/a/muse(d)

So, Ben showed me this thing to do on the Internet which makes pretty collages. You answer questions, search the answer in Flickr, find the picture on the first search page which best suits your answer, add the URL to a list on a different website, and press a mysterious button and…hey presto! A mosaic which supposedly represents your personality. Here’s mine:

The questions are (from left to right):

1. Your name
2. Your favourite food
3. The high school you went to
4. Your favourite colour
5. Your celebrity crush (or, what it would be if I could bring myself to have a celebrity crush)
6. Your favourite drink
7. Your dream holiday destination
8. Your favourite dessert
9. What you want to be when you grow up
10. The most important thing in life
11. One word/phrase to describe yourself
12. Your Flickr name (if you were to have one)

Try it sometime (using my detailed instructions)…it’s a fun way to procrastinate and you have a pretty set of pictures at the end!

Well, last night finally arrived after a month and a half of anticipation. Ellie and I caught the train into Newtown and met Jess and Lucy for dinner at a little Pakistani resturaunt which could actually have been in Pakistan, except for the fact that you wouldn’t get sick from drinking the water or eating the lettuce. It was inexpensive and the food excellent. You could watch them making naan in a tandoori oven…thrills!

After dinner came the highlight of the evening…a birthday present of tickets to see ‘Merchants of Bollywood’ at the Enmore theatre!

It was in every way Bollywood, except without the excessive violence and bad special effects. A singing, dancing spectacular, complete with lip-synching, brilliant costumes, colour, comedy and amazing choreography. Set in the context of a succesful young Bollywood choreographer’s reminiscences and journey back to her hometown to reconcile with her dying alcholholic grandfather (who was once also a brilliant choreographer), the history of the Bollywood phenomenon was traced from its more traditional dance style beginings in black and white film, to the high-energy, disco-style, revealing outfit-wearing dance of Hindi movies today. It was very funny in parts, melodramatic in others, and made a point of openly admitting that all Bollywood films are essentially the same, simply set apart by their individual dances and songs.

I was amazed at the dancers, the costumes and the sheer volume of choreography and practice that must have gone into making the dances (of which the show was almost totally comprised) so seamless. It was fun to hear well known songs from Bollywood films, and hear the reactions of Indian members of the audience when well known actors or dancers came onstage. It was the sort of show which you hoped would not stop, but keep trailing you along in it’s sparking blur of colours and movement, which made you want to dance too. At the end, the cast made the audience stand up and ‘dance’ for them, beginning with a traditional Indian arm and shoulder movement and moving to the John Travolta style ceiling-floor move. That’s one way to ensure a standing ovation!

As is the case with many Bollywood movies, this show was sweet, entertaining escapism. Five very enthusiastic thumbs up.