dressed the same.  Is this a function of their profession, or of holding themselves in the same positions whilst dressed the same, or what?  Certainly wouldn't apply if you went and mixed in opera singers amongst them :-)  (Certain amount of covert sniggering in the aisles...).

Actually however I like having a decent cleavage! (Oh how un-PC!)

(At half time, squeezing through the throng of sweaty dancers) - oh poor boy, he has goosepimples on his thighs, must be damned chilly, I wouldn't like a costume like tha.... WAIT!!! I am squashed right behind the lead male dancer, him wearing pretty much nothing, and that in tight flesh tones, and I am commiserating with his virtual nakedness?  Do I not realise how over 50% of the population would kill for such a view?...

There are exceptions.  But on the whole, opera singers do not look anything like that in their knickers.

What can I do to better myself in terms of physical awareness on stage?  In terms of graceful moment?  Of surety of aim, of expressiveness of form?

There's always so much to learn.

As rehearsals start to sketch out the trajectory of this piece, a sense of... well, really, I can't say getting deeper into character; it feels more like finding more and more points of reference in common with my self.  I suspect that lots of this is due to having a bloody good director.  (As a performer it isn't always obvious why the director is needed, if you're the opinionated type.  However they are crucial in bringing together the individual interpretations into an organised and coherent whole, not to mention being able to see the entire picture from the outside, which we as performers of course can't.)  It's an enthralling process.  I am constantly reminded that, however angst-ridden or awkward or painful the individual moments, the thrilling fact remains that I have a chance to interpret one of the great roles professionally.  Lady Macbeth is a dream for an actress (at least an actress of a certain age and inclined towards charisma rather than sweetness) and however off the wall the production or music, she is MINE to inhabit for the moment. 

The brain is at full throttle.  Apart from the obvious difficulties of trying to remember the virtually impossible music, without a prompter for whatever reason, I am attempting to hear and respond to the other singers' lines, whilst using my entire body energies trying to sit on a hideously raked stage without slithering inelegantly to the floor (OK inelegant but darned good fun:  tried it a few times when not required to sit in one place, and it was great!!).  On top of all that, it seems that, even more in such modern music than usual, the inherent possibilities of the vocal line show themselves up only when one starts to inhabit them physically.  I am subject to constant mental tweakings (oh yes, so HERE I might well be crying; would suit the break over the lower passaggio, and the meaning, let's see whether the conductor thinks it works) and the huge, HUGE revisions and forward-forecastings-in-case-of-trouble that are part and parcel of our work.  These are often tried out en route home, startling the poor innocents I pass on my bike...

However it has to be said I am proud of myself in respect of my approach to changes here.  I was DETERMINED to keep my mind open, and try everything without automatically condemning it.  (Sounds bad, but with all the Regietheater over here in Germany, you get a LOT of singers who have cynicism built into their very bones.)  And at a couple of points where it would have been (for me as an actress) disastrous to carry on, I was able, through diplomacy and appealing seriously to the fabulous stage instincts of the director, to effect enough of a revision to be able to stick closely enough to the original text to satisfy myself.

In other words, a decent start.  Must remind myself of this when I am panicking blindly about not having the music down pat (I pride myself on being professional enough to turn up to first stage rehearsals off copy. ALWAYS. )  It WILL WORK!!!

To the ballet last night.  Beautiful production; I enjoyed so much being with friends, one especially whom I hadn't seen for too long, and who danced when younger (I am always awed by her grace, and jolly grateful for knowing that despite all that, she manages invariably to bash her head on any available kitchen cupboard...).  Prokoviev, Romeo & Juliet.  Is there any music catchier than this?  Literally - wasn't really aware of this production (there are totally separate worlds operating at any one time within a theatre), but when walking past the stage the other day, going to fetch my coat from my dressing room after a rehearsal, I was caught and drawn in by the syncopated thump of the most famous tune in this piece, and couldn't escape...

I always come away from a ballet with the same yearning feeling, though; why can't *I* do anything like that??  Now maybe it's because I haven't seen a ballet since my operation in the summer, and consequent possible-OCD application to practice, but suddenly the answer was crystal clear.  These dancers practise their movements exactly the way we practise our singing.  Their TOTAL control of their body (ahhhh, but really, it is unbelievably good - I couldn't see the Juliet breathing at ALL after she was meant to be dead) is the equivalent of our superlative voice control; hard-earned after so, SO many hours. 

I still wish I could control my body better.  I sincerely envy the dancers their ability to register and avoid obstacles on stage, and have vowed to improve this aspect of my art.  (Mainly because I kept tripping over a particular raised board on the floor of the rehearsal stage yesterday.  And it's not that I never tried ballet - I vaguely remember one lesson - the teacher asked us to put our arms out and up a little and attempt to bring our toes up to touch them.  In my usual overenthusiasm I kicked a leg up... and dislocated my left middle finger.  I don't remember any more lessons.)

I was strangely uplifted:  what those dancers did last night seemed to me to be magic. They defied gravity, time, LOGIC.  Maybe that's what we're about.  Somehow keeping magic alive.  A nice thought, anyway!