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Chopin Imaginaire

I attended a fantastic performance at the Cottbus Staatstheater (State Theater)last night. The program was titled "Chopin Imaginaire" and was a combination of Chopin's piano music and original ballet dancing! That there, my friends, is an amazing combination!!!

There were two people on the piano performing live but invisible from my seat on the first floor. I have no complaints at all about my seat though because it provided a great head-on view of the dancers, which were also not too far away as this is a relatively cozy theater (seating for ~ 260 on 3 levels). There were 4 female and 4 male dancers.

Chopin's compositions vary in length from barely a minute to several minutes long. The dancing performances ranged from classical pair dancing to comical skits. One of the wonderful things about ballet is how open it is to creative movement and expression. As the title of the program gives hint, the dancers brought to life what one may possibly imagine when listening to Chopin's pieces.

I cannot recreate in words the fantastic things they did on that stage, but I will give a few hints so you may develop a little bit of an idea of why I sat in that theater gladly smirking. For one of the pieces, the dancers wore socks and gloves which showed up in the black lighted stage. As they danced around and interwove their arms, all we really saw from the audience were free-floating hands and feet! In another piece only the men danced together and created with their legs raised up on one another what I thought of as a caterpillar marching around!

The stage and costumes continued to change as the show progressed. At the start there was a glossy black wall with 4 doors in it across the stage. The dancers spent a while "dancing" with the doors. Eventually the wall and half of the doors disappeared and only two doors remained but further back on the stage with a new, shear curtain as the wall. Since their were only 8 dancers, the dancers themselves used different additions and subtractions of black clothing to keep their characters fresh in each scene.

Although I could have easily attended this program on my own, I found out about it through the International Office listserv (emails) and attended with other students from BTU. The International Office coordinated a tour of the theater before the performance which was pretty sweet. We got to go under the stage and see the mechanics for how the center of the stage turns (which they used during the show) and where the doors are for actors to disappear through the stage floor. The guide also told us the history of the building. The most important fact for you to know as to the history is that this is the only large theater in the state of Brandenburg and it is supported through state funds. (Don't we have a theater in Detroit called "the State Theater"? Is it supported by state funds? Was it once upon a time?) In order to attract theater-goers from around the region, the theater has a different show each night covering the whole gamut of live performances like operas, plays, ballets, and orchestras. Many of the shows are put on by visiting performance groups since Cottbus is not such a major city as to have its own opera company, ballet company, orchestra...

One of the delightful aspects of this Chopin Imaginaire was its combination of live music and frequently changing visual entertainment. With a classical ballet there is one story line and one musical theme for a couple of hours. This can be wonderful, but a little tiring. I wasn't sure what to expect from this Chopin Imaginaire, but I was greatly pleased with what it turned out to be!

Rhyming in German

You know what's great about the German language? I'll tell you: the standard form of verbs ends in -en and one of the past tense forms ends in -t. Can you imagine how easy this makes things for poets?! Let's make a poem right now (instead of writing for schoolwork)!

Ich habe einen Hund gekauft,
obwohl es nicht erlaubt war,
Ich habe ihn getauft,
obwohl es nicht gestattet war.

Wir sind im Park gegangen,
er hat einen Ball gefangen.

Wir spielen jeden Tag,
weil er es mag.

Ich muss ihn verkaufen,
weil er zu laut ist,
Ich muss eine nette Familie suchen,
weil er mir so wichtig ist.

I bought a dog,
although it wasn't permitted,
I baptized him,
although it wasn't permitted.

We went to the park,
he caught a ball.

We play every day,
because he likes it.

I must sell him,
because he is too loud,
I must seek out a nice family,
because he is so important to me.

-----------------------------

I can see how much is lost when translating poems!!!!

All Gone!

My neighbor apartment building is completely torn down. All that remains is the rubble and a new view from my living room. I can now see the park across the street.

Is Blue Really Soothing?

