How now?

Oh yes! I remember that I have a blog. So sorry.

It’s been nine days here in foggy London town (I’ll try and keep off the clichés—but foggy it is)and I am having an insanely amazing experience. Our little group does so much in a week’s time. I’m not sure how I’m going to document it all here in one post, but I will try! We’ll do it this way: first day…tour of the center…highlights of our travels.

DAY ONE

I’m awake. I’m packed. I fly from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis (lovely airport) and then to the London Heathrow Airport. The universe smiles on me and I get two adjacent, empty seats.

Touch down after 7 hours or so of sleeping and watching The Artist-- turns out I'd already seen it. (Singing in the Rain, much?) I’m in London. Customs. Passport. Landing card? Didn’t even give that to anyone. Oops. Okay. Keep going. It feels weird— YOU’RE IN LONDON. FEEL IT. You don’t really feel it. Not until you’re out of the airport. So I rendezvoused with my little third of the group in a strange, grey metallic, echoing limbo that was the Heathrow baggage claim. In London. But not yet. You know?

The first little happening that brought us (we were all feeling this way) closer to feeling like we were actually in London was meeting our coach driver Winston. Yes. Winston. Naïve as it may be, I didn’t think it got any more British than that. (writing that is something of a dramatic irony now) We packed up the coach (coach= charter bus, and probably a normal bus as well) and set off for the London Center.

Oh my goodness, I love the London Center. Quaint, Victorian, beautifully carved mahogany everything, slate blue and gold carpets, pale green walls and extremely creaky floors. Also, there are a lot of stairs. 66 up to my room. I just counted. Out—of—breath. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I did have to lug my luggage (2 goodly sized suit cases and a backpack) UP said stairs. But hey, I’ll just show ya.

LONDON CENTER

Pics and stuff

HIGHLIGHTS

Sorry if these aren’t necessarily in order, but here’s the cool stuff we’ve done so far.

This is my picture-- not the one on the internet :) 

• Royal Albert Hall. I made it! Oh, people. People, it's beautiful. I had such a moment in the park that first day when a my friend Lauren and I ran to go see it. It was drizzling a little that morning and the chill made your fingers stiff. The park was still and quiet. As we walked, all of a sudden we see the Royal Albert Memorial, which is stinkin' impressive. 
• Running Hyde Park. The first morning (the morning when everyone woke up at the hours of 10pm, 2am, 4am and 6:40am) a few of us went running around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, as I mentioned before. We've done this a few times now and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of the trip! Hyde Park is a little paradise no matter what the weather is doing. 
• Museum of London
• Gelato Mio, Café Diana, Rose & Crown Pub, TukTuk Thai--these are all the little restraunts I've tried so far. Some twice. The Thai and Indian food scene in London is one of the best-- according to locals and our directors. 
• Borough Market-- 
• Globe Theater
• London Philharmonic Orchestra (4 quid, what what!)

• Tower of London
• Stratford-on-Avon
• Anne Hathaway’s Cottage
• Royal Shakespeare Theater Company’s production of Twelfth Night
• Chipping Norton
• Westminster Abbey
• Parliament and Big Ben
• Les Miserables at Piccadilly Circus 

Update. Getting close!

HAIL THE CONQUERING HEROES! 

My dear sweet roommate and I just returned from our botany final. Are we botanists? No. Did we take the class as a clever out to taking Biology 100? Yes. Did we succeed? Absolutely. The living with plants 100 final represented the last of the hard things and it's smooth sailing from here on out, kids. One week from tomorrow, I will be in London with a bunch of cool people whose names I still don't know all of, yet. :) Needless to say, I'm no small degree of crazy, wicked excited!

7 days and counting, there is still so much to do--

 Pack up my life, put 80% of life in a box with a lock on it, wash car for its summer-sitter, one last walmart run before I depart the country, collect some addresses for post cards, and kiss everyone good bye for 7 weeks. eep!

ALSO, I HAVE A ROYAL ALBERT HALL UPDATE. 

After actually looking at a map, I found that the path around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens where a group of us have decided to run some mornings will take us RIGHT PAST it. The BYU London Center was within fifteen minutes walking distance of Royal Albert Hall all along and I didn’t even realize. WOW! Here's a little map. The green is Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens on the left. I added the little suitcase--that's the London Center. The crown is Royal Albert Hall. :)

Stay tuned for the following: 

1. huge London to-do/to-see list, 2. maybe post my ballet philosophy paper, 3. some cool things I'm learning about Queen Elizabeth II 

The Investigation Begins

Post number two! Hot dog!
This is actually a special kind of post today because it is the first of a whole vein of thoughts I plan to share on the subject of ballet. The things I mention here will apply to any kind of athletic, intellectual, or otherwise pursuit if you spin it right. However, I am writing purely from the context of straight up, undiluted, theatrical pink ballet. Don’t worry—I am definitely writing with non dancers in mind, if not for them especially. 

