it's great to have a friend who shares a passion

i'm really glad that i went for the ROH Behind The Scenes course - it's really exciting meeting people who are as kooky as you! people who you can comfortably start a conversation with about Tamara Rojo, how many times they have been to the ballet this month, the latest gossip in the artsy world (and even in the Royal Opera House! oOOOoOo...). one of the girls could even point out every single (even remotely-famous) person who walked into the cafetaria and tell us who he/she was! talk about hard-core!

we all knew that we wanted to work in the industry (i'm sure almost every person wished he or she would someday call the Royal Opera House our office!) and it was fantastic knowing that there are other people out there with similar aspirations (people are usually are stumped when i say i want to work in arts management).

during the course i met a girl called Urzula who i didnt really talk much to but after the course, the whole group of us swapped e-mail addresses and she and i ended up having each other on our MSNs. then started the very random msging (which at the beginning was awkward because we never really hit it off during the course): she used to send me links to dancey stuff and then we'd start chatting about the contents of the link. in some ways i'm glad i didnt blow her off initially because she was really such a big help! when i decided to teach a movement class during the Warwick Student Arts Festival, i knew that she was the right person to ask for help from. she immediately gave me some suggestions and pointed me in the right direction to the right forums to post my problem to the rest of the www-connected dance world. she even told me whom is the resident guru of the forum who would give me the most qualified help. we'd laugh over all these funny games we'd play (one was guessing all the acronyms she had on her MSN nick that were all dance companies) and gush over Mikhail Baryshnikov and Sylvia Guillem clips on youtube.

she recently sent me this which i thought was fantastic because i love love love Darcey Bussell AND Anthony Dowell, and this French & Saunders sketch was really tastefully done.

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