highlights

When so much time has passed, it's hard to know where to start. For those I haven't spoken to in the interim, I spent the last couple of months not just worrying about my friends and colleagues in Japan but also working on a website that launched a few weeks ago.

Penitents leading a procession through the streets
of Sevilla on the Sunday before Easter.

Since then I've been meaning to post but then had a visitor for a couple of weeks who kept me busy with sightseeing, including a trip to the truly awesome town of Sevilla during the run up to the city's famous Holy Week (Easter, etc.), so we actually got to see the procession floats on display in a couple of churches and then even some penitent processions on Palm Sunday (the pointy mask-hats creeped us both out a little). Apparently the major processions (can't imagine there being even more people in those narrow streets, I don't like crowds and I was freaking out a little as it was) later in the week got rained out.

Sadly, two days in Sevilla just aren't enough (we barely got to see a sliver of the gorgeous Alcázar) but I am going back there in a couple of weeks with a friend from Montreal who I'm meeting in Malaga next Monday. I will take tons of pics then and post about the trip afterwards as we're also going to Granada and stopping in Cordoba (all by train) on our way back up to Madrid.

But what I wanted to talk about today was something that I dreamed up the other night after A & I went to a concert by one of the few jazz artists A listens to who I actually really like a lot: Avishai Cohen. It was a really fantastic show with a very enthusiastic crowd & 4 encores that gave me an idea for a post theme like some I used to do in Tokyo: here are my cultural highlights of our time so far in Spain, which unbelievably is now 10 whole months. We tend to do more cultural things here than we ever did in Tokyo since it is very affordable and the selection is great.

Incendies: a play by Montrealer Wajdi Mouawad. We saw this back in early fall I think. The movie has come out, which I haven't seen but the play was excellent and it was so nice to hear some Québécois!


Max, by Batsheva Dance Company: the show was called Max and was arresting & fascinating, riveting in fact. It seems to have drawn heavily on the movement technique/'language' called Gaga (nothing to do with that Lady) developed by the company's artistic director that has apparently even become a sort of exercise style/movement, spreading to the US and Japan (Batsheva is coincidentally also Israeli).

Flamenco at Sevilla's Flamenco Museum: I'm afraid I didn't write down the names of the artists but all 4 were superb. Male and female dancers were both so impressive (I particularly like male flamenco as it seems more physical/passionate and you can see the foot work better without the dress!) and the vocalist and guitarist absolutely excellent. We were in the second row but it was hard to get nice pix as we weren't allowed flash so most are just a big blur!


Avishai Cohen: Bassist, composer, arranger and to my surprise, a really great singer. Most of his own work doesn't have that much vocals in it but he covered a couple of songs that night, including a version of this Argentinian ballad, Alfonsina y el mar, that was even more beautiful, if you can believe it.

Museums: It was nice to have a tourist-friend excuse to go back to two of Madrid's world-class museums, the Thyssen-bornemisza and the Del Prado. Am looking forward to the Picasso museum in Malaga now too.