A Show from the Cat's Eye View

Whew! The music went off at 9pm sharp, a happy surprise since the last apartment complex courtyard performance went until 11pm and was painfully loud, especially considering the fact that this is a family community. Tonight's decibels were maintained at a rather acceptable level (I'm sure there were complaints last time at both the volume and the late hour the "noise" lasted) although I did have to close the veranda door in order to be able to listen to a DVD lecture.

For the first couple of hours, the windows and veranda doors stayed wide open to listen to the "action" below, and of course to occasionally poke the head out and check out the stage action: whirling dancers in flairing brightly colored skirts dancing to South American cantatas, an Indian song reminding me of Bollywood accompanied by swaying arms and arched backs (most fascinating was the bizarrely elongated shadow of the twisting contortionist on the wall behind the Bollywoodinger)... Other Spanish flavored songs followed, an English ballad, and a couple of songs bordering on opera, and then a unique Korean fan dance zippily danced to the faster rhythms of modern pop - I rather liked the unique blend of attire of the past with the beat of the present!

The last hour, when people had gotten off work or away from classrooms and were starting to fill the plastic chairs set up for the free performance, the volume went up and then Korean ballads oddly salted with jazz and peppered with quavering or sometimes screaming voices replaced the internationally zesty music fest ... and occasionally an electric guitar ripped through the air and electrically thwanged on my nerves and sense of flowing music. Suddenly, a DVD lecture seemed more interesting than the live performance below that my cat and I had been enjoying from our pillowed reading chairs.