crazybobbles

Photo taken from Aurelien S at Flickr

Now this was pretty hilarious, whenever i told everyone i was going to see a scottish ballet they gave me this very confused and *breathe in* “ah i totally get your choice of entertainment, i get you so much like we’re blood brothers, buddies since highschool even though we weren’t but it sounds nicer to say that on paper to show a strong bond between us but deep down inside i haven’t a clue why you’re going to a random scottish ballet but i’ll just smile and nod along whilst judging you in my head for not only on where you’re going, but also what you’re wearing because you probably can’t hear this thought because i’m too busy giving you that look like i’m agreeing with you whilst thinking about what i’m eating for dinner and calculating whether or not i have enough meat to cook up a mean pasta and then wondering whether the stores are still open to buy some because i’m in that mood of cooking and will most likely need the extra meat but then having second thoughts on whether a mean curry is more appropriate and then having to trail back at the food i had the previous nights to ensure i haven’t recently eatten a mean curry to show a bit of variety but knowing i’m just kidding myself because i’d eat 3 curries in a row if i really felt like it” look *breathe out* (oh yeah, got to love big fat strike offs). I usually would milk the silence for a bit whilst the person is still doubting whether I’m serious or not and then I would pop the reason why I was going… I would add to the end of the line “… dancing to Radiohead”. Immediately the other person finds me cool and everything is happy and sacred (not that Scottish ballet isn’t cool, more on that later).

I think I heard about this first from NME when they mentioned that 5 radiohead songs were going to be used for a ballet. When that was announced, the performance wasn’t announced for London just yet so I didn’t pay any interest, a few weeks / months later I saw the event pop up on my last.fm calendar, Scottish Ballet with Radiohead. Immediately that event clicked to the article I read on NME and I decided that it was going to be a kooky (yet fun) experience that I couldn’t miss out on. I booked some shonky seats near the top of the stage (like, the last minute seats that cost nothing! haha) and tada.

I decided against using my DSLR camera to take pictors since photos would never really do justice to a ballet performance (hence I did some flickr searching and found a photo to use). I paid my friends a visit before venturing to the performance, there we ate nando’s and played all sorts of games from Rockband to Soul Calibur (oh how fun was that, i kept whooping my friends with a simply tap tap tap combo :P). It was nice seeing them again, we’d talk about Lost theories, books, bands, films and various kinds of odds and sods. Things were too fun that I left later than I was supposed to leave. I arrived at the doors a wee bit late and was held up at the doors to the hall because the performance had already started, I was luckily able to watch the thing on the TV’s outside (which made me wonder why the hell do we need to purchase tickets?).

Once ushered in I got seated to appreciate some fairly abstract dancing to the songs of Radiohead, the performance wasn’t just people dancing to radiohead, it was split into 3 acts. The first act was called Ride the Beast which featured the Radiohead songs. The song I missed out was creep and fitter happier which was a bummer, but fortunately I didn’t miss out Idiotechque and National Anthem and the other radiohead songs. I couldn’t really put my thumb towards the whole experience, a few times I wondered what the hell I was doing watching a bunch of people dancing around to radiohead and thoughts kept distracting me from the visuals.

I finally settled in and was able to focus on watching the folks dance, though it was always hard to digest the entire scene as a whole since there were so many things happening simultaneously, sometimes I would direct all my attention to one dancer and sometimes I would picture them as colourful dots on a big black canvas swimming around. In my head I would even imagine how I’d choreography a bunch of dancers to the beats of radiohead, and when Idiotechque was on, all I kept imagining was my very own performance of 50 people spasing out like Thom Yorke, kinda reminded me of that episode where Joey taught a bunch of dancers how to dance, you know…hand, hand, head, head, up, out a beret, out a beret, big turn here, grand dechant, desont, desont, slide back, step, step, step, and jazz hands!

