Edinburgh Bullet Points

1. Dear Uncle Andy,

Many years ago you went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and when you came back you brought exciting stories and an album of songs from an Australian performance art band that I can still sing most of due to the fact that I spent years listening to it too much. Because of you I have always wanted to go to the fringe.

Thanks for planting that desire, I had a freaking amazing time.
Love,
Casey

2. Kevin flew in from New York and then had two days to attempt to get over jet-lag and hang out with Ella before I put him on an overnight train up to Edinburgh. We arrived at 7:30 in the morning, climbed a giant, ridiculous hill, dropped off our bags and then got started. Because with something like the fringe it's better to jump right in rather than wade slowly.

3. 24 shows in 5 days (22 each). We saw 1 scripted musical, 2 improvised musicals, 2 sketch comedy troupes, 1 “wtf was that??” devised play, 2 improv groups, 2 panel talks, 1 ceilidh, 7 stand up comics, 1 neo-futurist alumni show, 1 ventriloquist, 2 comedy bands, 1 puppet show, and best of all? 1 Folk musical version of Beowulf. God, that was good. (We not at all secretly both want to work with these people.)

There were also 2 shows that we either forgot we'd bought tickets for or completely failed to accurately read the map for.

4. Kevin and I turn out to be excellent travel partners with an almost uncanny ability to get really hungry and lose it at the same time. This might sound like a bad thing but was actually and sincerely wonderful because it meant that we'd get quiet and withdrawn (due to low blood sugar) at the same time and then fix that (by eating) and perk up at the same time. The only real difference is that I need, like, a sandwich in the morning and Kevin needs a giant coffee or three.

5. Edinburgh is beautiful. Ridiculously rainy, but stunningly gorgeous. We kept catching our breath and sighing at how pretty it was. Bonus of all the rain? Numerous rainbows.

So, so, so pretty.

6. I kept running into people that I knew or had connections to. Walking into rooms or new venues or down a street and going, “Oh. Hi there.”

The city was filled with my people, both figuratively and literally.

7. The fringe is totally overwhelming. I had the catalogue sent to me beforehand and barely looked at it because it was so full of things. We arrived and I went through a period of panic because we were going to MISS things. Which, of course we were- we only had 5 days, things were already finished or finishing, there's only so many shows you can see in a day and only so many tickets you can afford. But the anxiety of missing something extraordinary took some getting used to.

8. Best Decision I Made: Joining Friends of the Fringe. It cost £25 and meant I got the catalogue sent to me. I figured I was happy to support the festival and too lazy to find a catalogue in London, so I went for it. This turned out to be an accidental stroke of brilliance: the 2-for-1 ticket deals meant that the membership paid for itself, but the real jewel was the ticket hut.

When buying tickets non-members have to stand in an epic queue that, because this is Edinburgh, is frequently soggy. Members, however, get to skip the queue and hang out in an adorable, dry little hut and take their own sweet time choosing what to see.

At first I kept apologising for hemming and hawing and taking so long at the desks, but they kept pointing out that there were few or no other people waiting so it was totally cool. Best £25 of the festival. Highly recommended. Five stars.

9. Flyering. We were there for the last five days of the festival, so a lot of people had festival fatigue. Not us, we were PERKY. Which endeared us greatly to the flyerers all over the city. There are SO many shows that lots of times the only way you hear about something or notice it is by being handed a flyer. Streets are covered in people trying desperately to get audience members for their shows. Kevin and I would go out of our way to get flyers and were always enthusiastic about taking them. We got profusely thanked for that a number of times...

10. The festival is so large and full of so many different things that any number of different festival experiences can be had. Want to get drunk and heckle a lot? There's a festival for you. Want to see a lot of dance? Only stand up comedy? An entire run of musicals? Things that make you cry? Political drama? Children's theatre? Want to make a study of different uses of puppetry? There's a festival for all of those.

After excellent and and appropriate-for-us shows Kevin and I would turn to each other and talk about how we had found our festival.

D'awww. I'm in love with the fringe.

