Pansy, being Pansy, loves to watch movie credits.
She finds it fascinating to get a glimpse of all the people that go into making a movie. So you can imagine how surprised she was when there was no mention of the orchestra in the South African Ballet Theatre's (SABT) cinema production of Coppelia - South Africa's first ever local ballet production to be shown on the big screen. They even credited the driver, but left out the orchestra.
The production was most enjoyable, especially as the artistes are familiar faces from local productions. They looked like they were really enjoying themselves, and Coppelia is a sweet story. The stage was miked, which made the ballet sound like tap dancing, but one got used to it after a while. They could have left out some of the ensemble dances from act 3 as these made the ballet a bit long and they didn't really add anything to the story. They also dampened the impact of the beautiful duet (pas de deux) which is the climax of the ballet, but it took too long to happen after the end of act 2.
It's always very reassuring to realise that other people are thinking the same as you. During one of the (superfluous) dances in act 3, just after Pansy thought to herself, "This is starting to drag," one of the audience members yawned very loudly, too loud to be edited out! It was pretty funny.
It turns out the orchestra wasn't credited because SABT used an out-of-copyright archived recording whose orchestra and musicians are unknown. The clarinet and flute solos were beautiful, pity we don't know who played!
Leaving the orchestra out of the credits is a bit like writing down a chocolate cake recipe and leaving out the sugar. Pansy once forgot to put sugar in a cake and it tasted awful.
Speaking of chocolate and sugar, Pansy recently attended a "plated desserts" workshop by one of South Africa's finest sugar and chocolate chefs, Nico van der Walt. Chef Nico is an amazingly talented craftsman. Sugar and chocolate is his speciality and he teaches professional chefs and dilettantes like Pansy how to work with sugar and chocolate - be it full time internationally accredited diploma courses or weekend workshops and demonstrations.
Like the "behind the scenes" of a movie, it's intriguing to see what goes on behind the scenes in a professional kitchen - imagine if all the people that were involved in preparing a meal were listed like movie credits on the back of the menu! The chefs are assigned roles in the kitchen depending on their seniority and are tasked with preparing a certain component of a recipe. At Chef Nico's kitchen, the most junior chefs washed the dishes, and the ones that were in Nico's bad books from the day before had the pleasure of getting the hardened crystallised sugar out of the bottom of the melting pot. The senior chefs are Nico's "right hand", standing at his side and pre-empting at what moment he will need specific ingredients and passing him utensils as he prepared the dessert plate.
Watching Chef Nico meticulously preparing a plated dessert is a bit like watching a surgeon on tv. The surgeon says "Scalpel....swabs....," and Chef Nicolas says "Spatula....raspberry coulis...." The nice thing about the workshops is that Chef Nicolas demonstrates the recipes and techniques and then the attendees get a chance to make their own plated dessert, so you get to feel like a pro chef for a while!
Kitchens can be very high pressure environments with a lot of swearing. One year when Pansy was part of the crew at "Joy of Jazz", the head chef's 2nd in charge was swearing like crazy because someone forgot to order freshly ground black pepper. Then she got on the phone to this "someone" and was screaming:
"Dude, you are dead. You are DEAD!!! I'm going to $%&*ing KILL you. I need the freshly ground black pepper. Why didn't you order freshly ground black pepper. How the f$*k am I supposed to do this without FRESHLY GROUND BLACK PEPPER!!!!"
When they put the food on the plate it's like a production line, with each chef putting an item on the plate. The head chef puts the final touch of garnish, ensures that the plate meets to his/her satisfaction, and then the plate is promptly whisked away by the waiters. All the time the head chef is keeping the team on their toes and shouting:
"Go, go, Go! Move, move, MOVE!!! Food's getting cold!!! quick, quick, QUICK! Table 39 NO ONION!!! Get a move on, why so slow?!?!? Keep it moving!!!! Watch that gravy!!!"
And so it carries on until everyone is served their meal.
So next time Pansy eats a decadent meal at a restaurant she'll spare a thought for the junior chefs doing the unglamorous cooking jobs, and hopefully future SABT cinema productions will have a live orchestra so that at least the musicians can be credited.
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