Just two weeks now @#$$%^&*!!!!!

I’m so bad; I’m so obsessed with Marcelo and his people I haven’t been properly blogging about another huge ballet event happening tomorrow night: the New York City Ballet’s opening night gala and the premiere of the much-anticipated new version of my personal favorite classical ballet, Romeo and Juliet. My favorite version is by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (which American Ballet Theater performs); this one is by NYCB artistic director Peter Martins — we’ll see how it stacks up! This also marks the culmination of a HUGE amount of hard work Winger creator and NYCB ballerina Kristin Sloan has put into making the company’s Tragic Love project, which provides fascinating behind-the-scenes footage of various aspects of the making of the ballet. Do check it out, and of course check out the ballet as well — it’s showing through May 13th.

As I had blogged about earlier, Dirty Dancing was shown on Thursday night at the Tribeca Drive-In, as part of the awesome Tribeca Film Festival. I couldn’t go, but my friend, Steve made it, and sent me his report (sorry about the weird spacing; I could not get Wordpress to format it properly):

“I went to the Tribeca Film festival drive-in event featuring a free outdoor screening of Dirty Dancing at
the World Financial Center on Thursday night. The pre-screening entertainment included a dance show, a
live performance by singer Lumidee (whoever that is) and a Dirty Dancing Trivia contest. A chilly night and
the threat of rain did not keep movie and dance fans away from this fun event set alongside the marina at
the WFC. First a group of dancers including Anya Fuchs performed some Latin and tango numbers. Four
principal couples were on stage and about ten others fanned out into the audience and danced in the aisle
and on the sides. Eventually, they drew audience members up on stage with them to dance to various
songs from the movie. It was a good way to keep warm. I enjoyed myself even though Anna Garnis decided not
to be in the performance. I didn’t stay for the movie and headed back up town to the DTS practice party,
which was pretty good. Nobody puts [studio owner and 1995 U.S. National Latin Champion] Melanie [LaPatin] in the
corner.”

Thanks for the report, Steve, and thanks for being my first “correspondent” hehe Dance Times Square puts on pretty good little ballroom dancing parties every third Thursday of each month. Visit their website for deets. Of course the showcase at Hunter College is upcoming as well, next week.

And finally, apparently in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Dirty Dancing, they are re-releasing the film in theaters for a very limited amount of time (the next two days basically), which is to contain never-seen-before footage. Go here for movie times and locations throughout the country.

For the past two weeks, choreographer Tere O’Connor’s “The Nothing Festival” which took place at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea and just concluded this weekend has been the talk of the town. Basically, in an effort to explore how meaning is produced in dance, O’Connor asked eight modern / post-modern choreographers to choreograph a 30-minute piece starting from “nothing” — that is, with no preconceived concept. The first set of four choreographers — Douglas Dunn, HIJACK, Sam Kim, and Dean Moss — showed their work during the first week’s performances; the second set of four — Jon Kinzel, Luciana Achugar, Susan Rethorst, and Walter Dundervill — the second week; and sandwiched in between, on the afternoon of the 21st, was a four-hour-long panel discussion moderated by O’Connor and including all eight choreographers (which is pictured above). O’Connor also led shorter discussions following each weekday performance with the choreographers whose work was being shown on that night. Doug Fox from the Great Dance blog and I attended the April 21st discussion and the first set of performances that night, and I attended the second set on the 25th.

As I said, this festival has been the talk of the dance town, and so much has already been said, that I don’t have a tremendous amount to add. But since no one has talked at length about Achugar’s work, and since it was my personal favorite, I’m going to focus on that piece. First, though, for anyone who doesn’t know about the festival and wishes to explore the ideas and bit of controversy it engendered, I’ll be a good blogger and try to point to everything that’s already been said:

First, go here for TONY dance editor Gia Kourlas’s very useful interview with O’Connor; critic Roslyn Sulcas wrote an early and much debated critique of the idea behind the festival but that is unfortunately no longer available to non-NYTimes subscribers so linking is pointless; for Newsday critic Apollinaire Scherr’s initial write-up, go here; for a first set of responses to that, including O’Connor’s, go here; for Doug’s comments to Apollinaire, go here; for my own musings to Apollinaire on the April 21st discussion, go here; for critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s analysis, go here; for Doug Fox’s coverage on his own blog, go here and here; for Village Voice’s Deborah Jowitt’s very thorough review, go here; and finally, for Jennifer Dunning’s NYTimes review of the whole festival, go here. I think I got it all; if I didn’t, I apologize!