Instructional Video

This kid is fabulous. I don't understand how the "Drawdio" works but it is SO. COOl! And I think that if I had made one when I was 8 like this kid is, I probably would have seriously annoyed my entire family.

BLOGS (and events and gigs, oh my!)

Hey everyone! If you're not already reading my sister's blog you really should because she's hilarious and wonderful and in Mexico.

In the meantime: I need to up my game! No posts in ages and now she's out there being all funny and awesome. I gotta catch up.

1. I went to a panel on Women in Music with my friend Ellie on Monday. It was part of Birds Eye View, a film festival for women film makers. The line up was pretty great and contained an interesting mix of pop musicians and people from the classical world. The audience was almost entirely female and man was that an educated audience. When it was time for the question and answer section pretty much everyone who stood up introduced themselves and their titles and I kept thinking "Yup, heard of your organization."

The topic was ostensibly the status or state of women composers in the UK today. And that would have been a really, really interesting discussion. Unfortunately the woman chairing the whole thing was not a musician and didn't know the right questions to ask. I got bored during the first half hour (and a little bit angry) because somehow the whole conversation started off on the odd (and rather inappropriate) question of whether or not the panellists were angry that there was a public perception that certain pop acts write their own songs when really they don't. This ended up devolving in to a "let's make fun of Cheryl Cole" conversation which didn't sit well with me and also seemed to be a conversation that the panellists wanted to get away from and were uninterested in. (I can tell you that I was certainly uninterested.) It was just such a negative and impersonal way to start off the discussion. Personal stories! Issues that they care about! That's what I wanted to hear.

Fortunately once the questions got rolling? That's totally what happened. And the discussion went on for a good half hour after it was supposed to because people just kept asking questions. We would have kept going too if we'd been allowed to. In retrospect it would have been a fabulous networking opportunity, but I didn't realize that was what it was going to be, so I was unprepared. Next time though, next time I'll be ready.

2. Tim Hecker. Rob's birthday was last week and he is a big, big fan of Tim Hecker so Gwen, Rob and, I went to a show he was doing in Dalston. He does ambient electronica; a genre I know next to nothing about. It was an interesting crowd- mostly 20 something hipsters in a dimly lit cafe and then, when the music started? Everyone closed their eyes. There's nothing to see, it's a guy with a computer.

Rob had positioned us (we were the first ones through the door) in the exact centre of the surround sound speakers which was excellent, because as someone who can only properly hear out of one ear, I need all the help I can get in order to hear the shifting sound.

It was pretty extraordinary. I had graphic pictures floating through my head- at one point there was a vivid disappearing weasel and another time this melting pot of white goo with something pushing it's way out of it.

Did I mention it was trippy? It was totally trippy.

I would definitely go to more events like that. Especially if there were more comfortable chairs that you could curl up into and more properly relax into. There was something really neat about experiencing something that was inherently personal (eyes closed, listening intently) with a roomful of people experiencing something...similar.

3. Gwen has been getting us awesome tickets to the Philharmonia. On Sunday Rob and I went to see the Dvorak cello concerto and Sibelius 2. Rob has been learning to play the cello this year and is adorably into it (And geeking out about it to a hilarious degree: when the orchestra came on he told me what strings each of the cellists were using- he's memorized what colour wrappings each brand of strings has...)

Gwen got us second row centre seats. This meant that we could hear individual players and were smack dab in front of the soloist. It was amazing. Also, because we were *right* in front of the orchestra, that meant that I got the surround sound experience again. The opening of Sibelius 2 tosses the theme around the orchestra, and because we had just been to see Tim Hecker and because we were too close to see much without craning our necks, I decided to close my eyes and just experience the music. It. was. so. cool! (I can't believe I've never done that before. Clearly I need much better computer speakers...)

