incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

Thursday, Music Haven was hosting Hamiltunes as part of the run-up to Hamilton coming to Proctor's this August. Hamiltunes is sanctioned communal karaoke, basically, except that Music Haven had paper lyrics sheets and not timed video screens as I understand karaoke generally does (which makes some of the songs a lot harder). Some places that run Hamiltunes seem to do the whole musical, but this was a 90-minute selection; I can't reproduce the song order, which was mixed up for pacing, but these were the songs:

• Alexander Hamilton
• My Shot
• The Schuyler Sisters
• You'll Be Back
• Helpless
• Satisfied
• Guns and Ships
• What Comes Next?
• Dear Theodosia
• What'd I Miss
• The Room Where It Happens
• Cabinet Battle #2
• I Know Him
• Hurricane
• Burn
• Your Obedient Servant
• Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

So some obvious choices and some surprising ones--I wouldn't have picked "Your Obedient Servant," myself, nor all three King George songs, but they are very sing-able. I know that "My Shot" and "Satisfied" were around the middle, while "Helpless" came later than "Satisfied." They started and ended as in the musical.

They had a big sign-up board, and a good range of people went up onstage; elementary school kids, parents-and-kids, high schoolers, adults, and (in what mildly seemed like cheating, somehow, but was also very good?) members of last year's local production of In the Heights, who did "My Shot" and "Satisfied" (and an encore "Alexander Hamilton"). They called for a John Laurens for the first song, because no-one had signed up, and in a moment of madness I raised my hand. I was not picked, which is good because my throat tends to lock up for performance-based things in public, and it would have sucked if I found out that still happened, especially since Laurens gets the second verse. We happily sung along heartily from the audience.

SteelyKid is now extremely into "Hurricane," thanks to the very good performance there, and also on the way back from Coppélia we listened to "Dear Theodosia" on repeat for twenty minutes because it was very late and we were very tired.

Speaking of which:

This was part of SPAC's Classical Kids program, which gives kids a free ticket to one ballet and a discounted rate to anyone who accompanies them, and then if they want, a free lawn pass until they graduate. Last night's ticket was for an actual seat, which was a mixed blessing because it was 9 million degrees and 500% humidity with no breeze, and the roof of the amphitheater made it even stuffier. (They'd already canceled today's matinee.)

So the Wiki description of Coppélia's plot is a bit misleading. There is, as it says, a small amount of plot in Act One, for which the Wiki was helpful, because the stuff with the ears of wheat was pretty confusing without that knowledge. I quite enjoyed Act Two, when all the dolls and Swanhilda-as-Coppélia dance in the house. But the description in Act Three about Dr. Coppelius showing up and various people offering to pay him . . . didn't seem to happen? Dr. Coppelius passes through, carrying a doll, and that was it? So I spent all 30+ minutes of celebratory dancing waiting for us to skip to the end, which made a late tired night even more late and tired.

Of course the New York City Ballet was very good, and there was an extended sequence with local kids that was very crowd-pleasing. I admire the technical proficiency and physical skill involved in ballet, and under better circumstances could probably be more relaxed about just looking at the dancing and not thinking about plot. But probably it's not my preferred form of dance.

I do, as I expected, now have a strong urge to rewatch Princess Tutu. But I don't have time right now, oh well.