City of Columns

Good day, gentle reader, we resume our tale of two travellers in a foreign land.

Prevously they have left the land of plentiful bagels and suffered on the journey of Amtrek. Check my previous post for more details.

Now we resume our tale in the land of the free (trade) …

From Union Station, which looks a whole lot better from the outside than on the platforms, we got a taxi up to our hotel – the Omni Shoreham (on Rock Creek).

This was a proper hotel, which was to say it had a restaurant, served breakfast every day (which it charged for), had paid internet access (at $10 for fifteen minutes!) and looked posh. But no kitchenette, no microwave and no TV guide. There was en suite (but the plug didn’t work properly here neither). There was an N64 built into the TV. Which you had to pay for.

Anyhoo, as Amtrak had added over an hour to the journey, which meant the taxi had to travel in rush hour so we didn’t feel much like going out. Instead we sat in the outside terrace and ate at the hotel restaurant. It wasn’t too bad.

This time.

By now, it was Sunday and after having a full buffet breakfast (I’ve still never had decent bacon in the States – it’s always dry, crispy and salty, and trying to get a fried egg …)

We decided to do a quick saunter around the block – at the very least we needed to find a working laundry. Then we’d come back to the hotel and decide what to do with the day. It took only a couple of minutes to find the elevator to the local Metro. We continued up the slight hill with the intent to see what we could see from the top.

Well, to the left a Starbucks, forward the road and to the right, a zoo. Obviously.

The National Zoological Park is part of the Smithsonian Institute, was landscaped by the same guy who worked on Central Park and is free to enter. Maps cost $2 though.

As you can guess, what started as a five minute jaunt to see the area ended up as a five hour visit to the zoo with a final walk through a leafy canyon back to the hotel. There were lions, and tigers and bears. Oh my. And toucans, elephants, panda’s, sea lions, eagles. And iguanas and geckos. And a whole manner of other feathered and furry animals. The kiwi didn’t come out to play, though and we couldn’t see any of the wolves.

I’m also fairly certain that Marine One went over our heads – at least we saw two large helicopters with distinctive colours flying in different directions. Watching West Wing does provide some info …

And, of course, I foolishly left the camera in the safe in the hotel room. DOH!

We ate at the bar lounge that night, seemingly having left our appetites at the zoo. Wife number one had been watching the tamarins eat too much as most of her blueberry cheesecake ended up over her white woolen top.

Ah.

Luckily there was a cleaners just up the road.

After an expensive breakfast the next morning, we returned to the elevator for the Metro.

Yet another underground transit system for us to try out.

Well, the Metro is shady everywhere – not badly lit but deliberately shady, which when combined with the concrete walls is not very inspiring to look at. Maps and signage are better as they follow the Underground concept of showing at each platform where the train is going and each stop to get there. And don’t show anything else on the platform maps a la the Underground.

But buying a ticket is more of a faff – ticket prices are only shown for a single and you have to do sums to work out the value of the return fare then ‘load’ a farecard with that amount. There are machines inside the barrier for if you get the fare wrong and need to ‘top-up’ to get out. Once a farecard is used up, it is taken by the machines. And the farecards get printed on them how much is left.

Oh, and the single fare changes dependent on the time of day, but it doesn’t tell you when that is.

We weren’t the only newcomers who needed human assistance to work it out.

There were smart cards that seemed to be like Oyster PrePay but we didn’t look into them – besides we already had something similar from the subway in New York.

The Underground has definitely gone up in my esteem since this holiday.

So once we’d finally got tickets, and helped a nice American couple get theirs, we descended to the platform, using the maps to look at our journey to come (NY transit take note, please).

We journeyed the three stops to Metro Center which brought us out on 13th and G Street North West.

A quick note on the layout of Washington DC:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/washingtondc/0035030022.html

Not quite as simple as Manhattan – there are avenues normally with state names and normally running diagonally to the main grid system.