As a relative newcomer to the post-modern dance scene, my only expectation going into this festival was that I was going to learn something about the relation between dance and meaning. This festival definitely met my expectations on that front. Although I often felt during the April 21st discussion that I was kind of eavesdropping on a debate already well underway and some of the language used (while giving me a certain nostalgia for my grad school days ) was a bit foreign to me, I still got the overall sense of great frustration dance-makers feel when trying to apply for grants to funders focused on the commercial value of the project and their need to know details of what the piece is about before it is even begun, as well as their deep annoyance at dance critics who, some choreographers feel, impose their own pre-conceived notions of what dance is and is not in determining, and recommending, whether something is worth seeing. I had some strong feelings about the discussion, which I posted as a comment on Scherr’s blog, and which she responded to (which I linked to above but will again), so am not going to repeat that here. In general, several critics were in attendance and it was really interesting to see them interact with the choreographers; at one point things got heated, but I appreciated that because I felt like serious frustrations were vented and deeper discussion came out of it. O’Connor had just embarked on a dialog with former Village Voice writer Elizabeth Zimmer on what is important in viewing a dance — is it just the beauty of the movement or is there more? — when time limitations forced an abrupt end. In the end, I love the discussion that the festival engendered, both on April 21st and in all of the newspapers and blogs, and I hope there can be more like it.

So, the performances: overall, my favorite piece — which is not at all to say it was “the best” but just that it spoke to me the most — was Luciana Achugar’s “Franny and Zooey” (not a direct relation to the book by Salinger, as the choreographer explained at the post-show discussion). I’m not sure exactly why it was my favorite — it just seemed to have the most going on in it that I could relate to. It began with spotlights jumping around, shining out on various places on the stage and in the audience. At points, while focused on the audience, it was rather blinding. The spotlight ended on a woman who ran out onstage and collapsed to the ground, where she lay, seemingly unconscious. The focus then changed to a video projected on the back wall showing a woman — Achugar — in a studio warming up, then trying to organize her movements into a dance. Unexpectedly, two cats, named Franny and Zooey, pets of the studio owner, entered, plopped down on the floor and began doing cat things — bathing, sleeping, curiously human-watching… Achugar tried to shoo them away, since, as she revealed post-show, she was allergic, but for the most part, the cats were oblivious. Slowly, the focus — both Achugar’s and the viewer’s, came to be on them. I noticed as they got up, shifted in space, and pranced around, how balletic and dancer-like the cats were balancing as they did toward the balls of their paws (if paws have balls that is!), looking all weightless and feathery, and the dramatic things they can do with those tails, waving them about in the air. I remember when my cat was still alive how much I wanted a tail — such an instrument of expression! Anyway, Achugar seemed to share my thought, as soon she crouched down on all fours and began imitating the cats. Throughout this videotaped activity, female dancers — four in all besides Achugar — took the stage and danced. At one point, the video was turned off and the women approached the audience, the tops of their dresses unbuttoned provocatively. As they took to the aisles, walking very slowly, they looked directly at audience members in each row, making sure to make eye contact. It was slightly uncomfortable for me, and I thought of this activity along with the initial blinding spotlights shined out on the audience, as turning the spectator / looked at, viewer / viewed relationship on its head — now the gaze of the women, provocatively dressed and soon to be naked — was turned on us, making us complicit in their world, kind of in the manner of Manet’s Olympie… Achugar, on the video, soon disrobed as she crawled around, cat–like on the studio floor. In the end, the women lift up the real Achugar, lying on the stage floor, all engage in a playful romp in which clothes wind up being shed, then dance around the stage naked, jovially and “unashamed” to use Dunning’s word. While there may have been no fully fledged story, I felt like there were hints of body image issues overcome, exploration of range of human movement and notions of beauty through casting a watchful eye on another species, and, as I said, challenging the dichotomy of the (traditionally female) watched versus watcher.

