enjoy the sun whilst it's out?

Spring has been a bit of a touch and go this year in London. We had approximately 10 days of fine spring weather and on the good days it almost felt like summer before it all turned again and out came the winter coat.

Today's an exceptional day. The sun was out and the sky was a beautiful blue. I had an impromptu lunch with a visiting relative and a family friend in the city and since the city really is no more than 5 miles away from home, I decided to walk home after lunch!

Only on foot do you really enjoy the sunshine and as I walk past the famous sights of London - Monument, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London do memories of the first time I set foot in London came flooding through my mind. Many firsts, many fond and not so fond memories.

This is truly a beautiful city...

So Londoners, enjoy the sunshine and remember to vote!

…attend a Royal Ballet performance?

B and I share a love for the ballet, though I have to admit to being less well-informed and less adventurous in my choices compared to her. I started going to Royal Ballet productions on weekend trips to London whilst at boarding school and university. Now that I am living in London, and working close to Covent Garden, it is far more difficult to resist attending several performances each season. A good production captures the imagination and draws you into a world of beauty, comedy and tragedy

Two productions stood out for me this spring – Kenneth Macmillan’s Romeo & Juliet and Frederick Ashton’s La fille mal gardee.

Romeo & Juliet, as choreographed by Sir Kenneth Macmillan, is my favourite ballet and I have seen it staged by the RB for the last three seasons. Stereotypes of traditional ballet are few; Romeo, for example appears far more frequently than Juliet does, there are no scenes with the corps de ballet in tutus, no scene added merely to show off the technical virtuosity of the dancers. Prokofiev’s score is a lyrical masterpiece which stays in one’s mind; I once found myself humming excerpts for a week after a performance.

The story, well-known to most, reaches a level of intensity with the dancers I have rarely seen even in stage performances of Shakespeare’s play. Macmillan gave his characters passion and headstrong recklessness; they appear to have no thought of consequences.

My favourite Juliet, Tamara Rojo, starred in this year’s production; she was a marvel to watch and utterly convincing as a 14-year old sheltered girl suddenly exposed to the violence of first love. Small movements in her arms and turns of her head alternately convey self-consciousness, sexual curiosity and a youthful urge to please. Her moments of despair at being forced to marry Paris and at seeing Romeo dead were heartrending.

Rupert Pennefather partnered Rojo as Romeo this year – he was, I felt, unnecessarily panned in the press for lacking the vitality and technique of the injured Carlos Acosta. True, he did not appear very confident in his many solos, nor was there much chemistry with Rojo but for all that, he made a decent hero on stage.

Youtube has several clips of the 2007 production with the Rojo-Acosta casting – the famous balcony pas de deux can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGTNHHekn98.

La fille mal gardee was a different sort of performance altogether. Choreographed by Frederick Ashton at the height of his powers in 1959, it has remained a perpetual favourite with the RB and it is not difficult to see why. Watching La fille mal gardee is like drinking from a never-ending bucket of champagne – one gets a little light-headed with the buzz and cannot help smiling and laughing out loud at odd places.

Like Romeo and Juliet, it features a couple facing obstables in love but unlike the former, it is a romantic comedy set in simple countryside with a happy ending, loveable characters and no real villains. One adores the lovely Lise (the daughter of the Widow Simone and “la fille” of the title) for her simple grace and her very human wish to be with her beloved farmer Colas instead of the well-off halfwit Alain. The dancers seemed to really enjoy themselves in this ballet; there is a sparkle in their steps which is a joy to observe.

The Widow Simone (traditionally portrayed by a man) and Alain are two of the funniest characters I have seen in ballet; the former pompous and vain, the other a shy nitwit who nonetheless craves attention. Widow Simone’s clog dance is wonderfully upbeat and quite hilarious, and the first to feature ballerinas en pointe with clog shoes – you can find it on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMn2TuvW_M8

The Royal Ballet is putting up more modern ballets this spring which I sadly cannot make due to work and social commitments. By chance however, a friend offered me a ticket to an upcoming performance of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella before the RB goes on tour this summer and of course, I could not resist…

visit this museum on the south side of the river?

Yes! I'm talking about the little known Imperial War Museum, located near Lambeth/Elephant & Castle and very off the beaten track and well clear of tourists. (apart from war enthusiasts!)

This is one of those places that we often drive past whilst house hunting on the south side of the river but never quite got round to actually visiting it.

