Oncoming

I spent most of August away in the States, at a big behavioural ecology conference in Ithaca and then a holiday in Boston and New York. Had a packed wonderful day in Boston, whale watching (saw 30 humpbacks!), following the Freedom Trail, and wandering through the North End. It seems an immensely live-able city. Then there was a week in New York. Now that I've been a few times it was great to not feel like I had to do anything, so we simply spent much of the time wandering about, particularly in the Village where we were staying, which rapidly became my favourite part of the city -- it is so filled with quirky cafes, restaurants, clothes and record shops, and perfect for an aimless afternoon. I even managed to go and take a dance class at Merce Cunningham's studio, literally a 10 minute stroll up Bleecker, and thoroughly enjoyed myself carving out those wonderful clean Cunningham shapes with the Manhattan skyline out the 11th floor studio windows. My sister gave us a foolproof list of great places to eat; my favourite was Ippudo (at St Mark's) -- wonderful bowls of unbelievably savoury ramen served in an actually reasonable quantity hit exactly the right spot for a couple of lunches. Although the pastrami on rye at Katz's was pretty darn good too. And parpardelle in ragu and a couple of glasses of vino at Frank's made for the perfect late dinner. And... oh dear, must stop now that I am back in the land of egg mayo sandwiches for lunch!

Now that I am back I am faced with that pesky but rather joyful problem of having signed myself up for too many fun things to do. In the upcoming 3 months I am:
1) Producing, designing, choreographing for and dancing in a full-length 2 night show of entirely new work with our new company Cambridge Contemporary Dance at the Mumford Theatre. Because we only actually have about 10 dancers, it is going to be an interesting exercise in stamina.
2) Also for Cambridge Contemporary Dance, doing long term planning and preprarations for further performances in January, March and November of next year in Cambridge and with luck, London.
3) Choreographing a musical which will run for 5 nights at the ADC Theatre
4) Supervising Trinity second years in the behavioural section of Animal Biology
5) Finishing off analysis from my second field season
6) Planning a third field season for which I leave 24 hours after the dance show
7) Attempting to stay sane

Hurrah?