Winter's Creeping

I keep trying to re-do some of my daily reading habits. Trying and failing, a little better each time.

Some years ago, I realized just how many web sites I had in my everyday bookmarks folder, and how much time I spent each day reading the whole lot. Even the ones that were updated only weekly or what have you.

So I pared them back quite a bit. Plus, over the past couple of years, I've even eliminated web browsing from the computer almost entirely. But there's the phone. Oy.

Even without setting up favorites or anything, thanks to autocomplete all I need to spend hours of web browsing is to have a vague memory of the web address, and autocomplete does the rest.

The problem isn't all of the wonderful writers that I visit, the problem is that I've only so many hours a day, and so much time for conversations that I'm actually part of.

So that's working about as well as you can imagine. Ah well, I'll get there.

So other than the oh so transient web, what have I been reading that's interesting? I've got quite a list of reads according to my electronic library, and the majority of them were well worth the hours of enjoyment.

But of those hours I've really enjoyed lately, the ones that I keep returning to are those I spent watching Michaela DePrince and company in a really wild and interesting version of Coppelia.

I won't get much into it, other than to say that melding animation with live ballet wasn't what I expected when I tuned in. I also wasn't expecting what is, if I understand the history correctly, traditionally a comedy ballet to have been turned into a Grimm Brothers version.

Unexpected. But absolutely delightful. My poor wife was traumatized, though, the dolls of the animation were far too much for her. Me I was enraptured; I suspect this is one of those that I will stop for whenever it comes around again.

The story itself came across in a way that I don't usually have in ballet. For me, like with most classical music, ballet is impressionistic, rather than the more direct realism of written or spoken text with respect to story.

The combination of live action ballet and animation here absolutely reached through my normal sort of broad focus taking it in viewing and came alive in the immediate sense of story, here and now. And without the sort of old-guy narrator that Nuryev and Baryshnikov's various appearences used to require to let us know what they were up to besides the obvious.

First time for me seeing Michaela DePrince dance as an adult, as well. I'd heard so many wonderful things about her since she came to the public attention, and I absolutely fell in love with her dancework.

Hers and the rest of the team, both the company itself and some of the marquis names that guested with Michaela.

All of this is a longwinded way of saying, if you like your fairytales and your ballet, seek out Coppelia from PBS/Great Performances, it's an absolutely must-see.