Friday, June 15, 2012

Grouchy McGrumpyPants(skaya)


Number of steps: 16080 (5.08 mi)

Today hasn’t been the greatest day.  I considered not blogging because I was in such a bad mood.  But no… I will soldier on through the inter-tubes to bring the seven and a half of you who read this blog your eagerly awaited update.

So, I didn’t have singing this morning since I had it on Wednesday, so I had a slightly later start than usual, which was kinda nice.  Then we headed upstairs for what was listed on our schedule as our one stage combat class.  Cool!  Instead of ballet.  Double cool!  Oh wait, never mind… it turned out we were just observing NIU’s stage combat class because it was important that they “continue to move forward.”  The Butler group got an alternate movement class instead of ballet… and we sat on our asses watching Illinois students have an awesome stage combat class.  Things I learned from this event: 1) MXAT stage combat involves way more actual contact than the combat we generally learn in the States.  2) I can successfully act like things that piss me off are perfectly reasonable for the benefit of the group. (I'm fairly confident that no one on this trip reads my blog... so my brave face is still in place.)

We weren’t told when the class would end… and it looked like it was going past our usual 1:00 end time, so I ducked out and headed out to find the Taganka theatre so that I could get us tickets for Marat/Sade tomorrow night – despite the fact that most of the group had not yet responded to my request that they tell me if they’re interested in tickets. (sigh…grumble grumble)  Anyway, I hopped on the metro, found the theatre with no trouble, managed to communicate with the woman at the box office to successfully purchase 8 tickets for 100 rubles each (that’s about 3 bucks - yeehah!) and then rushed back to the MXAT for class.  (I had time to shove a cherry crepe down my throat AND to find out that three other people were interested in tickets to Marat/Sade…so guess what I’m doing on Lunch tomorrow.)  Anyway, our beginning-of-class etude today was not one of our more successful ones, but that was okay – there were still good things about it and things to learn from it, so no worries.  Then, we did this exercise where we listened to a piece of music and then Ilja (Sergei’s assistant teacher - beloved by undergrad women of every nationality) led us through this envisioning exercise that really didn’t work for me in the mental space where I was at the moment, so I just kept getting grouchier from my residual grouchiness.  Our training went fine for the day, and another day of animal etudes made me feel a little better too, but I really did have a hard time making it through today with anything resembling a positive attitude.  Then I had to hang around for an hour and a half waiting for Will Call to open so that I could collect our tickets for The Master and Margarita… and give it to someone else.  Because there are so many people here, they could only get ten tickets for us tonight, so I bowed out, since I had seen the show last year (not that I didn’t want to see it again… I REALLY did… but I was gracious and mature and all that crap.  Whatever.So they finally opened the will call half an hour before the show (REALLY?).  I did manage to figure out that a woman who came and spoke to us while we were waiting for the tickets was trying to scalp some tickets to the show… so that was another moment of Russian triumph for me.  I should have asked what her price was.  But oh well.  Anyway, once I finally got the ticket, I explained what it was going to be like to be shoehorned in to the sold-out show, and I headed back to the dorm where I did my insanely expensive load of laundry (it costs about $10 to get a card that works three times (a wash, a dry and a wash?).  So I just washed and then decided to air dry.  Maybe someone else in the group will give me 100 rubles for a wash.  <shrug>  But hey… at least I have some clean clothes moving into the second half of the month.  Woohoo!  I then spent the evening with some work and some extremely mediocre vodka in a very pretty bottle.  But hey… tomorrow I have movement class, and tomorrow night I’m seeing a show… so tomorrow will be a better day!

In other news… I’ve decided that I could probably get a grant to come back here to study contemporary Russian women playwrights…  so there’s something to toss onto my to-do list!

No comments:

Post a Comment