pensnest | (no subject)

Exercise today involved using resistance bands—I've had them for a while but never remembered to use them at home before—and then going through our yoga routine again. We seem to do the yoga in about 35 minutes, whereas the actual class runs for more than 45, so I must have forgotten some stuff.

This evening I got to see most of my chorus members again. It has been ages! They didn't get to see me, because this monitor doesn't have a camera, but Beast says we might have one somewhere so I will see if I can do better next time. We did quite a lot of cheerful helloing and a little bit of warm-up singing (some of the exercises are very cool when sung effectively as duets, with our MD singing and everybody else muted and singing at home). I can sing! I still have a gluey throat, which is unpleasant in the evenings and quite nasty in the mornings, but I can sing!

One of the people in the Zoom works for the anaesthetists in a local private hospital. That hospital is now being taken over as an outpost of the big NHS hospital here and will house cancer patients and, I think, A & E, to leave the big hospital to deal with covid-19. They have been retraining the staff like mad. And there was the 8 o'clock clap, which, I dunno…. but we had a break in our Zoom meeting and everyone went outside to make a noise, and there was certainly a lot of clamouring, hooting and loud noise-making in this vicinity. Will it make NHS staff feel appreciated? I guess. A surprisingly large proportion of our chorus work for the health service in some capacity, and several more have family who do.

Spent a lot of time this afternoon watching YouTube videos about musicals, including an analysis of the music of Sweeney Todd, which was interesting but referred to the hideous Tim Burton film instead of a stage version. And as there actually was a snippet of video from the truly superb version I saw in the West End with (astonishingly) Michael Ball as a really menacing Todd, there was no bloody excuse for using the film. Johnny Depp as Sweeney is an… understandable choice, I suppose, if you want to sell a musical, but Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett was *ludicrously* miscast.

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Hurray for singing! And having at least one other voice to sing against is nice, even if it's not the full harmony. I got a little of that in my church's Zoom service with the music director providing the central singing and everyone else encouraged to sing along on mute.

It's so nice to feel part of the group again. I hadn't been to chorus for about three weeks before the decision to cancel rehearsals, so I've been missing it for ages, and seeing all those faces again was lovely. Having a reason to do disciplined singing was also a wonderful thing.

Yay for singing!

It is heartwarming!

I love that you got to sing that way.

I need to dig out my hand weights. At the beginning, I used them along with doing online routines and I need to get back to that for some extra movement.

There are lots of home exercise routines - we just did one which was quite a good challenge! Plus we're working on things that we've done at the gym, for variety. I do not want to lose my hard-won muscles, or the habit of exercise. You're a good walker, I know you and James are always going off for a walk, so you'll be missing out, and it'd be a really good idea to set up some kind of movement thingy. If you find anything that involves dancing which you like, let me know!

I failed to make virtual!choir last night, due to a badly timed work phonecall, and I'm having the hardest time imagining how it will work, but I am heartened that it worked for your group!

It was great for having a chance to socialise with my chorus ladies again, but we had a mini version with just the baritone section afterwards, and found that actually trying to sing together was very difficult because of the lag factor. Our section leader started off and then tried unmuting one person at a time, but, eh.

It was good, though, in that it made me think about doing some singing practise!

HBC's costumes were the one highlight of Burton's Sweeney Todd. Her cute, stripey lil' seaside outfits! I loved them!

But the singing -- um. You'd better not get me started. (Has it really been ten years since that thing was released? I'm still not over it.)

The really infuriating thing is that the guy doing this had obviously managed to get hold of stage productions. I know the original Broadway production is available on DVD because I have it, and although it is hard to get past Sweeney's terrifying hair, George Hearn does a fine job and Angela Lansbury is an excellent Mrs Lovett. But, I saw a recent production in the West End which was *brilliant*, and had Michael Ball as Sweeney, and he was really menacing. Frankly, Johnny Depp by comparison just looks sulky. And Imelda Staunton was *fantastic* as Mrs Lovette, whereas Helena Bonham Carter.... might have worked as the Beggar Woman, maybe, but Mrs Lovett? Fuck, no. AND THERE WAS AN EXCERT FROM THAT PRODUCTION ON THE VIDEO! I want it, I want it now. When I went to see it there were some teenage girls in the audience near me, and they were so totally involved, they were *terrified* when it looked as though Joanna was going to get killed. Brilliant.

OMG. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryF2rt0hQiM Watch it now! It was set in 1930s depression era, which worked perfectly well.

My favourite version was the one I saw in my head, because I was first introduced to Sweeney Todd by a concert version on Radio 4, with Denis Quilley and the sublime Julia McKenzie. Bloody marvellous. And, ahaha, the internet doth provide, you can listen to it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCsxcDE3QWY&feature=youtu.be I love Julia McKenzie's sheer relish in Priest.

It's great that you get to sing, even if it requires creative methods to do it.

45 (or 35) minutes of yoga? I've been trying out some Youtube videos, and I can barely get through 20 minutes!

We've been doing a Fitness Yoga class twice a week for about four years now (plus I started an additional class, not quite so tough, a few months back) so we're quite used to doing 45-50 minutes (the instructor tends to overrun). I wrote down our routine, as well as I could manage, and we've done that so far, but at some point we're going to have to devise a different routine and try to remember all the other moves we're supposed to know!