BTW If you do search for the street layout of Washington, be prepared to wade through a mountain of Masonic imagery …

Well, with a slight distraction at Filene’s basement, we went past the Treasury building and looked at President Bartlet’s office – oops sorry I mean President Bush Jr. Then we walked onto the Mall and were towered over by the Washington Monument. And looked down onto the helicopters flying low over the Potomac. Then by the WW2 Memorial and along the reflecting pool to the Vietnam Memorial. Across to the Lincoln Memorial then down to the Korean War Memorial.

[note - this is the point where something has gone awry with our photos and we cease to have any beyond the WW2 memorial. The Washington shots are here – hopefully if any file recovery programs actually work, this set should increase)

By now we we a little memorialed out so we headed across to the Smithsonian castle and found a foodstore so we could eat on the Mall midway between the monument and the Capitol building.

We then entered the Air and Space Museum – full of big hanging things – then pushed on past the Capital to the Library of Congress then past US Supreme Court back into Penn quarter, missing – sadly – the International Spy Museum and returning to Metro Center.

They don’t do things by halves in Washington, at least in terms of architecture. There doesn’t seem to be one building that doesn’t, from outside at least, stand proud in a city of columns.

We returned back to the hotel and finally found the main entrance to the Metro – that we had been walking past every time we left the hotel. I’m not certain how anyone can miss three escalators covered by a large overhang but we managed.

And it we hadn’t been going to a drug store I doubt that we would have noticed at all, it being in the middle of an intersection …

A quick note on buying pharmaceuticals in the US, if it’s an over the counter drug, bring your passport. The pseudoephedrine I was taking to try to keep my sinus’s open while I failed to shift a head cold is a federally controlled substance. A driving license is not enough – as you need to have a citizen number (seriously) to purchase it. My passport number worked – though it did tell the computer I was a resident of Ottawa (shrugs)

We braved the hotel restaurant again that night – and wished we hadn’t. Wife number one had the seasonal ‘cherry blossom’ based three course and only really liked the ice cream that was part of her chocolate and cherry pie – the ice cream from Haagen Dazs.

The duck parfit stack I had had changed it’s contents since I had it two days before – there were a large number of peppercorns on the side of my plate by the end and there had been none the first time I had eaten that dish. The main meal was no better and again only the Haagen Dazs ice cream was enjoyable.

With the hotel eateries out of the picture, we purchased fresh bagels from a local diner. If you are in the North-West area of Washington, I’d recommend Cafe International on Connecticut Avenue. They open from 6.30am to 5.00 most days, have internet access (25 cents a minute or $7.90 unlimited) and a good selection of cakes and savouries. The only problem we had was a slight language issue between our UK English and the Japanese accented American of one of the servers.

Returning to the Metro, we bought fare cards like seasoned commuters (kinda) and headed back into Penn Quarter to see if we could find any shops.

Yet again, we got waylaid by Filene’s basement. Slightly laden down, we stopped in a local bakery for sandwiches, cookies and coffee then got overcome by a last bit of lingering culture and headed to the Natural History Museum.

Yet again the Gem gallery caught the eye of wife number one – this time the Hope Diamond along with the Splendor of Diamonds exhibit. The meteorites weren’t quite as good as the ones on display at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC but the quality of the exhibitions was markedly better – see, no stuffing …

Having missed the wildlife photos at the Natural History Museum in London, it was nice to be able to catch up with another collection here – it shows what a lot a patience and a damn good camera, and a little lucky timing can achieve.

We returned to the hotel one final time – then remembered that we didn’t like the food and we had to pick up a couple of bits of laundry. So we recovered the nearly clean woolen top and went out to the Open CIty diner. The service was quick as was the food. The food was simple and tasted good – something our hotel could have learnt from. We were even able to take dessert out with us.

Our last day in America loomed and we tried to fend it off with a breakfast at the Cafe International.

No luck – first a taxi to the sweeping concrete of Dulles International Airport (I’m surprised there weren’t any columns) then wandering aimlessly up and down the terminal which took almost our remaining cash reserves and left us with the grand total of $7 and change.

Then onto Virgin Atlantic to find that economy class in this plane wasn’t up to the standard of economy class of the flight over. The screens had a permanent flicker and the films weren’t the direct access of the flight over – instead they started them playing on a loop. If you missed the start, then you had to wait until it started again.

