More Bass Ballet

Unexpected Workshop

Today I was wandering through the foyer of the main building on my way to return an overdue library book when I stopped and started chatting to Salima, another American bassist that I often run in to at various cross arts events. She's fun times and so I went and said hello. She was super bouncy about this project that she had just signed up for courtesy of gig-arts.com So before long, I was too a part of this.

I had to miss the beginning of the workshop due to my doctor's appointment, so instead of telling you what their mission is- I'll tell you to go check out their website. They seem like a cool organization. In any case, our mission for this afternoon was to create a show. We had three teams each with their own theme: Salima, Laverne, and I ended up with "equality." And Equality just screams 'carrots' to you, right?

Yeah, me neither, but for some reason that is what I came up with when we were told to come up with a character- "What about a giant talking carrot?" Fortunately, Salima and Laverne were cool enough to not only go with it, but to also get excited about making a piece about a giant talking carrot.

I think our finished product ended up missing the boat a bit on the whole equality thing- the carrot, which is a "walking, talking, gargantuan carrot" is due to some magic fairy dust. The hungry bunny rabbit singing the blues spies the carrot and wants to eat the carrot after the carrot's initial introduction song (la, I'm a carrot; la, I'm a carrot) but eventually the carrot convinces the hungry bunny that he is also a person (?) and so the hungry bunny has a change of heart and they leave the stage searching for food together as best friends....(?)

So maybe we need to work on plotting a bit more.

But I had SO MUCH FUN making up the random songs. And I made up nearly all of the random songs, lyrics and all. So here's what I want to do: I want to work on a children's show, or in a children's theatre, or in a children's band or something like that so that I can make up ridiculous songs all the live long day and hang out with tiny tykes. Sound like a plan?


Also, we put bunny ears on Salima's bass. It was awesome. (Sorry there are no pictures!)

Andy: I finally had English strawberries!

And oh my goodness, they are divine. They didn't look like much, quite pale really. I bought a box and shared them around at the workshop I was at this afternoon. I think I know where any and all of my disposable income is going in the next few weeks...

Ankle Goodness

I *finally* had my appointment with the doctor at school (I've seen the nurse a couple of times and she is wonderful, but I hadn't managed to meet with the doctor until today.) She reckons that I did actually fracture my ankle a bit- like a tiny bit of bone came off when I ripped the ligament off the bone (aaahh!!!!) but she also says that it is looking quite good and I should stop using my crutch.

She poked around all the parts where it still REALLY hurts. Those portions of my ankle that I have been very careful not to touch. Then she started pushing on them (aaahh!!!!) and massaging them (aaahh!!!!) probably not very hard, but it sure felt like it.

Fortunately by the time she was done about 10 minutes later after many reminders to breathe, my ankle felt much better. I see her again in two weeks because that was the next closest time we could find.

I can now point and flex both my feet! There is, however, an amusingly large difference between what angle I can get my right and left feet into.

Lufthansa Baroque

Lufthansa Baroque is a festival in London that has been going on for 25 years now. They play at St. James Smith Square and in Westminster Abbey. Peter is the orchestra manager for their house band so when they needed people to sell programmes in exchange for free tickets, he called me up. Wasn't that nice of him?

On Wednesday I had my first experience of being inside Westminster Abbey, and wow is it ever over the top with all of it's monuments and such. I'm sure I wasn't treating things with the appropriate level of reverence. My sense of history is lacking because although it was totally amazing to hear coronation pieces by Purcell and Handel in their original venue- what I was most impressed with was watching Peter fit three basses, a cello, all the stands for the whole ensemble, all the music, and two violins into his tiny little car. That was some masterful packing.

Peter invited me to come to the pub with the musicians after the show which was lovely- it turned out that one of the violinists was one that original Academy of Ancient Music tour that I saw at Interlochen- the concert that started this whole journey off.

In introducing me Peter described my coming to London thusly:

"She was coming to Guildhall to study with me but at the same time that I was deciding I didn't want to teach, she decided she didn't want to take lessons. So it's worked out well."

Catch up number whatever

1. The picture from "bass ballet" is the first still from a video we made of a practice with my dancer and I for my final project. I just thought it had such lovely lines so I thought I'd put it on the blog.

2. Ankle update: I've been using my crutch this whole week, which I think has been helpful. I've also been elevating it and icing it. What I haven't really been doing is resting it to any particular degree. Sorry ankle. I've got a doctor's appointment to look at it on Wednesday. It's still pretty swollen and bruised.

3. London has been having RIDICULOUSLY nice weather the last couple of days. I'm only inside writing blogs for you because I love you, otherwise I would be outside sitting in the glorious sun.

4. Do you know the term "fly tipping?" This is how wikipedia defines it:

Fly-tipping ("sneaky dumping"[2] or "dumping on the fly"[3]) is a British term for illegally dumping waste somewhere else than in an authorised landfill.

Somebody (we suspect our upstairs neighbors) has been doing so in our front yard. Currently we have an entire bed, a dismantled vacuum cleaner, multiple giant cans of paint, boxes of assorted sizes, and roughly 20 bags of garbage sitting in front of our house. This has been bringing in vermin and dumpster divers. Awesome. We're calling the council.

6. Marissa, Laine's friend from Scripps, was just in London for her first international business trip! We hung out all yesterday and ended up walking through the gigantic hordes of tourists along Portobello Rd. (Would you like a £3,000 pewter tankard? Because I know where to find one now.) then we ended up walking down to Kensington gardens through to Hyde park. We skipped Green park and took the tube to Leicester Sq. to have tasty udon and sushi before walking to Buckingham palace, through St. James park, and ending up at Smith Square where I was selling programmes for Lufthansa baroque.

I have helpfully highlighted walking for you in the preceding paragraph so that you can get a good idea of how much I'm abusing my ankle. Oops. (But it was lovely out! And I've missed walking!)

Bass Ballet