Amazing day of theatre!

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Today was our first day with Larissa. She is this amazing ballet teacher who has to be in her 80's but moves likes she is in her 60's. She was lively and spry and clearly is in love with what she does. I was nervous about going into ballet but she made it so enjoyable. She was so cute how she would shout out directions or yell at someone but then make them feel that it was okay that she just yelled at them. At one point she yelled STOP! And of course we all froze, including her piano player, but she didn't want the piano player to stop, just us. It was very funny. She apologized to the pianist and blew her kisses. So cute. Toward the end of class she started teaching us a Russian folk dance, and since time was running out we would move across the floor then she would say, "Run, run, small time!"

Lunch again was a delight, then acting was a blast. We were paid a very high compliment by Sergei. We did a bunch of exercises manipulating chairs. Pick them up a certain way, move a certain way, set them down a certain way, and sit in them a certain way, and the entire group (15) had to do it all at the same exact time. The challenging exercise was we had to decide to spell out a word but we couldn't speak to each other or pre-plan what word to spell but we had to work together and concentrate feeling each other's energy. After each letter we would set our chairs down and then sit in them, then when we had spelled a whole word we would return to the semi-circle shape and sit down. The word we spelled as a group with zero communication was Help. The compliment was that Sergei said that we were the first group to do it on the first try. It felt good, really good.

After class we had another orientation meeting and JT pulled aside all the graduate students and said that there was a show tonight that started at 9 pm, but may not be for the undergrads, but that it was really amazing and worth going for just 500 roubles. Of course we agreed. It was based on a character from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. We had until 8 so I hung out at the green room where I could be on the internet without feeling guilty about hogging the computer, and was able to secure another of my tickets for the second half of my trip. Then I walked to the other side of Tverskaya and found the post office where I was able to buy post cards. I have to decide if I am going to try and mail them in Russia or not. JT said that the first time he tried doing that the post cards got to America 6 weeks after he did. I'll think about it. I got home just in time to meet the group and head to the play. We got caught in a crazy rain storm on the way that we waited out.

The Play: 15 years ago I had an experience at a theatre that affirmed to me then as a young man of just 18, that the theatre is where I belonged. It was a deeply poignant and spiritual experience which has been forever seared upon my heart. Tonight at this show that mark was refreshed and renewed in a deeply powerful way. The play was really intimate, with mostly just one actor, a woman, who was so riveting and compelling and an audience of no more than 50. It didn't matter that I didn't understand a lick of Russian, it probably wouldn't have even mattered if JT and prepared us with a synopsis of the play. The communication was happening on such a visceral level. At one point she and I (I was on the very front row) shared a very intimate, seemingly private moment. It was spiritually wrenching, I know of no other way to describe it. At the end during her curtain calls, she came to me and thanked me, I was so dumbfounded and shocked. It was surreal to the nth degree.

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