Some news.
I've been quiet for a very long time, n'est pas vrai? But there is at last some news from me, and positive news, even.

First of all, the small change in the theater; a couple of months ago, the mother of our male soloist developed some serious health problems. Our soloist was already considering when the sum of his own small injuries would require the end of his career, and he recognised that the time had come sooner than he'd expected. He has gone back to Russia, to spend this time with his ailing mother, and has made an end of his dancing career. The situation we were left in... was starting rehearsals for the Ballet, without a soloist. And now I am that soloist. It means a 2.5 percent increase of salary, and quite a bit more dancing...

Hmmm... the dancing. It's quite a bit more dancing in THE piece that we do. I feel that it's still a ridiculous little amount of dancing per month. But it's more dancing on those few occasions that we have a ballet evening. Half of the dancing is good. Is very good. Is a chance for me to... DANCE. The other half is still... well... I see a hundred ways in which it, (the choreography) should be improved. It's rarely awful, but it feels so... half way done.

So I do not take every chance I get to tell people that I'm now a Soloist, but it does have definite advantages as well as the disadvantages.

Anyhow, we've just had our premiere last week, of Don Quixote. This of course is a much loved Ballet by the dancers, and is a chance to shine. (And the parts of the "Normal" choreography which our Ballet-chef used are truly a super opportunity out there on the stage.) I've danced this before in Tartu, but a shortened "Suite" version. I do think that I have improved since then. The Audience was wonderful on opening night, and the reviews were all good (and the personal impressions of those who saw it were all along the lines of "Matthew, you were super. Well done.")

I don't know how much is me being modest, and how much is me having a giant ego, (let me explain how it could be both...) I say to such praise, "Yeah. It went pretty well." So, modest because I don't revel in "Oh yes! I was Fantastic!" but huge ego, because what I truly think is "I could have done just as well in the last 5 years if I'd only been given real steps to dance." I know that I do it well, but I wish to do it still better. Oh, and there's a review (not the one from the newspaper, that one was a pointless joke,) from an online Dance-Site which I've translated. (And there's picture to go with it.) Here it is.

OK, enough about dancing now. The other news is that Pamela has gotten a job in Northern Germany. It takes just over an hour to take the train from here to Lübeck, and Pamela really likes what the office there has to offer. She'll be starting in April, and we're... "enjoying" looking for a flat to share. (At times enjoying the hope of "that one sounds nice" or "this one looks perfect" but there's way to much of "oh, no, that's not nice at all" or, again and again "that perfect one has already been taken by someone else.") It's actually being rather hard on us, because I'm looking during the week, and then Pamela has very little time on the weekend to look at what I've found -which is often then already gone to someone else.

But we still can't wait to be together. To be with each other every day.

And now I've typped to long, and feel very very hungery. Oh, and my new laptop, (have I said anything about my new laptop?) Well, it seems that I haven't yet got the spell-checking working in my text-pad. Oh bother.

Well, happy... Valentines day!