Parts of other pieces caught my eye too (but I won’t go into as much detail or this post would be 100,000 words long): the contrast both literally and stylistically between Walter Dundervill’s movement (that man can really dance and he’s very sexy — I wish I could move like him!) and the constricting, corseted 18th Century costumes — it was a spectacle just to watch him dress his dancers; Susan Rethorst’s depiction of a large group of women humorously vying for space in the tiny apartment she is now forced to work from after losing her studio to skyrocketing rents, and her ability as a dancer to evoke profundity from such a simple, very human, everyday gesture as shoulder shrugging — Dunning remarked on this too; and, as I mentioned in my comment to Apollinaire, I was struck visually by Sam Kim’s piece in which two women, wearing lacey white dresses, inch-long darkly polished fingernails, and their hair long and unruly — sometimes prettily feminine, sometimes montrously out-of-control, by turns caress, madly fight, then placate each other nearly rendering each other catatonic at times, which was titled “Cult” and I surmised could have denoted a kind of cult of femininity and its potential destructiveness.

I knew I was going to see experimental pieces, none of which would be fully formed, and so I didn’t judge them on those grounds. I enjoyed the process of simply sitting in the audience watching, thinking about the movement, the interactions between the dancers, the visuals, the progression of the piece, and arriving at my own conclusions about the meaning of each work, or what I took from it.

Last, in her article Jowitt talks about the artwork on display in the lobby.

Doug and I found it fascinating as well. A video camera surreptitiously set up on the wall near the street records patrons’ images and projects them onto a screen on the opposite wall. Movement of outside passersby triggers this little skeletal figure to begin dancing on the screen. Very amusing to look up at the screen and see this little bouncing skeleton guy “dancing” with you

Fun but busy weekend. I attended two very different kinds of dance competitions and saw some really amazing stuff. Last night, I went to the Tribeca Drive-In at the Tribeca Film Festival, to see a new film, Planet B-Boy, a documentary that follows the lives of the members of four teams of break-dancers culminating in a big worldwide competition, held yearly in Germany. I’m so glad I saw this — it exposed me to a whole culture I didn’t really know existed. I knew about break-dancing on a very basic level, but didn’t know it was such a huge thing world-wide now. Like soccer / international football, it’s not very big in the U.S., but in this case that’s rather ridiculous since we started the dance…

Anyway, these international team competitions involve some of the most incredible dancing. It’s so much more gymnastic than I ever knew — some of these dancers I’d swear had formal training in the sport. In addition to super athletic floor-work, they do these amazing acrobatic stunts — lifting each other, leap-frogging over a sea of bodies, building human pyramids from which they perform spectacular jumps, and dance with such character and, yes, beauty, and artistry. Each team is judged on its synchronization (about eight dancers doing same moves in complete unison), artistry and technique of individual dancers, and conceptual idea of team theme. Each team came up with a theme that illuminated an aspect of their culture — I thought the Korean and Japanese teams were by far the most original. The Koreans, who basically own this dance nowdays, were just incredible. They really have to be seen to be believed — so go see this movie when it hits the theaters!

