She's Singing To Bring Down The Chandelier

By far the most striking feature of the Winspear Opera House (inside the house that is) is the chandelier. It is made up of hundreds of individual tubes that light up in the full rainbow of colors and raise and lower out of the ceiling in any pattern programmed into its computer. Generally the chandelier was raised up all of the way when they opened the house to the audience. As people walked in they would start to lower it into its programmed arrangement. Then as the overture started, the chandelier would retract back into the ceiling. It is a good thing too because apparently they got many, many complaints from patrons in the top tier who were afraid that they would have to watch the show through the chandelier!

So I really wanted to get a series of photos of the chandelier being lowered, and you would think that in a run of two weeks that would not be a problem. Well for various reasons this was the best I could do. Oh well!

It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's The Wyly Theatre

The second theatre in the AT&T Performing Arts Center complex is the Wyly Theatre. The Wyly is a smaller space than the Winspear Opera House and is more multifunctional. It also is the home to the Dallas Theatre Center.

When I was researching if there were any shows that I could see during our two weeks in Dallas, I discovered that the Dallas Theatre Center was producing a newly revised version of It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman, and they had a matinee during the week which did not conflict. Naturally I was excited because not only was this a second show I could see (Dreamgirls being the other) I have never seen It's A Bird... but have always been curious. So just like Dreamgirls our two shows did a ticket trade and to make matters even better the presenter gave us a tour of the Wyly Theatre. The theatre is designed to be vertical meaning that the theatre space itself is one level and all of the other spaces (like dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, and tech spaces) are stacked on top of the theatre. As for the show, it definitely feels like a musical version of Superman that was written in the sixties, but it was a fun afternoon at the theatre.

Dreamgirls...Finally!

If you can remember back a year ago when we were in Providence rehearsing Beauty and the Beast, I had made plans to go see the tour of Dreamgirls in Boston on our day off which happened to be Super Bowl Sunday. Well they ended up calling a pointless rehearsal on that day, and my plans were spoiled. After I found out that I could not go, I immediately went online to see if there was a time that our two tours would cross paths again. Well Dallas was that time. Since Dallas now has two touring venues, two different shows can overlap which was the case for us. We were at the AT&T Center and Dreamgirls was at the old Music Hall. So our tours did a ticket trade, and I got to see Dreamgirls at long last! And it was worth the wait.

I now have another entry for my "it figures" file. Dallas has a pretty efficient light rail train system that goes most of the places I could want to go. Well except for the Music Hall. Since I last played at Music Hall, DART has now expanded their system with a train that goes right to the Music Hall. It made getting to Dreamgirls quite easy, but why couldn't I have had that option the two times that I played there. It figures!

The Traveling Man

The Amazing Technicolor Sculpture

I tried everything I could think of to get the moon in focus in these pictures. Oh well!

Will I Ever Learn?

So as I set out for my day of visiting the Dallas World Aquarium, I decided to go take some pictures of a little park area across the street from our hotel. Imagine how excited I was that there was a giant dragonfly buzzing around by the water. So I got out my zoom lens and went crazy taking pictures. It was insanely hot and bright out, but from what I could tell I had some really great shots. Now imagine how devastated I was when I got home after a full day of taking pictures and saw that all of my pictures were grainy because I had my ISO turned up to 1600. I had been taking pictures of the theatre at night and did not reset my ISO. Damnation!

Thirds Time's Not The Charm

I love the Dallas World Aquarium so as this is my third visit to Dallas it was also my third visit to the aquarium. Unfortunately I have chronicled my camera issues in the above post so I ended up not getting very many good pictures. Alas!

I'm not sure why there is an anteater in an aquarium.

I have decided that I want an otter of my own. If I had a choice I would choose a river otter over a sea otter like above, but something tells me I am never going to be in the position to choose.

Third Time's The Charm In Dallas

It seems like when I first started touring, I was very gung ho about going to art museums. Now it seems like I go to very few art museums. (That probably speaks to the size of the towns we play as much as anything). There are a couple of museums that I would visit no matter how many times I have been there in the past and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is one of those. Since this was my third visit it is also my third blog entry about the Nasher. So instead of rehashing my feelings about the Nasher, I am going to post some pictures of pieces that I am pretty sure I have not posted before.