Tag: ballet

A retired person’s summer “vacation”

Trying to make light conversation, the receptionist at the dentist’s office asked if I had done anything fun during the summer. I stammered; I had trouble thinking of anything.

Thing is, I was just a very distracted unit at this point. My cat Mac had managed to somewhat seriously injure his paw on a sharp section of our catio (since repaired), leading him to have to be isolated, medicated, and coned. This threw the usual cat routine—which is a significant part of our overall household routine—into some disarray.

My mind was full of that (plus, having to get my dental appointment). No space to think back on what fun things I might have done of late.

White cat in pink fabric cone with injured paw.
The patient. This cone proved inadequate, by the way. He ended up in the rigid plastic type later.

Mac is now on the mend—no longer isolated or coned, just on medication and laser treatments for a few more days—and that gave me some time to review the calendar and recall that I did, in fact, do some fun stuff this summer… And that I should maybe document it.

While we’re still nursing a general reluctance to travel much, there have been some sojourns to nearby towns and cities; quite a few visits to local restaurants, often while catching up friends not seen in some time; and enjoying the outdoors through hiking, biking, and gardening.

Visiting nearby towns and cities

Back in June, we took a day trip to Toronto to attend a National Ballet performance. We took the GO train there and back, which worked well. (We took taxis to and from the GO station.)

On arrival, after visiting a few shops, we had lunch at The Rabbit Hole, a kind of upscale British pub. Though the forecast was a mixed bag, it turned out to be a nice enough at lunch time to be able to sit out on their patio. The space was pretty; the food was very good; all in all, a very enjoyable meal.

The ballet, however, was… not entirely successful? It was called Maddaddam. It was based on a trilogy of futuristic Margaret Atwood novels, which is a pretty ambitious thing to try to cover in 90 minutes of dance. Though they used video and narration to try to help things along on that front, it was still often just confusing. On the bright side, the dancing was excellent, of course, and I did like the score.

Later that same month, we carpooled with some friends over to the hamlet of New Hamburg to dine at Puddicombe House. It was a lovely day, which made it good that we had booked veranda seating. Great catching up with these friends, whom we hadn’t seen in about a year. We also quite liked the food. I even took a photo!

Dish of seared tuna, orzo, and asparagus, with wine glass in the background, and people with faces not shown. Sun streamed.
Seared tuna with orzo and asparagus

On the day of the Apocalypse…

Continue reading “A retired person’s summer “vacation”” →

A ballet at the Moulin Rouge and a symphony in space

The recent calendar has been a little busy, starting with a surprise party for Jean last Friday (at Verses), and a Valentine’s Dance on Saturday (at which we received some nice comments on our dancing, actually), and ending with another Verses dinner this Saturday, with a dance class and practice night fit in there as well.

And we also attended Moulin Rouge: The Ballet, the first ballet we’ve been to since, I think, the Ballet Béjart tribute to Freddie Mercury, quite a few years ago, in Montreal.

This one featured the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and took place in our home town concert hall. It was inspired by the Bahz Luhrmann movie, but didn’t imitate it so closely as to get into copyright trouble. So though it is still a love triangle between a woman who works at the Moulin Rouge, an impoverished artist, and a more powerful man, they aren’t the same characters as in the movie. We still get a tango scene, and green fairy scene, but not at the same points, nor for the same reasons, as in the movie.

No matter. The plot isn’t the point in a ballet; it’s just window dressing for the dancing. And that setting and those themes made for some really lively dancing. It particularly came to life, of course, with the extended can-can scene inside the Moulin Rouge. That part began with an unfortunate flub, in which one dancer was nearly dropped, but otherwise the dancing was nothing but impressive. (Not that I’m any expert.) I wasn’t sure what Jean thought of the whole thing, but he assured me he found it enjoyable—even though he knows this may mean has had to attend another ballet in another 10 years or so.

And Friday, we had tickets to Symphony in Space. This was a KW Symphony Pops concert intended to feature music with a astrological theme. So there was some Star Wars music, some Star Trek music, and some things you wouldn’t expect, like Bach’s Bradenburg Concerto, which apparently is out there on a space capsule somewhere, searching for intelligent life.

I’ve never seen conductor John Morris Russell before, but man, what an enthusiastic, lively personality he is. Along with being interested in science as well as music, he’s quite passionate about education, so the show also featured some young performers. The most adorable thing was seeing all these tiny violin players trot out to join the symphony in Suzuki’s “Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Brought back memories of my own violin-playing days. But these kids were much better.

The second half was hosted by an astronaut, Bjarni Tryggvason, who guided us through the planets of our solar system as the symphony played excerpts from Holst: The Planets and a bit of Mozart (Jupiter). This part was also accompanied by these gorgeous NASA photos of the various planets. It was really hard to get bored during this concert.

The conclusion featured the Eastwood Collegiate Concert Choir accompanying soloist AJ Bridel on “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. Man, does that girl have chops. Remember that name: She might be someone someday.

All in all it was one of the most enjoyable symphony performances of the season. Well worth making time for!