Cultural Experience: Balenciaga - Shaping Fashion at the V&A

Victoria and Albert Museum
Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion Exhibition

Last Friday, I met up with a friend for a cultural day out at the V&A. Last time I went, I only had time for the Undressed exhibition, but this time we had a little more time. We started with the newest exhibition in the fashion gallery - the Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion exhibition!

I absolutely loved this exhibition. It chronicles Balenciaga's work and legacy, and has loads of examples of his work as well as work inspired by him of other designers work. It turns out that he has been working for 50 years in fashion and inspired loads of other big name designers!

There was a lot of architectural inspired designs, which had really clever designs and drafting. the things that caught my eye the most though, were the detailed designs (like this 2015 Oscar de La Renta dress with gorgeous embroidery) and lots of intricate detailing.

Another favourite of mine features dark green silk, overlaid with black netting, which then had braid, beads and feathers attached to by hand. So beautiful.

After spending so much time admiring the beautiful handiwork, we still made time to wander through the British sections of the museum. Lots of nice stuff from the reign of Henry VIII! By the time we had done that though, I was well and truly museumed out for the day. Such a great exhibition - would highly recommend. Now, more photos of my favourite things!

Cultural Experiences: An Evening with Kathy Reichs

Last night, I headed over to Waterstone's in Piccadilly for another excellent book event. This evening's was for the awesome Kathy Reichs, to celebrate the release of her first standalone novel, Two Nights.

Kathy Reichs, it turns out, has exactly the same sense of humour as her most famous character, Temperance Brennan. She is not only one of less than 100 forensic anthropologists in the world, since 1997 she has written almost 20 books in the 'Bones' series, leading to not only fame but also the longest running scripted drama on the Fox network. I personally love that fact that she really knows what she's talking about, and it doesn't talk down to you even with all the science.

The evening had a few technical glitches (microphone issues), but Kathy was funny and quite insightful as well as interesting. All her Tempe stories are influenced by real experiences she's had, which is very cool. We also had a very interesting question: "If Shroedinger's cat broke a bone, would it remodel or stay broken?" A question which stumped even her!

After the talk (during which we were told there will be a new Tempe book next year!) and the questions, there was just enough time to line up and get my book signed. Generally this signing was more serious and low-key than the others, but she was very nice. No photos this time though - nobody was taking any.

Now, I get to actually read the book!

Theatre Trip: BBC Proms #13 (Malcolm Sargent's 500th Prom)

Royal Albert Hall
Date: 24th July (Monday), 7:30pm
Seats: Rausing Circle W, Row 1, Seat 154/155

Program: National Anthem, Overture 'Le carnaval Romain' (Berlioz), Piano Concerto in A Minor (Schumann), Overture 'Cockaigne (In London Town)' (Elgar), Facade, Suite No. 1 and 2 - Popular Song (Walton), The Perfect Fool (Holst), On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (Delius), The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Britten)

Notes: This Prom was to recreate Malcolm Sargent's 500th Prom, to mark 50 years since his death. It was very cool, in the beginning of the concert, to stand with the rest of the Hall and sing the National Anthem with the full orchestra. Such a great mood.

I wasn't familiar with much of the music in tonight's concert, but it was a lovely concert. Being in the first row was really great to be able to have a good view with no obstructions! The Schumann was pretty great, quite laid back and simple with lovely melodies. I also particularly enjoyed the Walton, it was very fun and playful to listen to! I'll definitely be listening to it again tomorrow. I did know the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, of course, and it was great to hear it again!

Prom #3 for this season, done and dusted! Tomorrow El Husbando is going to Prom the concert featuring Holst's Planets, but I've got a book event to go to instead which I am very excited for! I'll report back on that one tomorrow!

