Four pineapples and a rose

Just one week ago, I was frantically packing up my belongings, trying to fit my worldly possessions into boxes and suitcases and move them to my new apartment in the East Village. I managed to do it in under 5 hours (with much help from Ross!) and then I boarded an airplane for the long journey across the Atlantic and half of the European continent. Though Sunday will officially be our one week mark of being in Prague, we're counting today as our marker. Because of a server issue, I've been unable to update, so I'll tell you about a few of the things I left out about this week.

On Monday night, we met our friend Katka from the Academy at the Nova Scena of the National Theatre where we saw a mixed orchestra-dance-video concert. The concert began with Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes, an 'event' piece that I actually fell asleep during. The transition to the next piece happened during my brief...uh...nap and I only recall waking up to quite beautiful orchestral music, yet disturbed by the furry black masks the performers were wearing. Behind the orchestra there were ten televisions, each showing a live video feed of the dancers of the company doing various tasks, some pedestrian like talking on the phone and washing clothes, and some more clearly scripted like rolling around in a chair while watching a small deer. With ten different video screens it was difficult to follow each person, and I became distracted trying to follow ten different journeys simultaneously. After each exit, I expected the dancers to enter the stage and do something less task oriented and more movement oriented. After several strange transitions of the television, the music and the musicians themselves, the dancers finally entered the stage from behind, climbing next to a paused picture of themselves on the TV screens and began to speak in Czech. Only one woman spoke partially in English, and she talked about her mother's belief that her hands were the hands of a ballerina or a musician. This was the only part of the concert I could really understand, and despite the supposed universality of dance, I really couldn't understand what the movement was trying to say. We all agreed that while the concert was not the best we've seen, we were glad we went and had our first taste of contemporary dance in Prague.

Our second concert was located at the much smaller Theatre Ponec in a very different part of town. Navigating the streets of Prague is difficult enough because they twist and turn, end abruptly and have very Slavic-sounding names that are difficult to pronounce, much less differentiate. We had made several strange turns which had taken us to a sketchy looking part of town and none of us were excited about venturing back in the dark. We had decided to turn back while it was still light out. I turned around to see if I could find a better route when right above where we'd been standing I saw a black graffiti sign: 'Divadlo ponec'. "Look what I just found!" I exclaimed and we all laughed.

The show was well worth the trip we took. Titled Perfect Day or Mr. Gluteus Maximus it was a witty, hilarious, and also disturbing tale set in a spa. A ballet teacher at the Academy was performing the lead role, and he was fantastic. As we entered the theater, a video montage of scenes from an early twentieth-century spa and the bizarre rituals that people subjected themselves to. The piece opened with a portrait of the lonely spa owner receiving an imaginary massage in a vertical massage bench, and his face through the port-hole. He prepared the room for the guests' visit to the sauna. The three guests wittily bothered and displaced one another at the manager's prodding. He provoked a vicious, athletic and breath-taking fight between the two female guests, and gave all three guests a massage that both resembled, and blurred the lines between, sadism, preparing meat, gymnastics and a hilarious semi-erotic massage. Between each vignette, the manager returned to his chair, and longed after a girl who's picture was projected onto the screen. His obsession with this fantasy girl quickly turned him into a murderer, as he stalked a spa guest and killed anyone who he deemed a threat to her. In the end, he had killed her, literally dancing her to death.

As the cast took their well-deserved five bows, the stage hands came out with one rose and four pineapples, one for each member of the cast. Whether this is normal in the Prague dance scene, or at this theater, or just a strange compliment, I don't know. It perfectly capped off a wonderfully strange evening.

Next up: the Prague Castle and the beginning of week two!