On my day off, I usually cruise around town or get lunch with people from school, nothing special. However, last week the heat was stifling and I didn't want to spend much time in crowded shops so I went home for lunch. As I ate, I flipped through the paper and found an advert for a dance concert: The students of a local arts' uni were doing a showcase which I thought it looked pretty neat. Manu, my host mum, called the theatre for me and reserved me a ticket, which was lucky since there were only two left! After figuring out the bus route, I went to find the theatre so I would be on time for the actual performance. Good thing too since the tiny theatre was hidden inside a musuem, with an entrance around the back. On the way back home, I made the mistake of reading Dumbledore's death and funeral, and had to restrain myself from crying on the bus. Ha!
After dining with the family, I shot out the door and headed back into town. I had to be early, because they would sell my ticket if I didn't pick it up in time, so it was a good thing I scoped the theatre out earlier. The dancing itself was absolutely beautiful. It was contemporary style- ugly, barefoot ballet. A lot of the pieces were depressing and although they weren't pretty, they were moving. The tiny theatre only had 70 odd seats and I appeared to be surrounded by the dancers' friends although the people in my row all seemed to be Theatre Veterans. As the audience got seated, the curtainless stage was black with two spotlights on two bodies lying curled up with their backs to us. They were two male dancers, wearing only black pants and covered in water. When the music started, they began crawling across the stage on their sides, keeping their backs to the audience and leaving a trail of water behind them. At first, I thought one of the dancers had no arms and was pulling himself painfully across the stage with his shoulders. When they blindly met each other in the middle, they began to dance off and with each other before going in their own separate directions again. The way they danced, it took me a long time to notice that one of the dancers was about as short as me while the other was basketball player tall but the way they danced together, they seemed the same height.
The majority of the dances were clearly about struggles and sadness, although my favourite was a dance called 'A Song of Aging for Him by Her.' There was a female dancer dressed as an old man and s/he was trying with all his might to touch an orange lying on the ground, which was just out of his elderly reach. After some struggles, he fell backwards into a somersault and began to dance fluidly. It was really cool, you could see that the dancer was portraying age but the movements were those of youth. In the end, he got the orange and shuffled happily offstage.
There were two dances which were really rock'n'roll. The first was to manic music and was absolutely wild. The second was clearly at the end of the night and the dancers had abandoned their heeled boots and were lolling drunkenly across the stage. Then one lit up a cigarette and started smoking it and dancing around the smoke. The one of the other two dancers made feeble attempts to take the cigarette and in the end all three were smoking as they danced. It was fabulous, there's no way you would see that in a New Zealand theatre.
After one particularly sombre dance, a flamboyant Asain dancer flounced onstage and started speaking in American-accented English, announcing that it was time for some games. He was joined by a Frenchman with a fabulous accent. Together they raced around the stage, sitting on a toilet they'd placed in the midde and putting on random masks from bags that littered the sides of the stage. Both had put a length of toilet paper hanging from their back pocket and were attemping to steal the paper from the other. When we were waiting in the lobby before the show, the asain guy got everyone to write on a post-it why we like to dance. When he called for everyone to come onstage and stick the post-it somewhere, the Theatre Veterans beside me looked horrified that this young man was destroying the mood. Both the dancers read the post-its as they raced around the stage with their toilet and masks, then they decided their favourites and managed to convince the writer of one to come onstage and do the Macarena with them. It made a fabulous contrast to the sombre dances.
As I was waiting for my bus ( I missed the first one by ten minutes so had to wait another twenty for the next), an 40ish fellow wandered over to me and started saying how he'd like to "get to know me." Shudder. I said, what a shame, I have to go home my boyfriend is waiting for me. Then he spent a long time saying things in German like you never know and he just had to ask ET CETERA. At least I know now I have sufficient German to get myself out of that kind of situation. What an end to a fabulous night out.
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