mixed nuts.

love.

2012-02-09T14:46:00.000-08:00

Personally, I'm not much for Valentine's Day. I kill flowers (unintentionally, I assure you); I already eat too much chocolate; and no stuffed animal can compete with my main elephant of 22 years, Mr. E. I'd much prefer to celebrate love every day of the year, in all the beautiful, unexpected little ways in which that indefinable four letter word can be shown. All that being said, I came across what is perhaps the most wonderful, genuine love letter I've ever read. It comes from the brilliant mind of one Lemony Snicket, to his beloved Baticeer Extraordinaire, Beatrice. Enjoy.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform.
I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them.
I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.
I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.
I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home.
I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen.
I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.
I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

"Il n’y a que deux endroits au monde où l’on puisse vivre heureux: chez soi et à Paris."

2012-01-24T07:41:00.000-08:00

After a very long, very difficult roller coaster of a month--and a fantastic tour to Paris--we dancers now have a much-needed three week winter holiday. Some (lucky) friends of mine are going to warmer climates, others are going home to family; I, for one, am having a staycation, in the hopes of rediscovering the fun and goodness in Copenhagen. But for now, a photographic look back at a wonderful week in one of my favorite places on earth, a city I fall more in love with each time I visit...Paris.

The wonderfully Parisian view from my hotel balcony.

"Toutes les femmes": Our dressing room at Palais Garnier.

My favorite hallway ever.

The view on the way up to the class studio.

Seriously, I needed to give myself an extra twenty minutes to go up to class each morning, for picture-taking like this.

I'd let Chagall paint my ceiling.

Palais Garnier. Speechless.

Even the pigeons were fabulous.

Helping hands.

Reception after the premiere performance. I would go back to this moment in a second.

And for those who missed it, my very good friend and fellow dancer Charlie Andersen and I made a little project during our time in the City of Lights...

An Ode to the Royal Danish Ballet

2011-12-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

I planned to revive my blog after the New Year--after taking a prolonged hiatus from writing publicly, I decided that one New Year's resolution I could gladly keep would be to bring back this virtual project of mine. However, current circumstances have inspired me to fulfill this self-promise a week earlier than planned, and with a more serious post than initially intended.

The present economic woes wreaking havoc across the globe have finally, unfortunately made their way to the little country of Denmark I currently call home. As you can easily guess, this means financial cuts in all professions...and big ones, as recently announced by the Danish government, in the arts. The most recent reports indicate that Det Kongelige Teater will be hit hard by sweeping government cutbacks totalling nearly 100 million kroner, to be implemented over the next four years.

I am not writing to provoke political change (for that is a ship already sailed), or to imply that an artistic profession is above any other. I only write this in the hopes of painting for you a picture of the kind of environment in which I find myself privileged to work, and why it would be incredibly heartbreaking to lose even one part of such a fantastic group of people.

The dedication and work ethic required to become a professional ballet dancer is pretty unbelievable. Most of my colleagues and I have devoted most of our childhoods, teenage years, and adult lives to this one art form. We missed out on normal educations, lazy summers, proms, normal boyfriend and girlfriend experiences. We spent--and continue to spend--hours in front of a mirror every single day, taking class and rehearsing, attempting to create with our bodies an unattainable physical perfection, an impossible beauty. We are the kids who fell in love with ballet and never grew out of it, in the best sense.

There are some people who would argue that ballet--perhaps all artistic endeavor in general--is a frivolous profession in comparison to law, medicine, science, etc. I know this for a fact because I am related to several people like this. I am not writing to declare that what I do is "better" than what anyone else does. I am merely here to say what I, as one corps de ballet member, believe, which is this: for me personally, my profession is not just a job. It is my religion, if you will; it is my hardest, most love-hate relationship, my reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Whether you believe it to be "important" or not is up to you, but regardless of your personal opinion, please know this: ballet is difficult, and not only physically. Other dancers have had different paths; personally, mine has not exactly been spoon-fed. For one, I was not altogether built for ballet (very few, very lucky people are!), and I had to almost work my ass off to get where I am today. I gave up school, much to my parents' and relatives' chagrin; I sacrificed my sanity and physical health for what basically amounted to a four year period in my mid- to late-teens; I matured very early in some ways (discipline; focus; sense of responsibility) and simultaneously fell emotionally behind in many others (boys; puberty; self-esteem).

As a profession, ballet is not an easy world in which to work. As dancers, we are paid very little for a lot of work. We spend most of our days physically and mentally exhausted. Most companies can be cutthroat or catty, and ballet can leave mental wounds as harsh as the physical ones. (Furthermore, we can all throw dreams of becoming foot models out the window.) But we all dedicate a good chunk of our lives to this art form because we truly, deeply, insanely love it. In my case, I know that what I do for a living may not cure cancer or discover a new planet. But in this messy modern world of ours, filled with so much hate and destruction, if I can make a theatre full of people forget their problems for a couple of hours by dancing onstage two or three nights a week with others to create some sort of beautiful escape among so much global ugliness, then I have damn well done my job.

The events which led to my employment at the Royal Danish Ballet were actually quite similar to what we dancers here are facing now; my previous company in America was facing a huge financial crisis, and in a rather unfortunately mismanaged firing process, I was one of the unlucky victims. I found it difficult to leave my friends there, but not impossible; as an apprentice, most of my closest friends from the school were also moving other places as we all found jobs elsewhere, which somehow made parting ways a bit easier. I packed up my life to move to a foreign country where I knew virtually nobody, and found myself with a whole new life notebook to fill.

I quickly discovered that the Royal Danish Ballet is unlike any other company I have ever worked with or heard about. This may read like a Hallmark card, but in my two and a half years here, I have found in my colleagues a second family. To be sure, we are slightly dysfunctional, but most of the best families are. I arrived in Denmark a severly underweight, insecure person with an impenetrably thick emotional wall built up around her heart; I wasn't exactly the type to let people in (or, for that matter, food). A mere two and a half years later, I am physically healthy. I have friends who are as close as, or in some cases closer than, family. I have somehow managed to build myself a veritable life here. I have found someone wonderful to love, and who--miraculously, wonderfully!--returns the feeling. And to top it all off I'm now probably one of the most emotional people working at the ballet. (As one of my good friends put it early on in the season: "Carling cried! The season has officially started.")

In the heart of the biggest city of this tiny, cold slice of the planet called Denmark, is situated a stunning royal theatre. This old building has become my second home, and is filled with a group of dancers unlike any other. I have never in my life come across people so brilliantly talented, warm, funny, creative, and incredibly loving outside my own immediate family. I lack a vocabulary adequate enough to describe how amazing it is to work here, or exactly why. I can only say this: I remember my very first company class, when I was in my worst place physically and a very wobbly second worst place mentally, thinking, "God, I'll never fit in here." Two and a half years later, I found myself in company class this morning thinking, "God, it would absolutely break my heart forever to leave these people."

And so, I would just like to say a deep, heartfelt thank you to the Royal Danish Ballet. I may be known as something of a cry-baby and perhaps not exactly one of the "normal ones". Despite this, you have welcomed me, and I have never felt more "at home" away from home than I do now. I can only hope that this post makes others realize how amazingly unbelievable and world-class this company is. To be a bit more blunt about it, I hope it inspires the Powers that Be (you know who you are) to work creatively to keep together this lovely, fantastic workplace.

badass swedish coffee

2011-09-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

So, sometimes your very best friend helps make a short movie for a clothing company that you think is really awesome. And the star of said short is an unbelievably badass guy with an earring and a farm, who clearly possesses a love of coffee that rivals your own. And on top of that, the clip has excellent tunes. Naturally, then, you share the wealth:

NORD Spring/Summer 2012 from NORD on Vimeo.

"why are you crying?"

2011-09-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

I am a person who can occasionally be one who procrastinates--an eternal believer in the promise and opportunity of "tomorrow" (particularly when it comes to my absolute least favorite chore, cleaning the toilet!). But I broke my personal slowpoke streak and finally got developed the last batch of photos from my trip to Greece this summer. This is a major event.

You see, after a little more than a week enjoying the Greek "mainland," we took a boat trip out to experience island life. After a day and a night on the very popular isle of Santorini (complete with a rented ATV and black volcanic beaches), we took a friend of a friend's tip, and a calculated risk, and made our way to a very small, decidedly non-touristy island a couple of hours from the aforementioned tourist trap. The boat ride from Santorini took just a couple of hours, and suddenly we found ourselves on a slice of paradise with slightly more than 300 residents, but an ample amount of relaxation, sun, clear waters, and general loveliness. What was planned as a one or two day trip turned into a four day adventure, accidents and all.

We left the boat and found a room near to the harbor area--and pretty much everywhere else, considering the fact that walking the entirety of the island took 3-4 hours at most. After settling into the hotel room and enjoying the waterfront balcony view, we rented bicycles and set out with the intention of exploring the tiny slice of heaven we had discovered. Let me preface this tale by saying: I am by no means a very coordinated human being outside the confinements of a ballet studio. I trip over my own oversized feet on a daily basis; I have gotten my shoelaces caught in my bike pedals; most recently (and by this I mean two days ago) I stubbed my third toe into my bathroom floor landing and ended up mopping up blood off the floor for the next fifteen minutes, like something out of Dexter. So renting bicycles with hand brakes on a tiny island in Greece, when I normally teeter-totter around Copenhagen on a mostly-broken Drescoe equipped only with foot brakes, was taking a big chance to being with.

That being said, once we'd settled into the hotel and met the unbelievably genial man-about-the-island (whom we saw countless times over the next few days, performing all kinds of island duties), we set out with the handbrake bikes to explore the island. The sun was shining, the temperature was well above average Scandinavian levels, and everything was hunky-dory. Until I encountered a slight hill. I forgot the handbrake feature of the bike I had rented, and ended up falling sideways and upside down and every wrong way possible, getting sand and gravel in my lovely wounds in the process. In the middle of nowhere, with no one else around to help or witness my moment of extreme klutziness, we managed to find the island health guy. Who turned out to be an older, unshaven, barefoot, absolutely-no-English-speaking man wearing a red jumpsuit and driving a severely fender-bendered vehicle. Regardless of his personal hygiene preferences and his knowledge of my native tongue, the wonderful man with the beard and no shoes got me to the island doctor in less than fifteen minutes; I was literally hyperventilating and could not even faintly recall any of the 89 Greek words I learned during my trip, but my meeting with the flip flop-clad, early-thirties island doctor resulted in a strict prescription to "go in the water." I was dubious, but took a leap of faith. (And, to be perfectly honest, healed my gaping hand and leg wounds faster than I could have wished for!).

To calm my ballerina-related injury fears, the good doctor sent my best man pal out to the island pharmacy for some goopy brown cleansing cream. I waited by the side of the road, perched on a short brick wall, crying and sniveling and waiting for the aforementioned wound tonic to arrive. After half-heartedly petting a couple of (admittedly awesome) stray island dogs, a barefoot, bald man with sunglasses happened to be passing by. I tried to hide my tears, but as anyone who has seen me seriously cry before will attest, this is no easy feat. The man was not an idiot, and saw past my snot-nosed, red-eyed, hiccuping appearance. He stopped and came over to sit down next to me. As a native New Yorker, I just looked at him, raised eyebrows, boogers, sadness, pus-filled wounds and all. And then in broken English, he said, "Girl, why you crying? Look around you!" I looked around, searching for a doctor wearing closed-toed shoes and a white coat, but instead found only sunshine and happy people. He saw my face and continued: "Don't worry. You are in paradise!"

And from that moment forward, I swear to god, I became an island lady. I embraced the sunshine, the lone island ATM, the generally slower approach to life. I enjoyed the fact that internet was not readily available. I learned to love the long walks around the island, especially when they resulted in stumbling upon a tiny private sort of beach. The saltwater was good for my skin, my hair, my feet, and I (literally) soaked it up. The fresh fish on this teeny tiny slice of magic; the Nightmare Before Christmas sort of dead-but-alive plants; the goats and roosters peppered about the island; the hidden sea caves and water in more shades of blue and green than I ever dreamed of; the shocking magenta flowers that popped against the blue-and-white backdrop of the architecture...I loved it all. The idea of camping, of having a boat, of living this slow-motion version of real life, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, became so frighteningly appealing. I left this island with tight jeans, hands and a left leg healed from the saltwater, hair tamed into those seemingly unattainable beach curls, skin softer than I'd felt in years, and an attitude more carefree than I could have ever imagined. There was something about the laid-back, happy-go-lucky nature of the islanders that made me able to spend a good chunk of time on one of the beaches, lying there doing absolutely nothing, and completely enjoying it.

This particular teeny piece of paradise will forever have a place in my heart; both for the warmth and generosity of its people, and for its incomparable natural beauty. I have never before encountered such an unbelievable piece of Eden, and I will definitely leap at the chance to escape to this happy place of mine again. I lack the vocabulary (in any language!) to adequately describe the enchantment of this island, and so I leave you with a few pictures, which will hopefully suffice...

The island, from the dock.

Playing in the (incredibly perfect!) waters...

There were tons of these magic coves along the island.

Well-fed and windblown on "the deaf island."

Daily magic.

the elements of style, or: my meditation

2011-08-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

There are many things people do to calm down. Some people take a walk, others count to ten, very practiced serene people meditate. I've tried all of the above, but none work as well as my own personal favorite: editing.

When I was younger, I read Strunk & White's famous guide to American English writing, The Elements of Style. The book outlines eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition," and "a few matters of form." William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White also provide a list of forty-nine commonly misused words and expressions, as well as a record of fifty-seven words often misspelled. It's not a perfect guide, and in fact has received criticism on both sides of the pond, but for my elementary school self, there was something beautiful and calming about the simplicity and purity of grammar laid out within its pages. In its first edition (1918), William Strunk wrote: "Make every word tell." I fell in love with this, and with the idea that the free, fluid art of writing did have structure and a set of rules. (I also believe that this sentence is the reason I very rarely use Internet short-hand. Acronyms do not have the same look or tell as properly written words.)

I have not read The Elements of Style in years, but the basic principles have stuck with me. And while some people can't stand a slightly crooked painting on a wall, or grow faint at the sight of one unlit bulb in a string of lights, my OCD centers around spelling and grammar. Give me a written paper, a red pen, and some time, and I am happy as a clam. There is something extremely soothing about correcting spelling mistakes, fixing punctuation, improving word order and the flow of writing, and amending errors in grammar. Once everything is in order, when every word of every sentence serves a purpose in an aesthetically pleasing and correct way, I can literally sleep better.

I do not often have the opportunity to edit. To be sure, I edit my own writing; most often, my biggest problem is following E.B. White's recommendation: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." I have had a couple of chances to hack away at others' papers with a beloved red pen. But sometimes, when I am very tense (or extremely bored), I will take an old pamphlet laying around or one of the magazines shipped over to me by my parents, and flip through, quietly putting the page--and my mind--in order.

Ελλάδα

2011-08-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

The Royal Danish Ballet's 2011/2012 season begins on Tuesday, and while I am ready and excited to begin work again, I cannot help but look back on the wonderful summer holiday. After a month-long return to the motherland United States, an extra week with my one-of-a-kind family in New York, and a quick stopover back in good ol' CPH, I took a trip with my very best friend to a little place called Greece and escaped the real world for two whole magical weeks.

Forget the sun, the beach, the food, the drinks. There's something about Greece, something that I don't think I will ever have the vocabulary to adequately describe. The people are as warm as the summer weather; the language is as beautiful to listen to as the island waters are to look at. In the face of national economic uncertainty, the Greeks showed no fear, only a love of food, fun, and each other. As someone who has never had an easy time relaxing, and who spent the first two days feeling frantic for not having mastered a very foreign language before arrival, I left Greece with a face full of freckles, significantly tighter jeans, and a strong urge to 'accidentally' miss my flight.

There's "big city" beauty--the nonstop, neon allure of New York or Paris. I always considered myself a true, blue, concrete-loving city girl. I have lived in New York and Miami Beach, and spent summers in San Francisco. I have never met a neon light or a skyscraper I couldn't get along with. I spend most of my time indoors in studios, and my pale skin reflects this affinity for artificial lighting. I have never been camping. I get cold if it dips below summer temperatures, and I can tolerate sweltering temperatures in 10-minute increments in a sauna. I don't pee unless it involves four walls, a door, and proper indoor plumbing. I don't consider bugs to be a satisfactory source of protein, and unless it's one of the approximately eight spiders a year involuntarily swallowed by the average human being, I really try to keep a more-than-safe distance from most insects. In short: I am nobody's nature girl.

But Greece is different. To be sure, we saw big cities. Athens is massive, Thessaloniki and Larissa are true cities as well. But for the most part, I was confronted with a completely different kind of beauty, one with mountains and sand and swamps and stretches of nothingness. I saw dragonflies in shades I never expected, spiders the size of gum balls, more shades of green and blue than I could ever imagine. Each day, I awoke to a clear view of Mt. Olympus and a schedule filled with hours and hours of relaxation. At first, I admit, it freaked me out. I cannot ever just do nothing. And in Greece, the daily schedule read something like: wake up, breakfast, beach, two-hour lunch, nap, beach, snack, do nothing, two-hour dinner, sleep. My stomach was not built for this schedule. The letters weren't letters, and because I love languages (and am a very nosy individual who likes to understand what people are saying and writing) I found my inability to understand or communicate frustrating. I mean, in Greek, my boyfriend's name started with what appeared to be a triangle. That's a shape. Also, I am not a person who does well at the beach; my skin simply can't take the heat (literally) and my mind can't take the lack of activity. I wear contact lenses, so I don't enjoy saltwater, and after an unpleasant childhood encounter with a rabid jellyfish, I'm not keen on swimming too far out. Plus there's the whole existential freakout I have whenever I find myself looking out over a large expanse of water; it's a situation that goes on in my mind something like: "Saltwater oceans are 71% of Earth's total surface, there are over 6 billion people on the planet, Earth is one of nine planets in our solar system, which is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in space, which means I am very small indeed..."

A couple of days in, however, and I was hooked. By the end of the vacation, I was expressing a desire to "just bring a tent and camp on the beach" next time we visited the islands. The sun was my best friend; the saltwater brought my skin and feet back to childhood softness; my stomach learned to not only accept but thoroughly enjoy the seemingly endless plates of food involved in daily meals. The ancient ruins nestled among modern villages and cities, the freshest food I have ever tasted, the unbreakable sense of fun everyone I met seemed to have, the addictive sound and look of the language, I love all of it. And the daily small adventures made the trip that much more perfect. My first lesson in the art of drinking raki; the small but Olympic-fast turtle we adopted (until he escaped); running up to the Acropolis with just ten minutes before the last visitors were admitted; tooling around the hillsides of Santorini on an ATV; the small island whose one ATM ran out of cash, resulting in a 1am race onto a visiting ferry for cash; water fights at lunch--I miss the indescribable mix of whirlwind amid hours of leisure. It was infectious. I wanted to be like this, all the time. There was a sense of frantic humor in almost every situation, and I could not get enough.

Vacation cannot last forever. This is why, like Christmas and birthdays and any other favorite time, they are so special. Greece was something I will never forget, and something I hope to repeat very soon. Because for the first time in my life, I spent over an hour in the sun, on the beach of a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't feel the urge to do anything or go anywhere. I didn't think. I didn't worry about fitting into skinny jeans, I wasn't nauseous about the releve section in Etudes, I had soft skin and healed feet and no sore muscles. I found my happy place.

After I had a bike accident on a tiny island, I was sitting by the side of the road crying and bleeding while disinfecting supplies were fetched. A total stranger passing by stopped and said, "Why are you crying?" I held up my bloody hands and stuck out my swollen, bleeding and bruised left leg as an answer. He smiled and said, "It's ok, don't worry! Look around. You're in paradise." And so, with another long, busy season ahead, I look forward to it being a great one, with new opportunities and challenges. But in the back of my mind, I will try so very hard to keep that feeling of real, honest-to-god bliss I achieved this summer. ευχαριστώ, Ελλάδα. You taught this neurotic mess to turn off her brain and just enjoy life (and a whole lot of food).

rubber balls are time machines

2011-08-17T11:32:00.001-07:00

Today, I smelled a rubber ball (being used as a prop in a friend's rehearsal), and suddenly I was six years old again. The powdery, uniquely rubbery odor sent me tumbling backwards in time, coming completely out of the blue. Everyone in the studio who smelled the ball had the same reaction: "It reminds me of childhood..." Maybe we all recalled different specific things, but of one thing we were sure. This seemingly unremarkable ball brought everybody to the same place.

It's funny how smells can do that. To me, this ball smelled exactly like the seemingly infinite collection of My Little Pony figures I had when I was little. (This was before the case of head lice that spread like wildfire throughout my kindergarten class, and resulted in all toys in with 'hair' being quarantined in garbage bags. Forever.) Others said the scent reminded them of pool floaties, or action figures. But for me, it was My Little Pony. I loved those stupid horses so much. I will forever hate head lice--not only because head lice is disgusting to think about, but because those revolting hair bugs meant the death of my Ponies.

The thing is, I hadn't thought about My Little Pony in years. (Anybody who knows about my affinity for unicorn culture might find this surprising, but it's true. The rainbow-colored little horses hadn't entered my mind in a very long time.) This ordinary rubber ball knocked me backwards into memories so far back, I can't even be sure I really remember them. In the middle of Det Kongelige Teater, I was suddenly a six-year-old playing with small, overpriced plastic ponies in our living room in Brooklyn. I didn't have a care in the world, except for figuring out which of these ponies, given the very girly pastel color scheme, could possibly be a boy. My Pink Little Pony needed a boyfriend.

Once I snapped out of my reverie, I realized why this orange ball had made me so happy and so sad all at once. When you're living out your elementary years, you don't recognize these smells as anything other than a faint odor accompanying a new plaything. The scent that escapes when clapping together chalkboard erasers, the distinct odor of Elmer's Glue, the fragrance of Play-Doh, that 'new notebook' aroma--you don't realize that one day, catching a whiff of any of these will become something special. You don't appreciate in the moment that one day, years from now, you will bring to your nose an apparently everyday rubber ball and be transported to another time and place. When you're six, nostalgia isn't really in your vocabulary--but when it is, you long for the times when you didn't know what the word meant.

It's not that I wish I was six years old again. Granted, there are things about being a six-year-old girl that I would love to recapture: the sense of innocence, of carelessness, of genuine everyday happiness, of having your biggest problem be fixing up two of your My Little Ponies. But I am well aware that a good chunk of the beauty in life comes from growing up and adding layers to one's childhood self. This being said, I do wish I could go back in time and tell the young me to love every small thing, to inhale every stupid odor, because one day a rubber ball will make you realize how wonderful all the smallest things are--and how difficult that feeling of being so very young can be to capture again.

are we human?

2011-08-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Very recently, I attended the birthday party of a wonderful acquaintance of mine, and had a fantastic opportunity to engage in a lively debate with a stranger. In the beautiful hours of a classic late Copenhagen sunset, this well spoken, Oxford-educated man tried to convince me that we, as human beings, could be reduced to basically nothing more than a series of well-oiled biochemical processes. As a decidedly nonreligious person who's only very warily, very recently (very reluctantly, very skeptically, very slowly, etc.) adopted certain practical principles of Buddhism, the logical side of me--the openly nonromantic, factual girl who grew up loving math for its lack of a grey area and who watches Bones in unhealthy quantities--understood the science behind his arguments. But the secret romantic within, the girl who loves to reread Fitzgerald and Bronte novels on a quasi-regular basis and cries at Kleenex commercials, refused to believe that all of humanity could be boiled down to just epidermis and bodily functions, with bodies ruled by science, lacking free will and that stunning unpredictability that makes living worthwhile. Despite the indisputable scientific evidence presented to me over the course of the evening, despite my logical self comprehending and realizing the facts laid out before me...I would not have it.

There is scientific evidence that our brains actually make decisions before we know about them. Researchers have done studies that show our brains prepare decisions up to seven seconds before we ourselves realize we have made choices. In the seven seconds before test subjects chose to push a button, making a decision, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, an area of sensory integration in the brain. These shifting neural patterns were monitored using a functional MRI machine. Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand: a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. This study means that for those used to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions. However, caveats remain, holding open the door for free will--the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions. Furthermore, the predictions were not completely accurate. There is a possibility that free will enters at the very last moment, letting a person override a chemically based, subconscious decision. The co-author of the study, John-Dylan Haynes from the Max Planck Institute, said. "We can't rule out that there's a free will that kicks in at this late point," but he admits he doesn't believe it's plausible.

This implausibility doesn't disturb Haynes, though. He says, "It's not like you're a machine. Your brain activity is the physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires operate." And National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Mark Hallett says that the discomfort people feel by the possible impossibility of free will originates from a misconception of self as separate from the brain: "That's the same notion as the mind being separate from the body--and I don't think anyone really believes that. A different way of thinking about it is that your consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing."

Forget the everyday decisions we are forced to make: What should I get for lunch? What should I wear today? Should I punch this person in the face? If those choices are, in fact, predetermined by biological processes occurring in the grey matter filling the space between our ears, I can totally live with that. But as a closet romantic, and against all logical evidence and better judgment, I refuse to believe that bigger choices, especially regarding definitively personal, undefined areas of our lives, are made by a series of neurons firing. I can't swallow the notion that my father's creative anniversary surprise to my mother a couple of years back was nothing more than a result of science; I hate the notion that some of my favorite fictional heroes were borne from some author's neurons firing a certain way; I refuse to believe that most great art of this and past centuries had its foundation in someone's physiological brain, and not something infinitely more undefinable. Perhaps this is idealistic thinking, perhaps this is a starry-eyed view of how we as human beings function. But while I believe there are, of course, certain undeniable sequences that occur in our brains and bodies every second of every day, I would very much love to believe we are so much more than that. Because can we boil down to simple science great music, beautiful art, even who we choose to love? I certainly hope not.

to know her

2011-07-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

Amidst what feels like an abundance of recent tragedies came the premature death of Amy Winehouse. Troubled though she might have been and--after the media blitz and countless tributes surrounding her passing--as banal as this entry might be, I must tip my hat to a singer who was a true talent, a refreshing original, and a real gift to the world of music.

I have always had a 'thing' for Amy Winehouse. Her troubled public persona, her music that recalled an era long gone, her hair that was (unbelievably) bigger than mine, and that voice...I was a huge fan. (I even dressed up as Amy when I was 17, living in Miami. I didn't need fake hair, but did need some help with the cleavage.) She was a petite soul singer with a big attitude and bigger problems, but I didn't care: her music, unlike so much of the processed junk occupying the other slots in the Top 40, had a rawness and an emotion that no one else could match. Rehab, perhaps her biggest commercial hit, was catchy and cheeky and all of that. But the rest of her wildly successful album Back to Black was, in my opinion, so much more wonderful than that first fun track; her first album was maybe less mature than her follow-up, but as an album put out by a then-19-year-old, it was truly original and still fantastic. My mother was a fan, too, one of the few musical artists we agreed on. She'd say, "That Amy Winehouse. So talented. What's that song, the sassy one...Rehab? She has problems, y'know, but she can sing. I hope she gets help." And that's what most people I knew seemed to say: she has problems, but man, that voice.

