I promise that pictures and descriptions of my room, the
villa, classes, and the city will come soon! For now, however, I have other
important things to share about Saturday, our first day off.
The day started
off early at 10:30am as most of the group had decided to head to the market
(which only occurs on Saturdays and lasts until 1pm) in Arezzo. I must admit
that I was expecting mostly a farmers market with lost of food and produce
available but mixed in with crafts, clothes, and maybe some other knick-knacks.
Boy was I off! It turned out to be one looong road with stalls selling mainly
clothing (very nice looking clothing) and accessories (like bags, sunglasses,
shoes) but with the average price being around 10 euros. Every once in a while
there were also stalls selling carpets or pillows and bedding, and, at the very
end of the market, there was a second row of stalls that sold food. There was a
lot of fresh produce there but also many carts selling bread, cheese, and meats.
I ended up munching on some wonderful bread and grapes that some friends got,
and I bought something soft and red with meat in it and some fries (thick but
incredibly crunchy and salty, i.e. perfect) for lunch for 6 euros total. AWESOME.
After that, I ended up exploring (and getting lost in) Arezzo.
It started with some of my friends looking for this one clothing store they
could buy some essentials at, then led us past a gelateria (finally! I had been
looking for one since our first trip to town!), and ended with us going out of
the city through a different gate then normal and discovering a beautiful
graveyard that I need to go back to sometime. Basically we didn’t make it back
to the villa until 3:30pm that afternoon.
Around 6pm, I headed back into Arezzo with four other girls
for dinner. We ended up eating at the Pizza Bar where I got a slice of pizza, a
“hot dog”, and a drink for less then 4 euro (isn’t it lovely how cheap good
food is here?). The pizza was good but not exceptional and the “hot dog” was
this foot long pig in a blanket that I had to try. It was surprisingly good
though the ketchup inside tasted more like barbeque sauce then ketchup.
After dinner we went back to Cherí, the gelateria. I ended
up getting a rich chocolate flavor and a mixed flavor that I think was called
Fiordinato (basically vanilla with caramel and nuts) in a coppa piccola, which was the smallest size but ended up being a lot of
gelato. Not that I am complaining J
We then got directions from our very nice
server to where the train station was so we could go to a dance performance that
one of my dance teachers had invited the dancers (and any interested actors) to
come see. The town the performance was at was the town right next to Arezzo so
it was only a ten-minute train ride. I’ll spare you the details of us getting
lost trying to find the theater and just go on to talk about the performance.
The theater itself was pretty interesting. The
stage was just an ordinary proscenium, but the audience seating was made up of
the seats on the floor and the many small private boxes that completely covered
the walls and upper levels of the audience area. I ended up in one of these
boxes with some friends, which was very exciting.
There were three dances that we got to see.
The first, “Searching for Suite-Hope”, was a duet with dancers in bright single
color t-shirts and pants. In the background, there were many paper cut outs of
the boy and girl figures you see on bathroom doors. The dance started with a
recorded monologue in Italian and then turned into a pulsating beat where the
dancers did mainly sharp and hard repeated movements with barely any interacting.
There was then a brief period of interaction based around getting into a hug
and rejecting one via shirt pulling (this was one of my favorite moments in the
piece), and then the second half of the dance was a solo comprised of movements
with a fluid/jiggly quality. I know that makes it sound like sad jell-o, but it
was actually a really interesting movement style (and it looked like it would
be incredibly difficult to pull off correctly). The dance then ended with the
soloist naked on the floor and the other dancer picking up the fallen cut outs
and changing their colors and then putting up more girl cut outs. Here is a
link to a trailer for the dance on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--OhtbD-ivQ
The next dance, “Verdinastella”, was a mix of
dialogue spoken in Italian by the dancer and moments of dance where the
movement seemed based off the ideas of being unbalanced physically and
quirkiness. At the end of this dance, the soloist took off her shirt and
everyone in my box began taking bets on whether there would be nudity in the
last dance (end result: technically no, but the dancer’s costume was pretty thin
in certain areas). My favorite part of this dance had to be the costumes. Both
of the dresses she wore were both beautiful in design and flowed out when she
would twirl. Here is a link to a trailer for this dance on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zd9ezXqQ6M
The last dance, “Psyche”, was also a solo
though that’s where the resemblance ended. This dance began as very slow subtle
changes from one position to another but then changed to very chaotic movement
later. I must admit that, to me, the music for this dance eventually became way
too loud and distracting (to the point of me actually having to cover my ears),
and I disengaged from the performance. I was unable to find a video on youtube,
but, if you’re interested in learning more, the choreographer’s name is
Gabriella Maiorino.
Overall, there were some really interesting
performances by some incredibly gifted dancers, but knowing a bit more Italian may
have been helpful in understanding the intentions behind each dance.
Ciao!
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