Theatre Trip: BBC Proms #12 (Sir Henry's Magnificent Musical Inspirations)

Royal Albert Hall
Date: 23th July (Sunday), 6:00pm
Seats: Promming (Gallery)

Presenters: Rory Kinnear (Sir Henry Wood), Ellis George (Emma), Louis Walwyn (Dan)
Performers: Jess Gillam (saxophone - Sculthorpe), Gaurav Mazumdar (Ravi Shankar), Kathryn Lewek (Mozart - Queen of the Night Aria), Ten Voices Children's Choir

Notes: Our second Prom of the season, and our first Promming experience! We bought these tickets online at 9am for the Gallery, which was actually very empty! We stood, leant, sat and at one point even lay down on the floor during the concert! It was a very relaxed way to enjoy the Proms.

This concert was one of the Family Proms, aimed at young people to encourage a love for music. This meant that rather than presenting it in the normal manner, it was presented like a play, with Sir Henry Wood come to life to talk to the other characters about what inspires conposers.

Works included Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, Mozart's Magic Flute overture, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, the Hornpipe from Wood's Fantasia on British Sea-Songs, and the fourth movement of the Pines of Rome by Respighi.

It was definitely a children's concert, but quite enjoyable, and a great first Promming experience! We've got real tickets to another one tonight, and plans for many more!

Theatre Trip: BBC Proms #8 (John Williams)

Royal Albert Hall
Date: 20th July (Thursday), 7:30pm
Seats: Rausing Circle S, Row 4, Seats 70/71

Presenter: Katie Derham
Performers: Jess Gillam (saxophone - Catch Me If You Can), Annelien Van Wauwe (clarinet - The Terminal), Jamal Aliyev (cello - Memoirs of a Geisha), Haringey Vox choir (Amistad), Music Centre London choir (Amistad)

Notes: This is our first Prom concert for the season! We are hoping to go Promming (standing seats on the day for 6 pounds!) for a few concerts, but we did buy 5 concert tickets in advance - mostly to get the entry to win tickets to the Last Night, but also to ensure we could get to the concerts we wanted to attend the most. We paid 20 pounds per ticket for these concerts and have seats in the Rausing Circle section (the first section below the top gallery).

This concert was the one which I was most excited about - a whole concert celebrating the music of John Williams (who is now 85, and thus couldn't attend in person)! He has written the music for some of my absolute favourite movie scores. They played a wide range of pieces, starting with the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also included were the theme from Jaws, Superman march, Memoirs of a Geisha, the flying theme from E.T., Escapade No. 3 from Catch Me if you Can, Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter and, of course, a few songs from Star Wars (March of the Resistance and Rey's Theme from Episode VII, and the Main Title from A New Hope).

My favourites were Jaws, Superman, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter (of course), Catch Me if You Can, and Star Wars! It was especially impressive to watch the string section playing Hedwig's Theme - it's a real workout!!!

They performed 2 encores - firstly Cantina Band (the full orchestra version, which I hadn't heard before), and then Harry's Wondrous World (more Harry Potter, yay!!!) El Husbando was disappointed in the lack of dinosaurs (no music from Jurassic Park), but it was a fantastic evening and quite resonably priced. Bring on the rest of the Proms!

Theatre Trip: WICKED

Wednesday 22 July, 7:30

Seat: Dress Circle, A38/39

Notes: Wicked has always been my favourite show, and it definitely still is! I adore this show, and in a fitting turn, this is our 10th show/concert we've been to since arriving (in less than 6 months, oops!) Our seats for this show were not discounted, but I really enjoyed our spot - we were in the front row of the dress circle, on the far right of the left block. I spent the whole show leaning forwards with my arms on the barrier in front so I could see even better.

In terms of plot and staging, almost everything was exactly as I remembered. Most people in the audience hadn't seen the show before, I guess (lots of tour groups), as some of the great jokes fell flat (lemons and melons and pears, oh my!!!), while others got a bigger laugh than I've heard before.

To the performers. Boq (Idriss Kargbo) was pretty good. I think his acting was better than his singing, honestly. I really liked Doctor Dillamond (Martin Ball), he was very good and convincing in his role. Nessarose (Sarah McNicholas) was fantastic, really really heartfelt. She was able to get all her emotion across in her singing, although it occasionally affected her vocal quality.

