All Imperfect Things

Alegria and Varekai

Just a few video clips to share, I've been watching two of my favorite Cirque du Soleil shows,  "Alegria" and "Verekai", over the weekend. I always find Cirque du Soleil to not only be very entertaining but also a great source of inspiration as well. Especially lately with some of the projects I'm currently working on.

"Alegria" is described on their website as "a mood, a state of mind. The themes of the show, whose name means "jubilation" in Spanish, are many. Power and the handing down of power over time, the evolution from ancient monarchies to modern democracies, old age, youth—it is against this backdrop that the characters of Alegría play out their lives. Kings' fools, minstrels, beggars, old aristocrats and children make up its universe, along with the clowns, who alone are able to resist the passing of time and the social transformations that accompany it." which is probably the best way to simply explain what this show is about. They're on a US tour with "Alegria" this year actually, I'm hoping to see it when it rolls around here this coming spring.

"Verekai", which is probably my absolute favorite Cirque du Soleil show out of the ones that I have seen, is loosely based on the Greek myth of Icarus. However in "Varekai", instead of Icarus burning his wings from flying to close to the sun and falling to his death, he falls down to earth into a forest at the base of a volcano. Alive but unable to fly, within the forest he meets many strange creatures, including a caterpillar girl with whom he falls in love with. While some of the creatures of the forest try to help him, others try to bring harm to him.

Kseniya Simonova Sand Animation

This video has been going around for awhile now, but I thought I'd post it here anyway. Definitely one of the most, if not the most, beautiful and emotionally powerful sand animations I have seen.

NY Trip 09 Photos from Times Square and Wicked

 

 

Went to go see Wicked on Broadway which was phenomenal! The tour is supposed to be coming to a theater near here later this month through December so I'd love to go see it again. This also made me realize that I really should start going to see plays more often. My mom, who's really into performing arts and a bit of a playwright herself, use to take me to see plays a lot when I was a kid.

 

This is a blurry awful picture, but a little proof that I did make a point to go see Wicked decked out in black and the perfect shade of green (though this really isn't any different from what I normally wear since my wardrobe tends to look like I stole most of my clothes from Wednesday and Morticia Addams...and now Elphaba too apparently).

I had black heels with me that have almost the exact same shade of green on the insides as those tights, However I didn't feel like and didn't think it was really all that necessary to walk all the way back to the car just to change some shoes.

 

Before and after seeing Wicked was spent roaming around Times Square, there was a festival going on with a bunch of vendors out. I think it lasted a couple days, I remember hearing about it on the news the first day we were there but we ended up not coming down to Times Square that day.

Also I really need to see The Lion King next time I'm there. I remember when it first premiered on Broadway, when I was about 9 years old, I think. I was determined to figure out how to make some puppets and masks like the ones in the show. I ended up making some odd paper mache version of Simba which didn't turn out too great. Hm, now that I think about it I think I might try that again someday when I have some free time.
That's pretty much all of the relevant photos from New York. I do still have some good shots from Ellis Island and Trinity Church that I haven't uploaded from my camera yet, I'll share those at some point in the near future.

Butoh Dance Performance

(Photo by mortellemarie on Flickr)

I was looking around on YouTube the other night and stumbled upon this video of a Butoh dance performance, performed by Sankai Juku. Unfortunately embedding is disabled on the video so you'll have to click the link above to see it. I thought it was quite mesmerizing though, too bad I can't find any videos of the whole thing.