The last 2 days have been unseasonably warm: it was 15 degrees Celsius as I was walking home last night. Although it's nice to peel off my coat and linger outside, I somehow feel like something is wrong - like we should be bundling up and shivering and drinking tea and huddling together for warmth. I've been away from home for 54 days, and I'm experiencing a paradoxical undercurrent of knowing I fit in and feeling loved and supported, while still feeling isolated within a crowd. My friends have become my family. Moscow has become my home. I visit Ilya every other day to buy fruit, talk about the weather, name the classes I took that day, and answer her questions with smiles and "I don't understand"s, or sometimes broken attempted responses. I saw a rat on the street and a man talking to himself, and I'm starting to recognize the old women with wrinkled faces bundled in rags who shiver and hold out dirty cups for kopecks. I gave a man directions to Tverskaya street last night in Russian, even though he switched to English as soon as I started to speak:
Man: "(Unintelligable Russian question.)"
Me: "Izvenitye?" ("Excuse me?")
Man: "Where is Tverskaya street?"
Me: (Pointing) "Tam." ("There.")
Man: "Thank you."
Impressive, yes? I'm practically fluent!
In Acting, we do etudes and etudes and etudes: in groups, in pairs, and solo. We're starting to focus on etudes relating to our scene work, and I'm playing Liuba from The Cherry Orchard. This week I did a solo etude in which Liuba tries to poison herself (which happened shortly before the play begins) and an etude in which my scene partner tells me my son has just drowned in the river (which happened 6 years before the play begins). Perhaps this is contributing to my general feeling of discontent.
I struggle in ballet. Larissa told us through a translator about her career in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre and how her dad always said that art is equally about technique and radiance. I'm inspired and continually awed by the fact that I'm studying with such a beautiful and accomplished ballerina, and frustrated that I'm not better at the dances. I suppose I should be easier on myself since I've only been dancing for 8 weeks, but it's difficult to be radiant when I'm tripping over my own feet. I stayed after class yesterday to practice a dance step again that we've been working on since the beginning of the semester. I was sweating and crying and getting it wrong repeatedly, and Larissa was clapping the rhythm and adjusting my body and shouting "again!" and saying "maladiets!" ("good job!") even though it wasn't. Finally she told me to stop, and I said "ya haichu dyelat" (I want to do it). She smiled and kissed me on the cheek and told me it was OK and said we would work together again after class on Monday. I don't know if I'll ever learn all the steps, but I hold within me a feeling of hard work, struggle, and immense care from a lovely artist who wants me to succeed.
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