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Pražký hrad (Prague Castle)

I made plans to meet up with Francisco and Kath the next day and we’d go check out the castle (since I never actually made it inside previously…) As I was leaving, the others from my conservatory, Sofia, Robert, and their two other friends, were heading out as well, and asked if I’d like a ride to the castle with them. I figured that’d work out great, and could surprise Francisco by showing up with them, as we’re all friends.

We wandered the castle grounds, and went into the church area with its incredible Gothic architecture. To enter the foyer is free, but to get much past there requires a ticket (50Kč student). The true treat, though, is ascending the 278(?) circular steps up one of the spires to get more fantastic views of the city below.

From there, Francisco, Kath, and myself headed out for some food, shopping, and wandering. That evening we went to a Black Light Theatre show. This is apparently something new and unique to the Czech, and they’re trying to obtain all licensing rights to keep it that way. There’s several theatres around town showing different performances. The common theme being the use of black lights. Costumes are designed in such a way to enhance the visual effects of this. We went to the Image Theatre and saw a “Best Of” performance that incorporated various skits and dances. It looks like some of the other shows at other theaters are full stories, like any other stage show… just with black lights. The show was cool to watch, with dancing neon shapes and colors seemingly floating in the air, along with the gymnastics and dancing on the stage…. but after a while I felt it was getting a bit stale. I’m not sure the artistic merit of the performance can really hold up to other forms. Perhaps this was due to a lack of continuing story line, or that the dancing was more like synchronized gymnastics, or that the music really was not very good… I’d like to see a different show as a comparison. I think there’s potential for some cool ideas, but I feel it can also quite easily dip into the realm of cheekiness and lack of originality. In between the dances there were two actors that mimed skits, not in black light. At first I was a bit confused by their presence in the show, and wasn’t sure if I liked them there or not. But as the show went on, I began to enjoy them. Perhaps it was because at first, they performed very standard and predictable skits, and I didn’t feel like the actual miming was particularly well executed. But later, the skits became funnier and better performed. No cameras are allowed in the performance, so these photos are from the theatre’s webpage.



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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 18:01 and is filed under Czech Republic, Europe, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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