La vida de Pablo
Tonight I've had the honor to go to a very nice flamengo concert in the Handelsbeurs with Jan on the expense of my good friends. Yes yes, in case you guys were wondering, I did exchange the gift voucher you've given me last year for my birthday and I chose a special day for it to do it....this year's birthday :p.
I had picked out "la vida de Pablo" because I like the Spanish music, I would love to see flamingo dancers once and the concept was based on paintings of Goya who is a fantastic painter!
After a long week in Wellen at work (with lots of 'great' bugs as usual) and a week spent in the Holiday Inn there, it was great to be back in Ghent and spend my birthday in an unusual way to me . Unlike my habit to arrive always and everywhere late, we arrived nicely at time downtown Ghent despite traffic jams in the city everywhere. For a moment I figured all the cars came for the filmfestival, but then the big publicity boards told me that the International Filmfestival of Ghent is only starting next week. Oh well, so for some reason lots of other people felt the need to enter the city by car as well, maybe they all wanted to celebrate my birthday there, but we made it quite at time so no stress at all. If we would have been 10 minutes later, I would have gotten quite stressed because by the time we had parked in the underground parking lot it was full!
Oh and thanx Jo Depoorter (or lookalike?) for just barely not hitting the tail of my car when I wanted to turn off ! Geez, leave the people some space so they can break! I did not experience a collision with a Flemish tv celeb on my birthday.
I have no clue why the teleticketing service had told me that i could still choose either seats on the front row or on the fifth row (fifth please, in that case!) as if it was almost completely sold out a month ago already. Much to my surprise the hall was only filled for 40% really... Hmm weird, so why so little choice on the phone??? They must try to fill in solid blocks of x rows at a time to avoid little groups of people scattered in the concert hall? Yeah, that sounds logic, I'll go with that explanation.
The concert started off quite introverted and intimate with a virtuous guitare player giving a solo while Goya's paintings came by, later on joined by a nostalgic cello. Out of Goya's paintings, they were following the life of Pablo...a little boy with a very happy childhood that comes to a dramatic end when his mom gets killed during the war. What follows is his dispear and confusion, his morning and his fatal decision to join the army.
With paintings, guitar, cello, percussion, sang and an impressive dancer, the story was brought to live. The musicians were already great to listen to, but in the parts where the singer and dancer joined them the concert was truly top. Wow, those feet of the dancer were amazing: his heels were clicking with lots of energy on the wooden floor in an ever accelerating rhythm to come to a sudden standstill accompagnied with a powerful arm movement. Very goodlooking guy by the way but he looked so incredibly tormented. I hope he's a good actor.
The story was quite sad and solemn and so it was weird and even inappropriate having a lady in the row behind us, screaming an OLE after every part of the performance..
..also when Pablo dropped dead after his execution (dance) !
But at the end of the concert, the performers had to come back, this time much more expressively joyfull and they all gave a little improvised flamengo dance, being cheered on by their colleagues. Quite funny. Ole ole I was thinking as well!
I had picked out "la vida de Pablo" because I like the Spanish music, I would love to see flamingo dancers once and the concept was based on paintings of Goya who is a fantastic painter!
After a long week in Wellen at work (with lots of 'great' bugs as usual) and a week spent in the Holiday Inn there, it was great to be back in Ghent and spend my birthday in an unusual way to me . Unlike my habit to arrive always and everywhere late, we arrived nicely at time downtown Ghent despite traffic jams in the city everywhere. For a moment I figured all the cars came for the filmfestival, but then the big publicity boards told me that the International Filmfestival of Ghent is only starting next week. Oh well, so for some reason lots of other people felt the need to enter the city by car as well, maybe they all wanted to celebrate my birthday there, but we made it quite at time so no stress at all. If we would have been 10 minutes later, I would have gotten quite stressed because by the time we had parked in the underground parking lot it was full!
Oh and thanx Jo Depoorter (or lookalike?) for just barely not hitting the tail of my car when I wanted to turn off ! Geez, leave the people some space so they can break! I did not experience a collision with a Flemish tv celeb on my birthday.
I have no clue why the teleticketing service had told me that i could still choose either seats on the front row or on the fifth row (fifth please, in that case!) as if it was almost completely sold out a month ago already. Much to my surprise the hall was only filled for 40% really... Hmm weird, so why so little choice on the phone??? They must try to fill in solid blocks of x rows at a time to avoid little groups of people scattered in the concert hall? Yeah, that sounds logic, I'll go with that explanation.
The concert started off quite introverted and intimate with a virtuous guitare player giving a solo while Goya's paintings came by, later on joined by a nostalgic cello. Out of Goya's paintings, they were following the life of Pablo...a little boy with a very happy childhood that comes to a dramatic end when his mom gets killed during the war. What follows is his dispear and confusion, his morning and his fatal decision to join the army.
With paintings, guitar, cello, percussion, sang and an impressive dancer, the story was brought to live. The musicians were already great to listen to, but in the parts where the singer and dancer joined them the concert was truly top. Wow, those feet of the dancer were amazing: his heels were clicking with lots of energy on the wooden floor in an ever accelerating rhythm to come to a sudden standstill accompagnied with a powerful arm movement. Very goodlooking guy by the way but he looked so incredibly tormented. I hope he's a good actor.
The story was quite sad and solemn and so it was weird and even inappropriate having a lady in the row behind us, screaming an OLE after every part of the performance..
..also when Pablo dropped dead after his execution (dance) !But at the end of the concert, the performers had to come back, this time much more expressively joyfull and they all gave a little improvised flamengo dance, being cheered on by their colleagues. Quite funny. Ole ole I was thinking as well!
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