"Everything Was Beautiful at the Ballet..."

Lauren had a bunch of people over Saturday night. Jeff stayed home and chaperoned while Kathy and I went to dinner at Satellite Bistro, and to see Carmina Burana at the Long Center.

Austin is a town where you can wear jeans to a play, or "nice" khaki shorts and a polo shirt to a five-star restaurant with linen tablecloths. Surprisingly though, when you go the the ballet, Austinites actually dress up. It's great!

At 8pm in the beautiful Long Center, the lights went down and the audience became silent. Then, instead of the show beginning, video advertising for various Ballet Austin classes and programs was run on a screen over the stage. I was very turned off by it, as were most people around me. There's enough advertising all over the place at these performances (and in everyday life). Let's not start an elegant event with tacky pre-show ads. At least they didn't run soft drink or tampon commercials.

Kai was performed before Carmina Burana. While the dancing was fantastic, the "music" gave me a headache. It's all loud percussion- dripping sounds and random beats. For forty-five minutes.

I won't get into the extensive history of Carmina Burana and Orff's composition of the music, but it is really interesting. His cantata is from a selection of written works from the Carmina Burana, a bound collection of 11th and 12th century poems and manuscripts about many subjects, including many about love and sex, written in Latin and German by clergy and students of the church. Seeing it performed by Ballet Austin, the Austin Symphony and Conspirare together was truly amazing! I enjoyed it so much. You've definitely heard the opening and closing song, O Fortuna, in popular films.

An excerpt from one song, translated to English:

In my mind's wavering balance, wanton love and chastity sway in opposite scales. But I choose what I see, I offer my neck to the yoke; to a yoke so sweet I cross.

..and my favorite:

If the world were all mine from the sea up to the Rhine, this I would willingly forgo to have the queen of England lie in my arms.

Refers to Eleanor of Aquitaine, not the current queen, although Queen Elizabeth is certainly lovely as well. :)



When Jeff's parents were here Friday and Saturday, we got to see all the photos from their month-long trip to India and Africa, from which they returned about a week ago.... Coach Holtman, my high school calculus teacher, showed us his underwater pictures from a scuba diving trip during class one day. Every time one of us would ask "Ooh! What is that?!" the answer always seemed to be, "That's some type of coral." Huge joke forever. If you don't know what something is in a photo, it's "some type of coral."

Well, when Liz was showing me the pics from their safari days, about every other photo, she would say, "That's... a hyena." Sometimes I could tell it was a leopard or something else, and I was giggling to myself. If you do not know what an animal is in your safari photo, it's "a hyena."

Lauren auditioned for the church worship band yesterday. She's in! Singer and pianist. Brava!