bear

I enjoyed watching Glee back in the day, at least for a little while, before the melodrama became too much for me. I loved all of the a cappella music getting mainstream attention and awareness, and as an inveterate choirgirl and lover of all series' musical episodes, getting an entire series dedicated to such? Hell yeah.

That being said, the performances on Glee and the level of dance talent and coordination they were expected to display? While singing? Utterly bemusing to me. In my then-twenty-plus years of singing in choirs, whether a cappella, orchestral, or church music, even when singing more pop-y songs? We didn't *dance*. The most complex choreo I ever had to worry about was "processing into the church holding LIVE FIRE a candle" or "rearranging ourselves into an arc."

Oakland Symphony Chorus is ... a little different, heh, despite being an orchestral chorus. We have several African songs in our repertoire, with simple accompanying line dances. (They have to be simple, given the percent of choiristers with physical limitations and even more decades of "SING NOT DANCE" under their belts than me ;) )

So we had two songs with planned choreo for our holiday concert this past Sunday - the African Noel, which we did last year, so at least it was review for many of us; and Donna Summer's Last Dance as the concert finale, because the theme for this year's concert was The Queens of Disco. A coordinated routine for African Noel, relatively simple two-step for Last Dance. Out of five songs total that we were singing (out of 17 for the entire show), that wasn't much, right?

... we ended up spontaneously dancing on the risers to five additional disco songs because engaging the audience. (I'm So Excited, Celebration, Love Sensation, You Make Me Feel, and I Will Survive.) It was an education for the high school choir that joined us this year about rolling with the punches. Every time it happened, I turned to them and went, "Surprise!" Because, well.

It also meant my watch decided I was "working out," and I got some kind of badge for "longest amount of time working out in one day," ROFL. If a tree falls in the forest, and it wasn't wearing a fitness tracker, did it actually happen, or did the observation need to have occurred by a third party?

All of this dancing did mean that for the first time in ages, we'd memorized a bulk of the music well enough that we sang without scores - obviously none for the two official dance pieces, but I and other old-timers didn't bother picking up our music for the Hallelujah Chorus, and we probably could have done the same for Let Us Break Bread Together, since we literally open every holiday concert with it. Which meant a lot better eye contact with the conductors! I get the feeling we're going to be seeing more of this, especially since our next concert isn't for awhile.

I ran an entire mile without stopping this week. And then after a 15-minute break for an iced chai because it was warm out, I turned around and did it again to go home. And then a couple of days later, I repeated the process with a shorter break, minus the chai, but also in slightly lower temperatures. !!! Haven't done that in multiple decades, since when I had to run in high school.

( cut for more health improvement navelgazing )

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Speaking of fog, Karl the Fog totally overshadowed any possibility of seeing the auroras in our neighborhood this time, so I was posting some pictures and videos to Instagram to demonstrate the difference between May and last night. I appreciate the ability to post mood music with them, so I was scrolling through the options that came up when I typed "northern lights" into the search box. One of the choices was VOCES8 performing Gjeilo's Northern Lights:

( lots of beautiful music: VOCES8 )

( and Vienna Teng! )

Dear friends and readers, I am really crap at this longer-than-140-characters-update thing lately, as proven by the number of paragraphs originally in this entry with date(d) references. It's a sleepy rainy Sunday afternoon in Camberville; let's try this again.

Update: I type that, and outside, I immediately hear a loud thundercrack, followed by a fizzle, and then the power dies. And then comes back on. And then dies. And now appears to be back on for us, but out for a good portion of a 3/4 mile radius around us? Sleepy rainy Sunday afternoon in Camberville? Hah. And then it died again, so we decided it was a good time to go feed ourselves elsewhere. So now I'm back, after a dee-licious schmancy pizza dinner at Posto and the weekly supermarket run; what I was saying was:

( Vienna Teng and Alex Wong at Passim )

( anything but shopping!!! )