A terrific song poses this question: “Are we human? Or are we dancer?”

Let’s talk about it.

First: ballet is not for humans. In fact, everything about ballet is completely unnatural—paradoxical to the point where a ballerina's initial occupation is to disguise the unnatural practice as something leastwise not completely insane. Crazily enough, the goal is actually to make it appear easy, wonderful. A real ballerina, though her definition is lost in a fog of opinion and hierarchy, is one who has discovered how to make you believe that one of your own kind has slipped through the laws of reality and taken you somewhere else. In this new place, gravity shirks his charge, people breathe up music instead of oxygen, and movement is as communicative and poignant as poetry. Truly, there are only a few real ballerinas, and that place where they take you is a greater illusion than you may realize. The truth is, nothing about the way ballet works comes naturally to us humans. Muscles we rarely use must be engaged at every moment. Positions the body should never be subjected to must become second nature. And criticism, the sticky, cherry flavored medicine of life, must become as delicious and wholesome to us as fresh bread. To be a dancer, one must depart from the natural and be something that is not human.  

Now, the inhuman road to the place where real ballerinas go is paved with principles—basic laws.

The ironic, I'll go as far as to say surprising, part is that these principles, the bricks that build up a successful ballerina, are the exact same bricks and blocks that build a successful human. To name a few: patience, humility, trust, courage, honesty, integrity, obedience, risk, balance, etc. They certainly go on. As I investigate the technique and art of ballet, I become more and more convinced that an average hour and a half ballet class is nothing more than a neatly compacted metaphor for life.  

Regarding Brandon Flowers’ pretty choice of lyrics, whether we’re human or dancer, the laws that govern our performance run parallel. To quote a stupid bumper sticker I saw once, “ballet is life.”

I'm sure you're craving the actual song at this point, and just to tie it all in, here's The Killers singing Human live from Royal Albert Hall in London! Enjoy!

ps- 2:20 thru 2:29 or so is probably my favorite moment :) 

First post ever. hoo-rah!

So okay. Let’s talk about this title. Pilgrimage. Means a journey to a sacred place. That’s what Webster has to say about it anyway. And that's valid. Truth is, Royal Albert Hall means a handful of special somethings to me—things that I feel are worth sharing on the internet. (Says a whole lot, I know)

So why a British concert hall?

This is where I'll be staying-- BYU London Center

Reason number one: The tickets are bought, my fees are paid (mostly), and I am going to London this Spring from April 25th to June 13th between which dates I'll visit this radical building! The program emphasizes on British lit and history about which I’m way excited, and I am using this blog as a means to prepare, geek out, share research, post pictures and keep in touch while I’m there for 7 weeks.

Reason number two: Royal Albert Hall stages ballet companies along with other artistic celebrations. I do a lot of thinking about ballet. One facet of the pilgrimage is a running comparison I seem to keep between any given ballet class and any given human life. Something I’ve noticed is how the principles of life seem to repeat. And repeat. I’m going to demonstrate how that remains unfailingly the case in something as unnatural as a ballet class.  It’s actually fascinating, I promise.

Reason number three: The best Christmas present I have ever received or am likely to receive was the dvd, The Killers: Live from Royal Albert Hall in blu-ray. (Ignore the urge to take that with a grain of salt. Just let it go.) One of the several things I’m justifiably passionate about is music. Recently, I asked my equally obsessive roommate, “could it be possible that during our waking hours, we’re listening to music more than when we are not?” She responded, “Yes. Yes it is.” And within that pool of music, the Killers take a top tier seat. Needless to say, there’s some deep pseudo-spiritual significance to that concert hall where they performed what must have been their best concert of all time. In summation, expect some music-related postage and certainly some Albert Hall fun facts.

Fourth reason: Royal Albert Hall occupies an asterisk in my own family history. Recently, I think I caught that genealogy bug that’s going around (might have something to do with the family history class I’m taking—what up, Brother Sperry) and I’ve become fascinated with my ancestors and their stories. One such story belongs to my Nana on my dad’s side. I’ve always admired her class and her flickering British accent left over from before my grandpa swept her off her feet and brought her to the States in the 1950’s. What I didn’t know about my Nana was that before she was married, she was involved in a lot of beauty pageants. When she was 20, my nana, Aileen Kearney was crowned Holiday Princess, Miss Great Britain in the Royal Albert Hall. More than just a cool story, that event connects this place to my heritage, which I hope in the coming years to explore and share.  (Here's a neat video I found of her in another contest--she's #11, the beautiful blonde who makes the camera man fall in the water) 

I hope you pop in now and again to read. If not, thank you anyway for reading the first post. I don’t think they’ll be this long usually.

Thanks,

Natalie