Watched on DVD a performance of Ashton’s ‘The Dream’ given by the American Ballet Company somewhere in California in a theatre the auditorium of which must hold at least ten thousand people! I have never seen an auditorium this big and a stage half the size of a football pitch. The production was fine, staged by Anthony Dowell who knows the ballet inside out having danced Oberon so many times and, watching this, with certain steps one was forcibly reminded of what a superb dancer he was, the image stays in the mind. Not that this handsome Oberon was bad though in this production I was particularly taken with Puck who I thought excellent. Chris didn’t seem too impressed, but then Chris was a dancer himself and knows more about technique than I do. I can only go by gut reaction to what looked like truly twinkling toes.
The only downside was the audience who were quite frankly a pain in the butt. Why oh why do Americans feel they have to continually applaud? Someone performs a pirouette and doesn’t fall over? Wow! Clap hands. Their enthusiasm was all very well but it was so disruptive and really not complimentary to the performers because it makes them look more like performing seals. At the end of course there had to be the ninnies giving the obligatory standing ovation. Gosh, look, she did two pirouettes and didn’t fall over. Well dip me in shit and candy me over!
Reading an article on the American novelist Jonathan Franzen and his latest book ‘Freedom’ I came across this startling statistic – “We are adding thirteen million human beings to the population every month.” Thirteen million? Every month? Not every year but every month? Can that possibly be true I ask in utter amazement? Go forth and multiply was never taken so literally but how long will it be before the earth runs out of resources? A Scottish bishop in advance of the Pope’s visit to the UK and defending the Catholic Church’s attitude to homosexuality says it can’t be right because it doesn’t create. He doesn’t mean art, or literature or music, no none of those things. By create he naturally means babies just babies and more babies. By babies he naturally means more souls for the church and, as contraception is a sin, to hell with the consequences! If it weren’t for various sexual peccadilloes the world would have been over-inhabited and gone down the tubes many a long year ago. The rate the earth’s auditorium, large as it is, is being filled, time is running very short before the final curtain. For old fogies like me who have had a life it really doesn’t matter but I do fear for the next generation and the generation to follow. How long will it be?
So much is being written, said, and argued about the Holy Father’s visit, due to cost £150000, none of which I presume is being paid for by the church itself, it deserves a Blog all of its own, or at least longer than I write here. I’ve bookmarked at least five articles from the news. (By the time this is published he will have been and gorn. I’m a wee bit ahead of myself)
Talking about passing time, seemingly moving ever more speedily with each passing year, the weather here is now really cool and the Greeks are already saying kala xiemona, “good winter.” The Greeks have a “good” for practically everything; good morning, good evening, good night, good week, good month, good spring, good summer good autumn, good winter, even good half day if the morning has already gone. I love it.