I managed to watch most of the Golden Compass and Juno but don’t ask me questions on camera or colour as the lady in front of me spent the entire journey with the seat back and I got to test the vertical viewing angle (result – NOT ENOUGH!)

Apparently I was meant to be sleeping.

Yeah right …

Arriving back at Heathrow, it was nice to walk into the short UK citizens line and not nice to then wait as the baggage handlers put the cases out one at a time. One case for about every complete turn of the baggage carousel.

I got to know some of those bags very well, particularly the African couple who had brought 13 bags with them. Yes, that’s 1 AND 3, 13 bags.

Finally we escaped to rescue our bored looking taxi driver who returned our sleep deprived bodies back to our abode.

Now I just need to spend some time sleeping to feel rested before returning to work next week.

For those concerned, wife number one was able to complete Resident Evil DS once through and is most of the way through attempt two.

This may have been the last time I see the DS …

We came, we saw, we had bagels

We did something new this month.

We had a holiday abroad.

Yes, wife number one and myself actually left the sunny shores of England to go to climes foreign, even going so far as to be in a different continent …

The towering heights of Manhatten Island followed by the cherry-blossom capital of Washington D.C.

Okay, it was only the US but that’s still 3,000+ miles away.

That’s about 8 hours flying time.

Or about 3 films worth …

Virgin Atlantic now have a flat-screen for each seat, even in economy and on the flight over there was a large choice of films

As we were headed to the eastern seaboard, we decided on films that would allow us to see where we were headed to.

So we started with I Am Legend (mostly in Manhatten), moved on to National Treasure 2 (which has DC in it for a bit). Then for some light relief we watched Aliens vs Predator 2 (definitely not NYC or DC).

A quick warning to any supporters of NO2ID travelling stateside – US Customs require a digital photo and index fingerprinting before they let you in – it was nice to not be told that until in the line to enter the country …

We flew into JFK which is out in Queens. To get onto Manhatten Island, you have to drive past La Guardia. How often you you drive past an airport going from an airport to your destination?

Before that though, we drove past the flying saucers at Queens. Okay, actually they are the observation towers left over from the World Fair 1964 but I first saw them in Men In Black so …

Anyway, we ordered a car from Dial 7 (guess the phone number!) which drove us through Queens, over the Triborough Bridge then down to 96th St (might be worth getting a map of Manhatten up about now) across the whole of the island to the Hudson Parkway then down to our home for the next week – the Milburn Hotel on West 76th St.

It seemed a little round about to me but then I don’t know road conditions at 9pm in the area …

A quick note on streets in NYC – I’m cutting a section from NY.com. All copyrights remain with their respective owners (find the whole page here: http://www.ny.com/histfacts/geography.html#manhattan)

The island of Manhattan is largely a protrusion of granite, rising a few hundred feet from sea-level. The southern tip and center of the island are virtually solid granite, while areas in Greenwich Village and Chelsea are composed of softer soil. As a result of this geologic arrangement, Manhattan’s tallest buildings are located in these two large “rocky” areas.

Manhattan is flanked on its west side by the Hudson River, and on the east side by the Harlem River (on the north) and the East River (on the south).

Manhattan’s street layout consists primarily of avenues and streets. The space between avenues is typically much larger than the space between streets (roughly 3x).

* Avenues run North-South, starting with 1st Avenue on the East Side, and going westward to 12th Avenue.
* Streets run East-West, starting with 1st Street in Greenwich Village, and increase in value up to 220th Street at the north tip of Manhattan.

General areas in Manhattan

* Below 1st Street is considered to be the Downtown area of Manhattan
* 1st to 14th Street contains the general “Village” area. The area west of Broadway is Greenwich Village, and to the east is East Village.
* 14th to 34th Street west of Broadway is Chelsea, known for its large loft apartments and studios.
* 34th to 59th Street is generally regarded as “Midtown”
* 59th to 110th Street contains the Upper West Side and Upper East Side, respectively. Between the two lies the green oasis of Central Park.
* 110th to 145th Street lies the village of Harlem
* 145th to 220th Street has no special designation, but does contain the neighborhood of Washington Heights and the Cloisters.

