I don't know who said it, but my favorite critique of this building is that it "answered a question no one asked." hahahaha. In any case, for as impressive at is looks on the outside, it's equally noteworthy on the inside. I swear it's another non-euclidean building. It just doesn't make sense. Our rehearsal was on the SIXTH basement level! So yeah, I spent most of my day 6 floors underground in a rehearsal room. Then we had a short break for lunch in the staff cafeteria, which is on the 7th floor above ground. You can do the math, that was a hell of a lot of escalators we ended up on, haha. We tried to find an elevator but gave up when we got pathetically lost. And the escalators ended up being more interesting anyway, since we saw the hallways for the soloists' studios and stuff like that. I didn't get to see inside any of them, but we all agreed we wouldn't mind being divas for a day and having access to all the fancy facilities. We had to content ourselves with feeling important in the staff cafeteria, which, for the record wasn't bad at all.
I think I solidified my reputation in the orchestra as the American nutcase, however. After my stellar performance of an American accent in French last fall, this time I solidified my American credentials with my knowledge of Grease lyrics. Yes, you read that right. The story is that the third movement the Mendelssohn piano concerto we're playing has this one line in the cello section that sounds EXACTLY like the walking bass line of Summer Lovin'. It's been a joke in orchestra all season long and we are all rather amused whenever we get to it. We were drilling that section (for the winds, the cello part is obviously not a problem), and everyone was laughing as we did it over and over. So then some people started trying to sing along, but of course they only knew the melody and didn't have the lyrics down at all. Finally I was like, "oh no, if we're going to do this, we have to do it right!" And that's how I found myself doing a full karaoke rendition of Summer Lovin', with even the conductor laughing his ass off at me. The only thing that would have made it better is if I could actually sing, hahaha. They were all impressed that I knew the lyrics, but I was sitting there like, "I didn't hear that song at EVERY middle school dance I went to for nothing!" When we got to the "tell me more!" part, at least I had some backup, as they could figure that part out! Otherwise, though, I was stuck being both Olivia Newton John AND John Travolta. And 100% crazy, I'm sure. But hey, you don't mistreat Grease. If you're going to make fun of it, you've got to do it right!
Once I got out of orchestra, Kari and I had grand plans for the evening, namely to go see our friend Charlotte dance in a burlesque show up in Belleville! Very cool. We had tried to go see her about a month ago but got to the club too late and there was no space left. This time we got there super early and stood in line for an hour, which was a good thing because we weren't in fact the first people in line. Charlotte was awesome--she's enrolled in the "école des filles de joie," which is basically a dance program to learn how to be a moulin rouge dancer. I'm insanely jealous, as it looks absolutely awesome. And hilarious...as I said to Kari, I haven't seen so many pasties in one room since I graduated from Bryn Mawr, haha. Too bad it's both a) expensive and b) heavily time consuming, or I'd think about it myself. SO funny.
Beyond just the students, there were also some professionals who came to do special routines as well. The highlight of the pros was clearly the fire dancers, who had a whole routine with these fancy torches that were attached to their hands somehow. I'm not entirely sure how it worked in that they weren't holding onto the torches, they were strapped on somehow. But then the women did all this crazy stuff with the way they moved their hands so that it created patterns in the air. We were really nervous about one of the dancers, who had super long hair in a ponytail that was flying all around. She's a pro so she must have it under control, but we definitely had visions of the ponytail going up in flames.
Anyway, that was perhaps enough excitement for one weekend, as at the end of the show I was cat-calling Charlotte and all of a sudden I felt like I had a knife in my throat. I've been trying to fight off a sore throat for a few days, I think, and I think perhaps it quite suddenly caught up with me last night. Today ended up being a low-key day of reading, as I realized just how tired I am. I decided the one productive thing I could do would be to do some spring cleaning, so I've completely redone my room. It's about time, this place was a holy mess. I suppose the one good thing about living in a shoe box is the fact that there's a limit to how long it can take to clean, haha. I mean, seriously, I think I can mop the floor in under a minute, since there just isn't much floor to mop!
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