The background color of Microsoft Word 2007 is blue. Blue is supposed to be a soothing color. What's your opinion? Do you think it works? When I know what to type, I don't even notice the color. But when I sit here wishing words would spring onto the page without any effort on my part, I fear it doesn't work so well.

Dreams -- Welcome to My Unconscious Head

I have the amazing ability to remember my dreams when I wake up in the morning, so I'm going to share some stories from the last few days.

Steve was in Germany for 24 hours. Yup, he flew up here from Afghanistan for 24 hours to attend some sort of event and then was going to be flying back a few hours after I spoke with him.

I was cooking and trying to salt my food, but the salt box had multiple holes at the top and across its middle. I instantly mentally blamed my apartmentmate Dominick and when he entered the scene I yelled at him, "Did you do this!?!"

I was hiking on rocky cliffs with a couple of people, one who I couldn't identify and the other an old apartmentmate (Christy Admiraal). Christy was trailing behind this other person and myself and fell off the cliff onto a sandy riverbank where a tiger was prowling about. Sorry Christy, but in our search we didn't find you.

I was in a mansion with some rooms with really high ceilings where large giraffe-like animals were hanging out for tourists who were mingling about, a few really quiet rooms with normal house-furniture like couches and beds, and a big, open, dirty cement-walled room with big rats running around on the floor. But these rats weren't pet rats like Hans and Frans. A couple of these crazy, dirty rats were in the hall where I was walking and jumped up viciously and tried to bite my arm. I woke up to reality flinging my arm away from my stuffed animal dog Perkins.

I love dreaming!

Ich uebersetze Deutsch.

I bet you don't understand the title of this post. That's okay, it's not your fault that you don't love the German language like I do.

I translate German. That's what the title says. And it's true, I do! I have signed on with the university's International Student Office to edit English texts and translate German texts to English.

I worked on my first assignment a couple of days ago. It was a lot of fun! I was given a couple of forms from the city office. I had to edit some stuff that was already translated and do some of my own translating. There was an entire page explaining a certain law, which might sound like dry reading, but it was actually kind of exciting to find out what all the words meant and learn all the regulations for this law.

I expect to learn a lot of new words through this work. You might be thinking that I should already know all of the words which I need to translate, but in fact I don't. What is important is understanding how German verbs conjugate (so I can find the core verb in the dictionary), how German builds compound words, how sentences are structured, and the German psyche behind word choice. I have these skills and I'm puttin' 'em to use!

"Ah-ha" Moments

There was a moment early on in high school when I remember sitting in English class and saying to myself "ah-ha! I finally understand the parts of speech!" It was a very jubilant moment since teachers had been trying to get it into our little idiot heads for years.

I had an "ah-ha" moment today in Aquatic Ecology. The topic of the course today was "acidification", which is a concept I've been taught about in several courses from various perspectives, but my chemistry skills are poor so thoughts in my head about acidification usually just felt like a blobby gray mass. Until today.

Unlike last week, when the professor for this class kind of sucked (we have a different professor nearly every week), the professor today was fantastic! He started with easy basics, hands-on examples, built up the concept in a simple way, and answered my questions clearly so that by the end I was actually comprehending the chemical formulas he was using to explain acidification!

It always feels good to say "ah-ha".

Building 2/3 Gone

This is my neighboring apartment building still in the process of being torn down. They seem to work every day, but are not making progress very fast. When I showed my new Chinese friend Lili the building and told her that they've been working at it for a few weeks now, she said that in China they would have that thing down in a day or two. I feel like they would in the United States as well. I guess these guys just want to hold on to their jobs for as long as possible.

COOKIES

Steffi and I made cookies on Sunday!

The light brown ones are chocolate chip. The dark brown ones were made with crushed haselnut, sugar, and graded chocolate. Both types of cookies taste delicious!

Delicious but hard. We need to develop a different technique next time to make sure they don't dry out. For the chocolate chip cookies I always wanted to wait until they were a little golden, but perhaps a combo of more butter and earlier removal would save them from being crispy.