Houston (pronounced HOW-ston) Street marks the top of Downtown which has a grid system of sorts but is named streets rather than numbered. Areas downtown include Soho (SOuth of Houston), Tribeca (TRIangle BElow CAnal street), the Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown, Lower Manhattan (where the Twin Towers used to stand and the Freedom Tower is under construction), and Battery Park)

Anyway.

We arrived at our hotel, the Milburn on 76th street, just off Broadway. This is a little hotel that is pretty much just somewhere to stay while going out to do stuff. Still, our room had a kitchenette with full sized fridge, microwave and sink, en suite bathroom (with dodgy plumbing), free internet access (including PC’s in the lobby for those of us who still don’t have laptops or smart phones), and even free rentals of DVDs, VHS (with players in the room), and playstations!

Rather than getting a decent nights sleep, we instead had arranged to do a tour bus to next day, for which we had to arrive while there were still single digits in the times. Bleurgh. Our first challenge was not finding a subway stop (only 4 blocks from the hotel) but working out how to use the subway.

As regular users of London’s Underground, we have been spoiled.

True, the New York Subway is 24 hours which the Underground does fail at but the Underground is better lit, isn’t so shabby around the edges and has proper signage. You don’t appreciate how good the signage is until you don’t have it. The subway has white on black signs in the roof that mention whether a train is going uptown or downtown – there’s no route maps, no next train due signs (or announcements) and the trains only have a start/end sign – which is the same whichever way you are travelling. It may save on the maintenance but it’s not friendly to first-time visitors. Sometimes the only indication is a single sign that says ‘uptown’ or ‘downtown’ at the entrance – New Yorks subway system expects you to know it.

Still, we arrived early with a loaded Metro Card and arrived at the tour centre.

Say hello to Sergei.

And his red umbrella. The three dozen or so of us on todays tour are going to spend the day looking out for the red umbrella, a handy eye-catcher for any tour guide. Plus it keeps him dry in rain and shady in sun

We went with Grey Line on one of the Manhatten Comprehensive tours – what we didn’t realise was that this is from a coach and not an open-topped double decker – any photos would be through tinted windows so we didn’t bother with the photos.

The coach left from 48th and 9th and headed southwards, mainly on Broadway while Sergei pointed out all the sights.

And in Manhattan, that’s like: “This is Times Square, on your right is Port Authority and your left is Grand Central, now we pass the Public Library on your left and on your right is Macy’s and then Madison Gardens and on your left was the Empire State Building and we’ve now missed St John the Baptist Church and you’ll have a couple of seconds to view the Flat-Iron building but in doing so we’ve passed Gramercy Park, oops and Union Square and that building is Forbes, nope the other side, oh too late, well next is …”

But with a Chechnian accent.

After we had missed looking at Wall Street (twice), we arrived at Pier 17 for a water taxi. 15 mins to stretch our legs (and check out Victoria’s Secret … as you do) then the water taxi arrived.

Actually, it was 15 minutes to stretch your legs and about 30 mins waiting for the water taxi to arrive – still it gives a chance to show off Sergei’s umbrella

This isn’t an amphibious vehicle but a regular two deck boat. It was yellow, though.

The water taxi heads around Lower Manhatten from the East to the Hudson Rivers then swings past Ellis Island to Liberty Island, pauses for the inevitable photos (I wonder why) then heads back up the East River to Manhatten Bridge then back under the Brooklyn Bridge and to the dock.

Chart our progress here.

The coach picks us up and missing Wall Street again, we headed to an eatery called Chevy’s. Lunch was free – which considering it was a choice of burger, burger with cheese, veg wrap or chicken burger was good – and was over quickly.

With a little time to kill, we paused at the Famine Memorial. Right next to the World Financial Center, I’ve never heard anything about this before – but I think this page tells about it quite well.

We moved back into the Winter Gardens – what else would you call 16 full height Palm trees in a glass hall? – and had our close-ist look at the site of the World Trade Center. It’s looks like a giant building site.

