Rhinoceri and JoJo

        In the hour I have between my lecture and my seminar, I thought I'd update.

        A few days ago (or was it longer? The days are blurring together), my friends and I went to see a play at the Royal Court Theatre. It's called Rhinoceros, written by Eugene Ionesco and translated to English by Martin Crimp.        It's an absurdist play, pretty surreal. A rhinoceros charges through a town, and one by one, the inhabitants turn into rhinos, until there's only one man left.
        It's this cruel and witty and painful and absolutely beautiful commentary on the nature of conformity and individualism, and the consequences of both. It's magical realism, which I know is not everyone's cup of tea, but in this case, it worked. The absurdity and surrealism opens the door to deep and raw reactions. Because the events are so outrageous, it allows outrageous and visceral emotion and thoughts. It's such a strange play, both extravagant and spare all at once, and endlessly breathtaking - you gasp and ache.
        The actual staging of the play was brilliant. It was pretty elaborate, in terms of mechanics, although the aesthetics of the set was nicely spare. Uncluttered.
        And the best part, the best part was that it was only ten pounds to see the show.

        The worst part, unfortunately, was that people don't know how to behave at theatre performances, apparently. The couple to our left was eating oranges, dropping the peels on the floor. The couple to our right kept hissing to each other, "What did she say? Did you catch that? I don't know what's going on." The girl just behind us kept snapping pictures (something any idiot with half a brain knows not to do, and is illegal to boot). And a woman down in front kept talking through the show and laughing at inappropriate moments. I mean, the play is satirical, it has it's humorous parts. But, at the end, in the very definitely not funny and rather horrible last scene, she laughed as the lights went down. The lead actor was clearly not pleased during the bows. None of us were.
        The funny thing is, with the exception of the obnoxious, laughing woman, I was completely unaware of all of this until the lights went up and my friends indignantly complained about it to one another. I was too busy being absorbed in the show.


        The Swing Dance Society finally had it's first meeting on Monday night. I was the first one there, being, as usual, rather nerdy. Then a few more people trickled in, then a few more, and then the instructor showed up. She's younger than I'd imagined, with artsy and ridiculous eyeshadow (blue and silver, with eyeliner drawn out in swoops like a spiky Chinese calligraphy letter on crack) and pinstriped pants.
        There were about twenty girls and two guys present, but that wasn't a problem, because the instructor (JoJo, as she told us to call her) simply split the room in half and deemed one side leaders and the other followers.
        I was surprised to find that I was one of the only ones there who had any previous swing experience. So it was slow going for a while, and JoJo proved to be an excellent dancer and a mediocre teacher – she'd get excited and ahead of herself, and used vague, half-articulated phrases to describe moves, and glossed over basics and tended to jump around, going off on tangents and forgetting what she was originally supposed to be explaining. It was, however, sweaty and fun and got the blood pumping. Next week should be fun.