I had a chance encounter with Amy Winehouse when I was living in Miami. I know--it sounds ridiculous, and it was; it was probably also the coolest I've ever felt in my entire life. At the time, I was living in South Beach, having moved there to ballerina dance. I'd read in the papers that Ms. Winehouse and her then-fiancee, some industry hanger-on name Blake something, were in South Beach for the weekend to "get hitched quick." As a teenage music fan, I was happy enough knowing that Amy Winehouse and I were sharing the same zip code for a few days, and thought nothing more of it. I was out running errands that weekend, waiting at the crosswalk near Collins Avenue, when I saw a pin-thin woman with massive hair walking in my direction, accompanied by a classically ginormous bodyguard-looking type. I made an executive decision not to jump to conclusions and assume it was her, but instead to take a moment to retie my shoelace and in the process miss the light to cross the street, thus creating a happy coincidence which would leave me still waiting at the light by the time she came close enough to identify, assuming she maintained her current speed. As she got closer, it was unmistakably the Amy Winehouse: the tattoos, the ratty ballerina slippers, the hair, all of it. In my ogling, I noticed that she was glaring at me. My first thought, naturally, was "I'm going to die at the hands of what appears to be an angry Amy Winehouse. This is so cool!" I was frozen, both out of fear and admiration. At this point, the bodyguard was glaring too; I thought, "Maybe excessive staring by fans is forbidden. I should stop, but I can't." And then, my coolest moment on Planet Earth happened. As she and her bodyguard passed by, still glaring, Amy Winehouse gestured to me and said in her thick raspy British accent, "See, she has sharp, unique features." I let them walk a safe distance before peeing my pants and calling my mother.

Silly stories aside, I write this because whatever troubling addictions she had, whatever "27 Club" nonsense is printed in the media, whatever wild rumors fly in the press following her tragic death, no one can deny that the world has lost a true talent, a beautiful artist, and a genuine personality. I read a quote recently, "Sometimes the truly gifted are fuelled with an energy that burns twice as bright, but only half as long." Amy Winehouse's light didn't burn nearly as long as we would have wished, but man, that voice burned bright.

ευχαριστώ, Ελλάδα

2011-07-21T00:50:00.000-07:00

After two weeks in the paradise more commonly known as Greece, I am back in Copenhagen, experiencing the highly expected traditional post-vacation-downer. It was a holiday filled with all the ingredients I love: new places and faces, indescribably delicious food (and a lot of it!), a beautiful foreign language, hours of relaxation, breathtaking landscapes and historical sights, summer heat and sunshine, and the best company possible. It was a perfect mixture of downtime and adventure, and not only was I able to escape reality for a couple of weeks, but I achieved my first veritable tan, learned a new alphabet, and managed to pick up 89 words (tallied during the return flight takeoff, to calm my flying nerves) in a stunning language. I would give anything to have stayed in that bubble of bliss for just a bit longer, but I suppose that is what makes holiday travels so special. It's like when you are younger, and all you want is Christmas every day--it sounds like a fantastic idea. But as you get older, you realize that Christmas is so wonderful because it only comes once a year, because it isn't just an every day thing. For me, Greece shall be the same; it is a Christmas-level sort of place, and I would not have it any other way. Until next time, then, a big fat Greek thank you (or "ευχαριστώ") to everybody there who made my holiday so unbelievably fantastic.

Street meat, highway-style. On the way to the house after landing in Thessaloniki, we stopped at this kiosk on the side of the highway. People pull over, hop the barrier, pick up some sodas, and keep on truckin'.

A slice of heaven.

While having a φραπές--or, a delicious Greek iced coffee--we saw this magnificent sunset over Mt. Olympus. I'd normally call it "Jesus light," but in this instance, I think "Zeus light" might be more appropriate.

Monkeying around at the Archaeological Museum in Dion.

One of my favorite villages we visited, Paleo ("Old") Panteleimonas. Like taking a step back in time, it was an escape from the escape from reality. Amazing.

1100m up Mt. Olympus. I got a bit light-headed, but a lunch of φασολάδα--fasolada, Greek's delicious national dish--and panoramic views like this one definitely helped.

At Aphrodite's Spring, down the end of this narrow tunnel was a font, out of which poured the clearest, freshest water you'll ever taste. The tight squeeze was worth the reward.

In Athens for the evening, I had to go to the Acropolis. I have no words, except: if you can, you must see this.

Athens, down the rabbit hole...

A trip to the islands, first stop: Thira, aka Santorini. This is the town of Oia by night. Fantastic!

And by morning, the view of Santorini's biggest village, Fira, from the old village of Firostefani.

No, this is not a pool. This is what the water really looks like.

The biggest--but smallest!--slice of paradise of all: Κουφονήσια.

This small island is my new favorite place on Earth. If ever I'm instructed to "go to my happy place," this is where I'll be.

This is just a small taste of my big fat Greek holiday. I cannot say enough how warm the people are, how beautiful the country is, and how delicious the food tastes. If you're ever searching for a perfect combination of relaxation and new adventures, consider Greece. You won't regret it--you'll only regret ever having to come home.

back to the basics

2011-07-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I leave for a little two-week holiday to Greece. No wifi. No TV. No phone. Nothing but sun, and the beach, and delicious food, and free time. I am incredibly excited, as well as characteristically still not packed...but it will be fantastic to see a new place and really just be able to enjoy the most basic pleasures in life.

One such basic pleasure is, of course, good music. A prime example of this can be found in Florence + the Machine's excellent cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." And so, on the eve of my big fat Greek adventure, I give you a little bit of audio joy...

See you in two weeks! xx

jetlag

2011-07-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

After five weeks away, it is really nice to be home for a week before I take a little trip to another land. Having lived in Copenhagen for over two years now, I can say that while I love this city (or at the very least, really like the whole city and love Vesterbro), it can get claustrophobic at times. Copenhagen is what I call a "little big city." And that's literally what it sounds like: while technically dubbed a city, as a New Yorker I can say with confidence that it is a very small city. To be sure, this is part of its charm, but it can also make me go a bit bonkers after a while. There are only so many times you can bike around the same neighborhoods or sit in the park before it gets a bit monotonous, no matter how lovely the weather might be.

And so it is wonderful to come back to sunny skies and warm weather, and to be able to re-appreciate this little big city I have come to call home. Despite the fact that the entire city seems to be under construction at the moment (see my lovely friend Sandra's blog for more on this!), Copenhagen really is quite fantastic in the summer. Before I go on vacation in a week, I plan to take full advantage of being able to do nothing and anything--and of the summer sales going on right now. So, a little photographic ode to good ol' CPH, as I continue the battle against jetlag...

New street art on Westend, my favorite block in Copenhagen.

"Blomster om sommeren" -- flowers in summer.

I love Vesterbro...

savage beauty

2011-06-29T23:49:00.000-07:00

After our final performance in New York, our summer holidays began. I kicked mine off by staying an extra week at home on Long Island, enjoying some quality crazy time with my family and boyfriend. Suburban downtime was mixed with a healthy dose of playing New York City tourist: walking around downtown Manhattan, exploring the beautiful new High Line park, eating really excellent food, etc. etc. Aside from generally soaking up New York City, there was one specific thing I had on my agenda: the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As someone who regularly steps outside her apartment looking like a homeless person (due mostly, I have come to think, to my schizophrenic head of hair), I may not seem like the fashion exhibition type. However, beneath the black-goes-with-black, this-smells-clean ensemble lies someone who is, in fact, a big fan of fashion. When I was 18 and living in Miami, I used to go down to this fantastic small boutique on Lincoln Road to shell out $15 for French Vogue. I could understand maybe three words in every issue, but I would read it like some sort of Bible. And here in Denmark, I will often sacrifice good kroner at Magasin for American Vogue--justifying this purchase as a "slice of home" that I can fully understand. My lack of daily style is not indicative at all of my love for fashion. My mentality is such: had I the funds to purchase the wardrobe I desire, I would readily do so. Since I do not currently possess such gold, and wish to remain out of 'minus,' I make do with the closet full of so-so clothes that I have. And when I do occasionally have money to burn, I carefully select one hopefully timeless item on which to splurge.

When I read that Alexander McQueen was the subject of a fashion exhibit at the Met, I was thrilled. From my years of devouring Vogue, I had picked him as one of my dream, fairytale life designers. To me, McQueen's collections seemed more like wearable, almost painfully beautiful art--more so than almost any other designer's. The descriptions of his runway shows made me love him even more; his runway presentations told stories, bringing drama and emotion to the fantastical garments he created. And beneath the masterful execution and magical quality of his collections was always a sense of beautiful darkness, a hint of "savage beauty," as it were.

According to those who knew him, McQueen was a deeply troubled but optimistic person, one with a great knowledge and respect for history, and with an immeasurable imagination. The Met exhibition, stunningly arranged and beautifully comprehensive, shows that with McQueen's tragic death in February of last year, the world lost a true visionary artist. I can honestly say that this exhibit was one of my favorite museum experiences of my life, and I can only wish that I could see it just once more.

Dress, ivory silk organza, Widows of Culloden (autumn/winter 2006-7).

Coat of duck feathers painted gold, autumn/winter 2010-11.

Dress, white cotton spray-painted black and yellow with underskirt of white silk, No. 13 (spring/summer 1999).

"Oyster" dress, ivory silk, Irere (spring/summer 2003).

Dress, black duck feathers, The Horn of Plenty (autumn/winter 2009-10).

Dress, cream silk and lace with resin antlers, Widows of Culloden (autumn/winter 2006-7).

Images from the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists. I have to force people to look at things." ~ Alexander McQueen (1969-2010)

summer, summer, summertime...

2011-06-29T03:14:00.000-07:00

As the great lyricist Will Smith once wrote, it is now officially "summer, summer, summertime, time to sit back and unwind." After a month-long tour to the good ol' United States of America (and a month-long hiatus from this blog of mine), I am back in Vikingland for a proper Scandinavian sommerferie.

But first, some highlights of RDB's big 2011 tour across America. Following a 17-hour travel day, which closely resembled an inner circle of hell, we started off with a week in Orange County. A week in Berkeley came next; then a week in the motherland's great capitol city of Washington, DC; and finally, a grand finale on my home turf: New York, the city so nice they named it twice. It was a long tour, it was a hard tour, but it was a fantastic, fun way to end a difficult, ultimately very gratifying season. And after having spent an unbelievably hilarious, relaxing, perfect week at home on Long Island with my family following the tour's end, I am now back in Copenhagen to continue enjoying the summer holiday. My jet lag--combined with the wonderfully long Scandinavian sunlight hours of summer--means I'm nearly cross-eyed at this time, but until I get back on European time, some photos from America, to get back in the swing of this blog...

A lovely community garden in San Francisco.

Monkeying around on tour...

It was fantastic to visit San Francisco again, after six years or so.

My first time in DC--heaven for this Bones fan. Agent Booth works here! ;-)

I felt this was only an appropriate pose, considering the circumstances. And considering I'd already made enough bad political puns that morning.

Inspired by the street art near PS1 MoMA.

Situations like this one are why I love love love downtown New York.

happiness is a swedish sunset

2011-05-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

The title for this short Sunday post comes from a Mark Twain quote: "Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it." A Swedish sunset is thought to be one of the most beautiful in the world; like the setting of the sun in this Scandinavian country, happiness is often unrecognized--and thus passes unappreciated--by most of us.

I'd like to post two things that make me happy this evening. The first is a fun interview I did for the wonderful website Ballet News, a contribution to their "Cupcakes & Conversation" section:

http://balletnews.co.uk/2011/05/15/cupcakes-conversation-with-carling-talcott-corps-de-ballet-royal-danish-ballet/

And the second is the ode to joy known as "Dog Days Are Over" by one of my favorite artists Florence & the Machine:

Everyone should be so lucky to go through life with such abandon...

1+1=1?

2011-05-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Soulmate. Depending on one's emotional or mental composition, the word can conjure up romantic notions or make one's stomach turn; the idea of this planet containing one perfect person--out of a global population that now numbers nearly 7 billion--for each of us to connect to, extraordinarily and eternally, provides much food for thought for this undecided author. As a closeted romantic myself, I find the idea of the soulmate attractive; as a professed disciple of logic and reason, the concept, on the surface, seems quixotic at best.

Oxford Dictionary defines soulmate as "a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner." If the general population were to go by this definition alone, I think most of us could be fortunate enough to say we have many soulmates. However, from what I have observed, modern society has placed greater meaning on the term: a soulmate, in today's world, is not merely "ideal"; the term has come to mean a person who, in effect, completes you...one's other (or, in some cases, better) half.

Some will argue that the very idea that we, as independent, free human beings, need someone to complete ourselves--perhaps that we, alone, are not enough--is antiquated. Others will say that we were put on this planet to find purpose and connection in our lives, and in order to successfully do this, the search for one's soulmate must play a crucial part in the course of a lifetime.

The theories about this topic are nothing new. The ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes presented a story about soulmates in Plato's The Symposium. It states that humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. However, Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning the humans to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them. And theosophy--a doctrine of mysticism and religious philosophy--teaches that God created androgynous souls, equally male and female. Later theories say that the souls split into separate genders, perhaps because they incurred karma while playing around on the Earth, during "separation from God." Over a number of reincarnations, each half seeks the other. When all karmic debt is purged, the two will fuse back together and return to the ultimate, united form; two will become one.

Bashert is a Yiddish word that means "destiny," often used in the context of one's divinely predicted spouse (or soulmate), called "basherte" (female) or "basherter" (male). It can also be used to express the apparent fate of an auspicious or important event, friendship, or happening. The idea of soulmates comes from statements found in classical rabbinic literature. A proverb that "marriages are made in heaven" is illustrated by a story in a midrash collection:
A Roman matron, on being told by R. Jose ben Ḥalafta that God arranges all marriages, said that this was an easy matter, and boasted that she could do as much herself. Thereupon she assembled her male and female slaves and paired them off in couples; but on the morrow they all went to her with complaints. Then she admitted that divine intervention is necessary to suitable marriages (Genesis Rabba lxviii. 3-4).
Even God Himself finds it difficult: forty days before a child is born, its mate is determined (Genesis Rabba lxviii. 3-4; Babylonian Talmud, tractates Soṭah 2a; Sanhedrin 22a; comp. M. Ḳ. 18b; "Sefer Hasidim," § 1128). In today's society, some Jewish singles say that they are looking for their bashert; they are looking for that person who will complement them perfectly, and whom they will complement perfectly. Since it considered to have been predetermined by God whom one will marry, one's spouse is considered to be one's bashert by definition, independent of whether the couple's marital life works out well or not.

The idea of a soulmate is an intriguing one for this simultaneously emotional/logical writer. I believe that it is possible to find one person with whom a deep connection can be made, and with whom one can spend the majority of one's life with. I don't believe it is easy, or necessarily predetermined by a heavenly being--even the best relationships require some iota of effort or work. And though my brain tells me the numbers are against the concept, my heart believes in a gentler version of Plato's theory: I think I believe finding one extraordinary person, perhaps defined as a soulmate, is possible. But I disagree with the idea that we are "condemned" to do so. On the contrary, I have come to think it is our privilege to embark on this journey, and those who dare to do so have more enriched lives for it.

point(e)less questions, and equally unimportant answers

2011-05-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

What is on your desktop wallpaper?

At the moment, my tired old MacBook displays a wall of my favorite flowers: cherry blossoms. I have fond memories of my father picking me some of these off of a tree on the walk from our apartment to my kindergarten. Plus, the flowers bloom for a fleeting moment in time, in the scheme of things. They are the meteors of flora...bright and beautiful, but blink and you could miss them.

What is your favorite zoo animal?

I have always had a soft spot for the manatee. The awkward, gentle sea cows worked their way into my heart when I did a report on them for a third grade project. Their endangered status is heartbreaking, since the major causes are man-made. (And a fun fact: though slower-moving, less motivated, and not nearly as widely adored as dolphins, manatees are in fact just as intelligent as their more popular water companions.)

What was your favorite toy as a child?

I wasn't much for toys or games, much preferring the comfortable universe of fiction novels, but I did have one stuffed animal that I still have to this day--a beloved elephant by the (oh-so-creative) name of Mr. E. Given to me as a baptism present, the furry friend who started out as a white-bodied, pink-eared musical companion can be found, 22 years later, to be a true elephantine grey, minus one ear and his tail, with musical abilities reduced to a sad sort of chord emitting from his stomach. Nonetheless, Mr. E was there for this ballerina child through thick and too-thin. He holds a privileged spot on my bedside table to this day.

What food do you eat too much of?

I am probably too fond of sandwiches. I eagerly await the day when I tire of the various bread/meat/cheese combinations so widely offered for gluttonous consumption, but the efficient packaging of several food groups mashed between two slices of carbohydrate delight, coupled with the variety of combinations available, makes the sandwich an irresistible lunch choice for yours truly.

What kind of hairstyle do you have?

If asked, I suspect most of the population would fail to classify the fluffy mass growing from my head as a "hairstyle." The largeness that spouts from my scalp is a veritable fiesta of curls, each with its own distinct personality and apparent intended direction. Some days, I am virtually certain that it is a minor miracle my hair can be tamed into any sort of socially acceptable fashion at all.

What was your favorite activity in gym class?

I wasn't much for gym class. My inability to run like any sort of normal homo sapien meant that I was inevitably picked very near last for any team activities. I do recall victoriously catching a kickball with one hand, a moment spoiled by the fact that my sudden "hot move" bent my pinky backwards in such a manner as to cause a severe jam. I did, however, very much enjoy being a part of the after-school baton twirling team. Our routine to "The Locomotion" was a true crowd-pleaser. Sadly, my career as a twirler ended when I was foiled by the toss-turn-around, a move that is executed just as it is named.

What is on the shirt you're wearing right now?

I've currently donned a very creative garment: a plain, light grey tank top. It goes perfectly with the fashionable pajama pants I've donned for the evening's activities, which consist of a whole lot of nothing.

What is the picture nearest to you of?

I don't have many pictures at hand, but across the room, propped up on the wall of a desk table, is the coffee table book my parents got me for Christmas, Audrey 100. A perfect tome to feed my mild obsession with the late, great Ms. Hepburn, the book contains 100 or so photographs of Audrey, both on and off the job. It's a fantastic way to pass an hour or so of boredom.

Whats your least favorite food?

I will confess that despite my willingness to try anything twice, and my unrefined taste buds that will accept most basic food, I can be something of a picky eater. I dislike anchovies, pickles, chopped tomatoes, and grapes. Due to an irrational fear of biting into hidden razors, I also refuse to eat unsliced apples.

What do you do on a Sunday night?

Sunday night is often spent consuming the meal commonly known as dinner, followed by a pointe shoe sewing session and an episode of some preferred series. (Often, this is Bones, probably my favorite show on television. I fear my boyfriend finds my love of this skeleton-heavy series mildly frightening, but I must confess, I mostly love the show for the fresh banter between its two attractive leads. Though I also find the forensic science fascinating.)

If you could only use one condiment on your food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

This is an unfairly worded question. Would I be forced to put this condiment on all of my food for the rest of my life? Because then I would have to severely restrict my diet to chosen condiment-friendly items. I don't think I want to consider this possibility; creme brulee should not be spoiled by anything, except the spoon used to crack its delicious top shell.

What color are your sheets?

This answer is almost as exciting as the one about my current shirt of choice. The bedsheets are white, with a grey duvet, and black, white, and grey pillowcases.

What pair of shoes do you wear most often?

If this answer had to be completely honest, I would have to supply a balletic response and say Freed of London, maker "crown," size 7 XX. But since that is an irrefutably bunhead sort of answer, I will reply with two daily footwear options I alternate between most: my beloved classic Converse All Stars, or my ultimate comfort pair of oversized Adidas running shoes. The latter is not an attractive choice, aesthetically speaking, but my feet love this pair the most.

What is your favorite game?

I have never been very good at board games. But I recently learned to play backgammon, which I can see myself enjoying very much once I have had more practice. I also like Mancala, and a party game I've dubbed the "Name Game," which is basically a multi-round version of Charades, with teams and famous people's names in a bowl.

What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

Turkey is lovely. turducken is extraordinary, and cranberry sauce is delightful. But I have been, am, and always will be a stuffing kind of girl. Perhaps one of the unhealthiest components of the traditional feast, I have to exercise great willpower to resist forgoing the other offered courses in favor of an entire plate of stuffing.

What, if any, irrational fears do you have?

Most of my fears are irrational. I fear various diseases and rare ailments; air travel; razorblades concealed in apples; slit wrists (images or mentions of, in addition to the actual occurrence); and various daily personal imaginations of badness that cross through the insane wiring which makes up my brain.

Have you ever put straws up your nose to pretend to be a walrus?

Yes. I have also wedged a French fry on either side of the inside of my upper lip to convey the same likeness. My mother rarely appreciated such imitations.

What is your favorite pizza topping?

I firmly believe that quality cheese is a major ingredient in my enjoyment factor of the classic comfort food. Save for anchovies and pineapple (I will never understand people who would put fruit on a pizza), I don't much care what goes on top of the base, provided the cheese is as deliciously gooey as it should be.

What time do you plan on waking up tomorrow?

If I could plan such a thing, I would love to say between the hours of 10 and 11am. Unfortunately for my sleep cycle, however, my ballerina dancing job dictates the hour upon which I rise; this means I shall be greeting the day between 8 and 8:15am, depending on my ability to resist the incredibly tempting snooze button.

What is your favorite day of the year?

The first day of summer holiday is in stiff competition with Christmas. Both are joyous times of the year with time off from work, and both involve delicious seasonal dishes. My favorite day of 2010 was December 13, but I do not anticipate that this will necessarily be an annual occurrence--a magical meteor shower and generally perfect preceding day do not often occur with yearly accuracy. I also happen to enjoy Groundhog's Day, but that is more for the unique opportunity to say "Punxsutawney Phil" multiple times throughout the day.

What was your most terrifying dream?

Funnily enough, I had a mildly horrific nightmare last night. It was one of those terrible dreams that are so vivid while they are interrupting a much-needed REM sleep cycle, but upon waking, one finds that only a few strong images can be recalled. In this case, upon waking, I felt slightly suffocated and a bit clammy, with one lasting image seared into my already-neurotic brain: that of my lower legs decorated with evenly spaced staples and other small metal pieces used for attaching things. I also found I could remember that at some point in the dream, several faceless figures had the happy duty of attempting to remove these objects from my shins and kneecaps. It was not a pleasant way to begin one's free Monday.

Have you ever sprayed a drink out of your nose from laughing?

I ruined a family dessert in this very manner. Having had a lovely meal at my grandparents' house one Sunday night, I remember I was seated next to two of my uncles. They were discussing a very amusing story involving a large woman and her husband--size unknown, or unremembered--and my seven- or eight-year-old self found something in the tale hilarious right in the midst of taking a huge gulp of my glass of milk. The urge to laugh was too great, and the milk spewed out of my nose and mouth all over the cupcakes that should have been served for dessert. Needless to say, I was appropriately embarrassed. And went without dessert. I have had more successful family dinners.

Long Live the (Mc)Queen

2011-04-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

I am not a fashionista, by any stretch of the imagination: I have been known to wear pajama pants on grocery store runs, and also I own a Snuggie. In my weak defense, my lack of creativity with my daily ensembles mostly stems from the fact that I rarely wear an outfit for longer than my 15-minute bike ride to and from the theatre (and also, the cost of my dream wardrobe far exceeds my anemic funds). But despite my "black-goes-with-everything" amount of effort that I put into my personal everyday look, I do have a typically girlish love and appreciation for fashion, and one of my favorite designers is the late, great Alexander McQueen, whose garments never lack for imagination or drama.

The current creative director of Alexander McQueen, one Sarah Burton, spoke with Vogue recently about several of McQueen's dresses, which are set to be part of the Costume Institute's upcoming exhibition "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty," opening May 4 at the Met in New York City. Turns out that the stories behind McQueen's designs are as inspired and as dramatic as they look.

The dress below is from the Fall 2006 collection, called "Widows of Culloden." Burton tells Vogue: "The collection was about the 1745 massacre of the Scottish Jacobites by the English, which Lee felt so passionately about because of his Scottish family heritage, which his mother had researched. The women were the widows of the slaughtered army. This dress was actually based on my wedding dress--I got married two years earlier. We had to figure out how to make lace work in the round with those ruffles because Lee hated gathering. So we cut out all of the flowers from the lace and reappliquéd it on tulle to make our own fabric. This is the collection most people remember as the one with Kate Moss in a hologram. Oh, my God, it was so beautiful. He loved that show."

And of this dress, from the "Voss" Spring 2001 collection, Burton recalls: "So much of this show was about the collective madness of the world. It was presented in a two-way mirrored glass box in London, and the girls had bandaged heads, acting like inmates of a mental asylum. Lee wanted the top of this dress to be made from surgical slides used for hospital specimens, which we found in a medical-supply shop on Wigmore Street. Then we hand-painted them red, drilled holes in each one, and sewed them on so they looked like paillettes. We hand-painted white ostrich feathers and dip-dyed each one to layer in the skirt."

Alexander McQueen's designs are beautiful not only for their masterful execution and obvious uniqueness, but because his pieces evoke strong reactions and emotions, and convey a sense of importance and story (if not exactly the tale which inspired the designer). His clothes are art and theatre unto themselves, and for this somewhat self-apathetic fashion lover, worthy of worship, indeed.

Grenade

2011-04-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

I am the first to admit that I am the queen of guilty pleasures when it comes to music: I have a shameful amount of Abba, Hanson, Journey, Sonny & Cher, etc. on my iPod; and I've been known to sing Spice Girls and the like in public on multiple occasions. So more often than not, I can easily handle (and sometimes, secretly like) most of the Top 40-heavily produced-one hit wonder confections that come out of the big music man factories. There is, however, one song that makes my skin crawl, my mind boggle, and my ears bleed every time I hear it--which, unfortunately for me, is much more frequently than I'd like given its current popularity; the most recent listening occurred on the bus two days ago, inspiring this post. That tune is Bruno Mars' Grenade, and I analyze the lyrics for you today to further illustrate my deep loathing for this piece of pop.

Let me start by saying: Bruno Mars is a ridiculous stage name. According to Wikipedia, Mars was christened Peter Gene Hernandez, raised in Hawaii, and was dubbed Bruno because of his resemblance to overweight professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino. If my parents had given me a nickname because my two-year-old self had looked like a chubby athlete who pinned other men in unitards to a mat for a living, I would have shed that moniker like snakeskin, but if Peter Gene Hernandez likes the comparison, more power to him. Especially since he is now quite rich under the first name "Bruno." But I digress. Back to his major solo hit, Grenade.

Easy come, easy go, that's just how you live
Oh, take, take, take it all but you never give
Should've known you was trouble from the first kiss
Had your eyes wide open, why were they open?

So. Bruno introduces the subject of this song--we presume, a lady muse, whose presence in his life has inspired such great music--as one who is fairly relaxed with regards to how she lives her life. But seconds after proclaiming the girl's "c'est la vie" approach to life, Bruno tells us that this girl is also kind of a selfish brat. She takes and takes and takes but never gives. Bruno has clearly penned this ballad after he terminated his relationship with this lady, since his 20/20 hindsight inspires him to croon that he "should've known [she] was trouble from the first kiss." This leads into one of my very least favorite lyrics in the song: "Had your eyes wide open, why were they open?" Well, Bruno. (A) Why were your eyes open? Because there's no way you could have known her eyes were open unless yours were, too. And (B) What's wrong with kissing with your eyes open? Some people might call that very romantic. Perhaps this girl of yours just wanted to gaze into the face that so resembles the large professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino. You should be flattered.

