at PANERA, easily looking up ANYTHING I WANT AT ALL ON THE INTERNET.
i love frank.
you don’t realize how much you need someting till it’s gone.
ok, maybe i don’t actually NEED to have wifi here at panera, but i LIKE it. it makes me happy.
i just wanted to say something more about “rockballet,” which was by the Springfield Ballet Company on Sept. 10th and 11th at sangamon auditorium. i mentioned before that it was GREAT. I didn’t go into any detail because i had no time, and because i didn’t have the program in front of me. i just found it, though, buried on the floor on the backsteat of my car.
this year’s rockballet was all music of Queen. i didn’t know i liked so many queen songs, but i do. the choreography, the dancing, the costumes, it all went together so nicely. i liked “bohemian rhapsody” in particular. wilfredo rivera did the choreography, as well as dancing in the number. he was so much fun to watch. i don’t know why he’s involved with the ballet, maybe he’s a friend of the director, but on the program it says he’s the Associate Artistic Director of the Cerqua Rivera Art Experience.
now, i WOULD have written I WONDER WHAT THAT CERQUA RIVERA ART EXPERIENCE MIGHT BE, however, because i’m sitting here at panera, i could look it up immediately, which is all the time i have the patience for. so here is what the cerqua rivera art experience is:
“A 29-member core company comprised of musicians, dancers, visual artists, designers and an acting coach create multi-disciplinary performance works, most of which explore socio-political themes. The company self-produces at least one show each year and has been presented at Chicago’s major dance festivals, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chicago Cultural Center and the Old Town School of Folk Music. An educational program, Jazz and Its Dance, tours area schools, and in 2001 the company introduced a new school-residency program that focuses on the art and cultures of Latin America.”
interesting, huh?
right now since it’s the middle of the afternoon, panera isn’t too crowded, luckily. there’s a group of old guy sitting acrosse from me having coffee. one of them was a principal at some school i went to, i’m pretty sure. couldn’t tell you what his name is, but he’s aged quite a bit.
next to them are some people who were watching some HORRIBLE thing on somebody’s laptop, some get rich quick thing, i think, and one guy is wearing a tie and now they’re having a very earnest discssion but THANK GOD i can’t hear them.
anyway, the rockballet – all the dancers were incredibly good, but i couldn’t help but watch one in particular. her name is Sarah Genin, and it was her pointe shoes that i got to wear in “i can’t take it with you,” and i’m sure she has no idea just how badly those shoes were used. she was clara in the nutcracker last year, and she was in quite a few numbers in the rockballet, and she’s incredibly poised, tall and thin and really good at all the ballet moves, and she’s ONLY AN EIGHTH GRADER! this is slightly mind-boggling. i mean, she probably doesn’t have quite as much poise as she appears to have in the ballet, but at least she has it up there on the stage. amazing. according to the program, she’s already danced at Lincoln Center in NYC and took classes from “many well known dancers.” hmm.
when i was in 8th grade, i’d never even visited new york city, much less taken any classes in anything. not only did i not take any dance lessons, it was all i could do to keep my balance, which i achieved only some of the time.
i wish there were more details i could write about the rockballet, but i didn’t take any notes when i saw it, so i can’t remember anything specific, except that i really liked it. it was clever, polished, entertaining, exhuberant, and i never got bored at all watching it. if you live in spfld and you haven’t gone to any ballet performances, GO ALREADY. the next thing coming up is the nutcracker, which doesn’t seem to have any problems with getting people to fill the seats because it’s a holiday tradition, but GO TO OTHER PERFORMANCES, TOO. they’re doing “cinderella” in the spring, which you probably won’t remember, but if you see a billboard around town, maybe that will trigger your memory and you’ll go see it. not to mention rockballet NEXT YEAR, which i realize is a ridiculously long time from now, who knows where any of us will be by then.
the only problem with panera is that it’s freezing in here; i could sit outside, but it’s about 90 out there and very humid.
also, nobody ever comes around and offers free samples of anything. that would be nice.
that is all for now.
ok then,
grace