A very imposing 4-storey building with beautiful grounds that used to be the Bethlem Royal Hospital (aka Bedlam, hence how the term bedlam was derived) which housed psychiatric patients in the mid-19th century, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) is dedicated to the Great Wars and also all military operations that involved Britain and the Commonwealth since 1935.

We finally decided that last Sunday was when we would make the dedicated trip to the IWM to view the exhibits that has changed how we now live and how the world functions today - paying homage to all the inventions (atomic bomb, tank etc). during the war and the social effects (children of the war, holocaust etc.) that have lasted till today.

Also I was drawn to the special exhibition that was on in the museum Ministry of Food - an exhibition examining how the British public adapted to the food shortages at that time.

I often hear about food rationing from my grandparents whom lived through WW2 as a teenager but it's not something our generation has ever had to experience so to hear some of the live accounts, see what a week's ration was actually like, flip through a rationing book etc. really did bring it closer to heart.

The exhibition also focused very much on encouraging the public of that time to grow their own crops and convert their back gardens into vegetable plots with propaganda posters and broadcast advertisements encouraging eating potatoes rather than bread (wheat was imported, potatoes were plentiful).

I guess this very much explains why most British people are such keen gardeners and why potato is such a staple and served in a myriad of ways in this country!

Some photographs of the exhibition (courtesy of Arf!)

In all, I really enjoyed the visit and am looking forward to revisiting the museum again soon and looking at all the rest of the exhibits that I did not get to enjoy this time round. A real gem of London and best of all it's free!

Imperial War Museum London Lambeth Road London SE1 6HZ United Kingdom		Open daily 10.00am - 6.00pm (closed 24, 25 and 26 December) ADMISSION IS FREE (Special exhibitions may charge an admission fee)

http://london.iwm.org.uk

...explore medieval art at the V&A, the Met and the Musée de Cluny?

Whilst working in Paris five years ago, I stumbled onto the Musée de Cluny whilst exploring the city. Housed in the former Abbey Cluny, and tiny, by Parisian museum standards, it showcased wonderful illuminated manuscripts and other artefacts from the Middle Ages. I fell in love with a series of six tapestries, called the La Dame à la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn).

Woven in Flanders in the fifteenth century, each of the tapestries shows a lady flanked by a lion and a unicorn ; five of them each showcase allegorical symbols of the five senses – taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch, while the more ambiguous sixth plays on the theme of “À mon seul désir" (“to my only desire”). Exquisite and intricate, the tapestries awakened an interest in medieval art, which I realised is so much more than the rather dull painted altar pieces one sees as the precursor to the Renaissance and the Old Masters in European painting.

Since then, this interest has lain rather dormant, crowded out by more flamboyant eras like the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionists. Over the last two weekends though, I was in turn at the new Medieval and Renaissance wing at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Medieval rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

The V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance Wing was revamped at the cost of £30M, and was rightly lauded in the press for breathing new life to the wonderful medieval artefacts owned by the V&A, some of which have never before shown to the public. Airy and flooded with natural light, the gallery looks and feels like a cathedral, particularly with the beautiful stained glass panes illuminating the space within. The effect was transcendental.

Highlights include the dazzling Gloucester Candlestick with dragons at its feet, the sparkling Thomas à Becket enamelled casket from Limoges, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks, a choir screen in its entirety from 's-Hertogenbosch , a fifteenth century version of Aesop Fables in Latin and Italian, and many well-preserved illustrated manuscripts, the writing and illustration of which were the sole occupation of many monks in that period. My favourite works were the carved ivory pieces, particularly the miniature altar panels, some so intricately carved it make me gasp. My boyfriend, A, and I had fun with the many quizzes within the interactive programmes positioned throughout the gallery; we now know for instance, that pointed arches and curved bodies in carvings were characteristic of the Gothic period. We barely made it through half of the exhibits during our afternoon there, so long did we linger in each room. I will have to return at some stage.

In New York just last weekend on a quick stopover for work, I nipped into the Met to re-acquaint myself with some of the wonders within. This time around, instead of hanging out on the second floor where the major paintings are displayed, I found myself lingering within the medieval rooms. Less informative and a shade less accessible compared to the V&A, the Met still has some breath-taking pieces, like the jewelled enamel caskets and tapestries showing the four stages of men. One piece did make me smile – a tapestry depicted man, represented by a stag, being hunted and chased by hounds representing vanity, overconfidence, rashness and desire, which were released by a lady representing ignorance. Read into it what you will…