They are putting the foundations down for the Freedom Tower, a 1776ft skyscaper to replace the twin towers (more information here). Sergei mentioned that the tour used to go up to the observation deck in the WTC – had the planes flown in five hours later, it’s wouldn’t be his jaunty red umbrella guiding us past tourist NYC.

The coach returned and we headed back up north of Central Park to St John the Divine Cathedral on 112th and Amsterdam. It’s currently being refurbished so isn’t looking all that divine at the minute – the main body of the church is sealed off, the North Transept was destroyed in a fire last year and the southern tower is being build by hand – very worthy but very slow. The north tower is yet to be started.

More details can be found here – they don’t seem to have updated their web site recently though.

Back along 125th St to get a glimpse of Harlem then down the Musuem Mile to the Rockefeller building to finish.

We say goodbye to the red umbrella and ascent to the observation levels.

– Northwards from Rockefeller over Central Park

– Southwards from Rockefeller over Lower Manhattan

After leaving there, we pause in Tiffany’s for high-brow shopping then head to a pizzeria recommended by one of the assistants for some low brow eating.

From there we walk back to 59th and 8th and catch the subway back to 72nd for the quick walk back to the hotel. Stopping at Loehman’s for a quick bargain search – fail. It wasn’t quick.

Day two of the adventure had us using the free internet access at the hotel to start (now that’s a plus) after a lie-in and free breakfast before headed subway-wards to get to Penn Station.

We had decided prior to the holiday to travel down to Washington on the Amtrak and have a look at the landscape. Our first task was to check out the station so we knew how easy (or not) it was going to be to get here carrying all the luggage.

First indications were good.

Then as we were just across the road, we decided to do a little shopping at Macys.

For hours.

Holey Moley – that’s one big-ass shop. Even keeping a tight rein on wife number one, it still took several hours to traverse the store.

It wasn’t dark when we finally left Macy’s (though the overcast clouds made it feel like it was) and we decided against going up the Empire State. Instead we headed up to the New York Public LIbrary.

Now that’s what a library should look like.

Then we swung by Grand Central.

It may be one of the most lauded train stations in the world but when it’s overcast and rush hour has started …

Then we walked the four blocks over to Times Square. The lights weren’t at their brightest yet but the crowds were as thick. We braved the TKTS booth.

One of the assistants at Macy’s had mentioned that Altar Boys was a show worth seeing – of course that wasn’t showing for a couple of days and I’d forgotten that Avenue Q was still playing (thinking about it, I seem to remember some localisation of jokes so it may not have been the best choice in any case). And we didn’t want to see one of the larger (read expensive) shows.

As it happened, we had seen an advert on the side of a bus while walking over for a show called Curtains. Starring David Hyde Pierce (from Frasier and Hellboy) (who was off that night) so we got tickets for that.

Which gave us just enough time to get back to the hotel, get changed and get back to the theatre.

The show itself is pretty good fun – think An Inspector Calls meets Chorus Line

It was going fine until there was an incident with the sound desk. In that it crashed. Totally, without warning, in the middle of the act two romantic song and with little hope of recovery. And the unlucky engineer tried. We heard pink noise several times as he attempted to return it to a show worthy state. My guess is that something was untoward in the scene memories towards the end – what caused it and why no backup could deal with it, I don’t know.

After 20 minutes of pink noise spotting, the show resumed with the cast testing out their projection skills which earned them a standing ovation from some of the audience. I was glad we had stalls seats for that one.

I’m not saying what the sound desk was in case the problem existed with another bit of kit (hardware or software).

And in case the problem was with the desk, well it was made by a company that I mention elsewhere as the digital desk manufacturer most likely to tour into our space, it’s big enough to deal with a musical and it’s not mentioned on this site anywhere.

Back to the bright lights of TImes Square for one last caffeine injection then return hotel-wards to more sleep (yeah, we thought that one through).

The sun dawned on day three and we slept in that little bit later. This turned into a slight problem as one of the two lifts had failed and the room used to serve breakfast in was packed.

Still, we managed to get our free cereal and bagels then took advantage of the good weather to explore Central Park.