4. It's been really warm here. The nation is sunburned. Ella and I had a picnic with some of the Fire-Hazard folks in Hyde Park and I kept spilling things. We sat down and I knocked over a glass of wine (fortunately the picnic blanket was mine, so I didn't need to apologise to anyone). Five minutes later I knocked over some olives that had been marinated in chili oil. Then a glass of cider. I also spilled hummus and more chili oil on my dress. Clever. Besides my clumsiness, the picnic was a lot of fun and I even managed to keep from joining the sunburn club.

5. I met Robin Grey on a bus last year. He was carrying a guitar, a banjo, a ukulele, and a small three legged stool. I was carrying my bass. We both had to keep moving because baby buggies kept getting on the bus, so we started chatting and discovered we had friends in common. I've been meaning to go to one of his gigs for ages but for one reason or another it hasn't worked out until last week. Last week he had a gig in a pub in Clapton, so I really had no excuse not to go. I looked up the address, got walking directions, and then found myself in front of what was clearly an abandoned and empty pub.

Turns out it's an artist's collective squat and you had to go through the secret door in the garage down the side of the block. (London has weirdly progressive squatters rights laws, so this is not as unusual as it might sound, though it was my first time in a squat.) The inside was delightfully derelict. The glasses seemed not to have been cleaned any time recently and the couches and chairs were particularly snuggly.

The hour between when I arrived and when the music actually started felt like an awkward cocktail party made up of art students and hippie musicians. I was curled up in an arm chair working on lesson plans. The interesting thing about musicians in London is that all of them teach, so I ended up having a good conversation with a banjo player about our experiences teaching early years music classes.

Then the music started: the whole place was lit by candles and the first act was this Italian guy with a guitar singing traditional songs and telling stories. Oh my goodness. I've never wanted to go to Italy before, but now? Yes. Yes, please. Unfortunately, though I'm fairly sure he was introduced as "Santa Mozzarella," I've had no luck in finding any sort of online presence under that name. Which is really too bad because it was the most magical and downright special experience I've had in a long time. Again, the communal act of seeing fabulous music in a dimly lit room. I like it.

And the I had to go home and get some sleep. So I did that too.

Things I've been doing.

I've had a social week so I thought I would share some of that with you.

First of all- my new flatmates are settling in nicely. The only issue so far is that Jenny used to work for Cutco and so has a large collection of very sharp knives. This is hardly a problem since having nice knives is a very good thing indeed. However- her collection of nice knives combined with my (much smaller collection) of nice knives means that our cutlery drawer is now a: overstuffed and b: dangerous to put your hand in to... It 's also been interesting figuring out what I've told them about how the flat works and what I haven't. For instance- the power went off for a while on Sunday because I hadn't remembered to point out that someone ought to put more money on the little key thing that is how we pay for electricity. Oops. Also- those weak pathetic showers that they've been taking in the morning? Yeah, there is a water pump that makes those all nice and cozy, but the switch for it is in the living room. (where all power switches relating to the bathroom should go, don't you think? So handy and sensical.) Jenny and I have been having some good bonding moments (talking till 3am one night, oops.) but John Henry is still quiet, we'll see how that continues on. He is a philosopher after all.

I saw a show last week- one of the technical theatre students at GSMD had noticed that the theatre was free for two days at the beginning of term so he finagled his way in to getting to use it. (Impressive.) The show he ended up producing is called "The Last 5 Years" and is one of my favorite musicals. The instrumental parts are all soloistic and there are themes that come back in just altered enough forms for it to be tremendously exciting musically as well as having excellent lyrics. The show is about a couple (only 2 actors in the whole thing) singing about the last 5 years of their relationship- but the man is singing forwards in time and the woman is singing backwards- so they never actually sing together. The whole show is one solo after another- it's a tough show to pull off. Anyhow the whole thing was student led and performed (though they did get the main director for the acting department to direct the show- again, impressive.) and it was FABULOUS. I've never seen a show where the band and the actors were more integrated. And authentically, organically integrated too. It was a joy to watch and I feel privileged that I got to see it. (Seriously, it was impressive.)

