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Feb. 8th, 2011 10:29 amI took a half day off yesterday and caught up with a good friend. She took me to see the Ballets Russes exhibition. If you're able to get to Canberra while it's still on, you should see it. It's absolutely amazing. I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking about the backdrop for the first BR Petrouchka performance (the whole thing on display!), about standing very close to trunks worn by Nijinsky (there were several costumes worn by Nijinsky - it was the trunks from Giselle that brought it home, though), about costumes designed by Bakst and Matisse and other amazing artists. As I entered a new hall I would stop and stand and look and see the amazing life ahead. Every set display was a pageant, with its own colours and textures and tale.
Seeing the designs as art on the wall and the costumes as art near each painting showed me a bunch of things I hadn't known about costume design.
What I love is that all of this material lives permanently in Canberra. We have about 300 Ballets Russes costumes here, and they're not all sad remnants of the Australian tours. In fact, most of them come from the original productions in Paris and London. I don't know who it was who decided that we needed this collection, but I am very appreciative of their work.
We also checked out the changes to the NGA and the foyer is now accessible and right round it is artspace. Some fabulous new work. Suddenly we have a world class art gallery in Canberra. We've had a world class collection for a while, but we now have the proper space to show it.
The rest of the day I'm in catch-up mode. I have a very big list and I need to decimate it, because tomorrow my Wednesday teaching begins and so does CSFG. Bascially, my workload will be about 15% heavier. All stuff I want to do, but still, it would be helpful to have more than decimated my list. I don't want one item in ten done - I want all the items done. It's about 12 hours work. The clock starts...now.
Seeing the designs as art on the wall and the costumes as art near each painting showed me a bunch of things I hadn't known about costume design.
What I love is that all of this material lives permanently in Canberra. We have about 300 Ballets Russes costumes here, and they're not all sad remnants of the Australian tours. In fact, most of them come from the original productions in Paris and London. I don't know who it was who decided that we needed this collection, but I am very appreciative of their work.
We also checked out the changes to the NGA and the foyer is now accessible and right round it is artspace. Some fabulous new work. Suddenly we have a world class art gallery in Canberra. We've had a world class collection for a while, but we now have the proper space to show it.
The rest of the day I'm in catch-up mode. I have a very big list and I need to decimate it, because tomorrow my Wednesday teaching begins and so does CSFG. Bascially, my workload will be about 15% heavier. All stuff I want to do, but still, it would be helpful to have more than decimated my list. I don't want one item in ten done - I want all the items done. It's about 12 hours work. The clock starts...now.