Gave you all I had and you tossed it in the trash
You tossed it in the trash, you did
To give me all your love is all I ever asked
'Cause what you don't understand is

Bruno, it seems, gave this woman all he had, and she responded by tossing it in the trash, yes, tossing it in the trash. And what did he ask for in return? Oh, just ALL OF HER LOVE. Ok, Bruno. My research shows that you are 25 years old. Most 25-year-old males--in particular, wealthy, famous, music star males--are not generally the "commitment" type. Perhaps this girl was understandably wary about giving you the entirety of "her love" because she didn't want to feel like a moron when photos of you and some other pretty young thing invariably surfaced on PerezHilton.com when you went on tour in a month or two. Cut her some slack. But no...

I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya

I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for you, baby
But you won't do the same

Whoa there, Bruno. After berating this girl for daring to keep her eyes open while exchanging saliva with him, and further admonishing her for not giving all of her heart to him immediately, turns out Bruno is just cray-cray. He says that he would catch a grenade for this girl, slice his hand on a sharp object for her, jump in front of a (presumably speeding) train for her. He goes on to swear that he would endure all of the aforementioned pain, plus he would take a bullet to the cranium and even die for this female. Fine. So we, as listeners, are expected to believe that this is the deal: Bruno is very irritated with his lover for not fully reciprocating his feelings, gifts, etc. (Plus she has those pesky open eyes.) Despite all of his quarter-life-crisis frustration, Bruno still loves her. So much, in fact, that he would put himself in incredibly improbable, very ridiculous situations that would endanger/terminate his life, all for this lady. Are we expected to find this romantic? Because if my boyfriend played with grenades or knives, or jumped in front of a public transportation vehicle moving at high speeds, or fiddled with loaded guns anywhere near the vicinity of his brain, all for me, and ended up severely injuring himself (or worse)? I'd be freaking pissed. That's not love. That's extreme stupidity.

Black, black, black and blue, beat me 'til I'm numb
Tell the devil I said 'hey,' when you get back to where you're from
Mad women, bad women, that's just what you are, yeah
You'll smile in my face then rip the brakes out my car

Now Bruno exposes his masochistic tendencies. He reminds us of the traditional colors involved in the composition of most bruises (black, black, black, and blue), and then orders his lady love, "beat me 'til I'm numb." He follows this delicate request by insinuating that this girl whom he allegedly loves so much was actually conceived, born, and raised in Hell: Bruno asks her to give Satan his best when she goes back from whence she came. Bruno is once again starting to sound rather resentful of his romantic partner, and proceeds to generalize the entire female sex when he sings, "Mad women, bad women, that's just what you are." He continues with a gross assumption: "You'll smile in my face then rip the brakes out my car." Forgiving the fact that this is poor grammar, I fear Bruno is very mistaken in his belief that "mad women, bad women" would extract the brake system from his personal vehicle. Unless his girl is a hot mechanic, the chances of her possessing the knowledge and skill needed to break into his car and then remove the brakes are, in all realistic likelihood, very slim. I could see her slashing his tires, or perhaps running a key along the surely-bitchin' paint job Bruno has on his personal automobile. Those, I think, are much more realistic vehicular-centric revenge plans for a young single female.

Gave you all I had and you tossed it in the trash
You tossed it in the trash, yes, you did
To give me all your love is all I ever asked
'Cause what you don't understand is

I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya

I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for ya, baby
But you won't do the same

Again, we have the chorus, first expressing disappointment and anger at the song's inspiration for her apathy and ingratitude, followed by the singer's suicidal declarations of all of the highly dangerous situations he would put himself into for this female.

If my body was on fire
Ooh, you'd watch me burn down in flames
You said you loved me, you're a liar
'Cause you never, ever, ever did, baby

Now, Bruno--who is very into hypothetical situations of perilous nature--professes his belief that, were his skeleton engulfed in flames, the love of his life would cold-heartedly stand by and watch him burn. I beg to differ. Perhaps this girl was a gold-digging, lying shrew who had the audacity to play tonsil hockey without resting her eyelids and the nerve to feel inadequate love for Bruno. Fine, but this does not place her in the same, rare category of human beings who can stomach the smell of burning human flesh, and who lack even the tiniest iota of basic compassion, thus enabling them to stand by and watch any other person (let alone a friend or loved one!) turn to ashes. So she said she loved you, but then maybe she didn't. This doesn't make your woman a sociopath, Bruno. Besides, with all of the dark, fatal situations you've been yodeling about for the past couple of minutes, I think you, Bruno Mars, are the one we have to worry about.

But darling, I'd still catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya

I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for you, baby
But you won't do the same

No, you won't do the same
You wouldn't do the same
Ooh, you never do the same
No, no, no, no

And it is, finally, the last chorus of this hit. Bruno once again paints a depressing melodic picture of all of the very painful things he would do for this ungrateful wench of his, and expresses his chagrin at the fact that she "won't/wouldn't/never do the same" for him. You know what? Excuse this girl for not wanting to lethally hurt and/or kill herself for you, Bruno! Just because you are completely bonkers does not mean she has to be! If my boyfriend ever said, "Hey, babe, I love you, but only if you would personally catch a small explosive/cut your hand off/throw yourself in front of a speeding train/willingly allow a bullet to puncture your cerebrum/end your life for me," I would have to seriously ponder his own mental and emotional stability. I would also have to wonder if he actually loved me, since--I hate to break it to you, Bruno--you don't often put life-threatening conditions on love. I'd say your girlfriend was probably a very sweet person who just couldn't deal with all your extreme, Shakespearean cray-cray, Bruno. Sort of like how I can't deal with all your profoundly irritating lyrics and uninspired melodies. Thank you, Bruno Mars, for approximately 4 minutes of my life that I will never get back. (For what it's worth, I'd consider, at most, pricking my finger with a needle to recapture that lost time. But nothing more severe than that.)

the most beautiful equation

2011-04-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

Etudes is an exercise in beauty; to me, its brilliance lies in its choreographic elegance and almost mathematical playfulness of the musicality. The strict counts and clean lines give this ballet a stunning, unexpected quality--in a way, Etudes is the most beautiful science put to music. This got me wondering: is there such a thing as "beautiful" math or science? And my research led me to what many scholars agree is the "most beautiful theorem in mathematics": Euler's Identity.

Named for Swiss-German mathematician Leonhard Euler, Euler's Identity is the equality in analytical mathematics:

where e is the base of natural algorithms (Euler's number); i is the imaginary unit--i² = −1; π is pi.

The reason Euler's identity is considered remarkable is because of its mathematical beauty. The three basic arithmetic operations occur exactly once each: addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. The equality also connects five fundamental mathematical constants:

- The number 0, or the additive identity
- The number 1, or the multiplicative identity
- The number π, ever-present in trigonometry, the geometry of Euclidean space, and analytical mathematics
- The number e, which is the base of natural logarithms
- The number i, or the imaginary unit of the complex numbers

Euler's Identity is a special case of Euler's formula from complex analysis, which reads (for any real number x):

And notably,

since cos π = -1 and sin π =0, then it must be true that

This gives us Euler's Identity:

The simplistic elegance of this equation, in mathematical beauty standards, is stunning; many scholars have waxed poetic about this one equality. A poll of readers conducted by The Mathematical Intelligencer magazine named Euler's Identity as the "most beautiful theorem in mathematics"; in another poll of readers by Physics World magazine Euler's Identity tied with Maxwell equations (of electromagnetism) as the "greatest equation ever". There is an entire 400-page mathematics book written by Dr. Paul Nahin devoted to the identity: Dr. Euler's Fabulous Formula; the tome professes that Euler's Identity sets "the gold standard for mathematical beauty." After proving Euler's Identity during a lecture, Benjamin Peirce, the noted American philosopher/mathematician and a professor at Harvard University, said, "It is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth." Perhaps Stanford University mathematics professor Dr. Keith Devlin was most poetic: "Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler's Equation reaches down into the very depths of existence."

Etudes has the same sort of clean beauty and technical impressiveness as Euler's Identity, albeit in a completely different way. Etudes takes the precise structure of the ballet class and emphasizes the beauty behind pure technique, much as this equality stresses the importance and beauty of the most basic numbers and functions in mathematics.

studies--etudes, and an apology (of sorts).

2011-04-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

At the moment, we are preparing for the April 30 premiere of Balletaften: an evening made up of August Bournonville's Konservatoriet; Johan Kobborg's new work, Alumnus (composed of Les Lutins and Salute); and Harald Landers' classic, Etudes. For me, these evenings are an education unto themselves. I've learned more of the Bournonville style--new to me--through Konservatoriet. Being a part of the creation of Salute has forced me out of my comfort zone and into a girly, very "not me" sort of character; convincingly conveying a coquettish, flirtatious personality has never come very easily to me, a dancer who has always felt more natural in plotless works. And Etudes is a lesson in and of itself: the releve section gives me butterflies just thinking about it, and at the end of every rehearsal, my legs and feet are quite spent. All of these work-related lessons got me thinking about what other kinds of lessons I have learned, and am trying to master, this year.

I think I have changed a lot in the past year, both as a ballet dancer and as a human being. The results of lessons learned in the studio can (hopefully) be seen onstage, but the others--those daily bits of knowledge we pick up; the life consequences that teach us most of all--are less showy. In my second season with Royal Danish Ballet, I have learned to seize opportunities when they come, and to take those chances and run with them. I have come to realize that letting people in can be a good thing. This one is an unmastered study: in times of stress or frustration, I often become offensively introverted and shut people out, usually the ones closest to me. I now know that if a dinner utensil proves unnecessary during the meal, thus remaining clean, it is wise if one does not put the clean utensil on the dirty dinner plate at the meal's end. This is thoughtless and only increases the amount of dishwashing. I am trying to master a difficult lesson, which is that in times of work frustration or ballet-related stress, one should not bring those problems home. It can be very hard for me to leave whatever happens at work, at work; I used to be very good at this when I was younger, and I think it's extremely important for the preservation of personal sanity. And so, I'm taking great pains to remaster this skill. When one does laundry, do not forget about it and make sure someone is home to hang it dry. A very close call has caused this particular lesson to become quite ingrained in my brain. Do not, under any circumstances, return to old bad habits or dark places, no matter how enticing or comfortable they may seem. The consequences are simply not worth it, personally or professionally.

But perhaps most important of all: never take the ones you love for granted. My grandmother, who had been quite healthy, suddenly underwent kidney surgery recently, and I realized how fragile--and beautiful--life can be. I have started to look at my life and the people I love, and I have come to the distressing conclusion that I do, more often than not, take it for granted that my family and friends and boyfriend will always just be there for me. It is a shockingly easy thing to do, and often it isn't until we almost lose or do lose someone that we are jolted awake to the fact that the people we build our lives with are, in fact, very special commodities. Whether it's family, a friendship, a relationship, even a pet, I think the most crucial lesson I have learned also happens to be the most recent: to remind myself daily how freaking lucky I am to have certain spectacular people in my life, and to treat them accordingly. This lesson goes hand in hand with some of the above (not shutting people out; keeping work stuff at work; etc), and it's a new work in process for me, but I have a feeling that it is a very important study--and one that won't bring on any nervous butterflies.

inception, personified

2011-04-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

Visual artist Maria Fischer has created a beautiful literary representation with her book Traumgedanken, or "dream thoughts." The text is a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological, and scientific passages that provide different insights into various dream theories. But what makes this book particularly unique, and a dreamlike work of art unto itself, is its design.

The book is designed as a physical model of a dream about dreaming. The slices of reality used to assemble a story bring the different text excerpts together. They are connected by actual threads which tie into certain key words--with the threads personifying the fragile, confused nature of dreams. Five of the pages contain illustrations made out of thread, with their form and color relying on key words on the opposite page. In this manner, Fischer has stunningly created for the reader an abstract image of a dream about dreaming. Moreover, there are five pages where a large excerpt from a text of the opposing page is stitched into the paper, thus rendering the text illegible since the type’s actual surface is inside the folded page. Fischer uses this to express the enigmatic characteristics of dreams, as well as the idea of dream interpretation.

Fischer has, in my opinion, created something wonderful. She has managed to (literally) weave together art and science, and has wisely chosen a more "creative" science as her topic--that grey area of dreamland. I hope to one day get my hands on a copy, if only to see for myself what it is like to untangle the threads and discover dreaming...

Mental Disorders

2011-04-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

I find mental disorders, minimalism, and graphic design fascinating (albeit each in very different ways), so when I saw that freelance British designer Patrick Smith had combined the three, I was intrigued. Smith has designed a series of minimalist posters on the often touchy subject of mental disorders. This could have easily gone very wrong--and many, maybe, will think it did--but I find I quite like the way Smith simply, beautifully illustrates the core idea behind each disorder; perhaps because I am all-too-familiar with the third in this series, I appreciate the subtlety and dark wit behind the posters (not to mention the use of my favorite font, the eternally perfect sans serif Helvetica).

OCD.

Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Anorexia Nervosa.

Depression.

Agoraphobia.

Sassy Gay Friend, and Fun fun fun fun fun....

2011-04-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

Laughing is one of my favorite activities. I am (embarrassingly) easily amused, and I unfortunately have no shame when I laugh: if you ask almost anyone who knows me, they will tell you that I laugh/chuckle/snort/guffaw like a certifiable idiot. This does go completely against the silent, unapproachable, glamorous ballerina picture that's been so associated with my profession of choice, but I can't help it. (Nor can I help my insufferable snoring at night; it seems I am destined to be very loud and somewhat obnoxious at all times.) And when I am feeling at my very lowest, the first thing I do--following the obligatory quick personal pity party, of course--is go out in search of a good laugh. My friends and family are always excellent sources, but sometimes unavailable. And it is then that I turn to what might be the greatest cheer-up invention in the history of mankind: YouTube. I may have to search around for a bit, but it never fails to bring me some form of joy.

I had a couple of "must find humor" days this week, and YouTube didn't fail me. Today I will share two of the biggest laughs I got this week. The first comes from one of my favorites: Sassy Gay Friend. Introduced to me this summer by one of my very best, very own SGFs, the latest installment involves Black Swan, and how she could have been helped, if only she had a Sassy Gay Friend...

And the second video is an unbelievably magical performance of the now-infamous Rebecca Black's Friday video. Widely panned both at the Royal Danish Ballet and worldwide, the song and its accompanying video are generally agreed to be fantastically terrible. But this parody, starring the always-hilarious Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon, brings me so much happiness I have no words...it almost makes me like the song. Just a little bit. Enough so I'm only mildly ashamed of writing that.

With that, I leave you to enjoy the weekend. Remember: Sunday comes after Saturday, and always listen to your Sassy Gay Friend.

Helmut Newton

2011-03-27T01:22:00.000-07:00

We've changed our clocks this Sunday morning in Copenhagen, "springing ahead" into (hopefully) longer, sunnier days...and with this post I will "fall behind", with a glance back in time, behind the lens, a bit.

At the end of this lovely last weekend as a 21-year-old--complete with excellent food, wine, footwear, and company--I've decided to post some pictures from one of my favorite artists, the wunderbar German photographer Helmut Newton. Born in 1920 in Berlin, Newton's provocative photos appeared in magazines like French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, stamped with his own distinct style of erotic, highly stylized scenes. Newton's photos are perhaps often characterized by less-than-happy subtexts; nonetheless, I find his work to be incredibly beautiful, thought-provoking, and timeless.

Some of Helmut Newton's works, from different points in his long career.

The photographer at work, early on.

Two of Newton's fantastic "X Ray" ads: top, for Van Cleef & Arpels; bottom, for Karl Lagerfeld.

An ode to my sister

2011-03-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

My younger sister, Shelby, is wonderful. She's a beautiful, kick-butt tennis player with an enviable set of locks and ice-blue eyes. She has a sharp sense of humor and is extremely intelligent to boot. But perhaps the best thing about my little sister is her ability to say, think, or write completely mind-boggling nuggets of comedic gold. Sometimes her humor is intentional, and sometimes it isn't, but whenever I need the best kind of pick-me-up there is, I talk to Shelby, and invariably end up with a hardcore, laughter-induced ab workout. Her pearls of wisdom are legendary in our family, and here, for popular enjoyment, I have gone through some of my virtual records and compiled a short "Best of" list. These conversations take place with me, my parents, and my siblings, for the most part; some have dubbed these Shelbyisms, I call them magic, but whatever you call it, here is a glimpse into Shelby's incomparable, delightful noggin, published out of love and missing her...

--after arriving at her hotel for a tennis tournament--

Shelby: "The taxi driver told me all about Hammond, as well as the fact that his aunt was a rocketeer, and she got kicked in the shin during practice and then she died."

Dad: "Do you mean Rockette? That's the dancer. A rocketeer goes up in space."

Shelby: "Yeah! Rockette!"

Dad: "Oh, dear."

--discussing her weekend plans--

Shelby: "It depends where we meet up, then we'll sleepover at whoever lives closest. Everyone's kind of in the same area...like if we're in the city we'll sleep at her house, or if we're in Staten Island or Long Island, someone else's..."

Mom: "Then everyone doesn't really live in the same area, do they?"

Me: "When Shelby says the 'same area,' I'm pretty sure she means 'planet Earth.'"

Shelby: "Well..."

--writing a report on Dracula--

Shelby: "Wasn't Dracula written by Shakespeare? Wait...Dracula was a book, wasn't it?"

Me: (mouth agape)

Dad: "No. No. No, honey. It was Bram Stoker."

Shelby: "What?! It would be something he would write! I think if it was written by Shakespeare, it would have been much better, no offense to Brams Stoker or whatever his name is..."

--after a tennis lesson with her coach--

Shelby: "I was talking with Parsa, and he told me that tennis was 'uno et uno'."

Dad: "You mean 'mano a mano'?"

Shelby: "That's the one."

--after seeing a Royal Danish Ballet promo video clip I was in--

Shelby: "Oh my god, that's such a seductive picture. She's attempting to have sex with the camera."

--discussing her travels to a tournament--

Shelby: "So this morning, I found out that Facebook IS a sufficient form of I.D. while going through the airport security. (The lady liked my picture.) Solid."

Dad: "We are SO losing the War on Terror . . ."

--a Facebook post left on my wall--

Shelby: "I had a dream today where you and Dylan were sharing an apartment in the city. The apartment was underground, so when you walked through the door there was just a small entryway and then stairs that led to the living area. I was at the entryway and you and Dylan were in the living room. All of a sudden hundreds of medicine balls just fell through the ceiling! They blocked my path to the living room so I pushed all of them down the stairs and walked down. You and Dylan wanted me to leave because the ceiling was probably gonna fall down, but my black uggs were in the medicine ball pile and for some reason I needed them. So I went and found them, and I tried to find my pink tennis sneakers but I could only find one so I gave up. Then I met you guys back down in the living room, and Dylan and I made you clean up the medicine balls."

--discussing my dog's unfriendliness towards small children--

Shelby: "I wonder how he'd deal with, like, a 30-year-old midget?"

--an average family discussion--

Mom: "We should have named Shelby 'Belle.' You know what that means?"

Shelby: "Yeah, it means BEAUTIFUL! So fitting."

Finbar: "Ha! more like...bootyful!"

--chatting about our father's high school pictures posted on Facebook--

Shelby: "Out of all the pictures, the one of dad as a teenager gazing into the distance like he's a wannabe model...classic."

--a particularly epic Facebook thread between my siblings and I--

Shelby: "TEAM JACOB! We are not just people. we are human beings. And we have names. And occasionally feelings."

Dylan: "I would be embraced as the Alpha wolf because they would believe me to be a wolf god for having survived living with you for 17 years. Also these wolves would hate Twilight and anything associated with it because they have taste."

Me: "Shelby--see, used your name--I gotta give Dylan--second name!--the win. That comment was gold."

Shelby: "Do they drink wine with their pinky's out too? Classy. And Carling...I don't lose."

Dylan: "Clearly you haven't been educated on wolves because you would know they don't use their paws to drink...let alone pinky's."

Me: "No apostrophe, Shelbs. Pinkies. And don't be ridiculous. Wolves don't have opposable thumbs. Or real fingers. They couldn't grip a wine glass."

Shelby: "‎...how am I even related to any of you?"

Dylan: "That's a good question, Shelby. I asked Mom how you were related to me after you hatched."

Me: "One word, Shelbs: FedEx."

Dylan: "Awesome."

Shelby: "I always knew I came from a higher being...this explains everything. Thank you, Carling."

--chatting about Denmark--

Shelby: "I was looking at tournaments to go play near you. THERE'S ONE IN DENMARK! But it starts tomorrow."

Me: "Get on a plane!"

Shelby: "There's actually not one other upcoming tournament near you...but then again, my geography is terrible. So I could actually be completely wrong."

--doing a report on a saint--

Shelby: "I have to do a report on a saint...I have Mother Nature."

Dad: "You mean Mother Teresa?"

Shelby: "Yeah yeah, her!"

Dad: "Oh my god."

--miscellaneous chat conversations--

Shelby: "Whenever I click on the screen, I look and it says 'dad' so I feel like Dad for a second, and then I realize that it's me talking...and sometimes, I actually do want to talk to you. And you're semi-anti social so you hide yourself on AIM, and I'm not sure how to contact you because I can't see you on my list, so I sit and I send you mental messages, 'stop being invisible' or 'IM Shelby Talcott.' It never works."

--on what makes her feel like an athlete--

Shelby: "The fact that I'm homeschooled, travel all the time, and train in California doesn't make me feel like an athlete. But this smoothie with protein in it? Yeah. That's legit...anyway, so I was just thinking...if bones didn't exist, we'd all be like so jiggly."

--reporting from the homeland--

Shelby: "So we were watching 48 Hours Mystery, and it was the beginning and the guy was like, 'Next up on 48 Hours Mystery: a loving wife and mother is found drowned. Could it be the husband's fault?' and then we're all just chilling and Mom goes, 'This show is usually about killing spouses...Shelby take notes...' and then continued eating her grapes like nothing strange had been said. Dad and I exchanged a 'Whaaaat?!' look, and then the awkward moment was apparently put to rest...I'm still not sure why she said it..."

--attempting to cook--

Shelby: "So apparently I have to put the chicken in the oven, and STIR THE RICE on the stove. So much effort for something that I'm going to eat within 3 minutes, possibly 2."

--geography lessons--

Shelby: "What's the biggest state?"

Dad: "Alaska."

Shelby: "What's the smallest state?"

Dad: "Rhode Island."

Shelby: "Rhode Island's a STATE?"

Dad: "You're kidding, right?"

Shelby: "Yeah. Let's go with that."

--history lessons--

Mom (after Shelby described a horrible day): "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the show?"

Shelby: "Who's Mrs. Lincoln?"

--writing gift tags for Christmas presents--

Shelby: "Do I use an apostrophe after Talcott?"

Dad: "No, it's plural, not possessive."

Shelby: "Well, we own the gift . . . "

--eating Chinese food--

Shelby: "I CAN'T EVEN GET THE FRIGGIN' NOODLES FROM MY WONTON SOUP BECAUSE I'M USING THIS STUPID LADLE THING THAT THEY GAVE ME. SO DO NOT START WITH ME ON DAYS FROM HELL. I'M SERIOUS. It's so frustrating. I finally got a huge ladle filled with it, and IT FALLS BACK DOWN INTO THE SOUP."

--sisterly advice--

Shelby: "So. I listen to your list of good things/bad things. (Hint: it goes on forever). I give you possibly the most amazing advice slash short piece of literature that my mind has ever come up with in my long 16 years of life. It's a short step down from Shakespeare, that's how good it was. And then you leave the chat!"

--on difficulties "Facebook stalking" me--

Shelby: "I went to go Facebook stalk you, so I typed in "c" for Carling. Then, all of a sudden, I forgot your name and who I wanted to Facebook stalk. But then I remembered."

--going out to eat--

Shelby: "Mmmmkay this lady gave us the check already and what if I want dessert huh? She just wasted a tree."

--one of the ultimate Shelbyisms, on punctuation--

Shelby: "For a second I was like OMG how did she get the periods to go under the lines, that's so cool! And then I realized that they were just exclamation points, and I felt a little bit stupid."

Et Folkesagn

2011-03-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

On Friday, we premiere the new version of Bournonville's classic Et Folkesagn ("A Folk Tale"). With stunning new sets and costumes by Mia Stensgaard, the ballet is visually amazing. The story--to this American, at least--is another matter. Even for a ballet fairy tale, this one is far-fetched; I found I had to tweak very little from the basic summary to convey the funny nature of this Folk Tale. And so, without further ado, a synopsis...

ACT ONE
The sophisticated but emotionally fickle (read: moody; possibly cray-cray) Miss Birthe, from the posh Danish estate of Højgården, has ordered lunch to be served in the woods of her property. These woods are very near to a legendary hill that is said to be a hiding place for local trolls. (Because trolls live in Denmark, and their preferred dwellings are the interiors of small dirty mountains.) Birthe's maids are preparing the table for their nightmare of a boss, while some local peasants--who, for the record, clearly haven't bathed in a while, just saying--play around in front of Troll Headquarters. The head housekeeper sees the peasants' frivolity and is not happy about it. She stops their monkeying around, because everyone knows it's all fun and games until someone pisses off the trolls in the hill.

Then Birthe arrives to inspect the peasants and the lunch table setting. She is a whip-wielding charmer, scaring the crap out of the trembling peasants and throwing a veritable temper tantrum after tasting the wine. But there is no time to waste, since her stuffy, wealthy, sticks-in-the-mud group of guests is arriving, so what's been set out for lunch will just have to do. Among the guests are Birthe's fiancee, the handsomely bookish Junker Ove; and the social climbing, flamboyantly smarmy Copenhagen theatre director, one Herr Mogens. The peasants dance for the guests, and Herr Mogens' troupe from Copenhagen provides further balletic entertainment. Birthe loves to dance and is enchanted; ballet is apparently one thing that won't set her spiraling into a maniacal rage. The ladies who lunch and their equally stuffy husbands are disgusted by the peasants' shabby appearance, strange folksy dance moves, and general stench. They take it upon themselves to indulge in some proper, stiff, socially acceptable dancing, at the suggestion of their outrageous hostess. So far, Junker Ove has been pretty cold to his more-than-hormonal fiancee, who in turn, has been openly delighted by Herr Mogens' presence. Birthe dances with Herr Mogens the whole time, shocking her guests with her vulgar behavior: exposing her ankles, swinging atop a horse's saddle with her legs splayed, dancing so scandalously with a man who is definitely not her betrothed. The horror! At dusk, Birthe invites the party back up to her estate; when she offers her hand to Junker Ove, he basically says, "Look, B. You're crazy. I will never be with you." She's not too broken up about it, though, and takes Herr Mogens--who can see the excellent financial benefits of putting up with Birthe--and her guests back to her place to continue the festivities. Junker Ove stays behind, reading in the dark woods. Which was probably difficult.