Madame Morrible (Sue Kelvin) was great - she did the most singing than any other Morribe I've seen (most usually speak their role instead of actually singing), which I appreciated. At times though, her voice was quite grating and she was slightly overacted, although perhaps that is just part of her character? The Wizard (Mark Curry) I was a bit disappointed in, honestly. He was just not as charismatic as i would like form my Wizard, which is a large part of why he is in charge...

Fiyero (Oliver Savile) was pretty great, I felt that vocally he wasn't quite as good as his leading ladies, but his acting was fantastic. In particular he was very emotional with his acting and resonated really well with his Elphaba. Glinda (Suzie Mathers) is yet another leading actor from Australia, and who I had seen in Australia, not in Wicked, but in the lead in Mamma Mia! with Mum years ago. She was my favourite of all the Glinda's I've seen, with beautiful top notes which she didn't need to slide herself up to. Her voice was so clear and her portrayal of G(a)linda was so honest and raw. I especially loved in the beginning sequence, when in between talking about how great it was that the Wicked Witch was dead, she was trying not to sob. So lovely and reflective of her character.

And then there was Elphaba (Willemihn Verkaik). She was the main reason that I wanted to see the show, before she leaves on Saturday, especially after seeing her perform at West End Live. She was AMAZING. She sang new riffs and notes that other Elphaba's didn't - it was clear how comfortable she is in this role. Her humour was very deadpan, which I think suits the character really well too. Generally, she was more sensuous too than others I've seen, and had amazing chemistry with everyone (but especially Suzie!). It was definitely an amazing relationship showed between the two leading ladies. They blew me away and had me in tears several times. Totally incredible.

We didn't stage door this time - partly due to being not a certain actor we had gone to see, and also because we had to work the next day! But I'm so so so glad we got to go and see this cast before they change (the last show for all major leads is Saturday nights performance), because both Suzie and Willimijn are absolutely amazing.

Explore London: Richmond Park

Last weekend we bought me a bike! It's part of my 'explore London over the Summer', to possibly help me commute, and also to help me get fitter. So this weekend, we went off for the day to explore Richmond Park.

As an extremely unfit person, it was a hard ride, about an hour all up. We did make a short stop in the way for a snack though. However, as we were arriving, it started to rain. It wasn't heavy rain by any means, but it was persistent. Once we arrived at the park, we rode to a field where some deer were hanging out and sat under a tree to watch them a while. Only annoying thing was, these Chinese tourists were there and they kept going closer and closer and making the deer run away!

After that, the rain had still not stopped, so we decided to slowly make our way home. We rode to a cafe for a quick stop, where we stumbled on a herd of boy deer with their excellent antlers! It was very cool and el Husbando took many photos.

Then we rode down the hill to the Robin Hood gate, wound our way through Wimbledon Common, and made our way to Wimbledon train station. I was much too sore and tired to cycle all the way home again, and thankfully, you can take your bicycle on the overground trains!

Theatre Trip: Hamlet

Theatre Trip: HAMLET

Saturday 8 July, 7:00

Seat: Stall, C12/13

Notes: Finally, a front row seat! I won these tickets through the TodayTix app. I've been stalking Hamlet on the app since it opened, and there are rush tickets available at 10am every day through the app. But it was hard, and I'd tried about a dozen times with no luck. So when I rolled out of bed yesterday at 10:01, I thought I'd just give it another go. And I won! Front row, centre seats, and at the excellent price of 15 pounds a seat!!!

This was a modernised production in the set and effects, but completely used the original Shakespearean text. I hadn't realised how many of the lines I was familiar with were from Hamlet! The text is of course very wordy, and although it kind of washes over you, and you don't understand all the words, the meaning is still clear and you totally understand what is going on during the plot.

The cast was fantastic! It turns out that I recognised many of the cast, including Daniel Rabin (Reynaldo), David Rintoul (Ghost/Player King), and Peter Wight (Polonius). The former two were in Game of Thrones! All the cast were absolutely great at their intense moments. There were two actors that I was very very keen to see in this play. One was Jessica Brown Findlay, who played Ophelia. She was Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey, and her performance was very nuanced. Her small mannerisms were lovely to watch, and then in Act 2 when she goes mad, she really did a very very convincing job of being mad.