I say explore – I mean, walk a little distance through. The park covers over 840 acres. We entered just below the Natural History Museum at 77th, meandered past the great lawn up to the reservoir then back to the obelisk via Belvedere Castle then deviated into the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Like so many of the major collections, there is no way to see the whole thing in one day – not and do the exhibits justice. We spent a few hours in the Egyptian tombs, a disappointing five minutes in the photo gallery (guess what was under renovation), a quick stride through medieval art and a potter through arms and armour. We noticed that some of the exhibits had been loaned out. I always though that a museum that loaned out an exhibit would put another similar item in it’s place. Apparently not.

After wife number one bought, and ate a hot dog from a street vendor (and bought a second one to find out what the sauce was!) we returned to Central Park, walking past the Alice statue and joining the Mall by the summer stage before circling the nature sanctuary and onto Central Park South then getting back on the subway at 59th and Columbus – the second time so far this week.

We decided to eat in tonight – mainly cos we’d been walking past Citarella’s on Broadway to and from the hotel each day. The price wasn’t bad for us (used to London prices in pounds remember) and the food was lovely.

Which kinda made up for not getting breakfast the next morning as our hotel didn’t do breakfast at the weekend, which started on Thursday. Of course.

I seem to recall we had some spare bagels. And the kitchenette in our hotel room had a fridge, sink and microwave and we’d fortuitously stocked up on milk and OJ.

Catching the subway back to 59th and 8th (we like this station) we walked along Central Park South to Bloomingdales. Now, this is a taller building that Macy’s but it seemed the smaller store. We tried to make it quick but still lost a few hours there (not as expansively as we had in Macy’s though), which included eating at the brilliantly named but average juice bar Forty Carrots. Reviews of this place call it a ‘froyo’ bar (what?) and rave about the ‘frozen yoghurt’ (oh).

Guess what we didn’t have.

Ah well.

When I finally got wife number one out, we ended up going back to the mall at the Rockefellar Plaza.

Okay, that one was my fault. I’d noticed a Gamestop there earlier and liked the idea of picking up a game or two for the DS at prices less than I’d pay in London.

Wife number one forgave me when she found Resident Evil DS preowned … I lost the DS for most of the rest of the holiday and still haven’t had it back yet.

Sigh.

As it was still mid-afternoon, we returned to the subway (not 59th this time) and went up to the American Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs from Night at the Museum.

Honestly.

We arrived too late to see the rotunda (the main hall closes at 3.30pm – huh?) and could see no dinosaurs on the map but had a look through the stuffed exhibits (and stuffed exhibits really don’t do anything for me) until we reached the Gem Gallery (ooh sparkly) then went back to the Planetarium before we realised that there were two more floors.

Wife number one got to see her dinosaurs after all but the Water:H20=Life was shut. And the Sonic vision display was not advertised anywhere and I’ve only just found it now while checking the web site

Which is a pity cos it looks like we may have enjoyed it.

Instead we went back to the hotel via Citarella’s again. Not all bad then

Well, it’s day five of the holiday (day six if you count the day of packing and flying – which you probably should as we saw the saucers) and we are travelling again.

It was a good thing that we were catching the Amtrak as American Airlanes were grounding most of the flight due to potential failures in airplanes, as were a number of internal flights.

Of course, just for us, the train before ours broke so all those passengers were shunted onto our train. Now, we’d paid in advance, for business class tickets. All that got us was a higher grade carpet to sit on for two of the three hours.

It wasn’t until the train was en route that it occurred to Amtrak to allow passengers to travel by more than one train – but rather than do the sensible thing and say any connecting service would be fine, they continued to specify which train passengers should catch.

If they had allowed access to the express train at Penn Station for passengers travelling to Washington then we could have been spread out and wouldn’t have noticed much disturbance to the journey. Instead, we crammed two trains onto one and ended up an hour late having stood for a majority of the journey. And it cost them money as we got a full refund.

Still, what do I know …

So we wave goodbye to New York and enjoy the view of the luggage rack as we head down the Eastern Seaboard to the US capital …

For the brave, a few more shots taken at various times around Manhattan.