Anyway, all of a sudden the hill opens. Turns out the stories are true: the sorceress Muri and beautiful mountain girl Hilda lead a motley crew of underworld creatures to the surface. Hilda approaches Junker Ove to offer him a drink from her goblet. Junker Ove is distracted by Hilda's beauty and accidentally pours the goblet's contents to ground...at which point the liquid bursts into flames and Junker Ove realizes the mountain glamazon was trying to off him. He refuses to give back the goblet despite Hilda's pleads; she tries to tell him that she was forced to offer him the fire beverage, but Junker Ove is not having it. Hilda and an infuriated Muri disappear as the hill closes. Dangerous elf girls appear, whirling around the exhausted--and, let's face it, probably totally confused--Junker Ove, trying to retrieve the goblet. They don't get the cup back, but they do manage to drive him into a state of insanity. Mission half-accomplished.

ACT TWO
Muri's sons, two trolls named Diderik and Viderik, are fusing pieces of gold jewelry for Hilda--with whom they are both in love, which causes some brotherly tension, natch. Viderik is the sweeter of the two, and so of course Mommie Dearest Muri has decided Hilda must marry her oldest son Diderik, whose personality is more acceptably...trollish. Hilda is just not that into Diderik; and Viderik is totally crushed, so he runs away while Hilda has fallen asleep. In her dreams, a strange vision appears about trolls mixing up two babies. The handsome Junker Ove and the goblet appear also. She wakes up and probably thinks something along the lines of: "Duh! Of course this explains why I'm the only sweet, hot one in this mountain! I was switched with a troll baby at birth!"

Meanwhile, Muri has invited all the trolls to an engagement party for Hilda and Diderik. The hill's most distinguished creatures attend the noisy, boozy event: the light men; vampire girls; the dead animals; the headless giant (with his detached head in tow); and many others. Hilda performs for this...peculiar audience, and once they have worked themselves into a fine drunken frenzy, she and a dismayed Viderik escape the trolls together.

ACT THREE
Back in Denmark, the harvest work is done and now the farmers are seeing a preacher who can apparently cure the sick. Hilda and Viderik come upon this crowd, and Hilda--who seems to dance whenever she doesn't know what else to do--performs for them. The farmers are in awe of her dance, and Herr Mogens, who has been watching from afar, is taken aback by her beauty. She might be even hotter than that sack of crazy, Birthe, plus maybe she's not crazy! But the general atmosphere of enthusiastic male drooling dies down when Junker Ove (literally) stumbles in, still suffering the hallucinating effects of the elf babes. He is still--somewhat impressively, two acts later!--holding that damn goblet, but finally drops it. Hilda recognizes him as the studmuffin from her dream. She picks up the goblet while slowly bringing him back to sanity and life through her dancing. And her hotness. Hilda gives Junker Ove his sanity back, and he recognizes her as the mountain babe. They are flaunting their joy of being reunited, somewhat insensitively, since poor old Viderik watches some handsome dude steal his lady love. Herr Mogens, meanwhile, is not happy about this unwelcome intrusion on his plans to inherit Højgården via an advantageous marriage. He organizes blue Gendarmes to hunt down Junker Ove, on grounds of insanity, and the intruding company (aka, Hilda).

In the meantime, Birthe is madder than ever. Her maids refuse to obey her. (Personally, I don't blame them. The woman is a nightmare who abuses her handbell. She would drive anyone completely bonkers.) Her already-fiery temper is reaching a (surely record-breaking) boiling point, and in a rather unbecoming fit of hysteria she faints. Just after Birthe's dramatic collapse, Hilda arrives, holding the goblet. She is recognized by the housekeepers and maids as the true heiress to Højgården. Birthe wakes from her tantrum-induced stupor to find she has been living a lie her whole life: she is, in fact, the real troll daughter of Muri, and is expelled from the estate.

In an attempt to find help from Herr Mogens and his peers, an enraged Birthe approaches them...only to realize they are all bewitched by grains thrown upon them by Viderik, who is apparently drowning his romantic sorrows in carbohydrate-centric pranks. Birthe forgets her rage when she lays eyes on the amusing scene--oh, she is just on an emotional rollercoaster at this point--and fairly immediately falls foul with Viderik, who has recognized her as his sister. Muri and the rest of the troll family turn up to welcome their long-lost family member. But Birthe has no intentions of following them to ther hill; she's sort of used to a decidedly cushier lifestyle by now, so I get this. Muri has an idea. A wheelbarrow full of treasures persuades the greedy Herr Mogens to take "troll for gold." Birthe, who is all about drama and theatre, doesn't care that her flesh and blood and fur totally just dumped her, because now she can finally have her dreams come true: she will be the newest star in Herr Mogens' Copenhagen theatre troupe.

Back at the estate, people are delighted. They've gathered for a summer wedding, between Junker Ove and Hilda. Even the rich people have relaxed a bit: gone are the neck-high lace aprons and outrageous hats for the ladies; and the men have even dared to show some spunk and (gasp!) roll up their shirtsleeves. The dancers from Copenhagen provide entertainment, including the recent addition of Birthe, while Junker Ove and Hilda waltz into summer light of wedding. And the trolls remain at their native soil--after all, according to the official synopsis, "one could not do without them...could we"?

shine a light

2011-02-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

Before moving to Denmark, I had very little appreciation for light or lighting design. I come from a place that, under normal global circumstances, experiences all four seasons--each for a relatively normal length of time. But unlike the motherland from whence I came, Denmark sometimes seems to have only two seasons: a very short, albeit gorgeous summer; and one unbearably long, dark, cold winter. I never had to appreciate lights before. And honestly, until a lightbulb in a lamp at home went out, I took it for granted that once I flicked the switch, the desired effect (lightbulb on or off) would be produced. I took no time to appreciate the setting in which these bulbs were placed, no notice of the fact that when executed well, lighting can be both functional and stunning.

Scandinavians, on the other hand, have learned quite well how to fully appreciate light. When you spend a good chunk of the year with infinite shades of grey providing the backdrop to your daily life, suddenly lighting design becomes something worthy of near-worship. I have come to appreciate the simple, sleek, functionally beautiful world of light. Most recently, I was introduced to the magical Ingo Maurer. A German industrial designer who specializes in light design and installations, Maurer's work is truly magnificent, and to me, demonstrates just how illuminating a bit of light can be.

A Maurer LED installation--like a blanket of stars.

I have a thing for skeletons--I'd kill for this to hang somewhere in my house one day.

Imagine this above your dining room table. When I picture that, the word "fantastic" immediately comes to mind.

I bet no one ever rained on Ingo Maurer's parade. Just saying.

Functional, check. Beautiful, check. Mission accomplished.

no glove left behind

2011-02-10T06:03:00.000-08:00

In my most recent post, I shared some of my deepest, most irrational fears. I failed to include a story that my parents love to bring up at expertly chosen group events (dinner parties, holidays, etc.). I decided I would give this tragically neurotic tale a post all to itself, to stand alone in all its shining, slightly crazy glory.

I spent the first 5-6 years of my life living in Brooklyn. I loved it there--we lived in a condo in Prospect Park with high ceilings and lots of light. I shared a bunk bed with my younger brother, and I had the top bunk. I loved this because it meant I had the window that looked into the living room where, on nights I couldn't sleep, I would peek down and watch grown-up TV (which in our house was often Law & Order). Our neighbors were perfectly eccentric: the gay couple next door used to give us free office supplies from their business, cool things like triangular highlighters with a different color neon per point; Mei-Ling and her husband lived downstairs, and when she got pins in her leg after an accident, she made her leg X-rays into electric yellow tshirts for her friends, and in the process gave me my favorite pajama shirt for the next three years. (I really, really wish I still had this shirt.) I went to Catholic school several blocks from our home. Every morning on his way to the subway to go to work, my dad would walk me to school. Along the way, there was a huge, beautiful cherry blossom tree that bloomed in the spring; these days, my dad would often pick me a flower and I'd stick it in my hair, accessorizing my kindergarten ensemble. It was a fun neighborhood: most of my clothes were from the countless street fairs that would come through the area; movies and TV shows were often being filmed at a quasi-famous cafe a few blocks from home; and we had the best bagel and Chinese takeout places on planet Earth. Life was lovely, and I was a toddler. I should not have worried about much.

But then my parents let me start ballet, at a studio just a bit further from home than my school. (And when I say "ballet," I actually mean "ballet/tap/jazz/creative movement," all in one hour.) I loved the classes--the teacher was sweet, and I had my own pink bag (read: a smartly designed box-with-a-shoulder-strap) with a ballerina and the words "Ballet Bag" in flowery cursive on it. I got to wear a leotard and a skirt, and I loved jumping over the scarves and moving across the room. The actual class, once it got started, was never the problem. It was the moments just before and at the very beginning of class that proved somewhat difficult for me.

Out of nowhere, I decided that my parents had signed me up for this beautiful extracurricular activity so that they could get rid of me. (I think perhaps the four-year-old me had sneaked in one too many episodes of Law & Order.) I dreaded the moment when my mom or dad would drop me off at the studio, because I was certain that would be the last time I would see them, and that I would have to make my own way in the world, living at the studio forever, suddenly orphaned. My parents, naturally, thought I was insane, but I didn't want to quit the classes. So I devised a surefire plan, one that would prevent me from ending up in an Oliver Twist sort of situation.

I decided that grown-ups like their clothing. So my plan was this: every week, when either my mom or my dad dropped me off for my ballet (and more!) class, I asked if they would "accidentally-on-purpose" leave behind an article of clothing. For my mom, this was usually a glove, or maybe this one beautiful scarf she often wore, or sometimes sunglasses. My father would leave his gloves as well, and on warmer occasions, his entire trench coat. This Cinderella sort of plan was, to me, quite foolproof: despite the fact that they would knowingly "forget" some item or accessory at the studio each week, I chose to ignore the "knowingly" part. Once the glove--or whatever--was left behind, my parents would go home and realize they had lost or forgotten a prized bit of clothing. Each week, they would make their way back to the studio to retrieve said forgotten token, and this retrieval mission would always be magically sync up perfectly with the end of my class. My parents would have picked up their missing item by this point, and upon seeing me, I figured they would think: "I suppose we'll take her, too. I mean, might as well: she's here now, and hey! I've got my glove back."

Perhaps this early display of neurotic tendencies should have been a big, fat, glowing red flag for my parents, a sort of flashing: BEWARE. YOUR ELDEST DAUGHTER IS THISCLOSE TO CRAZY. But they were game, both then and now, to put up with my nervously-wired self. And besides, my plan totally worked: they were never even late to pick me up from ballet class.

my fear of (almost) everything

2011-02-01T13:02:00.000-08:00

Since I was very young, I have been scared of many, many things. Most of these are highly improbable, nearly impossible, and stem from nothing and from nowhere. I'm wired, I think I have come to learn, as a neurotic, incredibly nervous individual; and on top of that, I have masochistic tendencies which prevent me from overcoming some of the greater phobias I possess.

One of the earliest fears I remember having is that of burglars. This, perhaps, is not so uncommon--particularly for a child growing up in Brooklyn. But the burglars I feared were not your garden-variety, vase/TV/jewelry/old family heirlooms-stealing thieves. In my head, these men (always men; always clad in classic black ski mask burglar gear) would enter my family's house, uninvited and in the middle of the night, as the best burglars are wont to do. They would steal our most valued possessions: the painting from my great-grandfather's time in the Korean War, a Stickley chair passed down by some ancestor on my father's side, our piano, my mother's jewelry, whatever stinky cheese my father had decided to stock our fridge with that week. And after they had pilfered all they could in terms of our material assets, they would invariably prey upon the more valuable, less replaceable goods. In my self-centered mind circa ages 4-7, the principal asset, then, was me. Because every skilled burglar wanted a little neurotic girl for his collection; more than any material possession, every masked intruder desperately sought a child, specifically one who cried when the toes of her socks weren't exactly aligned, one who wore her hair to school in a towering ponytail stacked with terry-cloth hairties to produce a specifically desired vertical effect, one who--after breaking her arm--wouldn't let anyone sign her cast for fear the arm would break a second time (thus making her the only six-year-old-with-a-broken-arm on the planet with a perfectly blank white plaster cast). When my family moved from Brooklyn to Long Island, this niche dread waned; but a few years later, when the similarly-aged Elizabeth Smart vanished without a trace from her upper-middle-class suburban home, the phobia returned with a vengeance. I feared all and any repairmen, postal workers, UPS delivery men, Jehovah's Witnesses who came to the house. It took years of burglary/kidnapping-free existence (helped enormously by the discovery of Ms. Smart, alive and [physically] healthy) for this deep-rooted fear to fade, but eventually it did.

Somewhere during the Elizabeth Smart phase of my burglar/kidnapper phobia, I developed a healthy fear of general health. To be clear, I don't mean that I was frightened of being healthy: on the contrary, I was a perfectly unsick almost-teenager who was convinced that a horrible disease was just around the corner waiting to stake its claim on her physical self. Where this particular fear came from, I cannot be sure, but I do know it was not always there. I had never coped well with physical pain--or even the common cold, for that matter--but one day, I was sure the freckles I had decorating my body were early signs of skin cancer. The irritated eye I woke up with after flying out to LA? Blindness. The migraine, a tumor; the cold, SARS; the rash on my chest that came after borrowing detergent, inflammatory breast cancer (this last diagnosis came from the hypochondriac's favorite website, WebMD). The lump under my left armpit was also a tumor, or--despite its lack of proximity to my breast--a sign of breast cancer. Turns out that the freckles were just freckles; the irritated eye was merely a reaction to the smoggy LA air; the migraine was simply a migraine; the cold was a common reaction to winter; the rash was a result of new detergent on sensitive Irish skin; and the lump was determined to be a point in my arm where two veins shared a ventricle (or something equally, decidedly non-lethal, I can't remember what the ultrasound said exactly). Despite the fact that none of my sure-to-be-fatal ailments have ever turned out to be anything resembling life-threatening, I held onto the deep-rooted fear of terminal illness. In fact, I went one step further in trying to "embrace" my baseless phobia by obsessively watching House, behind the (true! but pathetic) excuse that Hugh Laurie was--and remains--one of my favorite actors. The show glamorized everything I dreaded most. Children would have headaches that turned out to be actual malignant tumors. Rashes would be symptoms of a horrifically rare, tropical malady. Leg pains would turn out to be stage four tongue cancer, or a tipoff to a ticking aneurysm (my greatest medical fear of all). If there was one thing I could take comfort in, if there was one thing I learned from watching House, it was this: it's never lupus. (Except for the one episode where it was, in fact, lupus.)

Perhaps my biggest, deepest, most publicly noticeable fear is a somewhat normal one: I am deathly afraid of flying. Many people are; however, I've been told that very few people let it show as much as I do. I have read books on the subject. I know the safety statistics like the back of my hand (and not just for air travel in general: when flying an airline for the first time, I'll often Google the company's safety numbers and flight craft information). I have no past horrible air travel experience or real personal reason for this particular fear. I also have no shame when I board a flight--during takeoff, I assume the "safety position" of bending over at the waist with my head between my knees. I white-knuckle the armrest (and on one unfortunate occasion, the actual arm) of the unlucky passenger seated next to me if we hit the slightest bit of turbulence; I am that idiot clapping when we make a landing. I don't eat or drink on flights, because I fear getting out of my seat to use the bathroom in case we crash while I am on the toilet. (I have this fear because I am scared of dying on the toilet, naturally.) In instances of flying during less-than-stellar weather, I have been known to ask flight attendants, "Is it safe to fly today? I trust the pilot, but if it's not completely safe, he knows it's alright with all of us if he grounds the flight, doesn't he? Because I don't mean to be rude, but I am only 21, and I am not finished with my life yet." I have cried out of sheer terror upon seeing the safety video shown while the plane taxis down the runway; I have since taken to listening to my favorite music during this bit of any flight, thus ensuring that if we crash, I won't know how to locate or operate any life-preserving devices, but I will go with the dulcet tones of Florence + the Machine in my ears. And although I have been seated in airplane emergency exit rows many times, it is never because I would be calm or good at operating a door during an actual crisis situation--it is because I want the few inches of extra leg room.

I have many other phobias and "active dislikes": images of or references to slit wrists; the sounds of messy eaters consuming bananas; the words moist and dank; waking up with a mouse in my bed; the return of a medieval plague; having a rusty nail go through my fingernail like in that one split-second frame of the creepy movie that causes all that trouble in the American remake of The Ring. Almost all of my most-consuming fears are without any sort of basis, and come from nowhere. I'm slowly but surely learning to deal with them--the burglar/kidnapper one has basically been erased!--but it is not without effort, or a healthy sense of humor. And it is certainly not without the knowledge that, except for that one episode, it's never lupus.

(I don't even know what time it actually is.)

2011-01-27T00:39:00.000-08:00

So instead of posting from New York, I ended up letting my blog take a little vinterferie of its own. After 17 months away from home, it was both weird and wonderful to be back. I could have done without the seemingly unstoppable blankets of snow falling from the sky, and the bone-chilling temperatures--honestly, as I sit here in the Iceland airport writing this, the weather seems sweltering in comparison!--but the slice of home was a long time coming.

My siblings are all fun-size grownups now, and while I love them each to pieces, I would not want to stand on the other side of the net from any of them on a tennis court. (Also, it was mildly unnerving to realize my 16-year-old brother is now taller than I am, with the 12-year-old Super Sib not too far behind...) It is always weird to "go back" once you have gotten used to living on your own. Because I'm one of those people who never bothered or cared to obtain a driver's license, I become almost completely dependent on my parents for the transportation virtually necessary to get around suburban New York. In a way, though, it is amazing to feel exactly the same as I did when I was 15: sitting in the front seat of the family "truck" listening to Car Talk with my dad (or suffering through the current incoherent Top 40 hits on Z100 if my sister's at the controls); making Sunkist deliveries to my mom, feeding her orange soda addiction; engaging in spirited, juvenile verbal battles--and subsequent girly makeups--with my sister; going to Starbucks with my brothers; all of that stuff was so identical, it's like stepping into a time machine.

The vacation wasn't perfect, and it wasn't always relaxing. (Also, it was absolutely FREEZING.) But it was wonderful, in its own wacky way. I remembered so many things I loved about America. Mike & Mike in the Morning, on ESPN. The tacky awesomeness of the New York Post (and my love of newspaper crossword puzzles). The gruff, unique friendliness of New Yorkers; not always apparent, yet in moments of united excitement--for instance, the day before the big Jets-Steelers game--obvious, and awesome. Being in a city that is constantly awake and huge and alive. Big, multi-level American shopping malls and grocery stores and wholesale clubs. Starbucks, and its new 31oz. cold drink cup size. Non-stop viewing of Grand Slam tennis, at least in my household. Getting carded at a bar for the first time in my life, very exciting. Barnes & Noble, the Gap, CVS, Stop & Shop. Tombstone pizza, "real" peanut butter, garlic knots, Trader Joe's beer. The tabloid magazines, football that isn't soccer, car dealerships, Netflix. Going to the movies with my sister and finding our own, unassigned seats. Taking a walk to get ice cream with my brother and having to cross an amazingly busy intersection. Converse sneakers that don't cost the equivalent of $100. 24-hour diners, and the messy subways, and the incomparable people-watching.

I could go on, but I won't. I was happy to visit home, but also happily surprised to realize that I cannot wait to be back in Copenhagen, to go back to work and see my friends. For now, though, I wait in Iceland, where it is pitch black at 9:15am, 4:15am in my head, eerily quiet, and not a sign of Bjork yet...

Vinter i København

2011-01-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I lied: my 'next post' will not be in New York. It will be written from Copenhagen, on my last night before returning to the United States of America, land of the free and home of the spray cheese. But before I bid this lovely little big city a fond farewell for two and a half weeks, an ode to winter in Wonderful Copenhagen...

A nippy, miraculously sunny December morning in Copenhagen inspired a faux postcard photo shoot. Subsequent editing produced what could very well be next year's Christmas card. Or, more likely, not--due to my tendency to procrastinate when it comes to sending out snail mail en masse.

The first snow, captured on my way home from a Tornerose performance. The streets were in a perfectly deserted state for me to capture the moment. Thank you, lack of traffic.

I have 'a thing' for many things: Vesterbro, sunshine with minus temperatures, and icicles. Provided, of course, they stay attached to the rooftops and window awnings from which they glisten. They're beautiful and mean--as Juno MacGuff so perfectly said, 'Like Diana Ross.'

Though I'm not as fond of the glacial masses of ice decorating the streets of Copenhagen as I am of the infinitely more delicate icicles dangling from places on high, I still enjoy appreciating them for what they are. Which is: large chunks of ice.

I like to think I open up on this blog, and reveal things about myself. But some things I will keep private, such as the full story behind this photograph. Suffice to say: this moment was captured at the end of an unbelievably perfect day, in the middle of a meteor shower. Sådan.

No Surprises

2011-01-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

One week into 2011, and already I have experienced high highs (in a Facebook contest, my father won a round-trip ticket to Copenhagen) and lowish lows (my back went out yesterday, which resulted in me missing a performance of En Skærsommernatsdrøm and spending most of the day/evening lying on my back doing nothing). But I think for the most part, 2011 will be a good one...minus the plethora of dead animals that seem to be falling from the sky or washing up on shore lately. I am not a fan of resolutions, as they always seem to fail a mere month into the new calendar year, but I am a fan of fresh starts and new beginnings. (Luckily for me, the entire planet gets one every 365 1/4 days or so.)

On Monday I leave for New York, where I will spend our vinterferie, aka winter break. After 17 months away from the homeland, I get 16 days with my crazy, wonderful family. I hate flying--more than just about anything else, as a matter of fact--but for these people, I'm willing to put in nine hours or so of pure personal terror. And so, the next time I post on this blog will probably be in New York. Until then, one of my favorite pieces: Claude Debussy's L'apres-midi d'un faune.

Glædelig Jul til alle!

2010-12-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine once did her own version of 'My Favorite Things,' and inspired by her (and Christmas), I'm going to try my own version. A Merry, Happy, Wonderful Christmas to everyone...

A Charlie Brown Christmas and hot cups of cocoa,
oversized sweaters and candlelights' glow,
holiday songs that make me want to sing,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Eskimo kisses that melt the mean chill,
carolers singing tidings of good will,
cinnamon buns and snow angels with wings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

When the snow falls, when the wind stings,
when I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things--
and then I don't feel so bad.

Stockings hung over the mantle with care,
bright lights and mistletoe placed everywhere,
pine trees all dressed up as though they were kings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Rosy red cheeks on cold smiling faces,
huge winter boots with millions of laces,
parkas and mittens and lights hung on strings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

When my toes freeze on the ice rink,
when I'm feeling mad,
I simply remember my favorite things--
and then I don't feel so bad.

The Giving Tree

2010-12-21T23:16:00.001-08:00

To begin with, I would like to thank everybody who read my last post, and those who sent such kind words about it: the thoughts and comments meant a lot to me. It was a difficult post to write (and perhaps even harder to post), but I am lucky to be both in a ballet company and in a personal place where I felt it was the right time and supportive environment in which to finally, fully let go.

In three days, it is Christmas--perhaps my favorite holiday aside from Talk Like a Pirate Day. The decorations, general atmosphere, eggnog, cheesy television specials (and their cheesier accompanying soundtracks)...I love it all. My favorite Christmas things are not always traditional, though, and so today I'd like to share with you one of them. Though it is not by definition a 'Christmas story,' I really love to read it at this time of year; and that book is Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. The simplicity and beauty of the story, coupled with his childlike drawings and that perfectly bright green cover make this one of the best books to read any time of year, for 'kids from 1 to 92.' And so, Shel Silverstein's text, with a photograph by someone very special to me...

Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy.
And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest.
He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples.
And they would play hide-and-go-seek.
And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.
And the boy loved the tree ... very much.
And the tree was happy.

But time went by.
And the boy grew older.
And the tree was often alone.
Then one day the boy came to the tree and the tree said, "Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy."
"I am too big to climb and play," said the boy.
"I want to buy things and have fun. I want some money. Can you give me some money?"
"I'm sorry," said the tree, "but I have no money. I have only leaves and apples. Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city. Then you will have money and you will be happy."
And so the boy climbed up the tree and gathered her apples and carried them away.
And the tree was happy.

But the boy stayed away for a long time ...and the tree was sad.
And then one day the boy came back and the tree shook with joy and she said, "Come, Boy, climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and be happy."
"I am too busy to climb trees," said the boy.
"I want a house to keep me warm," he said.
"I want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?"
“I have no house," said the tree.
"The forest is my house, but you may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy."
And so the boy cut off her branches and carried them away to build his house.
And the tree was happy.

But the boy stayed away for a long time. And when he came back, the tree was so happy she could hardly speak.
"Come, Boy," she whispered, "come and play."
"I am too old and sad to play," said the boy.
"I want a boat that will take me far away from here. Can you give me a boat?"
"Cut down my trunk and make a boat." said the tree. "Then you can sail away ... and be happy."
And so the boy cut down her trunk and made a boat and sailed away.
And the tree was happy ... but not really.

And after a long time the boy came back again.
"I am sorry, Boy," said the tree, "but I have nothing left to give you, my apples are gone."
"My teeth are too weak for apples", said the boy.
"My branches are gone", said the tree. "You cannot swing on them -"
"I am too old to swing on branches," said the boy.
"My trunk is gone," said the tree. "You cannot climb -"
"I am too tired to climb," said the boy.
"I am sorry," sighed the tree. I wish that I could give you something...but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry...."
"I don't need very much now," said the boy,
"Just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired."
"Well," said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could,
"Well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest."
And the boy did.

And the tree was happy.

Portions for Foxes

2010-12-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

Though sprinkled with sarcasm, this blog of mine has maintained a fairly sunny sort of appearance. (I mean, hello: one of my recent posts was a few thousand words on unicorns. Doesn't get much more magical than that.) I don't plan on changing things, but I now feel comfortable enough to include a post on a partly cloudy subject I know far too much about, and that is the ever-so-touchy subject of eating disorders.

Yes, I used that phrase. The one so often associated with ballerina dancers (though I can vouch for my colleagues over on this side of the pond and say: we eat). It's a combination of words that has become a cliche in this profession, and yet has achieved this "cliche status" in whispered tones and behind closed doors.

Recently, however, a dance critic for the New York Times stirred up quite a fuss when he wrote some very uncomplimentary things about the appearances of two New York City Ballet principals, each of whom he apparently found to be looking too heavy for his taste. I’m sure he thought that he was being clever, but really his comments were just mean. (I’m not going to dignify it with a link; if you can use Google, you can find it.) So the topic of dancers and their weight problems has, for the moment at least, emerged from its closet.

And so now may be a particularly good time for me to share my story. As someone who has been down in that dark, addictive, and yes, empty vortex, I can tell you firsthand that it's not fun, it's not pretty, but it's not impossible to climb back out.

I grew up in a large, loud, typically dysfunctional Irish-Catholic family. With four siblings, multiple pets, busy schedules, and lawyers for parents, I was raised in a loving environment of organized chaos. There was a strict "no bullshit" policy in effect at all times; democracy stopped at the front door; if questions were not answered directly, the phrase "move to strike as non-responsive" was a perfectly acceptable request. And when it came to food--well, it wasn't really an issue. We ate healthy, we ate until we were full, we had desserts (after dinner, of course). The only "rules" applied to eating were: (1) my parents weren't chefs, home was not a restaurant, so eat what you were served, make something yourself, or don't eat; and (2) soda was only on the menu on special occasions--even at McDonald's, even on pizza night, the choices were milk, juice, or water. (Always stated in that order, I can remember so clearly.)

