Boston Ballet : Spain Tour 2007

BOSTON BALLET
SPAIN TOUR 2007

Diary of the Tour
by Sarah Wroth, Boston Ballet corps de ballet member

July 31, 2007

MADRID

Ahhhh Madrid……….. Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, and even Burger King. All beacons of light guiding weary travelers home, even if only for a moment. With this hotel we have departed from the five star resort setting and plopped ourselves down in the middle of a bustling city full of life and youth, art and history. It is only a couple blocks from the Plaza de España.

Yesterday, on our day off, a group of us decided to take the red double decker bus on a tour of the city. I saw more things than I could even digest. We passed the Museo del Prado, a wonderful structure. I intend on going back to see it. The Botanical Garden, The Teatro Real, the Puerto de Toledo and the Plaza de Colon kept us entranced by their history. Old in Spain, (architecturally and historically) is so much older than United States old. I think that sometimes we forget that, as a nation (comparatively) we are really just adolescents. The sound of my camera captured the world around me for three hours as we browned on the roof of that easy bake oven of a bus.

Talk about HOT. It was about 98 degrees yesterday and we all found ourselves understanding why siesta is a brilliant summer idea. Dancing in this heat is going to be interesting. Muscles begin to warm before class even starts and by the end you are so drained of water, bringing agua is a must.

A bunch of us took Pino Alosa’s open class yesterday morning at 10:00am. It was so good to be reunited with our summer-lost ballet master. The studio was in a small street south of the city. It was an open class and afforded us the opportunity to “ballet it up” with the locals. The dance world is so small and Misa and Matteo and several members of our Boston group ended up being reunited with old friends on the studio’s sun drenched Marley. My exposure in the dance world has been very limited. I only knew Pino, which was a welcome comfort in a foreign country and a more foreign ballet studio.

Seeing someone in their home environment can really open your eyes to who they are as a person. Yesterday evening we were invited by Raul Casasola’s family to their home outside of Madrid. We took a bus and believe me a bus load of hungry American tourists would be enough to shake up even the most Martha Stewart of hostesses. Raul’s mother, father, aunt, and sister were all there to receive us. They were so very excited to meet all their son’s friends and fellow dancers. The whole evening they visited and smiled, passed out fruit cups and all kinds of traditional Spanish temptations. The entire company applauded for Raul as soon as he got on the bus. He gave us the best gift anyone ever could at this time in the tour; he gave us his home and family.

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