Weekend in Charleville-Mézières - Part 3 - Visit to Rimbaud's house and museum

Sunday morning started off with a delicious, typical French breakfast: coffee in a bowl, croissants and brioches, jam, fruit and yogurt.

After breakfast, we visited the house of Arthur Rimbaud. The house itself was nearly empty, but had a modern-style exposition, with video, sound effects, and so on, and there was a museum across the street with actual letters he wrote, manuscripts, etc.

Portrait of Rimbaud

Manuscript of "Le Bateau Ivre"

View from museum window into the city.

Turns out the the streets of Charleville are mostly parallel and perpendicular to each other, which isn't the case in many old European cities.

Statue of Duc de Gonzague, who founded Charleville in 1606.

Charleville-Mézières Downtown. A bientôt!

Weekend in Charleville-Mézières - Part 2 - Trip to Reims

Saturday afternoon we visited Reims (a city of about 200,000 mid-way between Paris and Charleville).

First stop - Pommery champagne cellars. It turns out that they were designed along the lines of the Oxford-Cambridge style. We didn't do much inside (other than look at lots of champagne bottles, of different types and sizes but all equally shiny).

Champagne Pommery

Madame Dufour (host mom), Camille, me

Camille and I

In front of the Villa Demoiselle

Stained glass doors that were recreated from special pieces of glass: they are ridgy due to the metal (platinum?) they contain.

Japanese-style landscape in the wood.

Champagne tasting. It was yummy.

In front of the Cathédrale de Reims.

Finally some sun!

Stained glass designed by Marc Chagall.

Side-street in Reims.

Weekend in Charleville-Mézières - Part 1 - Everyday Life

Spent the last weekend of March in a different host family in Charleville-Mézières - excellent experience! Got there on Friday afternoon, left Sunday evening - you should have seen the six of us who went, sitting in the train on Sunday, waving like crazy to our families :).

So a little bit about Charleville-Mézières - it is a small-ish city of about 60,000 inhabitants, in the north-east of France, close to the Belgian border.

Entrance to my neighborhood.

Inside the house.

My host sister, Camille, took me for a walk while we were waiting for dinner. We went down to the horse stables on the edge of town --

Horse!

Camille and I

We were trying to watch TV, but concluded that there was nothing particularly interesting, other than some music shows/concerts/etc. One of the songs used the lovely expression, "to kick the bucket," and Camille was quite surprised to find out what it actually means (makes sense why the song included green, hat-wearing skeletons dancing in the background...).

On Saturday morning, we went to her middle and high school, which are right across from each other. It was an Open House day, so there were lots of students, parents, and teachers walking around. And some brownies, cookies and coffee.

View from the English classroom at the Charleville-Mézières high school.

French high school lab. Wee titrations! Haven't done them in a good while.

Camille

Colorful squares

Church in Charleville-Mézières

It was definitely interesting to see a glimpse of everyday life of a different family.

Untitled, because I'm too lazy to come up with one :)

Living without a camera is doable, but that means I need to write entire posts and that's harder than captions... (Me? Avoiding a challenge? Why, never...)

Anyway, some happy things from this week:

--Seeing an English setter. And an English cocker spaniel, vacuuming along a Parisian street. And lots of Goldies. Did I mention I want a dog?

--Hearing the echoes of kids on recess from within the stone walls of les écoles maternelles.

--Seeing a little kid whose hair was standing on end in the wind pull out a chocolate from a box with so much concentration and then eating it ever so slowly.

--When our 2-year-old host daughter wants to get attention, she likes to say, "eo!"

--Seeing the first flowering tree! Flowers have started blooming too. Spring is heeereee! (attempting to sing)

--Trying to cut down my theater presentation from 25 minutes to 20, and having professor tell me that "in France, for us to say a presentation is 'too long,' it'd have to be 1:30!" I gladly avoided the handy technique of cutting time by talking even faster.

--Relearning to walk in high heels because it's finally warm enough to wear them.

--Walking home instead of taking the metro just because.