So. I grew up not thinking twice about food. Like most children growing up in America, I of course had an exaggerated sweet tooth, but my parents did make sure I ingested the occasional bit of the good stuff. I didn't know what calories were until middle school age; I was blithely unaware that there were heaps of people who believed carbohydrates to be evil; I had no qualms ordering (and consuming, with gusto!) a large chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with cookie dough toppings and chocolate syrup when my grandparents took us to Carvel for "special order night." Blessed with a quick metabolism and a heavy after-school schedule of ballerina dancing, the only thing I was told to think about was my genetically high cholesterol. I didn't think about it, but I was the reason for the skim or 1% milk in the fridge.

As I got older, I only got more serious about ballet. But I never once thought about my body shape. I was getting accepted into very good schools and summer programs. My parents had generously given me a favorable combination of genes which resulted in my legs being noticeably longer than my torso. My boobs fell into the "slim-to-none" category, and my leg muscles were long; I was oddly toned for a young teenager, but aside from that and my canoe sized feet, I didn't think twice about facing a wall of mirrors clad only in a leotard and tights every day. I never weighed myself except at the doctor's for my yearly checkup, and even then, I was more concerned with being taller than my mother. (Mission accomplished, and easily. The woman is 5'1" (1.55 m) on a good day.)

And then, things started to change. I was never "big," not for life and not for ballet. I wasn't a waif, but I was ok. I turned 16, and it started to become clear to me that maybe my tendency to consume large amounts of chocolate and generally unhealthy, teenagerish sorts of foods every day wasn't really going to help my energy or my figure; I knew that this speed-of-light metabolism thing wasn't going to last forever. I knew that one year I would wake up and those quarts of eggnog consumed during the Christmas season would suddenly show themselves somewhere between my hips and my thighs. So, on an Easter vacation to Disney World of all places, I ate healthier. And I found I did have more energy, and hey! I did like sushi. Salad wasn't bad either. And when I got back home and back to ballerina class, other people told me the part that I hadn't noticed: I got compliments on losing a few pounds. This, I think, is when it started.

I had never before been much concerned with my physical appearance. I didn't consider myself to be beautiful, and I'm not writing this to throw myself a pity party: I didn't think I was hideous, but I convinced myself I was too smart and too serious to be worried about my body shape or my face or even how I dressed. But with these first compliments, I realized that it felt good to be noticed for my appearance. I had a new goal: to be the epitome of fitness and health and overall awesomeness. Achieving this goal would, in my head, make me a better dancer, generally improve my life, and maybe even erase those two or three years when I had the trifecta of awkwardness--braces, glasses, and a bad haircut. (Yes, there's blackmail photographic evidence.)

So I amped things up. I kept eating healthy. I replaced the frappuccinos with coffee, like a real grownup. I joined a gym with my dad, and worked out on the elliptical machine for 45 minutes to an hour almost every day, usually after I got home from ballet, to Green Day's American Idiot album. (It was a place called Planet Fitness, which advertised itself as a "judgment-free zone." But I was, in fact, totally judging myself.) I started weighing myself, and saw the evidence that the pounds were dropping off. That scale rapidly became my altar, and the numbers could make or break my day.

It took some time, but within a couple of months I had crossed over from looking healthy and fit to looking like I really could have used a month of those Carvel ice cream nights my grandparents used to take us out for. Teachers spoke to me, my friends and of course my parents expressed concern, but I didn't need to hear it. I saw it. For me, the problem wasn't that I wanted to be so thin. I could see that I looked sick in the mirror. I was actually embarrassed to put on a leotard; I grew to loathe my workouts because they just made me exhausted; I hated thinking about food and weighing myself all the time. I wanted to be normal again, to order an ice cream and not feel an obsessive need to go do situps right afterwards. But I couldn't stop. Somehow, it was easier to exhaust myself maintaining an underweight status, armed with the knowledge that at any moment I could legitimately pig out and it would in fact be good for me; it was easier than just admitting I had a problem.

During this first trip down the dark and twisty rabbit hole, I went away to a wonderful summer program for ballerina dancing where they helped me put on 15 much-needed pounds while still letting me participate in the program. (I had auditioned for them when I was at a happier physical place.) And I felt better. In the summer dorms, I had no scale--I had friends, sunshine, a summer schedule of nothing but ballerina dancing, and direct orders to enjoy food. I learned to enjoy my life again, and in the process improved my dancing enormously over the course of the summer program.

But the dark empty pantry that was my "safe haven" was still there. I had just taken a little summer vacation away from it. After the summer program ended, I moved away from home for the first time (for ballet, natch) that fall, when I was 17. Suddenly, I had grownup things to think about on top of my ballerina dancing and making sure to avoid the dark scary place. I had to clean an apartment; I had to buy groceries and remember toilet paper and get up with the alarm and all of this business. I had to put up with a roommate who could have been, shall we say, second cast for a part in the ballet version of “Mean Girls.” On top of this, I was getting wonderful opportunities at the ballet, and I have a type-A personality. So in times of stress, I chose to not eat. Or rather, I ate "just enough." And down the rabbit hole I went again, this time further than I'd gone before. By Christmas break of that year, I was 5'7" (1.7m) and tipped the scales at under 100 pounds. I had not gotten a correction or compliment in class since November.

The school where I was studying at the time did not sit idly by while I wasted away, I should note; and nor were my parents uninvolved. I was sent to the ballet school's psychologist--a wonderful woman who was the mother of two dancers, and so understood the added pressures beyond the physical ones. But as a then-stoic person determined to guard what I thought to be my one control in life, she could only help me to the extent that I was willing to open up and start helping myself. My ballet teachers also reached out. (Outside of the classroom, everyone wanted to help me except for me.)

I understood why my teachers felt they could not and should not correct or compliment me in class: not only would it send the wrong message to the other students, but it would certainly be sending the wrong message to me. My parents, from home, did what they could in terms of emails and keeping in contact with the ballet school and phoning me often. I had to keep a food log for them, but it was easy enough to invent a menu. The lies were somehow easier to digest than actual food.

Things got so bad that just before Thanksgiving, my father made a trip to visit me. It was, to say the least, not the most pleasant of visits--for him or for me. There was a weigh-in, at which point I faced the normal daily sight of numeric, black-and-white proof that I was literally fading away, only this time, my father saw it too. The sudden lack of privacy at my newly-found altar turned what had become a normal daily ritual into a painful experience. I remember distinctly that right after this, he cooked me a delicious (if oddly-themed) Indian masala dish for dinner, which in typical Irish-Catholic fashion, we ate in uncomfortable silence/awkward conversation in my courtyard. I remember him having to force me to eat a large brownie sundae from Ghirardelli, something I previously would have devoured with glee; and that the last meal before he left consisted of me crying at a crowded outdoor cafe and him looking so incredibly sad. This I will never forget.

The holidays that year were not much better. At Thanksgiving, I can recall my mother serving me a second helping of spinach pie, and me eating it in tears. Christmas was virtually treat-free for me that year, something I shan't soon repeat. After every meal at home, I was miserable. Not because I wanted to look this way, not because I enjoyed being cold all the time or because I liked circles under my eyes or because I was losing my hair more than the usual "shedding." It was because I was exhausted, and I desperately wanted to shake myself awake, to climb out of this hole I had dug myself so deeply into. But I couldn't stop. Part of me actually feared reaching a "normal" weight--in a sick way, it was sort of enjoyable to be in a position where I could have pigged out, eaten everything in sight, and still have eaten more.

I went back to ballet school in January, no better mentally or physically. But then, one Friday night, my mom called. In an over-two-hour conversation, she asked of me one thing: to please not make her bury her child. And I don't know if it was what she said, or how she said it, or the fact that my mother--always a very strong person--was crying. But I hung up the phone, and somehow I knew that in the morning, I was going to wake up and start eating like it was my job. Because I wanted two things more than anything, to achieve what I had trained for the better part of my life to do; and to not end up in a coffin any sooner than necessary. And so I did.

I remember getting up that Saturday morning and stopping on the way to ballet class for one of my favorite breakfasts since I was little: egg-and-cheese on a roll, with chocolate milk. And slowly but surely, I kept eating. I started to put on much-needed weight. My color (well, what little I had even before the problems started) returned, the circles under my eyes went away, and I started to realize that not only did I feel better in the studio, but I had extra energy for life in general. And by the year's end, I was getting corrections again; the other students and faculty had stopped looking at me like I was on the verge of death; and I was able to face myself in the mirror for the first time in a long time.

For the next three years, I stayed out of the rabbit hole, though I had half an eye on it. Things were good: I was healthy and happy and ballerina dancing. And then things were fantastic. In the winter of 2009, I auditioned for and got a dream job here, in Denmark, with the Royal Danish Ballet. I could not have been more scared-excited-but-mostly-excited. When my season ended, I went home for the summer to spend time with my family, get my life into four 50-pound bags to move overseas, and to experience my first summer-program-free vacation ever. And during what should have been a summer of relaxing and enjoying family and having a good time before turning my life upside down, I went to my favorite dark scary place. I ignored my parents this time, consciously realizing what I was doing--or rather, not doing, aka putting enough good food in my mouth.

My initial reasoning for cutting back on the whole eating thing was multi-faceted. By my logic, during the summer I was “only” going to be taking one class a day, at best; not being in a full-fledged summer program meant no five-classes-a-day schedule for me. Thus, I would not be burning nearly as many calories, and so would not be able to take the "eat whatever I want" approach I normally would during the summertime.

Furthermore, I was suddenly faced with the reality that I was moving across an ocean to dance ballet in Europe, the home continent of ballerina dancing. On top of the giant stress of leaving everything I knew behind for a strange new city and culture, where I may or may not have fit in or adapted or made friends, I had this thought: this was Europe. I had to arrive thin and in shape and not look like I had spent the summer sitting on my butt doing nothing. And so this time, despite the warnings of my mom and dad, I ignored them. This time I was doing it for my fantastic new job, so their words fell on my deaf--and hungry!--ears. Once again, a time I should have enjoyed was spent worrying, packing up, and wasting energy on not eating.

And so I arrived for my brand new job looking frail and small and suddenly realizing that my physical state could very well get me sent right back home. I was embarrassed. I felt like a foreign idiot.

Luckily for me, however, my airplane had taken me to a very excellent place. When my dad left me in Copenhagen, after spending a little over a week helping me get settled (and trying to feed me), it was hard. I was suddenly all alone, with a big problem of being frighteningly small. I didn't understand the language or the currency. I knew no one, and from my appearance upon my arrival, had understandably alienated a good chunk of possible friends for the time being.

After a start-of-season meeting with my boss, who was amazingly understanding about the whole situation, I was sent to a nutritionist. The ground rules were simple: I understood that I would not be put on stage until I got better. (And if I didn't get better...well. I would not be a dancer. Simple as that.) The instructors were very encouraging in terms of making it clear that I was being given a very big chance to get better. And there were several people in the company who did overlook my scary physique--some treated me normally, and some were there for me to talk to about it directly, but they all ended up making me feel what I had been searching for all along: I felt accepted, and like I could possibly fit in as myself.

There were a couple of dancers who reached out to me from the beginning. It was uncomfortable for me to open up to new people about something that had become so intensely personal, so much mine in a way, but I realized that these people wanted to help me. And as a new foreigner with a lot of baggage, I had to make a choice: I could keep on keeping to myself, keep hanging out in my little empty corner (because that had worked so well before). Or I could bite the bullet--and maybe a burger while I was at it--and step out of my comfort zone and start talking honestly to these people, and to myself, and hopefully make friends in the process.

I went for the latter. And it worked: these friends let me whine and cry and be scared. And in return they gave me lots of hugs, lots of advice, and lots of free therapy dressing room cot time. I got help, I woke myself up, I developed some truly wonderful friendships from it--and I haven’t shut up since.

Some of the other dancers who at first seemed distant or reluctant to talk to me later told me that they were just wary about making a connection. This company does have a (dysfunctional, awesome) family atmosphere, and when I arrived, I certainly didn’t look like I was going to be around for very long--forget in Denmark, I’m just talking about planet Earth. But as I gained weight and confidence, and continued my new-found hobby of not-being-quiet, I found that a lot more people started to talk back. I didn’t look so much like the Grim Reaper’s girlfriend anymore. When people weren’t distracted by the bones jutting out and the malnutritioned translucence of my already-fair skin, I think I was a lot easier to talk to and look at--not Audrey Hepburn, mind you, but also? Not dying.

The nutritionist helped, to be sure, but what really made me "get over myself" and start eating--and liking it!--was the strange sensation that in this weird, lovely new place, I could just start over. Life was exciting here; I had found people, places, and a culture that made me want to get out of bed every morning and soak it all in. And on top of that, my new job and the theatre where I got to go in to work every day quickly became the best things about my daily life. (Also, it's one of the most difficult things on planet Earth to resist the powers of Copenhagen’s famous bakery, Lagkagehuset.)

So I started eating again; and I won’t lie, the occasional beer didn't hurt either. And it paid off--once I started looking and feeling healthier, I started getting onstage.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m “all better.” I’m not sure I’ll ever be “all better.” There are still days where the last thing I want to do is put on a leotard and tights and stare at myself in the mirror. There are days where all I want to do is curl up under the covers and maybe skip lunch and then everything would feel "under control." But unlike before, I know better now; I know that skipping a meal is not going to make anything better. Besides, quite frankly, things--work, personal, etc.--go better when I execute the simple task of putting food in my mouth. Plus, dinner parties and in fact most events involving large groups of friends usually involve good food (and often, good wine!). And for me, right now, my life is too good to waste away.

This post is not meant to be a guidebook on how to overcome an eating disorder. It’s not, by any means, a sort of “Dr. Hamburger, or: How I Learned to Stop Hating Myself and Start Loving Food.” This disorder is highly personal, and my experience is just one of many. I consider myself lucky every day to have gotten out of the dark place when I did, and yeah--I am proud of it. But it was such a big part of my life during an important period of growing up, and so it will be with me in some ways forever.

Writing this was sort of like getting over a breakup. For a while after the fact, you know it was the right thing to do, but you still can’t really talk about the relationship without feeling crappy; there are even days when you miss things about it. But then, so slowly you don’t even notice it, those feelings stop. You find you don’t think about your ex-whomever so much, and when the subject does come up, you can talk about it--maybe even laugh about it--without wanting to cry and run into bed with a tub of Chunky Monkey and watch all six seasons of Sex and the City.

I had to go through the same sort of process with anorexia. It had become the most personal, deep-rooted part of me over a long period of time. And even when I let it go, I was not immediately ready to talk about it, or even to be truly, totally “okay” with food. It took a very long time for the scars to heal, for me to realize that I really am indescribably better off without this thing in my life. It took time and effort and daily, conscious thought, but I managed to swap my former scary “safe haven” for a much nicer new one: life, warts and all.

In Honor of a Bear on a Unicycle

2010-12-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

I have a dear friend who dedicated a survey-post to me on her blog, and so this dark and snowy Sunday morning, I will return the favor. In Lily Watkins' honor, then, I fill out this survey...

- When’s the last time you ran?
Surely, dear survey-writer, you jest: this ballerina child can barely manage walking (in boat-sized Adidas sneakers, natch) the relatively flat terrain which makes up Copenhagen. Unless someone is chasing after me, or trying to steal my tropical-flower-themed purse, I generally try to avoid maintaining a gait in which both feet are suspended in the air for any amount of time. For one thing, I am not very quick. For another, I look like a moron--I distinctly recall attempting to run in order to retrieve a stray tennis ball during a match my mother was having with some friends. Upon seeing me "run," one of my mother's friends inquired, "Is she joking?" To which my loving mother responded, "You know that Friends episode with Phoebe running? Yeah..."

- Do your jeans have rips, tears, and holes in them?
No. I did go through my Mary Kate Olsen-let's-pay-out-the-butt-for-destroyed-denim phase, but thankfully for me, my bank account, and my general dignity, I find I now prefer jeans sans holes. (I will not, however, deny owning a beloved pair of high-waisted black jeans, a style which my dad might dub "mom jeans.")

- What are you dreading right now?
I'm not dreading much. Except there is one distressing thing. It's Sunday morning, pre-9am, and this is a time/day combination I haven't experienced in a while. I'm wondering how I'm going to be once I really wake up, and hoping the answer isn't "nightmarish." Also, just in unrelated news, I need coffee like...ten minutes ago. Preferably a vat-sized serving.

- Do you celebrate 420?
Does this numerical figure carry any significance beyond being just that: a numerical figure? Because if not, I do not know what you're talking about.

- Do you get the full 8 hours of sleep a night?
Ha! As a ballerina child/amateur insomniac, I'm lucky if I get eight hours of snooze time a night. But you know, I once read that some major geniuses in history didn't sleep much. I'm sort of hoping that one day, after a night of restlessness and normal sub-par sleeping time, I wake up to find I am armed with knowledge about EVERYTHING.

- The last person who grabbed your ass?
It's funny this question should be included, since in this country, people really seem to enjoy that area of my body. I'm not a fan of my rump, to be honest, but I'm glad that other people find it pleasant. For example, the other day, nine individuals found some reason or other to touch the junk in my trunk. I'm just sayin'.

- Have you ever been on your school’s track team? 
Please refer to question 1, and afterwards enjoy the fact that I will admit to being a baton twirler for several years before the "toss-turn-around" proved to be my downfall.

- Do you own a pair of Converse?
Is this even a question? Of course I do. As a New Yorker, as someone who enjoys shoes that look better when almost-gross...of course I do. Canoe-size, full of holes, perfect.

- Have you ever kicked a vending machine?
No. Vending machines often dispense chocolate, which is equal with puppies (and just below unicorns) on my "things-I-love" scale. And I would never kick a puppy.

- Do you watch Trading Spaces?
No. I did, though, and I will say this: that one episode where the designer put fake flowers on a bathroom wall? Maybe it was cute for a hot second--and that's a BIG maybe--but can we just say one word: MOLD.

- How do you eat Oreos?
Better question: How could anyone not eat Oreos?!

- Could you live without a computer?
As much as I cherish the idea of the Pony Express and snail mail and sock hops and all thatn...hell no. Lord knows I love me some Information Superhighway. Plus, I Google everything. I'm not even exaggerating.

- Who or what sleeps with you?
Robert Downey Jr. BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE.

- What do you do when you’re sad?
Oh, I am the queen of a good pity party. One of my very best friends once told me, "I feel like you're either laughing hysterically or crying." And, being a person of major excellence, he's completely correct--I'm not often ambivalent (or, to use popular vernacular, meh). When I'm upset, tears are always involved. I will call my dad and tell him everything, usually twice since the first time around he's often unable to understand me because the snottiness and sniffling that accompany my tears get in the way of normal comprehension. Then I'll take a shower, because as everyone knows, when you are crying a lot, nothing is better than sitting in a nice warm shower for a very long time, mixing the water from the shower head with the water pouring out of your face. And finally, I go home and put on pajamas. I always have chocolate milk and maybe a few cookies, and I will watch a proper fantastic movie to take my mind off of upsetting things. (This is usually Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in times of distress, since Robert Downey Jr. can take my mind off of the worst sort of day.) Then I usually sleep like a log, and wake up with those I-went-to-bed-after-crying, puffy eyes that look horrendous but feel really fantastic.

- Last time you saw your best friend?
Well...I have a couple of "best" friends. My dad, for one; I haven't seen him since he left me in Copenhagen a year and a half ago, returning to the homeland with a new cargo bike and minus a kid. But I get to see him--and my mom and super sibs, other best friends--in about a month when I finally return for some "vinterferie" fun back in the good ol' USofA. This brings me large amounts of happiness. Plus, I can restock up on peanut butter, the real(ly-fake) kind that I grew up on. And my Copenhagen best friend is currently taking some time back in the States as well. It is a bit weird to not have him around every day, considering he can more often than not finish my sentences; I was getting used to only saying half-thoughts. (I kid, of course.) He'll be back soon enough though, and when he returns I expect we'll have a proper reunion involving food, beverages, and maybe even Kiki & Herb...

- Is anyone on your bad side now?
Oh, for sure: SUNDAY MORNING. Also, I'm not a huge fan of Mother Nature at the moment. Because of her, I am forced to dress like an oversized onion--in layers--every morning, and you know, snow is beautiful, really I do love it, but enough with the biting wind already. My face is angry enough about all the ballerina stage makeup I'm wearing at the moment, it doesn't really need any other things drying it out and making it stage a protest on my skin. Thank you very little.

- What’s the first thing you do when you get online?
I usually open three tabs: GMail, my virtual mailbox of choice; Facebook, my virtual drug of choice; and BoingBoing, my virtual source of necessary "weird news" of choice. The most entertaining part usually is a tie between BoingBoing and my Spam folder in GMail, the contents of which never cease to make me wonder about the source.

- What are you doing tomorrow?
Tomorrow is Monday, a day usually reserved for sending out angry signals to the universe. But during December at the ballet, Sunday is the new Monday; and Monday is the new Saturday night, so I have a free day tomorrow! And a special free day at that: we're having the annual Julefrokost (Christmas lunch) tomorrow night, and a right proper party after the sit-down bit, so I am eagerly awaiting the plates and plates of yummy food in my near future. The schnapps? Not so much. But whatever, I got a new LBD and everything, so bring on the buffet, please!

- Do you return your cart?
No, and I'll tell you why: I always use a basket. (I assume this question refers to the grocery store and not, I don't know, go-carting.)

- What noise do you hear?
There is a cacophony of sounds going on in my head every time I take a glimpse out my bedroom window at the snowy outdoors. It sounds something like: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Also, my stomach is growling. I'm hungry. And in the mood for the best meal ever invented, aka brunch, but no: I have a ballerina show to do. Gotta give Princess Aurora some Temperament at lunchtime.

- What’s the last thing you purchased?
Last night, I was really exciting. Too lazy to cook, I stopped by a pizza shop on my way home and got a pizza sandwich. I love pizza sandwiches. And this one had like fancy ham and some cheese and vegetables all warm and melty and delicious...anyway. Oh and for some reason, I was totally craving Orangina--a drink I haven't had for, like, ever--and I went a little nuts and picked up one of those.

- What brand are your pants right now?
I am currently wearing my favorite, aforementioned (see that question about jeans) high-waisted black jeans, and they're from a wonderful Swedish brand called Acne. Who also created the LBD I'm wearing to Julefrokost tomorrow, by the way. And may I just say: Kudos to them for such good clothing, but also for managing to create a successful brand named after what I know to be an often crippling teenage skin ailment. I mean that takes skill.

- Ever been to Georgia (the state)?
I have been to the Atlanta airport. Which, for the record, is HUGE, and made me really really frantic. Thanks a heap, Georgia, your ginormous airport's a real peach.

- Do you watch movies with your parents?
I always did. And perhaps the most awkward of these magic moments occurred when my father and I went to the movies in Miami. We saw that classic father/daughter film--wait for it--Borat. Ah, the memories...so many moments to pretend I wasn't sitting next to my dad...

- What song best describes your life right now?
Is there a tune that basically says, "My apartment's kind of messy but it's ok, and my job is actually fun, and aside from the minus-temperature weather I'm actually really enjoying life right now, plus I have a new LBD that is comfy, and dinner plans with good friends tonight that I'm really looking forward to?" That'd be great.

Unicorns!

2010-11-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

With the premiere of Tornerose a mere four days from now (coinciding with one of the most beloved homeland holidays, Black Friday!), life in Det Kongelige Teater has been very busy and stressful and anxious and sparkly. Ergo, lack of posting is a result of lack of free time/energy. And because my recent existence revolves around all things related to a certain princess who is fond of really, really, ridiculously long naps, this post will have nothing to do with ballerina dancing or Tornerose or the theatre, but everything to do with a subject near and dear to my heart: unicorns.

The word unicorn comes from the Latin unus ('one') and cornu ('horn'). Today, when we think of a unicorn--and when do we not?!--we basically picture a horse, only with a fancy horn on its forehead. But the traditional image of a unicorn also has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hooves added to the already-fabulous mix. In The Unicorn and The Lake, children's book author Marianna Mayer waxed poetic about my favorite equine: "The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He could be captured only by unfair means, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison." Basically, Mayer is eloquently saying what I already know to be true, which is: Unicorns are perfect, plus they can neutralize poison.

A lot of people probably think unicorns are found in Greek mythology--because let's face it, there's tons of magic in Greek myths. But unicorns were actually first noted in Greek accounts of natural history. Like many rational-thinking people, Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of the unicorn. Which they of course found in India. The earliest description of a unicorn comes from Greek physician/historian Ctesias who described them as "wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half in length and colored white, red and black." That famous thinker Aristotle comes next, talking about two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass". Greek geographer Strabo says that in the Caucasus there were "one-horned horses with stag-like heads." Pliny the Elder (a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher with an awesome nickname) tells tales of three one-horned beasts: the oryx, an Indian ox, and finally, "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits in length." We've also got Cosmas Indicopleustes, a 6th century merchant of Alexandria (who I'm guessing just went by "Cosmas"). He made a voyage to India, and in his subsequent works on cosmography, describes a unicorn--but not, as he puts it, from actually seeing one. His description comes from four figures of unicorns in brass held in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. Cosmas reports that "it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive; and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe and sound." So his description is a little less magical than Mayer's, and also apparently, unicorns were sort of like cats when it came to falling, in the sense that they always landed on their horns.

Unicorns are all up in the Bible, too: an animal called the re’em is mentioned quite a few times in the Hebrew Bible, usually as a metaphor for strength. The re'em is described as a wild animal of great strength and agility, with a mighty horn or horns. This description fits the Assyrian rimu, another creature often used to personify strength. The rimu is shown as a powerful, wild mountain bull with large horns, and was often used in ancient Mesopotamian art, with only one horn visible. The Authorized King James Version of the Bible used "unicorn" as a translation for re'em, and thus gave us a familiar animal known for its wild nature. The American Standard Version translates this term to "wild ox", which is not nearly as magical, in my opinion. But perhaps my favorite Biblical unicorn use comes in the classical Jewish understanding of bible. This did not identify the re'em as a unicorn but instead spoke of the Tahash animal. The Tahash was thought to be a "kosher unicorn" (Wikipedia's words, not mine!) with a multi-colored coat, and it only existed in biblical times.

Fast forward to medieval times. There's a popular story going around in which a unicorn, representing the Incarnation, is trapped by a maiden (who is obviously the Virgin Mary). As soon as the unicorn sees her, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. MAGIC. The medieval idea of the unicorn was related to the popular tales of "beguiled lovers." Then you also had some medieval religious writers interpret the unicorn and its death as the Passion of Christ. Older myths often referred to a one-horned beast that could only be tamed by a virgin, so of course, many medieval authors turned this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary. The unicorn was also big with the court people--for some 13th century French authors, "the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin." And when humanism became popular, the unicorn got a bit more secular; it started to symbolize "chaste love and faithful marriage." But perhaps my favorite medieval use of the unicorn occurred in my current country of residence. Way back in the good old days, the royal throne of Denmark was made of "unicorn horns." (Which we now know were almost definitely the horns of the Narwhal, a medium-sized Arctic whale, but whatever.) Danes used the same material for ceremonial cups because the belief that unicorn's horns could neutralize poison was still the cool way to think. At this time, unicorn products were not cheap, since everyone was hearing about their aphrodisiac qualities and other alleged medicinal virtues. Plus, unicorns were said to be able to determine whether or not a woman was a virgin. Which I'm sure on more than one occasion would have been very useful, if that sort of thing was considered an important factor.

