Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
Boy, the things you come back home to after you’ve been away on vacation. Especially if you’re one of those people, like myself, who tries to avoid the stuff that chains you to your regular, non-vacationing life: the news, the Internet, social media. Sometimes this philosophy backfires. In mid-June I came home from a relaxing … Read more
Buying a $25 ticket for the ballet can be a bit of a gamble. The cheapest seats tend to be the ones furthest back, in the nosebleed section, but you’ll also find them way up close, or way off to the side. (Or, one time, this miracle bargain: https://www.theclassicalgirl.com/how-i-attended-the-san-francisco-ballet-for-14/). Last Saturday night, my $25 seat was … Read more
Willem Christensen and Gisella Caccialanza, 1944 It hadn’t been intended as a “timeless holiday classic,” that first year, on Christmas Eve day, 1944, when Willem Christensen, artistic director of the fledgling San Francisco Ballet, presented to audiences his complete, two-act Nutcracker production. He’d known he was doing something relatively new. The only other complete Nutcracker ballet outside Russia had been in … Read more
My first glimpse of the magic that is “The Kingdom of the Shades” came when I was sixteen, via the opening sequences of the film The Turning Point. The music, the image of twenty-four women attired in white, descending a tiered ramp through silvery lighting, striking arabesques in perfect synchronicity, haunted me. Particularly once I got some … Read more