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Children's Book Author and Illustrator

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Dresden

« H E Travel & Favorite Places :: Ballet :: email
posted Monday, 14 January 2008

We arrived in Dresden at night. It was pitch dark: this is not a city like NY, blazing with street lights, abuzz with people at all hours! But we successfully got ourselves orientated. For our trip I had planned out all the travel arrangements and Lydia was in charge  of accommodations and maps. She did a great job! We checked into the Kangaroo-stop - and it was perfect for us.

Lydia's audition in the morning was for The Dresden Ballet. This is the Semperoper Theater where the company performs:

However, this postcard perfect view is not the way we saw it - for us, the day was gray, with misty rain - like this:

The studios are in this blocky-looking building connected to the back of the theater. Lydia reported in for company class and I took off to explore the town. It is a sad place. Just before the end of WWII on February 13, 1945, with horrific bombing, the Americans and British reduced Dresden to ruins. Over ninety percent of the beautiful baroque city center was destroyed and perhaps as many as 50,000 civilians died in just a few hours. Construction and reconstruction is very much still an ongoing process. Everywhere there is a mix of old and new. But it is confusing because actually everything that looks old has been rebuilt. This view of the theater with its mixture of new and old-looking parts is a good example of what the whole city looked like to me. But it also seemed empty of people, except at the indoor shopping mall I happened to stumble across. 

Lydia stayed to watch a rehearsal after the class, so I picked her up after that, and we were immediately off to the train station. We had a long day of travel ahead: train to Berlin, plane to Brussels, end destination: Antwerp - here we come! 

 

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comments (4)


1. Mark Stephenson left...
Thursday, 24 January 2008 4:59 pm

Hi Monica, I am enjoying the travelogue. Is it cold there, too? Good luck, Lydia. You must have a suitcase full of offers!

As you already are aware of, Dresden is a famous place and one still of great controversy as to what happened there in February of 1945. There are estimates that upwards of 100,000 to 150,000 lost their lives there in the firestorm. Kurt Vonnegut, who recently died, was a POW in Dresden at the time and survived the firestorm by taking refuge with other POWs and their guards in a subterranean vault of a slaughterhouse. His famous book, Slaughterhouse Five, is his account of what he experienced, as told by the book's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Billy suffers from flashbacks where he finds himself back in the war. The book is Vonnegut's most famous, it is filled with great satire, dark humor and some of Vonnegut's best writing, and should be read by all.

There is a famous musical "sentence" (phrase, or motif) composed by Felix Mendelssohn in his Fifth Symphony (the "Reformation" symphony) which has taken the name "Dresden Amen". It consists of basically three chords with passing notes, suspensions, etc. It has been borrowed (quoted) by a number of composers, most famously by Wagner who used it to symbolize the Holy Grail in his opera Parsifal. It can be found in many church hymnals.

You may know much of this already. You are wandering around places filled with incredible history.

Mark


2. monica wellington left...
Saturday, 26 January 2008 10:30 am

The weather in Europe was damp but really mild, and it got dark so early every evening! And thanks for writing more about what happened in Dresden - I want to learn more about it all. I've never read Vonnegut - thanks for the recommendation, that book sounds very powerful.


3. Jill Hudson left...
Tuesday, 17 June 2008 9:54 am

Any word yet on who the other 2008 NYCB apprentices are?


4. monica wellington left...
Tuesday, 17 June 2008 12:18 pm

I wish I could let the cat out of the bag, but I'm not suppose to because it is not "official" yet. Lydia and Megan are so excited about starting their new "jobs"!! The other young women and men have been offered their apprenticeships and have been told they will probably start in October. Everyone has been seeing lovely dancers in Workshop and now the SAB performances at NYCB, so I know people are wondering! I wish I could say more, but not yet!