A study of monochrome

I’ve not been deliberately avoiding writing about shows from behind the scenes of recent – I just haven’t actually worked on many different shows over the last few weeks.

Still, the show calender is full for the next couple of years (!) so here’s the next one (contain yourselves, please). There is some show talk interspersed in this one. If you see acronyms, it’s probably as well to skip on if there’s no gearhead in you.

This week started with another of our one day rehearsals – which actually had a lighting design of sorts (booms, cyc, 2K back wash, a few MAC 500s overhead and corridors of light from our ever tetchy SL profiles); black box masking with cyclorama and white marley; and a little bit of sound.

Anyone paying attention will have a fairly good idea of our ‘basic’ set-up and thus it was again today

-Midas control to MediaMatrix processing for a EAW and JBL rig with Max 12 foldback; same old, same old-

The source today though was five vocalists singing harmonies. Each one had their own SM58 and each made good use of the proximity effect when needed. When I saw the initial tech request for this (asking for 15 SM58 to be split into three groups of five) I was a little dubious, and for the rehearsal set-up, adding a little extra copper was all that was needed.

Radio mics were mentioned but it wasn’t until into the afternoon when we finally heard the pieces that it became clear pretty quickly that lavs just would not be able to do their vocal ranges justice. Our Sony handhelds may well have done the job but I know that they don’t respond as quickly as the SM58’s do – something to try next time though.

While I liked the harmony action, the fast paced contemporary dancing just didn’t seem to match. There was a tabla for a couple of sections and it may be the plan to expand the use of instrumentation – as it was, the singing and dancing seemed very disconnected.

The main piece we’ve had in for the rest of the week had a very synchronous design – a study of monochrome, really – though more involving than that descriptor sounds.

The show, from an established continental dance company with a very good reputation, opens on a black box stage with a grey floor. And a light orbiting a dead tree. Hung upside down (the tree, not the light)

The dancers are also in black and the piece is scored to Cage, Glass, Bach and Biber.

Once it finishes, the tabs come in and we actually do a proper scene change – when the tabs go out at the end of the interval, the floor is now black and several small black tabs are hung at angles over the dance floor. As the piece progresses, these change height, moving in and out and silks upstage begin to billow as if a wind is being blown across them (as if). Again, the works of Glass are used for this dance.

Once the tabs go out for the third piece, the set-up has changed again. Now the floor is black one side and white the other. A grand piano is on the dark side with 10′ legs and the pianist is accompanying the works of Beckett, Mozart and Haubrich. Meanwhile on the white side is a pile of light – literally.

One day, I’ll explain how to make a pile of light

The nearest any of these pieces comes to colour is the tungsten lamps in the few lanterns not gelled in a flavour of CCT blue – that’s not to say the performance is tedious. The performers are excellent and the pieces work very well.

It’s just that together, they are all a little similar. A little too similar. I always tend to think that companies showing a collection of pieces should have some cohesive element to them. These three pieces are just a little too alike to be shown together.

[SHOP TALK]

Okays, for those who’ve been waiting patiently.

This production is a little showcase for d&b Audiotechnic. A pair of F1220 hung from our pros speaker bar, a second replacing our stalls EAW and a third acting as front fill left and right from beside a B1 each side. Onstage a pair of M2 monitors each side provide foldback.

Everything is powered from P1200 amps with the appropriate cards – as they prefer the sound of the older analog amps to the newer D12s for their speakers.

At the control position are two CD players and a small sampler, running through a Yamaha DM2000. There are two mics on the grand piano (though it being a little taller than normal, I never actually saw what was inside).

Most of our system was switched off except for the E3s and EAW that serve as delays and centre cluster. Processing and delays were all on the DM2k, apart from system processing on our speakers that was our normal MediaMatrix settings.

It was nice to hear the F1220 with a piece that wasn’t recorded directly from an old record player

[/SHOP TALK]

And as a note, there probably won’t be much more show related posts for a few more weeks.

Wife number one and myself will be making a big donation to a carbon positive scheme at somepoint soon to make up for the imminent flight to NYC and DC on what will be our first holiday on our own – ever.

That should be worth a post or two …