So do unicorns exist? Hunts for an actual animal have added a further layer of mystery to the unicorn. Example: There were many prehistoric bones found at Unicorn Cave (new vacation destination!) in Germany's Harz Mountains. In 1663, some of these were picked out and rebuilt by the mayor of Magdeburg, Otto Von Guericke, into a shape resembling a unicorn. Guericke's so-called unicorn had only two legs, and was made from fossil bones of a Woolly rhinoceros and a mammoth, with the horn of a narwhal stuck on for full unicorn effect. Another view came from Baron Georges Cuvier, who said that since the unicorn was apparently cloven-hoofed, it must therefore have a cloven skull--which would make the growth of a single horn impossible. To disprove this, University of Maine professor Dr. W. Franklin Dove, aka A Heroic Man Indeed, artificially fused the horn buds of a calf together, which resulted in the appearance of a one-horned bull.

In addition to actual hunts and experiments, there is historical evidence which makes one trend very clear: Once upon a time, there were a whole bunch of animals that really looked like unicorns. One example comes from the thought that the unicorn is based on the extinct animal Elasmotherium, which is a giant Eurasian rhinoceros. Elasmotherium didn't really look like a horse at all, but its selling point was its large single horn in its forehead. It became extinct about the same time as the rest of the huge ice age animals, but two sources dispute this: Nordisk familjebok (Nordic Familybook) and science writer Willy Ley. These guys say the animal may have survived long enough to be remembered in the legends of the Evenk people of Russia as a huge black bull with a single horn in the forehead. And they might not be crazy--13th century traveller (and inspiration for modern-day children's game) Marco Polo claimed to have seen a unicorn in Java, but his description of the animal makes it clear today that he actually just saw a Javan Rhinoceros. (But he probably died believing he'd seen a unicorn, and how awesome of a thought is that?)

In addition to these examples, there are several other animals who have been mistaken for unicorns throughout history. The Biblical vision of Daniel is to blame for the single-horned goat's confusion with a unicorn (as is the work of self-described "Wizard" Timothy Zell, whose webpage I strongly urge you to visit, because words cannot do justice). And as mentioned before, the narwhal was also falsely identified as a unicorn, along with the oryx--an antelope with two long, slender horns--and the eland, a South African antelope with a history of mythical importance.

But the interest in unicorns is not only in the distant past (and not exclusive to me, which makes me feel marginally better about the state of my brain). Just two years ago, in 2008, a new possibility for the inspiration of the unicorn came with the Italian discovery of a roe deer with a single horn. Single-horned deer are not uncommon, but what is very unique is the placement of the horn in the middle. The scientific director of Rome's zoo, Fulvio Fraticelli, has described the central horn placement as "a complex case." He also says that the placement of the horn could have been the result of some type of trauma in the life of the deer. And according to Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Science in Prato, “this single-horn deer is conscious to its uniqueness and does not come out a lot, always hiding."

So. Unicorns maaaybe don't actually exist. But they were fairly important in a lot of different cultures for many, many years. Plus, they're pretty to look at, and make appearances in current fantasy movies like Harry Potter and Stardust. I say for that, we keep them around. (Also, you never know when one will swoop in to neutralize some pesky poison. I'm just sayin'...)

Sleeping Beauty

2010-11-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

We have left the Lake known as Svanesøen, and are preparing to enter into a 100-year nap: Christopher Wheeldon's new Tornerose. In plain English, this is Sleeping Beauty. (And in my personal English circa when-I-was-two, due to pronunciation problems, it was known as "Sleeping Doody," but that's just some potty humor for you.) Probably one of the most beloved and well-known story ballets, it is very exciting to be involved in an updated version of a storied classic. Christopher Wheeldon is adding some twists and updates of his own, but I won't spoil the surprise. Instead, I'm here to give a little summary of the basic fairy tale version we all grew up with...

Once upon a time, there was a magical kingdom. All the best fairy tales involve royalty (and, in my opinion, unicorns, but even though this one doesn't have any, it's still pretty good so stick with this). The King and Queen of this kingdom get down to their royal business and make a beautiful pooping, crying toy more commonly known as a baby. A baby girl, to be precise, named Aurora. The sort of name which brings to mind sparkly things and daisy chains and rainbows and yes, unicorns. (Actually, the story says she is named after "the dawn," but whatever.) And because the King and Queen are respectable royal people--who, let's face it, love an excuse to throw a good party--they decide to hold a big Christening for their new bundle of joy. Everyone's invited, including some very special, extra-sparkly guests: the Fairies, led by the Lilac lady. See, the King and Queen are super well-connected, and the Fairies are important. You want them at your baby's Christening. Because even though their names are ridiculous (in this version, Beauty, Grace, Knowledge, Song, Temperament, and Dance; translate into Danish at your own risk!) and thus a bitch to write on the place cards, this bunch gives really good baby presents. Seriously, they'll make your kid sort of fabulous.

Anyway. The Christening is on. The Court is celebrating the new Princess, and the fairies are (literally) flitting about, hither and yon, giving out their presents. Everyone is having a fantastic time; this might be the most fun baptism ever. And then the Big Sack of Crazy crashes the baby bash. The BSoC being the evil fairy Carabosse--sort of the Wicked Witch of the West to the Lilac Fairy's Glinda. Carabosse is not happy. Girl loves a party, and SOMEONE forgot to invite her to this one, which happens to be a biggie. But instead of doing the normal thing and getting wasted and maybe giving a somewhat crude, socially awkward speech at the dinner like any sane uninvited guest would, Carabosse has to go one step further. She has to give a gift, and she has to make that gift totally awful and ruin everybody's fiesta, and also screw up the innocent baby Aurora's life. Which doesn't really seem fair, given that despite all the gifts she's getting, one thing Aurora still lacks is the ability to hold a pen (or quill) and write invitations. It's not her fault, but Carabosse doesn't see it this way, and so her gift to Aurora is that sixteen years from now on her birthday, the Princess will prick her finger on a spindle and die. (Carabosse really knows how to kill a mood. And, apparently, children.) Of course everyone totally freaks out. This is turning into the worst Christening ever. But the Lilac Fairy is all cool as a cucumber and comes up with a solution. She can't undo the curse, which doesn't seem fair to me but whatever, but she can alter it. Princess Aurora will prick her finger on a spindle on her sixteenth birthday, but she won't die. She will just fall asleep for 100 years until wakened by the kiss of a prince. Shockingly (to me), everyone accepts the idea of taking a giant coma sixteen years from now, and Carabosse leaves in a big evil huff. Then the King orders all spindles and needles and sharp things in the whole kingdom to be burned, hoping that will help. Obviously it won't, and clothing is just going to be that much harder to make for the next decade and a half, but the people do it because he's the King and he said so.

Fast forward sixteen years. It's Aurora's birthday, and finally she's getting a party she'll remember. Before, y'know, the Big Nap. Villagers are dancing around with garlands; the Princess and her friends are stupidly playing with roses--hello, Cursed Baby, thorns are spiny!; and the King and Queen present their baby girl with four eligible stud muffins, by which I mean princes. (And to think, all I got for MY sweet sixteen was permission to adopt an adorable mutt from a Harlem dog shelter.) The princes are beautiful and hail from exotic lands, which of course means they're unoriginal and completely unaware that this pretty young thing is not allowed near anything sharp: they all give her roses. Aurora's easily pleased, being a generally happy-go-lucky sort of gal, so she's having a grand old time. And then she gets a creepy present from a disguised guest. It's--wait for it!--a spindle. Aurora's all intrigued, but I gotta say, if someone gave me a GIANT NEEDLE on my birthday, I might wonder about their motives. But it's not my party, so I can't argue (or cry if I want to). Her parentals are freaking out, with good reason, but Aurora's sixteen now. And we've all been there: when you're sixteen, you know everything and are in fact superhuman and can't get hurt. So the Princess ignores her parents and dances around with the spindle before accidentally pricking her finger on it. No one says "I told you so" even though this would be an entirely appropriate time to do so, but I mean come on, everyone's thinking it. Turns out the disguised guest was Carabosse, that sly fox, but she hightails it outta there before the studs in tights (aka the princes) can fight her. And at the perfect moment, the Lilac Fairy appears. (She knows all about being fashionably late.) She reminds the kingdom: "Guys, I fixed this sixteen years ago. Seriously, you don't remember this?" Then she casts a slumber spell over the entire kingdom so that they will only wake up when Aurora does, and everybody falls asleep for a really, really, enviably long nap.

So. Everyone's taking a quick coma. And during the snooze, we meet Prince Desire. (Yes, that's actually his name. I know.) He's the one, the good kisser who's going to wake up the Princess and save the day. He sees this in a vision, put upon him by the Lilac Fairy. In the vision, he's in a forest surrounded by sparkly perky ladies in nymph form, and through them all comes Aurora. She's something of a babe, and Desire is all obsessed with her after this vision. So he does his thing, going through the vines and nature crap that have grown around the castle over the past century, fighting the shrubbery and mossy madness (oh and Carabosse), until he finds her: the Sleeping Beauty (hello, title moment!). And in the easiest part of his journey, he goes over and plants a big wet one on the Princess. She wakes up, followed by the rest of the kingdom. Everyone's a little groggy and covered in cobwebs and probably has a mean case of morning breath and eye boogies, but other than that they all look damn hot for having been in a 100-year nap. (And more importantly, no one seems to have suffered any major brain damage!) Desire and Aurora waste no time. They're like in "move-in-with-me" phase within a few minutes, and declare their love for each other, which is a little fast for my personal taste but I mean, to each his own right? The King and Queen are just happy this strapping young lad woke everybody up on time, and of course they give their blessing. Wedding preparations begin immediately--kudos to this kingdom for party-planning efficiency.

Wedding Day: there's a literal menagerie of guests. Everyone and their mother is invited, plus birds and cats and fairies and all that. Special guests perform for the new couple; court people are dancing; everyone is in hot sparkly royal outfits; and Desire and Aurora are totally that lovey-dovey-we-literally-just-met-but-it's-true-love couple that everyone loves and secretly also hates just a little. Third time's the charm, since at this party, no one gets cursed and no one goes into a coma. The whole thing is a rousing success, the King and Queen can finally take that vacation to Rio they'd been meaning to go on forever, and they all live happily ever after.

Christopher Wheeldon's Tornerose is a bit different from this traditional sequence of events. But I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag, and you get the gist. It's a fairy tale in every sense of the word, with beautiful Tchaikovsky music (and wonderful new costumes and sets by Jerome Kaplan). The only thing that's missing? Unicorns. But I can get over that easily enough--fairies are pretty damn magical, too.

Halloweenies

2010-11-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

There are many things I love about living in Copenhagen: my work, my friends, the city, the culture and fun new language, the eerily-reliable public transportation system, etc. etc.... But, as with most things in life, there are a couple of things that still take some getting used to. Among this short list of "less-than-desirables" is the fact that the Danes do not celebrate the awesomeness that is Halloween. Sure, they have Fastelavn in February, where children dress up in costumes and hit large barrels--in the good old days, filled with a live black cat; but in these animal-friendly times, filled with candy and oranges. And there's something about "'fastelavnsris', with which children ritually flog their parents to wake them up on the morning of Fastelavns Sunday (Quinquagesima)." But nothing is quite like Halloween, that magical last October day when you can be anyone or anything you want, and even better you can get away with blackmailing strangers for sweets. And so, some friends and I decided to have a little slice of creepy home and had a costume-centric shindig. Preparing for the Halloween fest was maybe even more fun than the party itself, especially since now that we are all alleged grownups, we really went all-out with the costumes. I went as Mrs. Lovett, of Sweeney Todd fame; and my best sassy pal went as the Age of Enlightenment. Here, then, was how I spent my Sunday evening of tricks and treats...

Thanks to the power of makeup in the hands of good friends, I managed to look fabulously undernourished and mildly murderous. This is also photographic evidence that I mysteriously own a rolling pin.

Mrs. Lovett and the Age of Enlightenment.

Sol Invictus

2010-10-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

In the previous entry, I described the wonderful work of Sophie Calle I saw at Louisiana. I also saw another exhibit, one much darker but no less impressive, by German artist Anselm Kiefer.

I was unfamiliar with Kiefer's work prior to Sunday. His work was mentally exhausting; the Louisiana exhibit spanned five rooms containing art inspired by controversial topics in modern history--in particular, his art took on themes from Nazi rule. The art was fascinating for me. It was sort of the same feeling I get when I watch a particularly depressing, but well-made, movie. I cannot honestly say I "enjoyed" Anselm Kiefer's art. But I can say that to my relatively inexperienced artistic eyes, the work was masterful. Like the Sophie Calle display, Kiefer's exhibition made me feel something; his work was not happy or remotely hopeful, but it brought my mind to a darker place and time in history that I will never be able to truly comprehend. And interestingly enough, I found that his massive, mural-scale pieces were the most effective. His smaller works are excellent, but Kiefer's use of paint coupled with other raw materials on a bigger scale work to his advantage. There was one piece in particular that stuck with me. It spanned an entire wall, and depicted a bleak field scattered with musty pink dots, roses. Clusters of material resembling barbed wire were attached to the canvas, in some places jutting out away from it. And scattered among this beautiful chaos were small, rectangular strips of fabric, onto which Kiefer had written sets of numbers, the meaning of which remains unclear to me, though I have my guesses. Perhaps most stunning of all was its title: Wohin wir uns wenden im Gewitter der Rosen, ist die Nacht mit Dornen erhellt...Wherever we turn in the storm of roses, the night is lit up by thorns. There were other murals, too; and in another room, painting after painting of a man in Nazi uniform, saluting Hitler, in various settings. There was a gigantic book, the pages of which were covered in a metallic sort of material and painted with abstract landscapes, again dotted with sets of numbers. There were smaller books, too, containing pictures of "barren landscapes" onto which Kiefer had glued syringes or surgical scissors. The entire exhibition did not leave me with a good feeling, as Ms. Calle's had, but it did leave me with a strong emotion. And for that, I highly recommend this wonderful German artist.

My favorite Kiefer piece of the day, an enormous painting entitled Sol Invictus [The Unconquered Sun], made using paint and what appeared to be sunflower seeds...

Take Care of Yourself

2010-10-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Today I took a trip out to Louisiana to see Sophie Calle's work. I was introduced to this unique French artist by a good friend of mine this summer, and was very excited to see some of it in person today. And I wasn't disappointed: Calle's work was quirky, serious, whimsical, and relatable, all at once. In one project, she found a man's address book on the streets of Paris. After photocopying the entries, she returned the missing little black book to its owner; she then picked a dozen or so of the addresses and contacted the people to "know" this stranger without ever actually meeting him. In another work, a fan recently separated from his long-time girlfriend wrote to Calle. He explained that he loved her work and wished to spend his time recuperating from the breakup in her house, specifically sleeping in her bed. Not with her, mind you--he just wanted to use her bed. Calle had the bed, mattress and frame and all, shipped overseas to the man, and he returned it several weeks later with a thank-you letter. The bed was on display today, along with the man's bizarrely innocently charming correspondence. Calle's body of work was intriguing and incredibly personal, but the highlight was her 2007 project entitled Take Care of Yourself.

A while back, Calle's then long-time boyfriend broke up with her. The man, dubbed "X" to protect his (now-infamous) identity, did so in the form of a letter, the contents of which would be considered frustrating for most women to read. He ended with the charming sign-off, "Take care of yourself. --X." Not sure of what to make of the letter's contents, and in an effort to move on after the break-up, Calle showed the letter to 107 women in all areas of work and asked them to interpret, explain, react to, answer, etc., in whatever way they wished. The result is a magnificently intimate collection about love, and how we deal with the end of a love. There was a rifle shooter who, from a far distance, shot bullet holes through the word "love" three separate times on the paper. An etoile from the Paris Opera Ballet angrily crumpled the letter, stuffed it into the toe of her pointe shoe, and proceeded to pique around a rehearsal studio before collapsing into a heap on the floor. A zoologist fed the paper to her ill-tempered parrot; a legal expert defined hidden "contractual terms" the anonymous man had laid out in the text; an accountant came to the conclusions that the assets of two separate statements--"I will always love you" and "I can never become your friend"--were equal. I loved this room of women and the strong rawness of their reactions to a break-up which was not even their own. I copy the letter here for you, then, to form your own response. And remember: Take care of yourself.

Sophie,

I have been meaning to write and reply to your email for a while. At the same time, I thought it would be better to talk to you and tell you what I have to say out loud. Still, at least it will be written.

As you have noticed, I have not been quite right recently. As if I no longer recognized myself in my own existence. A terrible feeling of anxiety, which I cannot really fight, other than keeping on going to try and overtake it, as I have always done. When we met, you laid down one condition: not to become the "fourth." I stood by that promise: it has been months now since I have seen the "others," because I obviously could find no way of seeing them without making you one of them.

I thought that would be enough, I thought that loving you and your love would be enough so that this anxiety--which constantly drives me to look further afield and which means that I will never feel quiet and at rest or probably even just happy or "generous"--would be calmed when I was with you, with the certainty that the love you have for me was the best for me, the best I have ever had, you know that. I thought that my writing would be a remedy, that my "disquiet" would dissolve into it so that I could find you. But no. In fact it even became worse, I cannot even tell you the sort of state I feel I am in. So I started calling the "others" again this week. And I know what that means to me and the cycle that it will drag me into.

I have never lied to you and I do not intend to start lying now.

There was another rule that you laid down at the beginning of our affair: the day we stopped being lovers you would no longer be able to envisage seeing me. You know this constraint can only ever strike me as disastrous, and unjust (when you still see B. and R. ...) and understandable (obviously...), so I can never become your friend.

But now you can gauge how significant my decision is from the fact that I am prepared to bend to your will, even though there are so many things--not seeing you or talking to you or catching the way you look at people and things, and your gentleness towards me--that I will miss terribly. Whatever happens, remember that I will always love you in the same way, my own way, that I have ever since I first met you; that it will carry on within me and, I am sure, will never die.

But it would be the worst kind of masquerade to prolong a situation now when, you know as well as I do, it has become irreparable by the standards of the very love I have for you and you have for me, a love which is now forcing me to be so frank with you, as final proof of what happened between us and will always be unique.

I would have liked things to have turned out differently.

Take care of yourself,

X

Lille Fredag

2010-10-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

For today, Thursday--aka torsdag, aka "lille fredag"--no introspection. No thinking, no lists. Just a dose of happiness in the form of some music from Amelie...

Anatomy Lessons

2010-10-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

I'm very into several things lately. Grey's Anatomy, because it's almost too much to handle and thus is a wonderful way to escape real life. Lists, because they're a good way for me to feel organized and neat when in actuality, I'm not either of those things. Chocolate milk, because it's wonderful. So for today, I analyze my anatomy...with a Matilde chokolademælk in hand. From feet to head, then:

- Feet: Approximately size 40 (that's a good old-fashioned American 10; a Freed of London 7X). Ten toes, with a bizarrely long second toe on each foot. Strange bumps protrude from the big, second, fourth, and pinky toes, a result of spending hours on end in what amount to paper-mache shoes. The third toes on each foot are miraculously, strangely okay. A bruised big toenail decorates the left foot; a deteriorating toenail tops off the right second toe. No blisters, but there appears to be a gaping white hole in between the fourth and pinky toes on the right foot. This is a large, persistent corn. It is actively disliked. Heels are fine, minus the callused skin factor. The muscles underneath both feet have an alarming tendency to cramp without warning, but this can be remedied so long as I carry around a tennis or dog toy ball to roll under my arches.

- Lower legs: Ankles are unmemorable, though small. A chronic case of eczema or some other mild skin rash is apparent on both legs, just above the ankles, but it sort of just looks like a band of freckles around each shin, so I'm cool with this. The legs could stand a good session with the Venus razor. Due to pale skin and klutzy tendencies, small bruises scatter both shins, but this can be explained: Each time I extract my bike from the parking rack, I manage to stab one shin or the other into one of the pedals. Since I do this at least four times a day, it's a battered area of my body.

- Knees: Knees are relatively unscathed. Though the aforementioned bruising can be seen in a large, now-faded contusion just below the right kneecap--a result of one-too-many patella-centric positions in Svanesøen.

- Upper Legs: The thighs appear to be healthy, though they too could really use a shave. Like the rest of my physical self, the upper legs are freckled, but--in a Sunday-morning miracle--appear to be completely free of bruising. This is good. The multi-vitamin+iron pill I take every morning appears to be working from the area starting above my knees and ending at my hips. The hamstrings could use a good stretch, but this does not make them any different than most of the other muscles in my body.

- Hips: My hips are not terrifically notable. Neither perfect for child-bearing nor for high-fashion modeling, my hips are relatively nondescript but for the fact that they seem to loathe allowing leg heights above 90, maybe 110 degrees. My hips don't lie: They are not big fans of adagio.

- Butt: A wonderful ballet instructor once told me that it's very difficult to injure your butt, and thus there is no excuse not to use it. I would rather not discuss this particular physical asset. I have a jumper's butt, which basically means: It is certainly not nonexistent. That's all I'm saying about the junk in my trunk.

- Torso: My stomach is freckled, and I have an innie bellybutton. Which is located ridiculously high on my stomach. I have a short torso, shorter than my legs anyway, and it's pretty boring, I think. I don't have a six-pack, due to my general distaste for sit-ups, but my tummy isn't too mushy. I mean, I'm a dancer. The ribs and collarbone are somewhat visible, but nothing to write to a clinic about. I have a fun triangle of freckles down near my appendix area (which I still possess, FYI); when I was younger, I dubbed this cluster the "Bermuda Triangle," but that's just a sign of my bizarre tendency to name things and make bad puns. And as for my chest, well...Pamela Anderson has nothing to worry about.

- Arms: I have ten fingers. One, the right index, underwent plastic surgery to repair a destroyed nail bed and ripped cuticle following a previously-chronicled altercation with a car door. The rest of my fingers are normal, save for the fingernails. I am not a biter, but I pick at them. (I'm a nervous person.) My wrists, like my ankles, are quite small; my arms are freckled and magically unbruised. My elbows are not hyperextended, but if I straighten them as much as I can, I have a sort of exaggerated muscle that sticks out and creates a nice sort of ditch on the outside of the elbow joint. It's not huge, but I can imagine it might be useful for storing something small, like a penny.

- Shoulders: We now come to the part of my body which (along with my gluteus maximus) is the bane of my professional existence--my shoulders. Aside from their alarming tendency to creak and crack, the ball-and-socket joints I have been blessed with are perfectly healthy, for normal life. But their resistance to remaining "down," in a graceful, at-ease position makes them a burden to me. Literally and figuratively.

- Neck & Back: My neck could, in an ideal ballerina world, be longer. More giraffe-like. But as it is, I suppose it is acceptable. It likes to crack first thing in the morning, and while this sounds grotesque, in practice it feels pretty wonderful. And like the rest of me, my back is dotted with "beauty marks" (aka freckles). A very mild case of scoliosis might be noticed upon extremely close inspection, but the real issue lies in the muscles of my lower back. Which are not into being flexible. If the rest of me takes a few hours to fully wake up, and thus classifies me as "so-NOT-a-morning-person," then my lower back is practically nocturnal.

- Face: My face is just that--a face. At the moment, due to a heavy performance schedule (which thus requires a heavy amount of heavy makeup), my epidermis is staging a protest in the form of a few decidedly not-freckle spots decorating my face. My mouth is nothing spectacular, with two lips of fairly normal proportions and a mouth full of (admittedly small) teeth. Unlike my younger sister, I cannot touch my tongue to my nose. My nose is small, and upturned. (And unreachable by my tongue.) I used to like it but have come to fear that as I get older, my nostrils are growing more obvious. If my ears were a cheap tshirt, they'd probably be a size M/L. My eyes are not bad, actually; when the pupils are tiny, I can see a blue outer rim, green in the middle, and goldish specks around the pupils. The eyebrows, however, were a source of great self-consciousness for years, though I've recently come to accept them. Large and defined, they require frequent maintenance. Silver lining is, I don't have to exaggerate them with (even more) makeup for stage. My forehead, mercifully, is not a fivehead and does not require its own zip code. And as for my hair? More often than not, my hair cannot decide which direction it wants to take, and so ends up choosing "all of them."

- Brain: Perhaps the messiest part of my body is locked away, beneath layers of crazy hair and skull flap and bones. My brain. It is constantly too full; I worry or overthink or concentrate or imagine all the time. Literally. I have tried to master the art of meditation, of clearing my head of any thought. But the moment I feel like perhaps I am nearing achievement, of being a total at-peace Zen wonder woman, a thought interrupts my yogi master success. I'm not a very calm person. I used to use the logical side of my brain most of the time--the side involving facts and rules and science and math. I thought and reasoned in very black-and-white terms. But as I get older/none-the-wiser, the more I use that other part of the brain--the creative part, the part with too many words and too many weird day(and night)dreams and too many feelings. I think I prefer this part now, because the more I live life, the more I realize that it is like Scandinavia, and not like Oreos: much of the time, it's not cookie-cutter black-and-white. Life is a grey area.

- Heart: Finally, what might be both the strongest and weakest part of anyone's anatomy--the heart. It's a muscle, and a powerful, resilient one at that. For a long time, in fact, mine was possibly coated in iron or steel. I was not into discussing feelings, or admitting emotions, or really letting anyone in. I wasn't into vulnerability or risk, and this was safe. This, I thought, was a good armor. But you know, walls can't stay up forever. It's too exhausting. And maybe one day, all it takes is a figurative blast to knock it down; for me, moving across the planet did it. I came to this country a sarcastic, somewhat-stoic, occasionally pessimistic, precociously bitter (or maybe jaded), fairly private person. And 14 months later, I'm...well, totally not. I'm still sarcastic. And I'm still not glass-half-full. But I have let people in, and I have even used the word "feelings" in conversations, and I have had heart pain (and I don't mean indigestion; my smuggled Tums cure that easily enough, in smoothie flavors!). Over the past year or so, that wall I spent 20 years carefully building around the muscle I once regarded as my safest, as my most protected, has been broken down to reveal a frightening fact: the heart is alarmingly fragile. And as someone who is a ballet dancer and who is aware of injuries, I can tell you something else. No matter what physical pain you endure--a broken bone; a torn ligament; a stress fracture--the heart takes the longest to heal. There's no ultrasound treatment, no physical therapy, no Band-Aids. But there is time, and very good friends, and yes, (provided the wall has been knocked down) talking. Besides, for all of the badness the heart can endure, it can take a whole lot of goodness too. And trust me: knocking down the wall is totally worth it, just for the good parts.

