So come Valentine’s Day we got gussied up a little and headed off to the theater to see what was waiting for us.

A lady saw me with my camera out and kindly offered to take a photo of us together. That was nice of her!

We left early enough so that we’d be sure to have time to ditch our coats, have a drink and putter around a bit before the show began.  Of course, I took that opportunity to take some photos of the crowd.

I had one of those moments where I was thankful for having lost some weight while climbing the two thousand stairs to the first balcony.

It was shortly after I took this photo that the lights dimmed and the announcement came that photography is not allowed during the show.  I was bummed.  I knew it was coming, because it’s pretty standard but I was wishing I knew how to turn off the LCD screen on my camera so I could try to sneak some during the show anyway.

I’ll be honest, once the show began there was no way I was going to risk it.  It was that good!  No way was I going to take the chance of being asked to leave for something.

The costumes were amazing, the music was great and the entire atmosphere was so incredibly energetic!   Xander and I were bopping in our seats, tapping our feet and sometimes even wiggling along with the music.

I’d like to take a minute to say that if there reincarnation does exist, I want to come back as a Bollywood dancer.

I did get some photos at the end of the show when they were saying goodnight and getting their standing ovation, as I figured it didn’t really matter.  The first time I saw someone’s flash (foolishly) going off, I whipped out that camera faster than you could say… anything.

I sort of wish they’d had on their more traditional costumes in the end so I could have gotten some photos of them but that’s not really where the story lead. It was about DISCO!  I was surprised to see the amount of disco and hip hop type of moves mixed into the Bollywood dances throughout the show.

It was easy to see that we weren’t the only ones that really enjoyed the show.  In the end the crowd were all on their feet, some of them even dancing along!  It was fantastic!

I think if it had been playing more than one night in Rotterdam and I thought I could actually get tickets, I would have gone again.  I enjoyed it so much.

The best part?  Xander enjoyed it too, must to his surprise!  He raved about it the whole way home.

If you are interested in trying to catch the show, I believe it’s still possible to get tickets for some of their upcoming shows in Den Haag and Amsterdam!

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1. The Day My Husband Finally Got In My Pants
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A few weeks ago my friend Penny and I went to see The Full Monty Musical in Roosendaal.  I had bought her a ticket as a Christmas present and we’d both really been looking forward to it.  A girl’s night out, naked men, honestly… what more could we ask for?

Ok, maybe some homemade hot fudge… which she made for us as a surprise for desert.  So freaking delicious!  I threw Weight Watchers right out the window and had two hot fudge sundaes.  So worth it.

The show was so much fun!  I’d first heard about it on Facebook when a friend had just gotten back from seeing it with her friends.   She described it as loud, rowdy and a really good time.  I was so in!

It was all in Dutch, which I was pretty sure I was finally ready for.  In the past I’ve wanted to see different musicals at the theater but thought it would be pointless because I wouldn’t understand everything.  It was time to put my Dutch to the test.

I’d say I scored an 90%… not bad, could be worse.

I understood most of what they said and only came across trouble when they spoke really fast, with slang or during some of the songs.   It wasn’t enough to make me not know what was going on though and I still enjoyed it just as much as I would have if it had been in English.

If you are into going to the theater, have some grasp on the Dutch language and have at least one good girlfriend who will go with you, I highly recommend checking out this show.  We laughed our heads off, hopped up and down in our seats and screamed ourselves hoarse.  It really was that much fun.  Even if you don’t understand it all, I’m pretty sure you’ll still sit there eagerly awaiting the hot blond guy (Charly Luske) getting naked!  I know Penny and I were!  Shame I didn’t manage to catch him in the photo.  I wanted to take more but I was scared I’d get in trouble and get kicked out or something.

I truly could not have chosen a better show to break me in to the Dutch theater.  I just wonder how any I see in the future will live up to this one!

It’s not too late to see them! CLICK HERE to see when they’ll be playing in your city!  For those of you in Rotterdam, here’s the info:

Oude Luxor Theater

• wo 17 februari 2010 – 20:00 uur
• do 18 februari 2010 – 20:00 uur
• vr 19 februari 2010 – 20:00 uur
• za 20 februari 2010 – 20:00 uur

If you do go, be sure to let me know how you like it!

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Last night my friend Laila and I went to the Old Luxor Theater in Rotterdam to see the Peking Acrobats.  We weren’t sure what to expect but it was a mixture of wonder, amazement, disappointment and absolute terror.

Not my photo, we weren’t allowed to take any so I had to resort to looking for one on the internet. 

Anyhow, they did some really fantastic stuff, like in the photo above.  There was a lot of jumping, flexing, balancing and flipping.  Most of it went ok but in the first half there were a few big disasters.   At one point Laila and I were looking at each other uncomfortably as we watched them crash and burn trying to do one act (jumping through the set of hoops) for the 4th or 5th time.

You see, somehow… even though all the seats around them had been taken, we’d managed to snag the very front row center seats.  I found it odd, since nothing within 7 rows was available but we took them anyway.  When we sat and found the stage about 1 foot away from our knees, we got a bit nervous.   Acrobats means a lot of flying bodies, and if one of them flies in the wrong direction, we’re screwed!

What made it worse was the amount of mistakes they made in the first half of the show.  If they weren’t making their jumps, or were dropping things they should be able to catch… what happens when they are swinging things that could possibly fly in our direction.  Can we count on them to catch it?!  Honestly, there were some points where we were gasping and dodging just in case.  I was convinced that one of us was going to leave with at least a broken nose or some missing teeth.

At one point I tried to sneak a photo with my mobile while semi holding it in my bag.  A girl had about 15 chairs stacked on top of a table that was stood on 4 wine bottles.  I just had to capture how close we were and how scary it was.  I didn’t realize that my phone was still on video mode and ended up with a really short video instead.  Check it out (you don’t really have to hit play, nothing really changes in the 6 seconds):

Now, this was from inside my bag, from where my eyes were looking it felt a lot closer.   After this point she had stacked about 3-4 more chairs and was doing handstands on the top.  All I could think is HOLY SHIT THIS TOWER IS GONNA FALL ON ME!!!

I knew I wasn’t the only one because within about 3 seconds of me capturing this, Laila said “Ok I’m out of here” and legged it over by the exit until the girl was done with her act.

Here’s another photo from the internet to show what she was doing while towering over my head:

Amazing feat, right?   Well all I could think of was all those episodes of CSI and BONES that I’ve seen where people get blown up or fall from really high places and other people wind up with their bone fragments stuck in them.  I shit you not.  If that girl fell, I was dead.

Anyhow, the second part of the show was much better.  There were very few, if any, mistakes made and some of the things they did were pretty amazing… especially towards the end when they were all on stage standing all over each other and being stretchy.

The whole front row fright made the evening a lot more interesting and entertaining than it probably would have been if we were a few rows back.  So I guess that’s a good thing, but I still think that with the amount of thing they dropped and missed in the first half of the show, we got off lucky!

Besides the fun we had with that, the show actually was pretty good.  It wasn’t HOLY SHIT OMG THAT WAS AMAZING kind of good, like you get with Cirque du Soleil, for example… but it was still enjoyable and great for an evening out with friends.

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