I couldn't resist posting this photo of 'impossibly cute, perfectly perched, flying floofballs.'

(Credit to Cuteoverload.com)

Did I hear "squeee!"? Good, glad to know I'm not the only one.

Life is good. Happy Monday!

Les Saisons Russes du XXIe siècle

Two wonderful, wonderful evenings.

The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées is right next to the Eiffel Tower. Just in case you're not ecstatic enough to be going to the performance, a lovely sight to inspire you --

Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

Thursday evening, March 4 - first part was Sheherazade, with Nioradze, Tsiskaridze, and Pivorovich.

Shéhérazade and the Odalisques.

Liked Nioradze very much. Crisp, defined and yet passionate poses, somewhat prickly and yet playful dancing. Her arms, her hands, her eyes - decisive and beautiful.

Nioradze & Tsiskaridze

Tsiskaridze had a quiet energy about him. His signature grands jetés, grandes pirouettes à la seconde - I think the audience may have gone a little bit crazy about them (and with good reason! How often do you see a dancer's leg take off into space, followed by the other one?).

Pivorovich played the role of Shakhryar. I wasn't expecting to see him here - he danced with the Moiseev company, and he was stunning in "Sirtaki," "Spanish Ballad," "Night on the Bald Mountain," "Gaucho." His Shakhryar was memorable!

Coda

I felt emotionally involved in the performance, rather than just watching from the sidelines. The end was moving, Nioradze lived through it, Pivorovich lived through it, and so the audience lived through it. Hard to describe in words. They never lost the theatricality, the stylization - but at the same time it was very real.

Bows.

The second part of the evening was The Firebird, with Aleksandrova, Yachmennikov, Balakhnicheva and Martyshkin.

Aleksandrova and Yachmennikov

I liked Aleksandrova, although compared to Nioradze the next evening, she seems to have been rather academic. The role suits her well, with all the jumps (nice cabrioles, and oh, grand jeté -- flyinggg, must we really land afterward?), 'prickly' head turns and port de bras.

I liked Balakhnicheva and Yachmennikov as well. Acted very nicely - sincere and heartfelt.

Bows.

After the performance.

Yours truly next to a gold pillar.

Friday, March 5 opened with Pavillion d'Armide, with Aleksandrova and Lobukhin (who is now with the Bolshoi).

Lobukhin, Aleksandrova, Pivorovich

I must admit that I didn't quite figure out what the Pavillion d'Armide was about... Some traditional storyline, I gather? Variations, character dancing, a waltz - the usual.

Lobukhin danced with a nice amplitude, but had a concerned facial expression for the entire ballet. And since him falling in love with Armide didn't seem to have a logical development, his suffering when she rejected him didn't seem logical either.

Aleksandrova was clean and precise but didn't seem particularly inspired.

Armide's Friends - Khassenova and Timofeeva

Lovely ladies! Really enjoyed their dancing, and especially Timofeeva.

Pas de deux

Bows.

On the left - Anna and Anatoliy Nezhny, designers who reconstructed the scenery and costumes for these ballets.

L'Après-midi d'un faune with Tsiskaridze, Chernobrovkina and the 6 nymphs.

Loved it - way too short! It seems almost strange to say that I liked Tsiskaridze in the role. There was no Tsiskaridze - there was a faun. And he went about his life, with very interesting faun-poses and musical pauses to look around. His ascent onto his little hill, in gold sandals, with precise, statue-like steps, was mesmerizing.

Tsiskaridze & Chernobrovkina

Another Firebird, with Nioradze, Yachmennikov, Timofeeva and Martyshkin.

Nioradze was more energetic and had more personality than Aleksandrova. She seemed to really enjoy her role. The flying, the 'perching' was prickly and fun. It was wonderful to see the look on her face when she decided to give a feather to Ivan Tsarevich and ask to be freed - aha!

She also had a good time putting everyone to sleep :).

Timofeeva and Yachmennikov.

Bows.

Great performances, with lots of energy both from the dancers and the audience.