And then there was Andrew Scott. Best known for being Moriarty in Sherlock (and in the most recent Bond movie too!), he played the title role in the play, and he was great! Slightly overwrought at times, but I felt like it fit in with the madness that he suffered from throughout the play. I did really like the emphasis he put in certain places during his monologues, it made me feel like certain parts had a different meaning to what they had before. Really interesting.

After the show we went to stage door. Jessica Brown Findlay came out really early and they got a cheer, but none of them stopped for autographs, which did make me quite sad. Andrew Scott did sign programs though which was awesome - although his handler made us stop taking photos really early, and I had to move to a different spot to actually get an autograph at all! A bit disappointing, but it wasn't Andrew's fault. Just not handled very well.

Overall, this play left me not excited, but a little overwhelmed - in a good way. It was intense and serious, but had it's funny moments. And was very impactful.

Cultural Experience: Wimbledon!

Today has been the longest, most exhilarating day. Today I ticked something major off my bucket list. Today, I went to Wimbledon.

My day started at the delightful hour of 3:30am, as I had organised to meet my friends for The Queue at 5am. I got onto my first bus, only to find that I had no credit and couldn't actually travel as far as I had intended. I jumped off the bus early at a tube station to recharge, except it wasn't open, so I couldn't top up. And I still had to get to Wimbledon somehow... So I downloaded and called myself an Uber, getting there just in time! Thank goodness.

I met my friends and we joined the queue. I was the first in the group to get a ticket, and I got number 2745... at 5am. Wow. The time actually passed really quickly, what with chatting and playing cards and snacking and complaining about how long we'd been up already (so many British people drinking at around 7am). We started to move around 9, I think, and by about 10:30 we were through security and buying tickets. When we got to the front of the queue, we were all set to buy our general admission tickets (a very reasonable 25 pounds!), until we heard that there was a single centre court ticket still available. We persuaded Jess and Matt to buy it, so that they could share it and get the full centre court Wimbledon experience. The rest of us bought our general admission tickets, and we were finally in!

We headed straight to Court 16, for the mens doubles, featuring Aussies Kokkinakis and Thompson. It was really cool to watch Aussies play here in London, although unfortunately they didn't win. Jess and Matt are the best people, and they let a few of us take turns to go into centre court to watch the game there! So I got to spend about half an hour watching Azarenka play against Brit Heather Watson, who was excellent, but Azarenka won in the end.

After giving someone else a turn on centre court, we headed to the gift shop for souvenirs! I got a few things for me (a cute mug with the Championship logo and strawberries on, and a fan which was super practical), and a few things as gifts. Not even super expensive. I even got a program, which I can fill in with the other results as they come in! Then we grabbed some food and headed to the lawn to watch the end of Azarenka/Watson on the big screen.

By this time, most of my friends had headed off, so the few of us remaining wandered the courts to see what we could find. And what we could find, was another pair of Aussies playing doubles! This time, it was Barty and Dellacqua playing ladies doubles. It was an incredible match. They lost the first set, won the second, and the third? It was game for game, practically. There were trick shots, there was surprises, and we were gasping and cheering. There was even three first serve lets in a row, which left all the players smiling at the chances. In the end, the Aussies came from 2-5 down, to 5-5, to finally win the final set 10 games to 8! We were cheering so so loudly, so proud of our Aussie girls.

By this time, I was left on my own with my remaining friends in centre court, so I grabbed a snack (strawberries and cream popcorn, yum!) and sat to watch the final centre court match on the big screen, which featured Andy Murray. But it was 7:30pm already, and it looked like a long game (turns out that was the beginning of set 2 of 4), so I caught a bus/train home, picking up dinner on the way.

A long day (from 3:30am to, well, I'm still up...), but an incredibly satisfying one. Wimbledon crossed of the bucket list - although I will return next year! Just, I need to catch up on my sleep first...