The dinner club folks have apparently given up on cooking and so this time we got together at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane along with another American couple that Dave met on his plane ride to London: Anna and Trevor. They are wonderful and the six of us spent most of the evening chattering away and having three threads of conversation run at once. It was fun and had the added benefit of being relatively easy to get home from for everyone. (That has been a standing problem with the dinner club group- whose house to have supper at! No one really wants to be the person who is always traveling.)

On Saturday I went with Rob and Gwen to go see a friend of theirs play a gig in South London. Tom Norris- who is a violinist with the LSO but has taken a year off to try getting his rock band off the ground (check him out on iTunes, guys!) it was an interesting gig because he was just one of four bands and man was his stuff different from everyone else. The band has only been playing together for a short while but they were tight and it was fun to watch them. Also, it isn't often that you see an instrumentalist warming up on Paganini before a rock show....

Consort is tonight- we have a concert on Friday for the Early Music Open Day at school. There are only two legitimate students in the group, but that won't stop us! I've also got my art-opening-gamba-solo-background-music gig on Tuesday so wish me luck on that one!

Oh, and my mother will be pleased to know that I have been applying for more work. Only two jobs so far, but progress! That still counts as progress

Aerial/Marimba

We need a new name because Aerial/Marimba just doesn't cut it- but on Saturday we had our first rehearsal!


In case I haven't told you/you don't remember- this is a project that started because of a sign I put up looking for choreographers for my final project for my masters degree (visual evidence in my profile picture). I didn't get any response from the sign and so found a choreographer through different means (namely a contact improvisation jam session). I figured the sign had been taken down and thought nothing more of it until I got an email a couple of days before the show for my final. The email was from Anna, a German aerialist and unicyclist who trained at the Circus Space in Shoreditch.


My final was done and dusted but I figured I couldn't pass up an opportunity that cool that dropped in my lap like that so I turned to my friend Caz, a marimba player who happened to be sitting next to me when I got the email and asked her if she would be interested in making a piece with me and an aerialist. You can't turn things like that down- so here we are! We have our first gig at the end of October so this is a pretty short run up to things.

We rehearsed at the Circus Space since they have the equipment needed to hang a 10 meter rope from the ceiling. There is a fairly large circus performing society in London and they do their rehearsals and training at the Circus Space so while we were trying things out and improvising Caz and I kept getting distracted by this extraordinary balancing duo over in the corner and a guy jumping up and down on a tight rope by the back wall.

Overall I think it went really well. Currently we are running into some difficulty because both Anna and I managed to misinterpret our schedules so we need to replace *two* rehearsals. For a performance on the 21st of October...

It is interesting working solely as a director and not as an active collaborator/improviser. It requires maintaining focus the entire time and paying attention not only to the artistic material being presented and trying to mold and shape that, but also paying attention to the working dynamic within the group. I'm glad there are three of us- it seems like a good size for practicing on.

Also, it turns out that 3 hours without a break is maybe a little long for me in my new role as director- about two hours in I was like "well, that's all I've got!" But no! They just kept spewing ideas out- and you can't blithely turn something like that off- if ideas are still coming and the parking meter is all paid up? You stick with it!

New Project

So ages ago I put up a sign at LCDS looking for a choreographer for my final project for what turned out to be the bass ballet movement. I didn't get any calls from the sign and assumed that it had been taken down long ago- but a couple of weeks ago I got an email about it. Sweet.

Her name is Anna and she's an Aerialist (ropes hanging from the ceiling, think cirque du soleil) so today we met up at the Circus Space. There is a place in London where you can get a degree in Circus stuff, how amazing is that? It is in an old power station next to Hoxton Square and there is this huge room with tons of rigging. We met, talked for a little bit, and then she showed me one of her routines-which was amazing though I did get a little distracted half way through by the flying trapeze practice going on across the room.

Do you know how cool it is to be in a room full of professional circus performers practicing? It's pretty awesome.

So the project plan is to work with a percussionist friend of mine because I think the visual of a marimba player and aerialist sounds super cool. A tall, thin, vertical sense of space rather than horizontal. (Like my last project but turned 90 degrees...) Basically I want to use this project to try being solely a director/producer instead of a performer. Experiment with being the outside eyes rather than being in the middle of things.

