Even MORE Artsy French Things {I bet you're excited...}

{Tuesday, October 7}

Nuit Blanche {White Night} is the night when Paris doesn't go to sleep; museums, churches, train stations, monuments, and various other buildings remain open late into the night {officially, the entire event ends at 7 AM the next day}, housing artwork, showing videos, playing music, and holding concerts and performances {traditional or otherwise}. Since the metro closes at 2, most people simply stay out and wait until it re-opens at 5:30 to go home, hence the lack of sleep. I, myself, did not stay out all night, as Monica and Melissa stayed in the dorm {accessible only by RER, which closes at 1}, and Cody, the only other person whom I knew for sure was going, was also planning to leave before the metro closed.

Despite my limited experience, I really enjoyed Nuit Blanche. I met Cody at the Centre Pompidou {a big modern art museum - yes, you're allowed to interpret that as "weird", but I didn't say it}, where he had just watched a bizarre performance art piece involving a cross-sectionally sliced trailer/hotel room and strings and harnesses. He said he thought it was about prostitution. Oh, performance art. We got in line to enter the museum itself, but since it was almost 1 and we were pretty far back in line, the guard turned us away, because they were apparently about to close the doors. We shrugged and headed over to the cathedral St. Merry, where there were various art exhibitions, a video of what appeared to be the subject of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" preparing to pose for the painting {and no, it was not Scarlett Johansson}. As we were wandering around admiring the various displays, I heard something unbelievable; the juxtaposition of this beautiful old cathedral with such a sound was just too much for my brain to handle.

They were playing hip-hop.





Now, this is Paris, so you know they had to get some interpretive dance in there for good measure, but it was really cool to see something that contrasted so forcefully with the setting. By the time we'd finished enjoying what the cathedral had to offer, such as...

An appropriate quote from the Bible, designating the snack table

This is art.

Zoom out: Swiss chair mountain?

And finally, for those of you who have read The Mysteries of Harris Burdick...

The Seven Chairs: The fifth one ended up in France.

For those of you who haven't: read it.

...it was pretty much time to head home. Cody satisfied a candy craving at the Haribo stand {think of those "get your own candy" areas at the movie theatres, but worse - this was 2,90€ per 100g}, then we boarded the metro and I crawled into bed around 3.

Sunday brought homework in great heaps, then Cody and I ate dinner at some café near his metro stop whose only dish without cheese was a large plate of meat...so that's what I ate. Prosciutto, some sausage that is sort of the French version of salami, and two kinds of pâté. Yes, I felt quite carnivorous.

Yesterday and today - more classes, etc. We worked on perspective in drawing, which made me happy because we got to use straightedges but, never again, alas. Tonight, though, was magnificent.

I arrived home, worked for a while, then Bénédicte arrived and we ate a quick dinner, which is basically unheard of for the French, but in this case it was important because then we set off for the wondrous Comédie Française. Since Bénédicte is a French teacher {not as in French and a teacher, but as in a teacher of French} at a high school, she likes to take her students out to performances, and she invited me along, this time to see Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro" {in French, "Le Mariage de Figaro", not to be confused with the Mozart opera "Les Noces de Figaro", based on this play and translated into the same title in English}. As enthusiastic as I am about French culture, I had actually never read or seen anything by Beaumarchais {one of the 'big three' French dramatists of the 18th century, the other two being Voltaire and Marivaux}. Bénédicte explained to me the plot of "The Barber of Seville" {to which "The Marriage of Figaro" is the sequel}, and a bit of the plot of this one, because you know those eighteenth-century French plays - plot twists, mistaken identities, and generally the nobles and their lesser counterparts messing with each others' heads.

So we took the metro into the city and met her students at the theatre, climbing up, and up, and up...into the nosebleed section. I couldn't even tell you how high up we were, but the chairs were straight-backed, velvet, and about a foot and a half from the little wall standing between us and a very painful descent. So, besides the fact that it was hard to see the actors' full physicality from so far away and the slight discomfort, the show was excellent. It was incredibly well-done, energetic, and accessible to a modern audience through their emphasis on the comedy without ignoring the human aspects of the characters, their relatively modern {but still believable} costumes, and a set that was comedic in and of itself {a door consisting of fabric stretched over a frame that "opened" by disappearing through a trapdoor, but couldn't actually be opened - though a few tried; merry-go-round horses; a trapdoor beneath which less-than-kosher activities took place}. I'll spare you the rest of what I fear would be a rather long theatre rant; suffice to say it was awesome.