Humbled and Overwhelmed

Here are some of my random favorite things of 2010:

Finally, on December 22, I rushed from work to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see the world "preview" premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's Nutcracker for the American Ballet Theatre. Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes are two of my favorite dancers and I was excited to see them too. I was very excited indeed to see what this talented choreographer would do with Tchaikovsky's score, and whether he'd adhere more to the Soviet traditions of making the Nutcracker about a girl's romance. Two hours later, I left the theater with rather mixed feelings. Here were my initial impressions of the performance: Act 1 - Stahlbaum House The beginning was charming -- it starts out in the kitchen, where the cooks and servants are preparing the Christmas feast. Hiding under the table is a mouse (all the mice in Ratmansky's production are albino mice who are wearing dapper gray jackets). The humans are horrified by the mouse, and a a game of "catch the mouse" ...

Three days later, I woke up at 10 in the morning to catch an 11:00 live HD transmission from the Bolshoi Theatre of Yuri Grigorovich's  Nutcracker .

I'm a huge balletomane, and every year I try to see one Nutcracker , usually the New York City Ballet's, mainly because after having watched just about every other version I still find George Balanchine's version the funniest, the most charming, and the most full of Christmas magic. But as it happens this year I ended up seeing three Nutcrackers. That, along with a video Nutcracker marathon I did, means I probably am Nutcracker'ed out for the rest of the year. But ... here goes. Nutcracker #1: December 16, 2010, at the New York City Ballet

Well ... my name is Ivy, and "poisonivy" is a nickname I use on another blog. 2010 was a rough year for me, and I decided to start off 2011 with something I've always wanted to do, which is start my own blog. So ... here goes. Here is a picture of me in case y'all wonder what I look like ...