There are so many things I don't know how to do yet, here are some that I have thought of already: Where can we perform? Anna was saying that aerialist work is the easiest to set up because it only needs one anchor point on the ceiling and she has all her own ropes and such so as long as there is a high enough, strong enough beam- we should be fine. But what else is going to be on the programme? Making a 10 minute piece would be awesome- but that isn't a whole evenings worth of performing. Also, how do you put on a show away from a school? I've only ever done this once and I've only ever done it with *tons* of help from GSMD. (Help from Lucy; thanks for all your help Lucy!) So anyhow- huge learning curve. This should be fun!

Travels with Grammy

We've been having an eventful yet relaxing time here in London. Leisurely breakfasts followed by jaunts into town or around my neighborhood.

On Saturday we decided that we ought to see a show so we got tickets to a performance of The Messiah at St. Martin's in the Field. That was in the evening so we decided to go explore my school area and look around. We took the bus down to GSMD and took a quick tour around the school. It was a lovely day so we bought lunch from Marks and Spencer's and ate in the public bowling green in front of my Finsbury job. Grammy wanted to see the Roman amphitheatre so we walked down to The Guildhall and managed to get there just as the art gallery went from being charged to being free. Well timed us! The art gallery was lovely and it was fun to see the amphitheatre as well. It was hard to believe that the ruins were so old. Particularly as they are bathed in this weird green light and there is an audio track of a crowd cheering/jeering and gladiators running around. It's actually just the tiniest bit silly...

Grammy had seen the 14th century hall that *is* the Guildhall before so we spent a confusing few minutes debating which building off the square it was likely to be. Eventually we figured out that we needed to enter a truly hideous 1960's entryway. The hall had been closed to visitors half an hour before we got there, so that was a little disappointing. I noticed that there were GSMD fliers in their flier area and since I had understood that there was NOT a connection between The Guildhall and GSMD (in spite of the name) I asked about it. It turns out that GSMD is sponsored by the City of London Corporation and The Guildhall is the heart of The City's government. So that is the connection. Once the security guards found out that I went to GSMD and that I was graduating this year, one of them offered to take us back to the hall! So that was SUPER cool. We felt very privileged. Also, it turns out that GSMD has its graduation ceremony in the hall- so it was exciting to see where that is going to take place.

There was lovely early evening light at that point so we walked to St. Paul's and had a quick coffee in Starbucks while Grammy told me stories about Helen. Then Starbucks closed so we hopped on a bus to Trafalgar square. We got some soup in the Crypt, which was very crowded- but a nice woman saw us looking for a table and offered us hers as she was just about to leave. We collected the tickets and were there right as the doors opened for the show. I hadn't been there since the remodeling was finished and it is absolutely gorgeous now. We didn't have the most expensive tickets so our view was pretty poor- but the acoustics were wonderful and it was a total joy. I spent a lot of time watching flickering candle light glinting off of the gold leaf of the ceiling decorations while listening to Handel's recitatives and soaring choral soprano lines. We moved to wider seats at the intermission- for which I was grateful.

See? Doesn't that sound like a delightful day?

Catch up number whatever.

I nicked this picture off of facebook- it is Jon, Me, Rupert, Kate, and Tara jamming in the great hall of Kinnersley the day we left. Look at all that sunshine! In England!

I carry a lot of notebooks around with me. I realized this when I switched from my backpack to a smaller bag in order to go to a show this Saturday. My "pared down" bunch of notebooks included my green Artist's Way notebook, a book of manuscript paper, my calendar, my research project note book where I write down what I'm thinking about/looking up for my IPE, a small black moleskin, and two spiral bound class notebooks- a black one that is full but that I refer to frequently, and a hot pink one that is ready for more notes. So- real quick, that is 7 notebooks.

Ridiculous.