The clothes the dancers wore were vivid coloured tops and trousers, the movement was lickerty and there was this one guy who just stood there the entire performance (sucks to be him). Their movements reminded me of ripples of a sound wave, things were fairly in time to the music and beat, other times it felt slightly off sync, like I was listening to radiohead in my earphones whilst actually watching a proper ballet. Things felt like a massive build up as the number of dancers would slowly increase until the “climax” of the show where uhm… people left? (tbh I can’t remember, it’s been a while but I did remember telling myself that it felt a bit like minimilism). The radiohead act was pretty short, once they were done we clapped and it was interval time. I was indecisive of whether it was good or not, it’s the first time I’ve watched ballet and I really had no idea whether or not it was some good ballet, or some lousy ballet. After some thinking it was time for act 2… s**tsticks.

The next act kind of bored me to no tomorrow, the dancers wore naked suits and danced to some experimental piano music which included all sorts of weird ad lib noises recorded to make it sound deep and interesting. I’m not sure whether the moves were fun either, the first part I just remember some girl running a bit and stopping, then she’s run backwards and stop a bit. Funnily enough it felt like me when I’m running to work, I’m always all over the place, maybe I’m perfect for ballet? haha.

This act felt far too pretencious, there was one guy who again, stood for the entire performance (sucks to be him again) whilst one, two or three dancers would begin to move. It mainly involved a lot of running, jumping, and running, and jumping, and standing, and running and jumping and rolling. Once the act was over I was even more confused as to whether or not that piece was good or not. I personally felt it was a bit pretencious and there was a lacking of cowboys jumping around the place! I kinda felt a bit tricked into going to a ballet where the only pull was that they were playing thumping radiohead music whilst people danced to it. I went out for some fresh air and finally went back in for act 3. I was glad I was watching act 2 near the back because I really didn’t want to see people in naked suits (they freak me out).

For the final act, I decided to sit RIGHT in the front, I had remembered where people sat during act 2 and made sure I would sit on a seat that wasn’t occupied (would be silly if someone joined in on the last act so I assume they couldn’t make it). I found a pretty nice spot that was close to the stage, the middle aged lady sat next to me looked slightly frightened that I suddenly appeared, but I paid no attention to her and played about with my mobile for a bit (most likely going on flickr to check up on photos). It was nice being flexible during gigs and sitting in empty spots, I remember going to a regina spektor gig with some cheap cheap tickets that was located at the far end of the venue (so regina was a tiny dot) and just ninja’ing a nicer seat at the next interval, you typically can’t do that when you have another friend so yay for solo missions.

The third act was a classical themed piece of ballet, people would wear suits and dresses and dance to some old time pieces. The dresses were elegant and the suits were… i dunno.. black? haha. Each person was paired up (I could picture the director going, “alright I want every in groups of two” like it was drama school all over for them) as a couple and would dance together throughout the act. I liked the chick in the green dresses because the dress looked awesome but what really won it for me was this couple where the lady was ickle and cute! The performance was warm and comfortable as they seemed to enjoy the dancers as much as the audience enjoyed seeing it, the music wasn’t experiental and really complimented with the dancing, the background was projected with stills or clips related to the piece and yeah, just loads of dancing, the themes moved from hotel lobby, to bar, to outside a hotel, to country western (thats when all the guys dress up as cowboys haha) and then back to something else again (sorry my memory is poor! It’s been over a month!). I remember coming out of the venue feeling happy that I was able to see the last act, it was the saviour of the whole piece and was even better than the radiohead, sometimes it’s the simple (and non pretencious) things that win it for me.

So yeah, sorry for the lack of photos, I’m sure it’s hard to imagine anything I said (especially judging on how descriptive I was for each act) without some form of illustration so yeah, here’s a youtube video I dug up of the three performances I saw that night, it’s all rehearsal stuff so yeah *shrugs*. Hopefully all of this drivel will make sense now. This was the last performance I went to in October that I had to blog about so woo! That’s all done now! Now I need to blog about Mercury Rev *grovels*.