Partly Cloudy

2010-10-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

As babies, we start out with a clean slate. For most of us, the world is shiny, everyone is good, nothing is terrible. Our biggest fears result from overactive imaginations--monsters, unseen things in the dark, kidnappers. We have the naive ability (or, perhaps, the innocent confidence) to harbor dreams The Grownups deem fanciful or ridiculous. We want to be astronauts, Olympic gold medalists, Batman,...and, ok, some of us? Ballerinas. When we are little, parents are wrong, with our friends we are the best, life is easy. But as we get older, and learn more, see more, start to think too much, and the doubts creep in. That confidence, that six-year-old swagger? Somewhere along the line, right around the time boys go from stupid to fascinating and mirrors go from inanimate objects to surfaces perfect for intense self-scrutiny, some of us forget how to just be. Some of us try to blend in so much we lose ourselves; some of us try to stand out so much we lose others. And everyone goes through a phase of not knowing what they want, of not knowing who they are, and perhaps more importantly, of not having the faintest idea of who they want to be. I haven't figured out any of this life business yet, and I have spent the better part of 21 years on this planet trying. But as the oldest of five children, as a girl with severe self-confidence issues, and as a person who has chosen to work at an art form in which we as professionals are eternally striving for some unattainable aesthetic ideal, it helps every once in a while to remind myself what makes me...me. In a foreign country, as a member of the corps de ballet of a very big, world-renowned ballet company, it's frighteningly easy to feel lost. In a company of about 94 fantastic friends, it is not as hard as one might expect to occasionally feel alone. I might preface the body of this post by saying I'm not clinically depressed; I am not an unhappy person. On the contrary, my colleagues will tell you that my laugh is frequent, snort-filled, and entirely too loud, akin to me having my own personal, permanent cowbell. But I'm not a sunny, girly ballerina child. If I was a weather forecast, I'd be like Denmark most of the time: partly cloudy. The other shoe is a size 40, and it's always ready to drop. So. Every once in a while, in an ongoing attempt to cure myself of what could be mildly crippling insecurity (both in and outside the theatre) and to remind myself of who I am, I make a list. Of things I hate about myself. Of things I like about myself. Of things that should perhaps cause me concern for my sanity. Today's list.

- I have a lazy eyelid, my left. It just doesn't want to keep up. When I'm especially tired, it's out of control. I am not a fan of the Lazy Left, but I will say this: I can close it completely independently of the right. Which, as it turns out, is a freaky party trick. Silver linings.

- My ears move up when I smile. And I don't mean a little bit; this isn't like a zit you get where you think it looks like a small planet growing out of your face, but it turns out no one else sees it (until, of course, you mention it). No, my ears go up a lot when I smile. I don't necessarily dislike this, but you know, with the shorter hair now, it looks a bit like I'm a Dopey impersonator.

- I'm really bad at chores. I hate cleaning, particularly the bathroom. I hate taking out the trash. I hate doing the dishes. I hate sweeping, and vacuuming, and stepping up on things so I can dust the corners of the ceiling, where all the dust bunnies hang out. I like the result--I get a clean apartment that smells like popular chemicals--but I abhor the process. (I don't mind laundry, actually; and I legitimately love ironing.) The one thing that gets me through cleaning is my Cleaning Playlist, a compilation of only guilty pleasures: Hanson, the Bangles, Queen, Ike & Tina, Meat Loaf, Metallica, Billy Idol, Madonna, Cher, Jimmy Buffett...I clean in my pajamas, always, with these top-notch tunes, and the job magically, eventually gets done.

- I watch a lot of medical shows, which feeds my hypochondria. Since I can remember, I overplay minor maladies. This is just how I'm wired. I thought a chest rash from a new detergent was inflammatory breast cancer. (A $300-something emergency room bill and a diagnosis of "Get some of that $2 cream at the drugstore" confirmed: it was not.) I was convinced that the lump below my left armpit was a tumor. (An ultrasound showed me that it is just a place where two veins in my arm share a ventricle, or pathway or whatever it is.) If I get a migraine, it's cancer. If I get a bad cold, it's swine flu. If I get a stomach virus, I am actually dying. But if I learned one thing from House, it's this: It's never lupus. And if I learned one thing from Grey's Anatomy, it's this: The best doctors are hot, and actually spend more time sleeping around with each other than practicing medicine.

- My eyes involve three different colors. I like this, actually--my eyes, I will admit to liking.

- I have very large feet, and the second toe on each foot is much longer than the first. I've been told that if I ever lose a finger, I can just do a little amputation-and-swap. My feet are the opposite of beautiful. I once had an old woman on the subway scold me for wearing flip flops: "You should really wear closed shoes so the rest of us don't have to look at those." But in a way, I'm proud of the corns and calluses and bumps (which I know aren't tumors). They're a sign of hard work, a lifetime of hard work. So to that woman on the subway, I say: I don't ask you to put tape over your mouth so the rest of us don't have to listen to your cranky comments. Flip flops are for everybody.

- I can crack almost every joint you can think of. I can crack two joints in my fingers, all of my toes, my cuboids, my ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders, neck, and back. I cannot crack my nose. One time, my collarbone cracked. For a minute, I thought I was going to die--it was shockingly unexpected and hurt, for a split second. But the relief felt afterward was pretty sweet, and I have never had it happen since. And I know it's weird and disturbing, but the simple joy of having an uncooperative bone or joint give a little click is a good feeling similar to that of taking one's hair down after having it pinned up the entire day. Trust me: it's wonderful.

- I can't cook. I burn toast. And set frozen bagels on fire in the microwave. I think the slice-and-heat Pillsbury cookies qualify as baking. I don't host dinner parties because if I did, I would end up buying a bunch of different kinds of cereal and some milk, lining everything up with bowls and spoons, and telling everyone to pour themselves a bowl.

- I like that I talk easily enough. So easily that I once had friends ask whether I had ever had an awkward conversation. (I have.)

- I changed my smile when I was eight. I used to grin so big that my lips would almost disappear...it was all teeth and gums. I saw a picture of myself, and I didn't like how it looked. Audrey Hepburn and I had just been introduced, and I wanted to be her. So I practiced. And now, I still grin, but my lips don't disappear. I wish I could be a wise, deep person and say I regret consciously developing a new smile. That I wish I'd loved my smile just the way it was. But if I'm being completely honest? I don't regret it. I have small teeth. I need a smile with a good amount of lip.

- I like that I had parents who wouldn't let me get away with being melodramatic. (A) Because now that I live on my own, I can indulge in self-drama til the cows come home, and (B) because I grew up with a healthy amount of perspective, as well as the phrase, "Save it for the autobiography." And now even when I do go into daytime-soap-series-mode, I'm aware of my own ridiculousness.

- As a result of the summer when I was 13 and became obsessed with improving my feet for ballet, I can now pick up small objects--marbles, ballpoint pens, the like--with my toes. This is handy.

- I have a body that wasn't built for ballerina dancing. I have tight muscles and joints, my feet aren't anything to write home about, and I'm fairly certain that whoever was left in charge of designing humanity built my shoulders with the idea that I would get into football. This, I'm not a huge fan of. But I will say that I like the fact that I've learned to make it look like I was maybe put together with the faint thought of ballet as a career option. And I like that I can go onstage knowing that the things I can do well--and even the things I can't do so wonderfully (I'm looking at you, adagio)--are the result of a lot of hard work. Also of being mildly precocious when I was younger.

- I can't sing for beans. I don't sing in the shower. I don't even sing along to the aforementioned Cleaning Playlist. I literally cannot carry a tune. I don't hum because my range consists of two, maybe two and a half notes. I can't whistle. There is a reason I chose a silent art form.

- I like that my parents signed me up for piano. And I was sort of good, too. I learned to play some pretty hard stuff, by lots of very famous dead guys. I haven't played in years, but I can still read notes. And play Chopsticks, the Linus & Lucy tune from Charlie Brown, the Rugrats theme song, and the first bit of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from memory. For this I am grateful.

- I really like my photographic memory. This is one thing I don't even feel bad bragging about--I was born with it, so I can thank my parents. It comes in handy all the time, and always has. In school, when I had to take tests, I could pull up a mental image of the page from the textbook and just sort of remember. I wasn't good in gym, I mean I was the girl who couldn't fit the softball helmet over her ballet bun, but the stuff on paper? That stuff I was good at.

- Despite my lack of self-confidence and my various, wide-ranging personal insecurities, I like my life so far. My family encourages my...individuality (code for "weirdness," trust me), and I have found very good friends who might very well enhance it. I'm not a super-girly person. I don't have boyfriends, I don't do makeup well, I don't find window-shopping fun. I make occasionally inappropriate jokes and many cheesy puns, I laugh too loud and cry too easily, I wear knee socks with alarming frequency. I do things like get my shoelaces stuck in the pedals of my bike, and I am usually that girl whose grocery bag breaks on the way home and then everyone sees her tampons and cereal and lack of actual cooking ingredients all over the street. I swear and don't cover my mouth when I yawn. I overthink everything. I am a closeted romantic, but use the weak man's weapon of sarcasm to cloak this. I listen to very bad music, watch bad television, and read good books like all three are going out of style. I'm not, and will never be, cool. I will never be in a fabulous "crowd," I don't ever know the newest bands or fashion or any of that. But I don't mind. I have my good books, my bad TV, my hard work ethic, my big hair, and my perfectly weird family and friends to remind me, when I forget, that I'm not a wallflower. And I'm not alone.

An Education

2010-10-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

Growing up: It's an unavoidable, occasionally painful fact of life. And no matter how hard we try, or how much we pretend it's not happening, one day you wake up and realize that you have become what you always dreaded; you have become something resembling an adult, or at least something resembling a human being with adult responsibilities. It happens fast, and without warning. One day you're six years old, and your biggest problem is the fact that the toes of your socks won't line up exactly right; the next you're a twenty-something living on her own in Scandinavia. Life happens. And without little lessons along the way, without teachers and people to give us helpful hints, it can be a scary thing. I've been lucky to learn a few things, to have a few pretty wise people in my life. And so, I give you a list of some of the things I've learned thus far.

- If you've just eaten a bowl of oatmeal, fill it with water and let it soak for a bit before putting it in the dishwasher. Otherwise, the leftover bits will dry and stick to the bowl, and then you'll just have to clean it again, so just save yourself the trouble.

- You can clean silver with toothpaste. And if you're cleaning a mirror, wipe it with newspaper. This won't leave streaks. Plus you can read the comics while cleaning.

- Don't be a backseat driver. Until you get a license, you may not pass judgment. Also, the driver gets first music choice.

- Answer questions directly. As the child of two lawyers, I found that any feeble attempts to avoid answering uncomfortable questions were met with the magical phrase "Move to strike as non-responsive." For example--Mom: "Did you call your sister an idiotic moron?" Me: "She was pillow-surfing down the stairs!" Mom: "And I will deal with her separately. Move to strike as non-responsive. Try again. Did you, or did you not, call your sister an idiotic moron?"

- Beware of yellow snow. Don't eat it.

- Singing, hats, and elbows are not welcome at the dinner table. Particularly the latter. I would be serenaded by my grandfather if my elbows were on the table: "Carling, Carling, if you're able, get your elbows off the table; this is not a horses' stable, but a high-class dining room."

- If you defrost a bagel in the microwave, it does not take more than 1 minute. If you would like to set a bagel on fire in the microwave, it takes about 3 minutes.

- Fighting over seating arrangements in the car is pointless. It just results in something resembling "Car Wars, Episode III: Attack of the Bratty Children."

- On Christmas Eve, if you're out of milk to leave for Santa, apparently Diet Coke and Guinness are perfectly good substitutes. Also, if you're ringing in your first Christmas away from home in Paris with friends, it's totally fine to do so in a gay bar. Gift bags will be involved!

- In matters of the heart, don't play games. According to my mother, life is too short, and emotional games are a waste of time. Boys can be stupid, but I was taught to try not to be. Also, if I end up getting married, ice cream sundae bar > cake.

- Don't wipe your nose or face on your sleeve. There's a new invention for messes, and it's called a napkin.

- We never faked sick. The rule was: If you're too sick for school, then you're too sick for after-school activities. And we liked those a lot. As a result of this no-faking policy, I like to think I'm something of a tough cookie.

- In emergency or even just mildly frantic situations, don't panic. For instance, if you slam your finger in the car door, breathe and open the door. Don't just rip your finger out. Then you'll get plastic surgery, and a gift from your parents--a book called "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking."

- Reading a good book is the best free vacation you can take. Take them often.

- Despite what my brother thinks, the floor is not the biggest shelf in the house. Particularly in the entrance hallway of a house, where according to my parents, "those things, the hooks and hangers in this little room we call a closet? Those are where the coats go, not thrown on the floor so we can all step on them."

- Eat what's on your plate. Home was not a restaurant, so if you didn't like what was served you could make something yourself, not eat, or just eat what was served. We mostly went with the last option.

- Sometimes my mom or dad would ask us to go find one of our siblings. We'd stay put and yell the appropriate name. Turns out my parents could have done that too, so if someone asks you to go get someone, chances are they could yell themselves and thus won't accept you doing so. Just go find the person in question the first time.

- Treat others as you would like to be treated. If you act like you're better than people, and my parents are around, you might get asked awkward questions. Questions like, "How is it that your nose isn't bleeding from being so high up?" or "Who do you think you are, the Queen of Sheba?"

- Living well is the best revenge.

- You catch more flies with honey. If you want something, you'll get it a lot easier if you're nice about it. In related news, it's ok to want to get to the top, but be kind along the way. Otherwise, when you achieve your goals, you'll be alone. And no one wants to get to the top, only to find out it's lonely up there.

- Use a coaster. Magazines can be used as coasters.

- Take responsibility for your actions and be honest. These were two biggies. If you mess up, own up; and don't lie. This includes lies of omission.

- Don't sit too close to the TV, and don't turn it up too loud. Otherwise you might be accused of being my grandfather.

- If you have a ring that's too big for your finger and you're not the type to go get it resized, just wrap a small Band-Aid around the back of it. Bam. Ring fits.

- Never fall asleep with your glasses on. You'll wake up with post-its stuck to them, very confused.

- If you want to decline someone's request, you can always just start singing, "You can't always get what you waaaant..." They will go away faster.

- Get up with your alarm clock. Don't get into the habit of hitting snooze, and you're going to have to get up eventually, so just do it before your dad comes in to wake you by singing one of three hit tunes: Kumbaya; something about Noah's "ark-y ark-y"; or my personal favorite, "Wake up, you sleepyhead! Get yourself outta bed!" repeated over and over.

- Every time you leave the house, brush your teeth first. It's just a good habit.

- Always check your Halloween candy. According to my parents, unwrapped candy was out. And for me, personally, so were apples, thanks to my mother's story about how "back in the day," bad guys would stick razors in apples and give them out to innocent trick-or-treaters.

- If you can't take it, don't dish it out. That is, if you can't take a little fun teasing, you give up your right to tease others. Also, in my family, if we feel comfortable enough to make fun of you, this means we like you and you're in.

- I used to be even more of a hypochondriac. But my dad taught me something: Time really does heal all wounds. Doesn't matter if it's a fracture or a break or a bruise or whatever. Ultimately, injuries and illness need time (in addition to proper treatment, of course). Time and patience.

- Stand up for things: beliefs, yourself, others, favorite sports teams. You'll sleep better, and be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning.

- Garages are actually not meant for cars. In three different houses in my childhood, we had a garage. We never used them for a vehicle. Garages are much better for storing crap and can hold a ton of books.

- Be yourself. If you're weird, embrace it; if you have crazy hair or a loud laugh or an inner dork, don't be embarrassed. Wear what you like, do what you like, be with who you like. And most importantly, do what you love, and do it to the best of your ability. That's all any of us can do to be happy.

Sleep

2010-10-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

After two weeks of very busy days and busier performance evenings, I find myself at home early on a Saturday afternoon with a steak dinner for a friend's birthday in my very near future--very different nighttime plans from my regular schedule of late, which have either been involving Napoli or Svanesøen. This is wonderful. I had a chance to take a much-needed sauna after rehearsal today. I have an opportunity to catch up on my current outside interests--Grey's Anatomy, digging out my corns, and snacking. But perhaps best of all, free time lets me stock up on something I am severely lacking: sleep.

Sleeping should be easy: we get tired, we lay down, we fall into dreamland. I am usually a very skilled sleeper. If there were Sleeping Olympics, I am fairly certain I would win, or at the very least make the podium. But getting back into the season, and the performance schedule, and the art of the daily afternoon nap, I have found that my ability to catch zzz's grows increasingly rusty. After a performance, I'm tired. Happy, but tired--my body is always ready to go straight home to bed. My brain, though, and energy levels take a little bit longer to calm down. Sleep is necessary, not just for my personal physical performance, but also for my colleagues. Because I am not a nice person if I don't have two things: (1) large amounts of strong, black coffee in my system; and (2) rest. I wouldn't be friends with cranky, decaffeinated me. So. The key is to find ways to induce sleepiness after a performance.

For me, this involves a combination of things. I always have a snack and a bottle of water after a performance--usually toast with peanut butter or a banana. Also, always always chocolate milk. I put on pajamas, and big fuzzy slippers, and whether I feel tired enough to sleep or not, I go into bed. Despite my dad's warnings about "media stimulation," I'll spend time on Facebook, I'll sew (more!) pointe shoes, I'll watch (more!) Grey's Anatomy, I'll read. And some nights--like the past few--none of these things work. Then I lay in bed, wide awake, until far too late; or sometimes I'll doze off but have an interrupting, indescribably bizarre dream, like one I had this week involving surgery on a 500-lb. chicken carcass, with cameos by my father and Rogers & Hart...anyway. I digress. More often than not, eventually the endorphins and adrenaline fade away, and I get to experience possibly the best feeling at the end of a long day: the feeling of doing absolutely, wonderfully, physically nothing.

Ballerina Perks: Dressing Rooms

2010-09-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

After a crazy, tough, busy week, I had a whole 24 hours to myself--a day off to sew pointe shoes, sauna, sleep, eat, catch up on my Grey's Anatomy, do nothing, exciting things like that. Last week, I spent more time at the theatre than at home, and so for me to be able to enjoy my own bed and my own apartment for a whole Sunday is wonderful. I did the math today: I got a total of 23 hours of sleep this weekend. This is awesome.

However, when we do have to spend loads of time at work, we're lucky because we have a lot of perks. Including our dressing rooms: one for two people, with couches, sinks, quiet, etc. People bring in pillows and pictures, candles and speakers, anything to make our "second home" feel more like the real thing. A peek into my dressing room, then--messiness and all...

My table, complete with my messiness, family photos, pointe shoes, fake hair, and (free! sponsored!) MAC makeup.

The sink. Not terrifically exciting. It does provide water. As a sink should.

The comfy chair, and window, and closet, etc.

The best part: the bed. I love the bed :-)

Under Pressure

2010-09-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, life happens, and by "life" I mean "insane amounts of work," and when that happens, you might (a) suddenly have no time/energy/desire for a social existence and (b) learn a new part in roughly two hours, to be performed the next night. Section (b) includes two options: you can either freak out and be nauseous and worry about a bunch of "what ifs"--my preferred course up until about, oh, two years ago. Or you can call your mom, have a good dinner, have an even better dessert, watch your favorite hot-doctor show (I'm looking at you, Grey's Anatomy), watch the DVD of your new assignment a couple of times before attempting to sleep, not crap your pants, and try to remember something awesome, which is: what you do for a living is meant to be fun, highly enjoyable even, and not pimple/sweat/vomit-inducing. For my first, highly unexpected 'solo part' at Royal Danish Ballet, I am desperately attempting to achieve the latter. And so, with apologies to this woefully-neglected blog of mine, please enjoy the very dulcet tones of David Bowie and Queen. In the meantime, I will return to Dr. Alex Karev & Co., and subsequent obsessive viewings of Svanesøen, in the hopes that the combination of the two (plus some chocolate milk and cookies) will result in a good night's sleep and an unprecedented injection of confidence and shoulders-down-ness...

Feathers, Free Zones, & Funny Socks: September at Royal Danish Ballet

2010-09-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

It's official: Summer is over. Not technically, of course; and there are still days here and there when the weather is beautiful and teases one into believing that summer could continue forever. But for the most part, the temperatures are starting to regularly demand sweaters. Galoshes are becoming increasingly necessary. And the carefree sense of having no schedule, and nothing but time? Well that's been gone for some time now, but after a marathon week of rehearsals at Operaen for Svanesøen, it's really totally without-a-doubt crystal clear--(1) we are all definitely back in shape; and (2) the season has begun, for real.

This back-to-school feeling doesn't mean no fun, of course. We are fatigued, to be sure; but while this may deepen the bags under our eyes it doesn't have to put a damper on general spirits. The shades of grey are slowly creeping back into the Copenhagen skies, but we savor the sun when it deigns to make an appearance. Our bodies are beat, but we still enjoy the days off--just perhaps not to "normal" 20-something-year-old extents. And even when the days at work seem to take approximately forever, people manage to keep spirits up. And so, a little photographic diary of September, Svanesøen, and the last of the sunshine.

The sun is still out, but signs of autumn are creeping into Copenhagen. This ballerina child doesn't mind so much: It's my favorite season, and I do enjoy any excuse to wear an oversized sweater.

Dinner of champions? Perhaps. At least we know the importance of greens.

On rare two-day weekends, it's wonderful to stumble upon something called "Free Zone" at Ofelia Beach: an event where everything (including the champagne, the umbrella, and the singing transvestite entertainment) was "gratis"!

The men of the Royal Danish Ballet are entertaining from all angles, and in all kinds of footwear.

Things that run my life at the moment: Pointe shoes. Sewing pointe shoes. The Board. The colors highlighter green and neon pink.

And finally, David Amzallag captured two of my Svanesøen personalities: white swan, black swan.

Hindsight is 20/20

2010-09-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

I am of the firm belief that "guilty pleasures" show who we really are. We file these secret addictions under the name "guilty" because they are, at their core, incredibly nerdy by normal social standards. They are dorky by definition; we confess guilty pleasures to friends with a laugh because on the surface, we're embarrassed to enjoy them, but deep down, we cannot exist on a daily basis without them.

As a confirmed geek, I have a plethora of guilty pleasures. I am hopelessly addicted to Grey's Anatomy. I regularly read The Princess Diaries and watch Gossip Girl. When I lived in a country that more easily offered such snackage, I used to watch Golden Girls while eating string cheese and Cheerios (simultaneously). I was once part of a fantasy baseball team. I have researched how much it would cost to be part of Virgin Airlines' trip to outer space (shocker: it's out of my budget). I subscribe to X Games highlights videos. I do crossword puzzles; when I knew absolutely no Danish, I used to make up clues and fill in English words based on the people-watching in which I would partake. I have a very big thing for Dr. Who (as played by David Tennant), and--in similarly British news--cannot wait for the day when Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's novel Good Omens is perfectly captured on film. I wear knee socks; I enjoy liking famous, incredibly-out-of-reach guys from afar (I'm looking at you, Gaels Monfils); I cry watching Pixar movies and Kleenex commercials; I like that I snort uncontrollably when I am really amused--thanks, Mom. But perhaps my biggest guilty pleasure lies hidden in my iPod.

When I was nine years old, I had a plan for my life: I would become a professional ballerina child; when I retired from said ballerina child career, I would become a sports medicine doctor; and I would, somewhere in the middle years of this process, marry one of the members of Hanson. I did become a ballerina child; my post-ballet dreams of multiple years of school/healing athletes has morphed into a curious shade of grey; and I am (incurably) single...BUT. While this last dream faded as I grew up and was drawn towards weirder, more wonderful music this does not mean that I do not forever and always hold a place in my heart for the magic that is Hanson's hit single, MmmBop. This song never, ever fails to bring me joy, of the nine-year-old, nostalgic sort. So please: enjoy. Particularly the moment of "disc scratching" around 3:06...not that I know every word and every second of this bit of magic.

Saturday Lovin': Larry vs Harry & A Dose of Cycle Chic

2010-09-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen is known for many things--beer, Vikings, Danish design, high prices on everything--but one of my favorite things about living here is the bike culture. And until you have seen it in person, until you've really experienced the scariness of being yelled at in Klingon by a more professional Danish biker, it's very difficult to understand how cool it is. Bikes are everywhere in this city; just 40% of Copenhageners own cars, and one in three ride to work. For me, my bike (a Dresco I have dubbed Detective Lenny Briscoe) is my main mode of transportation. I love my hunter green Detective, a bicycle my dad got for me within two days of moving here, a bicycle I chose specifically because it looked like everyone else's. I wanted to fit in. And don't get me wrong, I love Lenny Briscoe; but after my father's Copenhagen bike purchase and after living here for a little over a year now, I know that my next set of wheels (whenever that purchase might be necessary) will be more distinctive. I have several "dream bikes," and one of these is a model by a fantastic company called Larry vs Harry.

I first learned of LvH through my dad, who helped me make the big move across the pond. Sure, he came with me to help a very big transition in my life and to help me get settled in. But my dad brought with him to Copenhagen a personal agenda: for his 50th birthday gift, my mother agreed he could pick something for himself. That "something" was a cargo bike, specifically a Bullitt bike from LvH.

We found the shop on Frederiksborggade and were lucky enough to meet the super-cool co-founder of the company, Hans Fogh (and his awesome dog, Skipper). Hans lent my dad the Steve McQueen model to test out for the week he was here, to see if this wonderful bike was something he would want to export back to the homeland. Over that next week, I had to pry my dad away from the Bullitt. Both because (in his own words) his "butt was out of shape," but also because he wanted to ride everywhere. Seriously. We biked a 20k to IKEA one August day, emerging with only sheets and towels. (I will never let my father forget this day--I was not a happy ballerina child.)

Hans in front of the shop on Frederiksborggade, with a Bullitt bike of course.

So a week later, my dad was best friends with Hans as well as the proud owner of the last Steve McQueen Bullitt model made. The bikes are an updated version of the Danish "long john" bicycle, and the frames sport different kinds of heroes...people like Che Guevara, Burt Reynolds, Elvis, and of course Steve McQueen. LvH is too cool for school: everything rocks, from the Bullitt bikes themselves, to their website and blog, to their slogans ("A pimp is only as good as his product"; "You will not be able to stay home, brother!”). Perhaps my favorite thing about Hans specifically is this series of videos he made for the Larry vs Harry website. Anyone who dresses up as Elvis and shows people the coolest cargo bike ever is pretty awesome in my book.

My father with his new best friend, Steve McQueen.

There was a very sad day towards the end of my dad's visit here. This was the day he had to return Steve McQueen, so Hans could ship the bike to America for "min far." It was a sad day for me, too, because I decided to skip the trip to LvH in favor of an afternoon nap. I should have fought the human urge to sleep, because when he went to the shop, my father not only saw Hans but he also met one of Hans' good friends, a man named Mikael. That's not the "sad-for-me" part; there are loads of guys in Copenhagen named Mikael. Here is the "sad-for-me" bit: This Mikael was the one and only creator of one of my absolute favorite blogs, Copenhagen Cycle Chic. I had discovered Mikael's site--a site where he posts, quite simply and fabulously, candid pictures of stylish Copenhagen cyclists--a couple of weeks before moving to Denmark (again, via my father), and had come to this country with the dream of making it onto the blog, of being considered a chic cyclist. (It hasn't happened yet, but I still try to look somewhat put-together whenever I take Lenny Briscoe out for a spin...you never know...) Plus, I knew from perusing the website that Mikael owns my ultimate fantasy bicycle: a Velorbis. So this one day, my father met and befriended Mikael while I took a snooze and missed an opportunity to meet a local celebrity. I still regret that nap. I'm not even joking.

Mikael on his Bullitt.

In short: Copenhagen's bike culture is unique, wonderful, and eco-friendly. And the Bullitt bikes and websites like Mikael's make it that much cooler. Hans and Mikael "dig it," and you should, too.

Erasers are good for mistakes

2010-09-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

When I have a rough day--like today, which involved a bloody lip, a flat tire, a legitimate cry, and other not-so-wonderful things--I always turn to The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, for comfort. There is something beautiful and honest about the simple story and its small hero that make me feel the same way an old sweater does, or a bear hug does, or crying in the shower does...