And that isn't even including the books that I carry around with me in case I might need to look something up/have a second to read and learn new stuff, and the scores for the LCDS project (one of which is 50 pages long! Why?!) Whew. It's a lot of paper.

This week I went to two performances- Complicite and Resolution! 2009.

Complicite is a theatre group that I am very interested in- they devise most of their plays as a company and use lots of mime and multimedia stuff. It is interesting- sometimes they get a bit too clever with what they are doing and it takes away from the story- but most of the time they manage to have incredibly powerful productions. This one, Shun-kin, had a main character that was a puppet.

I just meant to go find out when there were student tickets available but then it turned out that there were 6 pound tickets for that night and it seemed a foolish thing to miss. I was also pleased because I managed to get to Waitrose right as they were marking down all the sandwiches so I had dinner for 70p, and was patting myself on the back for doing something fun so frugally- but then I bought an audio CD of a past performance and a book of plays that they had written so that sort of shot that all to hell.

On Saturday I went to Contact Improv again. So much fun! I think one of my favorite parts is finding out where I am going to injure myself each time. The first time I threw out my left shoulder, the second time I scraped the skin off my right big toe, and this time I overextended my right hip. I'm not being facetious, I get a big kick out it. Remember Laine counting her bruises after ice skating? Same thing. It's also fun to find out where I'm going to hurt for the next three days- each session a different set of muscles I didn't know I had make themselves known. This time it is a band around my ribs, right under my shoulder blades.

At dance class I picked up a flier for a performance at the LCDS that night that involved 6 improvising dancers and 1 musician. So I pretty much had to go, right?

It turns out that Resolution! (as far as I can tell) is an annual festival of new choreographers work from the London Contemporary Dance School. There were three pieces on that night and a HUGE crowd. The improvised one was by far the best and was also a hoot. It was interesting/strange that the most comfortable, relaxed, confident performance was improvised rather than strictly rehearsed and choreographed.

Stuff We've been doing here in London

Others things we’ve done:

*The American style New Year’s day parade with 1,200 American cheerleaders and a bunch of American High School marching bands. It was pretty cute- most of London’s boroughs entered floats and there were borough beauty queens who looked bored and cold, a giant kinetic sculpture of a tiger, an Indian Scottish pipe band, Harley Davidson clubs, a fire engine from Bethesda, MD (we understand why the WWII trucks and tanks are in the UK, but a not terribly historic fire engine?), historic bicycle clubs, a bunch of clowning groups, and my favorite: a group of miniature steam engines. Basically I want one.

*The Soane Musuem: Okay, so maybe he was a great architect but what a trippy museum. He had a special act from Parliament that means that the house is in the same state that it was when he died in 1837. It is interesting in terms of seeing how museum curating has changed and how different museum aesthetics are now. There is virtually no explanation of any of the artifacts, and there are tons of artifacts. The walls are *covered* and some of the walls swing out on hinges so that more can be displayed on the walls behind the first walls. The sheer volume is overwhelming, and a bunch of the artifacts are just creepy. There is so much stuff in the house and the hallways are so narrow that at times my shoulders would be touching the walls. My shoulders and I’m not that big. Nancy and I decided that we were both happy that we have never had to live with Sir John Soane. Also it was totally cool to see Hogarth’s The Rake’s progress, not the prints, but the paintings.

*The café in The Victoria and Albert Museum. This was my discovery (I only mention this because it means that someday I might get to be as good as Andy at finding out of the way, cool stuff.) I remembered it from a book that I read at Mical and Dan’s house called “Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite” and it had a slogan that the V&A used at one point which was “An ace Café with quite a nice Museum attached.” It turns out to be the first museum restaurant in the world. Quite tasty food too.

