London, Opernball and Preparation for NYC…

Wrote that really some time ago. Sorry to post it only now
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Hi again.
I’m sorry I did not get back to blog some days (actually more than 2 weeks :-/ ). I had a busy time back there.
Well I’m sitting right now in the plane to Amsterdam (the connection flight to New York) and write this thingy here to later post it on my blog.

London
Well I was in London for two days to rehearse and unsurprisingly it rained like always. Whenever I am there it somehow happens to rain, no matter what time of the year or how long I stay. It just rains buckets. The rehearsals with my partner Roberta Marquez from the Royal Ballet went well and I had a nice time over there walking around in Covent Garden and meet some old friends. I was there already before. What comes to my mind now is a clip I found back last year in YouTube. It’s funny actually. Please watch that clip here and focus on Second 00:36…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsGHSg81wbk (unfortunately the embedding is disabled)

Furthermore here are some pictures I made with my phone (I apologize for the quality).

Covent Garden:

View from the Royal Ballet area:

(By now I was interrupted by the stop in Amsterdam. Now I am writing from the flight to New York.)

Vienna Opernball
Well immediately after that took place Vienna’s Opernball. I actually don’t know how popular this is apart from the German speaking countries, but here it is definitely a big thing. (Really excessively) dressed up people come together and celebrate, dance and have fun. Even the theatre itself gets dressed up for the occasion. The tickets have a hefty price tag, but luckily I got to go for free since I was dancing a small variation choreographed by Giorgio Madia. All in all it was a nice and special experience, which I will not forget.

New York Preparations
Well, my program in New York is not an easy one. I am going to dance Les Bourgeois, Moorhuhn and the Don Quixotte Pas De Deux with Roberta. First of all the worst thing is that DonQ (that is the acronym for Don Quixotte) will be in the very end and it is definitely the piece which I need the most energy for. It always has been and will be, so I just have to deal with it, I guess. The problem is the constant warming-up-dance-getting-cold cycle, which really drains on your powers, especially when you are dancing three times. In this case the normal routines you are used to do not apply fully and you really have to plan things and your energy out in between the performances and in the breaks. I will try my best as always but unfortunately you never know with what surprise life comes up for you. I like things to be pinpoint precise and planned out in advance, but you never know If you have watched, please know I tried to do my best

Well. They are giving out ice-cream inflight now (even though unfortunately it is no Ben Jerry’s or Häagen Dazs, but now any icecream will do it actually ^_^) and the flight is about to land soon, so I’ll finish that here and post it later in my hotel.

Ask me a question and what I am currently up to…

Hey there. Well first of all, Happy New Year 2008 to all of you even though I am one week late. I wish everyone who reads this first of all health and then… everything else! I often catch myself worrying about stupid things and then I have to remind myself that my number 1 priority is staying healthy. So stay healthy, all of you!

Well I had a nice New Year’s eve and am currently working on my second principal performance of the prince in our Nutcracker here in Vienna. I will have the premiere very, very soon on January 9th. Wish me luck ! Unfortunately there will be no video this time since they are very strict here with performances being recorded.

Beside this I know that this blog is being read by a lot of people from the United States. Just to let you know and remind you, I will be dancing in New York on February 11th in the Lincoln Center on the gala “Stars of the 21st Century”! Get a ticket if you want to see me perform live ;).

Hmmm, some friends told me that I have a social network account on Orkut, which I do not! One more time: I have no Orkut account! Anybody seeing an Orkut account, that is not me, but a person pretending to be me ;). One more time in portugese for my brazilian friends (I apologize in advance for the google translation): Não tenho conta do Orkut! Or in spanish: No tengo cuenta de Orkut!

Well something more…you know, I am kinda busy these days and therefore am unable to answer mails, comments and such from people who admire me or like my work and would like to know me better. Therefore I was looking to a way in which I could answer some questions which would interest not only one person, but a group in the same time. So I thought of that: write me one or a couple of interesting questions, send them to me, no matter which way. It may be through a direct comment to this post, and email or myspace message or whatever. Out of these question I will try to pick the most interesting ones and answer them in a post here on my blog (hopefully there will be more than one and I will have the possibility to make a series out of it ), so my answer will not only go to this particular person, but you as a reader will get to know me better!

Take care!

Don Quixote - Video

I just quickly stop by to post the video.
Just push play! Enjoy