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made a friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you --the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is MY rose."

And he went back to meet the fox.

"Goodbye" he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose-- "said the little prince so he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose. . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

Death Becomes Her

2010-08-31T10:01:00.001-07:00

I love to find inspiration from outside the ballet world to use in the studio--I'm not the kind of ballerina child who can survive and be inspired by ballet alone, since outside interests help keep me (semi)sane. And more often than not, I find that I am drawn to weird, ugly-beautiful sorts of things. So when my friend Louise introduced me to the work of British artist/taxidermist Polly Morgan, I was immediately fascinated and completely infatuated.

Polly Morgan began her career as an artist after taking a course with a professional taxidermist named George Jamieson. Her first four pieces caught the attention of graffiti artist Banksy; they depicted a lovebird looking in a mirror; a squirrel holding a belljar with a fly perched inside atop a sugar cube; a magpie holding a jewel in its beak; and a couple of chicks standing on a miniature coffin. Banksy commissioned Morgan to produce work for Santa’s Ghetto (an annual exhibition he organised in London). From there, her career as a unique taxidermist-as-artist took off rapidly, and the rest is history. Morgan is a member of the guild of taxidermists, and for those concerned parties: the animals she uses are donated by vets or pet owners, and they have died naturally or accidentally (i.e., roadkill, for lack of a gentler term).

I know the subject matter and materials Polly Morgan uses in her artwork are slightly twisted and definitely macabre in nature. But there is something incredibly fragile, honest, and beautiful about her pieces. I feel mildly, inexplicably intrusive when I look at her pieces...like I am peeking in on something I shouldn't be seeing. I can't put my finger on what it is about her work that I love so much (and yes, for the record, I am a dog-owner; it's not the "dead animal" part that I like most). Perhaps it is the fact that to me, she gives her subjects a new, unexpected life through her work. Whatever it is, I do know this: Death becomes Polly Morgan.

Sommerferie er SLUT, or: Tusind Tak, CCBC

2010-08-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Cross Connection Ballet Company's run of performances for Sommerballet at Bellevue Teatret ended this weekend, thus officially marking the end of summer (in my mind, at least). I want to use this post to send the company--dancers, designers, musicians, everyone involved--a big fat sack of "TAK" for including me in the wonderful wackiness that is SOMA, their first full-length creation, and giving me one of the most enjoyable summers I can remember.

From the beginning rehearsals right up until the fantastic last show on Saturday night, I was able to be a (loud, snort-laughing) fly on the wall for the process of putting this incredibly creative ballet together. I got to play around on the life-size Soma cube, cut out the patterns for Maja Brix's "eye hats," snap photos of the dancers in rehearsals, listen in on Afenginn's rehearsals, and make epic coffee runs. (Anna Wintour, if you're reading: I can remember up to 14 individual drink orders sans notated help. Move over, Anne Hathaway.) I got to play cheerleader for wonderful new friends and pimp them out on Facebook and Twitter; I learned that there are so many different ways to move, to think about movement, to hear and count music. Plus, I maintained ab shape because I laughed so much on a daily basis, surrounded by awesome, hilarious, warm, intelligent people. So tillykke, CCBC & Afenginn, on a wildly successful trip down the rabbit hole (in cubic form). And tusind, tusind tak for en dejlig sommerferie.

The poster for Sommerballet.

A moment from "Clocks n' Clouds." (photo by Costin Radu)

Louise Midjord's "War Scene," in SOMA.

Esther Lee Wilkinson's pas de deux. (photo by Costin Radu)

The "Nymphs," choreography by Esther

The lovely "Balloons," choreography by Louise Midjord.

Constantine Baecher's "Musical Chairs" choreography.

Esther's box pas de deux choreography, danced by Louise and Peter (with his head in the box).

SOMA.

Jernbane Cafeen: the site of SOMA Saturday night celebrations. Also, the third-best bodega in town (they couldn't find the first two)!

My Danish Marc Jacobs: An Ode to Henrik Vibskov

2010-08-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Copenhagen, I have been exposed to all kinds of new things--language; people; ways of life; food; music; nightlife; shades of grey...you get the idea. Moving to a new continent = being flooded with newness. Including the beautiful world of Danish fashion.

While I am by no means a fashionista (I mean, hello, I have worn men's boxers paired with knee-high rainboots in public), there is a part of me that absolutely wishes I was one of those people who always looks awesome. Superficial? Perhaps. But I know that few things give me so much simple pleasure as sitting down with a bunch of glossy, overpriced, international fashion magazines and a direktør snegl from Lagkagehuset and devouring both; from the magazines, I pick out my dream looks, lusting after things that would cause my wallet to literally explode. Instead of risking an accessory blowing up, I find other ways to satisfy my clothing cravings. Example: Once a week, I make a trip to my personal Tiffany's--the Marc by Marc Jacobs store on Christian IX Gade. I don't buy anything; the lovely employees have stopped asking whether I need any help, probably because when they do ask, I reply (with a heavy girly sigh), "No...no. I'm just looking."

But back to the point of this post, which was supposed to be Danish fashion. In a nutshell, I love it. The volume, the quirkiness, the love of mismatching-to-match, the outrageous accessorizing, the androgynous feel...I really truly love it, with every girly bone in my battered body. And one of my favorite designers is the magical Henrik Vibskov. With collections titled things like ”The Land of the Black Carrots," ”The Fantabulous Bicycle Music Factory," and his latest "The Slippery Spiral Situation," the fact that I love this designer's fantastical garments was fate. And besides his weird, beyond-wonderful fashion, Vibskov has also worked in visual arts. The man is, in my humble opinion, a whimsical genius. And now joins the aforementioned Marc Jacobs on my list-of-designers-whose-entire-collections-I-would-love-to-magically-find-hanging-in-my-closet-one-fine-morning. Here, then, a peek into the stunning world of Henrik Vibskov. (And if you're reading, HV: Your women's A/W10 collection made me drool a little. TAK.)

And the man himself:

Svanesøen

2010-08-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

Our 2010/2011 season began a couple of weeks ago, and we are kicking things off with Peter Martins' Svanesøen (for English speakers, that's Swan Lake). It's a tough first program, akin to being shot out of a cannon (into a lake, natch), but I love it. Correction: I love love looove Swan Lake.

The story is your classic, improbable-but-dramatic-and-stunning, ballerina fairy tale. It begins--as any good story does!--with a party: in the palace garden, people are celebrating Prince Siegfried's 21st birthday. Young people, old people, Siegfried's partner-in-bromance Benno, and a mischievous court jester are all having a fabulous time. (I mean, goblets are involved. It's a legitimate party.) Then Mama Queen herself arrives and she gives Siegfried a crossbow (probably the best gift he's received since being given the name "Siegfried"). Being a responsible mother, the Queen reminds Siegfried that he is now an adult and will soon be married. Siegfried gets the hint--thanks a heap, Mom!--and is understandably upset. I mean, what 21-year-old wants to be told, "Here's some arrows and a crossbow. Go get hitched. Oh, and happy birthday"?! Anyway, that night, Siegfried invites Benno out for some moonlit hunting to get his mind off of things. (Personally, I think if Benno was a real best friend, he would have maybe said, "Siggy, let's just get a pint. Lot easier than hunting in the dark." But then of course we wouldn't have this great love story.)

So the boys go out to kill things. They end up by a lake(!) and it is here that the birthday boy meets the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Quickly forgetting that mere moments before this, he was all about mourning the death of his bachelorhood, Siegfried is immediately totally in love with this nocturnal lake-babe. Siegfried has strange taste in women: turns out this wondergirl is the swan princess Odette. She's got a whole lotta baggage, too. A sorcerer, Von Rothbart (think the Voldemort of ballet), has turned Odette into a swan, but for a few hours each evening she gets back her human form. Because Rothbart is a nice guy like that. But at sunrise each morning, Odette swaps legs for wings again. Here's the catch: the spell can only be broken by a man who will love her forever, and not be a total jerk and cheat on her, ever. This curse-breaking stuff will not permit any wild nights in Vegas or slip-ups. Siegfried promises to marry her (a little fast for my taste, but to each his own) and he swears to Odette eternal fidelity. ETERNAL FIDELITY! This isn't just a pinky promise. Then Rothbart comes and sees his prized victim flirting with the prince, and they're all ready to have a manly showdown, but Odette is a lady (when she's not a swan, of course) and stops the testosterone explosion. This whole time, Odette's also-cursed, swan-lady girlfriends, have been watching their friend, and ballerina dancing. Then sunrise comes, and Rothbart leads his ladies up, up, and away, with Odette waving to her new squeeze.

After intermission, we go back to the ballroom at the palace to keep celebrating Siegfried's birthday. The Queen, looking out for her son/her own legacy, has taken the liberty of inviting six pretty young things as potential brides for Siegfried. He's a little bit, "Thanks, Mom, but I met a total babe at the lake." Then, a mysterious knight arrives at the party (sort of like the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride) with his daughter Odile, who is seriously working a little black number. Siegfried thinks it's Odette, rocking a smoky eye and a hot evening ensemble. I can cut Siegfried some slack for the confusion: he just swore eternal fidelity like 12 hours ago; he met his true love in darkness, so it's not like he's going to know every freckle on her skin; and he's probably a little buzzed from "birthday spirits," if you know what I'm saying. Of course, the Dread Pirate Roberts guy is actually Rothbart, who has lovingly transformed his daughter Odile to sort of resemble Odette. Who, this whole time, is running around like a crazy person outside, trying to catch Siegfried's attention to warn him that he is about to totally screw her over by falling for Rothbart's trick and pledging his love to a big sack of crazy. The guests, meanwhile, are entertained with a series of national dances. Odile dances with Siegfried, and he digs her hot moves (and thinks she is Odette) and then swears her eternal fidelity. Rothbart and Odile are classically maniacal in their evil victory--I'm pretty sure they would cackle if ballet had sound--and the prince discovers that he has been deceived.

Back at the lake, Odette's girlfriends comfort her, albeit sans Ben & Jerry. And of course Siegfried is a mess. He goes to find Odette to ask for forgiveness. He is again ready to battle Rothbart, but again Odette is not having it. She forgives Siegfried for the big mix-up, and Rothbart preys on her emotional state to put her through some serious unpleasantness. But Siegfried has sworn eternal fidelity twice now, once to a different swan-babe, and so he has broken his promise to Odette. As a result, she must remain a swan forever, and the ballet ends with Odette and the girls going away into the forest. Siegfried stands alone, depressed and (I'm just guessing this one) feeling like a class-A fool.

So. Svanesøen isn't exactly a feel-good, laugh-out-loud evening at the theatre. But it doesn't matter: it has some of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful music I have ever heard, by Tchaikovsky; the story is full of drama and love and passion; and it is stunning to watch onstage. If you're in Copenhagen from September 15-November 6, then, I highly suggest you come check us out at Operaen. You won't be disappointed. You might cry, but disappointment will not be the reason for your tears.

Amy Watson as Odette. Photo by David Amzallag.

Reasons to Smile

2010-08-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, as a ballerina dancer, you have difficult days. Maybe your feet are bleeding/peeling/developing weird bumps resembling small mountains. Maybe your calves have suddenly shot up into your knees, and maybe your butt feels like someone with very big arm muscles has been using it as a punching bag for the last week. Maybe you wore a crappy leotard today, and your pointe shoes felt even more alien than usual, and your body is completely ignoring your brain's orders for it to perform unnatural feats with the greatest of ease and grace. Maybe your brain needs a clean-up crew to come in and sort things out. Doesn't matter. Because if you look really hard, or even just take a quick peek, things aren't that bad. Observe:

1. You have all of your limbs...and they function. Seeing terribly wounded soldiers, home from Afghanistan missing a leg (or both), doing Pilates rehab in the gym at the theatre--and with a wonderful sense of humor and incredible determination--reminds you of how lucky you are.

2. You have a beautiful flat, in a quiet, central Copenhagen neighborhood. If you open your windows you can literally hear amusement park sounds. You might live in a postcard.

3. You get paid to do what you love, and you have loved doing it since you were six. How many people not only hold on to their childhood ballerina dream, but then get to live it out, to a pretty sweet extent? (Hint: The answer is, "Not many; you're lucky.")

4. You have an iPhone. This is just sort of nice to have.

5. Your friends are true, and wonderful. It's rare to find people in whom you can honestly and fully confide, and who get your left-of-center sense of humor, and who will let you sit on their couch and cry about stupid things for hours. Keep these people in your life. They're healthy. Healthy things are often good for your skin, too.

6. You have a legitimately large bathroom, which has a showerhead quite far from the sink, and with good water pressure. This is a huge blessing. Also, at the theatre, you have the Magical Sauna.

7. You have daily, nearly-instant communication with your family (especially your best friend aka Dad), thanks to the advances of modern technology. Specifically, Steve Jobs. So even though you're far away, in the land of Vikings and Carlsberg, you can still sort of cry on Dad or Mom's shoulder. And by "cry on Dad or Mom's shoulder," I mean "cry into their ears via your cell phone," but it does the trick.

8. You have P.G Wodehouse, David Sedaris, Milan Kundera, David Lodge, Edward Gorey, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Neil Gaiman...the authors you turn to when things are looking a bit cloudy. They will make you feel instantly snuggly.

9. Related to #8, you have music too: The Strokes, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Prince Billy, the Amelie soundtrack, Arcade Fire, and (when you need to be extremely melodramatic and completely self-indulgent, once every six months or so) Fiona Apple. Blast this music very loud in your ears when you need to.

10. You have pillows! These are excellent to lay on, cry/scream into, throw, hug, and--if they are of the decorative variety--pleasant to look at.

11. You can always have Matilde chocolate milk. Preferably with a slice of toast, perfectly golden and topped with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. The invention of these foods and choice beverage are reasons to smile.

12. You have clothes that you like, and a large collection of fuzzy socks. These are good things to remember when you feel a little bit less than perky. Also good for less than perky is coffee, but that's different.

13. Your current haircut is the easiest "do" you've ever had. Maybe it's not always Vogue-approved, but more often than not, it looks pretty okay and bonus: it takes ten minutes to style. Because ten minutes is about how long it takes you to get out of bed in the morning.

14. You have glitter pens. It doesn't really matter what you write, but filling a blank sheet of paper with sparkly doodles is stunningly gratifying. Just keep this in mind.

15. Your life, at the end of the day, is absofruitly unbelievably fantastic, especially compared to most of the planet. Your family loves you, and they're actually cool; your friends are indescribably fun; your job kicks butt, even when it kicks your butt; you try to live life fully; and just a cherry on top of the cupcake, you get to end most weekdays with Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. So. Things aren't so bad. Soak your feet, have a cry (or a cookie), get some sleep, and do it again--but better--in the morning.

Posting from my iPhone--tak, Steve Jobs!

2010-08-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

A very quick post from my iPhone this fine Wednesday evening...my lovely
composer friend has my Internet stick thingymabob, and so I am forced to use this magical device to connect to the informaion superhighway until further notice :-)

Swan Lake is currently consuming my existence, and I love it. Walking down the street doing my shoulders-down! exercises; developing my personal wingspan; feeling the drama of Tchaikovsky's incomparable score; fearing the hunters and developing one's own swan personality...it may sound ridiculous. But know this: I am well aware my job is not going to find a cure for cancer. However if I can convincingly portray a cursed swan-woman and make people forget about this troubled existence in which we live, if I can be a part of offering an audience a sort of escape, then I have done my job well; and this , then, is what I strive for.

Tomorrow marks the premiere of Cross Connection Ballet Company's Sommerballet performances at Bellevue Teatret, and with several "old" pieces plus a fantastic new full-length creation (SOMA), it is sure to be quite an event. I am proud and ecstatic to have been allowed to be a part of it, and if you're in Copenhagen, visit Bellevue.dk or billetnet.dk
for tickets!

And Saturday is the debut of Royal Danish Ballet's 2010-2011 season, as we take part
in the "Open Air" performances this weekend. The ladies and I will be performing sections from Serenade, the boys
will present (shirtless, kilted) Jord, and both men and women will do Tarantella from Napoli...all for free! And put with performances
from the Opera and Playhouse and Orchestra, this will be a fun one...so
lots of cultural entertainment in and around Copenhagen this weekend, all highly
recommended :-) Happy Wednesday to all! I am resting a spasming back with The Royal Tenenbaums and 5kr
cookies, and can only hope
everyone else's evenings are as relaxing.

Lacing up the Ballerina Shoes Again...

2010-08-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

Our first week of work for the new season is over, and it was quite a week! I discovered new muscles thanks to their soreness. I got to see friends I had missed very much over the holiday. The ladies of Royal Danish rocked rehearsals: we ran through Serenade and learned all of the two swan acts in Swan Lake in three days. (Thank you, fabulous Petrusjka Broholm...and Tchaikovsky ;-D). Everyone is back fresh and tan; some people got puppies; some people had babies; some people got haircuts or new hair colors...returning to work after holiday is like a grown-up version of starting school after summer vacation, and I love it.

This next week will be even busier. With a seven-day work week ahead, we are continuing Swan Lake rehearsals; beginning to work on Christopher Wheeldon's new Sleeping Beauty creation; and will be preparing for two "open air" performances, one in Rosenborg on Saturday, and one in Skamling on Sunday. And on top of that (for me), Cross Connection has their Sommerballet premiere of SOMA on Thursday, which begins a nine-performance run at Bellevue Teatret. And while I am sorry summer is ending, I really happy to get back to work and to have a schedule again (and will be even gladder when I feel truly back in shape, if only because it will involve less sore muscles!). Plus, we are starting with two pieces set to some of the most heart-breakingly fantastic, incredibly beautiful Tchaikovsky music ever, in the forms of Serenade and Swan Lake. So it's not really difficult for me, someone who is big on music, to want to go rehearse these things every day.

All in all, it's been a wonderful first week back. Seeing everybody again, working on wonderful pieces of ballerina dancing, and ending the week with a Saturday night out in Tivoli/Kødbyen = en dejlig velkommen tilbage! To end this post, a view from my new apartment's roof terrace, and Tivoli fireworks...Happy Sunday :o)

Sunrise, and sunset, from my roof. I love the view from up there; it's wonderful to bring my coffee and a book up every morning and start the day in a lovely sort of way.

And on our way to Kødbyen: Tivoli fireworks. Our timing coincided perfectly with the grand finale, so it was especially wonderful. I love fireworks almost as much as I love unicorns.

Sommerferie er færdig...

2010-08-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

It is back to ballerina work tomorrow, ringing in a brand new season with four hours of Swan Lake rehearsals. After a summer of sunshine, blissfully free days, long nights, and wonderful memories, it is time--for all good things must come to an end--to lace up the pointe shoes, face the music (and the mirror!), and really work my reluctant muscles once again. I'm glad to return to a schedule, and ready to get back into shape, and I love (times infinity) the music for Swan Lake.

And so, a lovely back-to-school sort of ballad by the eternally cool White Stripes...and here's to another dejlig season :o)

Inception, or: Is This Post Even Real?

2010-07-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

Last night, I did something I love to do but haven't done in a while: I went to the cinema. (And yes, it still tickles my fancy that they call it the "cinema" here. Also, the whole assigned seating thing. But I digress.) A group of us went to see Inception, the latest from the fantastic Christopher Nolan (director of two of my favorites, Memento and The Dark Knight). I have never been happier about forking over 85DKK.

First of all, I didn't know much about the film going into it, and was apprehensive for a couple of reasons. Aside from a third grade phase of Titanic-related adoration--a movie I still have not seen--I am not one of those people who Loves Leo. I "nothing" Leo; though at one point I recall my brother and I dubbing him (somewhat unfairly) Leonardo DiCraprio. Also, since Denmark is a bit slow with movie release dates, the film has been out in most other parts of the planet for a couple of weeks now. (As my brother pointed out: "What is with that country? When is the movie coming out there, three years from now? And you guys have weird plumbing.") So although I knew nothing about the actual film, not having a television and only viewing the trailer once online, I had read enough on American friends' Facebook profiles and seen enough foreign headlines to know that this movie was "AMAZING! INCREDIBLE! OMG INCEPTION!!!!!111!!!" Such hype often leads to massive disappointment, and so I made a conscious effort to go into this movie with no expectations. And I walked out in tears.

Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is our hero, an "extractor" paid to invade the dreams of various industry titans and steal their top-secret ideas. Dom is a pro at navigating other people's sleepland fantasies, but he's got a lady problem in the form of Mal, his late wife who bears a shocking resemblance to Marion Cotillard. She's "cray-cray" and has the problematic tendency of getting all up in Dom's subconscious and totally screwing with his missions. She seems to really enjoy gunplay.

Mal lives up to her negative-prefix of a moniker during a dream-raid on wealthy businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe). But it's sort of ok because he is in fact auditioning Dom for a much riskier job, the target of which is Saito's future rival, billionaire heir Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy). The goal of this dangerous mission is not to steal an idea but to plant one (the "inception" of the title; love when that movie moment occurs) that will lead to the dissolution of Fischer's empire.

Dom takes on this job, because--as the best protagonists are--he is a little cuckoo for Coco Puffs, and has unresolved family issues. He assembles the classic Dream Team, starting with an architect, Ariadne (the fabulous Ellen Page). Dom teaches her how to mentally build every street, every building, every physical detail in the dreamer's world (necessary if the dreamer is to be deceived). There's also Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, still freaking adorable) as Dom's organizer; Eames (Tom Hardy) as a cheeky "forger" who can shapeshift--how cool is THAT?!; and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), who supplies the powerful drug that pulls the whole motley crew into a beautiful stupor.

As you watch, the strange beautiful world of dreaming and the rules by which it operates grow clearer: There are consequences to dying in a dream. Dream time vs. real time--you have way more time in your subconscious life. There are serious risks of layering dreams within dreams (hello, turning into a human vegetable!). And once our heroes dive head-first into this labryinth of an other world (via Cillian Murphy's subconscious), this movie--like a dream within a dream--becomes cloaked in wonderful, almost-incomprehensible layers of complexity as Dom and his merry band of crazies navigate the chambers and antechambers of a young billionaire's mind. So, just another day at the office.

I can't go into much more detail, both because I don't want to give anything away and because I can't adequately describe what I saw myself. I do know that for two and a half hours, I didn't move, except to put my hand over my mouth or cover my face or cry. I rarely enjoy a film so thoroughly as I did last night, and I do know I will see this movie again in the theatre, because I have to. It's more than worth the money, so I urge you: go see it asap, but save the beer for after the flick, full concentration is a must. And to Leonardo DiCaprio, I say: I am so sorry I ever called you Leonardo DiCraprio. You are the opposite of crappy. So undskyld, og tusind tak for en underlig, dejlig aften.

The Little Things in Life

2010-07-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

Literally, little things. Like...a friend's awesome new puppy. Karen the pug belongs to a friend of mine and a bunch of us spent quality time watching the dog fight its reflection today. Puppies and such adorable things are excellent reasons to smile, and so I give you: Karen.

Getting back in shape

2010-07-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

The untold horror of every dancer's summer: Getting back in shape. Facing the mirror, donning that oh-so-flattering leotard, lacing up the ballerina shoes, making the unnatural look (and feel) as natural as possible. It is, pardon my French, a bitch. But it must be done; preferably in the company of familiar faces and possibly to the dulcet tones of Lady Gaga/Trentemøller/T.I./The Bangles/Kanye West/The White Stripes/Hanson. (Aaaand now you know a good chunk of what makes up my "biking playlist," heavy on the guilty pleasures.) Technique that takes years to build up; stamina which takes months to perfect; mental tenacity and self-confidence that--for this dancer--is an ongoing battle, inside the studio and out: All magically go into excellent hiding within the first five days of being on that wonderful time known as holiday.

So. What makes it ok? Well, for this low-self-confidence ballerina child, several things. The knowledge that those probably not-so-noticeable summer pounds [read: ounces] will go away very quickly upon resuming (ab)normal activity. Good music to bike to. Still having fun and enjoying free time after that morning workout period. Ridiculous outfits worn during said morning period, just to spice things up. (For example, my uniform of late has consisted of: brightly-colored leotard, dangly earrings, boy shorts/men's underwear, a headscarf, and knee socks/ridiculously large Adidas sneakers for the bike. Because in two months, I'll be wearing a freaking ski jacket to ballerina class and yearning for the days when I could frolic about the theatre in garments meant for footballers and members of the opposite sex.) Most important, though, is to take time and enjoy the sunshine at the end of the day. It's not going to be around for long in Scandinavia, so soak it up (literally) while you can, preferably in the company of close friends, and good food and drinks, and music.

I have had one of the most wonderful summers in recent memory. Dramatic, occasionally, but I do have a flair for it; mostly, though, it has just been simply fantastic. And so, in an effort to remind myself (and whoever may read this--Hi, Mom!), some of my favorite pictures from my first full sommerferie away from home...

The fabulous, incomparable, CCBC dancer Heloise.

Burning an effigy of a witch on Skt. Hans Day. Danes' idea of a good time.

As an American, I never understood or experienced the whole World Cup fervor thing. I did this summer. What I learned: Soccer/football ain't so bad, but the vuvuzela is surely an "instrument" (I use that term oh-so-loosely!) from Satan.

One day I took my bike Lenny Briscoe for a ride and found the suttetræ, or where pacifiers go to heaven. Amazing tree, I felt like I was in a Terry Pratchett novel or a Tim Burton fairytale. Lovely.

These photos combine several favorite things: Islands Brygge; sunshine; and one of my very best friends/newly adopted older brother, Constantine.

Ah, Tivoli. Thanks to connections in the Pantomime Theatre, I can go for free--and I do love Tivoli time.

The jazz festival turned out to be quite a surprise highlight. I may be a cool cat after all!

One magical night--the random, perfect summer sort--I saw two awesome bands, one Klezmer and one Balkan (I hope I'm categorizing right). Either way, both made me want to shout MAZEL TOV! from the rooftops; as a result of this evening, my forthcoming housewarming will be bat mitzvah-themed. I'm not joking.

The Rose Festival has to be one of the happiest evenings in recent memory. Here, Constantine, an unidentified pink-wine lover, and myself, on a Nørrebro sidewalk.

Late one night on Islands Brygge, I "car crashed"--a term coined this summer due to my frequency to sleep over at my friends' apartment there (in fact, this is a rare night at home for me; it feels wrong, somehow...). My beloved Stauning and I stayed up very late making drawings and watching American Dad, and generally having a wonderful night, and we made this. Whatever "this" is.

A dejlig aften på Kongens Have with friends like Mathilde and Constantine ended with a Car Crash--and a wonderful sunset!--on Islands Brygge.

A weird, fun night out in Kødbyen led to making new friends. En dejlig aften!

SOMA with Cross Connection is so. Much. Fun.

I am fairly certain I would die without this person in my life. Or at least go certifiably insane. Tusind, infinity thanks and hugs.

Finally, these: Gaga-meets-Wonder Woman gold sparkly panties, from Royal Danish Ballet's 1950s production of Salome. Beyond having my first-day-back-at-work outfit planned, I don't know what I will wear these for, but I am certain I will find an occasion or eight.

Dulcet tones of summer...

2010-07-16T05:31:00.001-07:00

My freckles are back with a wonderfully-missed vengeance; my skin has achieved its first legitimate tan--not a sunburn, not just some pigment; and my ears are smiling from Bonnie Prince Billy. Happy Friday, and happy summertime :o)