*A puppet version of Cinderella at The Little Angel Theatre in Islington. The UK’s leading puppet theatre. The most abstract version of Cinderella ever. There were stick puppets and marionettes and the whole story was told through the music and the puppets movements except for a few bits where the puppeteers spoke in French. A number of extra characters were represented simply by shapes without faces. The kids seemed to be following the story more easily than the three of us were. Andy said later that they could advertise by promoting their ability to speak a language that only children will understand- the parent’s will be flummoxed. This was the first thing we went to that Andy found and then a few days later Time Out magazine wrote a big spread about. The second thing was The Young Ones

*The Young Ones was a musical at a theatre called “Upstairs at the Gatehouse.” The theatre is located on the second floor (first floor, whatever) of a pub in Highgate that has been there more or less since the 1670’s though there are arguments to be made for an Inn being on that site as far back as 1337. (1337!) The musical was a fringe theatre adaptation of a 1950’s movie of the same title that starred the UK’s answer to Elvis- Cliff Richard. It was pretty charming, and in such a small theatre we were practically on the stage. It was cool seeing such classic musical theatre choreography so close up. They played it very straight and without irony, which was sweet but also highlighted how incredibly predictable the plot is.

New Year's Day: Billy Elliot the Musical

I wasn’t all that impressed with the movie when it originally came out. I think I was in the midst of Interlochen and all of that business with “Am I a musician?” and there was some scene at the beginning where Billy was banging out a tune on the piano and I got miffed that they weren’t giving him music lessons and that sort of spoiled the rest of the movie for me.

When I was in London last April Billy Elliot the musical was sort of on my radar. The theatres for Billy Elliot and Wicked are across the street from each other and away from the rest of the West End, so I knew it existed and I remember hearing good things about it, maybe I read a review in Time Out? I don’t remember, but I do know that when Andy and Nancy showed up it was one of the shows I requested to see even though, you know, the movie had miffed me.

Anyhow, whatever the movie- the show was AMAZING. I spent the first half hour of the show with my jaw literally hanging open. It opens with this totally powerful anthem and oh, am I a sucker for anthems. And the choreography! Inspired, awesome, powerful, abstract, and direct. The cast is split about 50/50 gender wise- but the men are all adults and most of the girls are around 12 years old and in Billy’s dance class. The girls are funny. They bumble around a lot until there is a dance with the whole cast and then you understand that they were cast because they can dance.

There is this one scene where the police and the striking miners are clashing and that scene is happening at the same time as Billy’s dance class and the entire cast is weaving in and out and suddenly all the girls are lifted into the air by the miners and there are chairs being passed overhead and then the police and the miners are sitting in a row passing their hats down the row- that is a very poor description of a very cool dance.

The music is phenomenal- so good that I went out and bought the CD during the intermission, which is when I figured out that Elton John had written the score. He’s good, I gotta say. There was one song where Billy had brought a letter to his dance teacher that his mother had written to him before she died. Billy begins singing it and then passes it to the dance teacher who sings it as a duet with his mother and then the mother finishes the song by herself. Every single mother in the audience was crying. Audibly. The woman next to me sniffled through the whole song and then during the reprise as well.

The song that made me start crying is when the Billy’s father is about to cross the picket line and go back down to the coal mines in order to pay for the bus ticket to London for Billy’s audition. He gets stopped by the rest of the miners who won’t let him lose his integrity like that and there is all this pain in the song because he doesn’t understand what his son is doing and he knows he needs to support him and give him a chance to get out of the town that is so clearly dying and the only thing that he can think of to do to help his son is to go against everything that he himself and his community stand for.

I laughed, I cried, I had my breath taken away by the dancing. Oh yeah, and the whole thing is carried by a 12 year old boy. He had to dance in a bunch of different styles (dance very well), sing, act well enough to have an entire show hang on his shoulders, and do all of this before puberty. I was totally impressed, and don’t think I’ve ever seen such a heavily muscled 12 year old before. There are 5 Billys actually because child labor laws mean they can’t do more than two shows a week or something like that. Think about this though- that means that they didn’t just find and train *1* boy who could carry this show- they found *5* (Only one of them per show though, they don’t switch half way through or anything like that.)

Okay, actually I am listening to the sound track again while writing this and I can’t listen to more than one song at a time because I get so worked up over them. Elton John, be my friend please? I really like your work.