Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Scissorhands


I guess I'm not going to Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands ballet. I have another opportunity to go alone tonight, and here I sit, typing, instead of driving my lazy ass to downtown LA to get a scapled ticket.

Sigh.

The thing is, I already know what my emotional response is going to be, and I don't know if I'm up for it. The movie impinged on me like few others ever have, to the point that I often just had to think of Edward alone in the castle to start crying at auditions. The film is so beautiful and resonant and so about my life mission statement, it's all a little overwhelming. And the ballet...well, the ballet looks like it brilliantly captured the subject matter AND it's ballet.

Going to the ballet often wrecks me, because it is so very beautiful, and I'm so very sad to not be a dancer. I spent years and years of my youth in dance classes, and loved it very much. My mom took me out of ballet in fourth grade when the teachers insisted I had a career and had to go en pointe...they were upset, mom was upset, I was upset. It wasn't great.

I think mom was right in the long run...she'd had a cousin who'd ruined her feet through dance, and realistically though I was the perfect body type and height throughout my teens (naturally aneorixic), my feet have always been in precarious health anyway, and I would probably be somewhat crippled now.

So I ended up in Fosse jazz classes instead, and other weird mixtures of dance. In ninth grade, I was quite disappointed to get on the cheerleading team and discover the other girls were more interested in giving bjs to the football players than in choreagraphing amazing routines. I quit, and went and taught ballet to little girls afterschool.

Not sure why I'm relaying all this to you. It's just, I can already see and hear and feel Edward Scissorhands in my mind. Perhaps it's okay to avoid the emotion of it all.

6 comments:

Heidi said...

Finally catching up! You know, Scissorhands got panned on NPR. Said it totally didn't live up to the Depp. Had a weird pantomime quality - for what that's worth.

Randomly, my kitchen sink has broken the last two xmases in a row. Odd. Hope it's working again!

K :) said...

Hey lady- I needed to tell you not to be heartbroken about missing this production of SCISSORHANDS; I freelance for the company helping to produce this and saw its orginal run at Sadler's Wells here in London. It absolutley PAINS me to say this but I was so, SO, SO disappointed because I love Matthew Bourne's work- but this production just doesn't capture the magic of the film or live up to the beauty of the music. I didn't go expecting it to BE the film but I did expect some magic (especially with Matthew Bourne's choreography behind it). Sadly I left afterwards feeling like a great opportunity had been missed. And it's more movement to music than ballet in a lot of it, which can get a bit frustrating after an hour... I feel somewhat guilty about telling you this because clearly you're hoping in your heart that this would be a amazing production... but to be honest lovely, I think the glimpse of it you get on the EPK video and your imagination will create something even more stunning and moving then what you're lamenting not seeing... Just wanted to put you out of your misery. (But if you ever get to see Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE I say RUN to see it. It's wonderful and moving and sexy and funny and I cried at the end both times I saw it- and I'm a hard woman to make cry in public!)

K :) said...

Hey lady- I needed to tell you not to be heartbroken about missing this production of SCISSORHANDS; I freelance for the company helping to produce this and saw its orginal run at Sadler's Wells here in London. It absolutley PAINS me to say this but I was so, SO, SO disappointed because I love Matthew Bourne's work- but this production just doesn't capture the magic of the film or live up to the beauty of the music. I didn't go expecting it to BE the film but I did expect some magic (especially with Matthew Bourne's choreography behind it). Sadly I left afterwards feeling like a great opportunity had been missed. And it's more movement to music than ballet in a lot of it, which can get a bit frustrating after an hour... I feel somewhat guilty about telling you this because clearly you're hoping in your heart that this would be a amazing production... but to be honest lovely, I think the glimpse of it you get on the EPK video and your imagination will create something even more stunning and moving then what you're lamenting not seeing... Just wanted to put you out of your misery. (But if you ever get to see Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE I say RUN to see it. It's wonderful and moving and sexy and funny and I cried at the end both times I saw it- and I'm a hard woman to make cry in public!)

K :) said...

Aw Christ, I published it twice.. DOH! Oops, sorry...

Kidsis said...

Heidi and K, you guys rock!!! okay, I feel better...I really do. Not that I want it to be a bad production (I did assume it was amazing from the one glowing review they found, and the video), but I feel better about my choice not to go.

K, you're absolutely right that I've created something beautiful in my imagination from the video - geez, the music is the majority of the emotion, isn't it? so lovely.

Well, I'm just going to let that percolate and not go for the actual experience.

I wish I'd done that with Phantom...we had an amazing show of it in LA, and then saw it twice in San Francisco trying to recapture the magic, and if anything it diminished the memory each time until we weren't really fans anymore...

Lesley said...

I heard that a cd by the rock band lovedrug matches up perfectly to the movie edward scissor hands--but check this; you turn your ipod/cd player on shuffle. I think the cd is called everything starts where it ends.