Like in student ballroom-dancing documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, filmmaker Benson Lee goes beyond this particular competition to explore the larger meaning of dance — freedom of expression and individuality, keeping young people out of trouble by giving them a creative outlet, and, interesting to me since it’s mainly men who break dance, allowing the dancers to act out aggression in a safe way. Watching the movie – -and the pre-film break-dance demos shown in the photos above — I realized how breaking was like a dance version of the rapping jams seen in Eminem’s movie 8-Mile in the way that the dancers taunt and mock each other — jokingly and without touching each other — before each round of competition, the teasing actually becoming an art in itself. And, being a globally-set movie, cultural / political issues are explored. My favorite part, filmed in Korea at the border between North and South, was when the “guards,” gravely serious and bearing frighteningly large weapons, suddenly break into dance! And, like with Mad Hot Ballroom, you find yourself rooting so hard for one team, you almost become teary-eyed at the end. It’s really a lot of fun — go!

Today, I went with Dea, my friend from Brazil who I met on the Winger, to the Youth America Grand Prix ballet competition, founded by Gennadi Saveliev from American Ballet Theater. Dea’s former ballet studio in Sao Paulo was competing in the group ensemble competition and she wanted to go watch them.

Above is Dea, inside the competition, which was held in the auditorium of Martin Luther King High School. Below is a picture of goings-on outside in front of the school — some dancers warming up, applying makeup, and hanging out after their piece. We were strictly forbidden from taking pictures inside — the head judge even threatened people with camera confiscation! — so, as soon as Gennadi posts the pics on his website, I’ll see if there’s anything I can link to that I saw.

Well, I’ve been to about a bizillion ballroom competitions now, but this was my very first Ballet comp. It was so fun! We only saw the ensemble competitions — apparently the solos have been going on for the past three days — but I saw some really good dancing from some very young people, and some very interesting, novel choreography. This Japanese school, consisting of four girls, wheeled some backless, rolling stools out onto the stage, and the girls used the chairs in amazing ways — arching over them and spinning, standing atop them on one leg, kneeling on one hand and one knee and lifting the opposite arm and leg high in the air — talk about balance! Acting was involved too, as the girls laughed, cried, and screamed — very expressive and perhaps a bit over the top but dramatic and emotionally compelling in its own way.

And about a quarter of all the teams were from Brazil! Poor Dea kept getting up go to the bathroom, but when the next team — yet another Brazilian one — was announced, she’d have to sit back down to watch. The Brazilian teams were all so diverse. One did a spectacularly synchronized traditional Irish step dance with gorgeously decorative costumes — Dea said she didn’t even know Irish step dancing was taught in Brazil! One, which received massive applause, did a contemporary piece danced to techno music, one danced to traditional Bossa Nova — Dea and several people sitting around me sang along with the lyrics and I felt dumb not knowing them , and one — my personal favorite — did this really cool combination flamenco / paso doble / belly dance / Martha Graham — it was a true original and I LOVED it, though others felt there was too much going on and it was just weird. Dea’s school did a contemporary ballet danced on pointe. I think her school had technically the best dancers and their choreography was original as well with some humorous moments, but I still loved the crazy fun everything-but-the-kitchen-sink number

It’ll be interesting to see who won. Hopefully Dea’s school! Tomorrow night at City Center the winners will perform along with professionals. I went to this show last year and it was really nice. Marcelo danced with Sofiane Sylve from New York City Ballet in the pro part, and David Hallberg danced in a pas de trois from Le Corsaire. I think David is dancing again this year, but Marcelo’s not on the list. Dea’s going but I still haven’t decided if I will. Going to all this stuff gets expensive!

Yesterday, in the New York Times, our new chief dance critic there Alastair Macaulay wrote an article about New York City Ballet’s new season, which officially kicked off on Tuesday. Because this Monday marks the 24th Anniversary of George Balanchine’s death, it is only fitting, he noted, that NYCB open with a week’s worth of Balanchine ballets, created between 1928 and 1975. The first night’s rep included a ballet that is obviously a favorite of Macaulay’s, “The Four Temperaments,” created in 1946. He says of this ballet, “Balanchine’s pared-down conception of ballet became a brave-new-world breakthrough.” He goes on to talk specifically about the movement employed, wherein the transfer of body weight — from the standing leg to the lifted leg but before the lifted leg has reached the ground — was somewhat revolutionary, combining as it did a fundamentally jazzy American style with classical ballet, and thereby “offending the European sense of propriety.” He continues, suggesting that Balanchine’s power is lost on the company’s younger dancers, who can’t for some reason adequately convey the beauty and meaning of “the master.” He opens this thought with:

“When people who have come to Balanchine choreography in the last 20 years ask me what makes me miss New York City Ballet in his lifetime (though I caught only the tail end of that golden age), I find myself saying that the company’s dancing in those days blazed with a kind of energy that was positively disturbing: it shook you by the shoulders as if to say, “This matters.” “The Four Temperaments” is one of many Balanchine ballets so extraordinary in their architecture and its conception that many new dance-goers must surely feel that they still matter now; I can only say it mattered more.”

Though it’s not tremendously profound or long, the article has turned heads, especially in the ballet world, and for good reason: it takes a solid point of view and makes a serious statement about the art’s current “state” (Matt’s term!) that is not off the cuff but based in knowledge and passion, and perhaps unwittingly, opens debate.

I have to say, of all the times I’ve gone to NYCB, I’ve never been able to understand Balanchine’s genius. I go to NYCB to see the Jermone Robbins pieces, the Peter Martins, those by new choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and the company’s Diamond Project series, in which they showcase new ballets by contemporary choreographers. I, as I think most of the public, know Balanchine as the man who starved his ballerinas into his ideal of feminine perfection, most notably Maria Tallchief, while insisting that he was exalting womanhood. “Ballet is woman,” he proclaimed. I’m sorry, but for a socially concious woman today, that behavior, and the resultant image as well, border on the repulsive: indeed, his ballets are filled mostly with emaciated-looking, very frail, very thin young women fluttering about the stage almost angelically, as if they’re not of this world, and very few men.

If you examine what today’s audiences watch, and want to see in dance, this image of woman doesn’t resonate. As I blogged about in my last post, all of the female contestants on Dancing With the Stars — and if you care about ballet’s future you must care about that show because like it or not that is the pulse of dance in this country right now — have been booted — all of the uber thin supermodels, beauty queens and TV celebrities, that is. Leaving as the sole woman Laila Ali, the boxer, and former heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali’s daughter. I believe a large part of the reason many go to see a dance performance is for the sensual experience, and I believe the concept of what is sexy and sensual in both men and women has changed drastically over the years, and this change is partly responsible for many young people today not “getting” ballet. Sexy today is — well, first of all, to at least half of dance-goers sexy is man, not woman And regarding women, sexy is strong, unexpected (Ali lifts men after all!), grounded and earthly, and muscular, not frail, not ethereal, not succumbing to men’s standards and expectations.

When I attended The Nothing Festival last weekend and this week at Dance Theater Workshop (which I will definitely blog about later this weekend), post-modern choreographer Walter Dundervill bemoaned that there are no contemporary dance writers like Arlene Croce, the former critic for The New Yorker, sending me straight to the bookstore to check out her work. So far, I’ve just skimmed through, but I am overwhelmed at her uncanny ability to pinpoint a thought so clearly and thoroughly yet succinctly. Here is what she had to say about American Ballet Theater in a January 1975 review of their opening night gala:

“Back to the Forties

If the number of fine ballets that American Ballet Theater had to show for its thirty-five years of existence equaled the number of fine dancers it currently has under contract, its anniversary gala, on January 11, would have been a night to remember. But numerically and stylistically the equation is unbalanced. The handful of illustrious ballets that made the company’s name can’t support dancers like Baryshnikov and Kirkland and Makarova and Nagy and Gregory and Bujones, and even if it could, it’s patently impossible to build a gala retrospective around “Fancy Free” and “Pillar of Fire” and “Romeo and Juliet” and “Three Virgins and a Devil,” all but the last created between 1941 and 1944. The creativity of that first decade had no sequel in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies. When you are seeing Ballet Theater choreography at its best, you are almost always seeing a picture of the forties. The dancers of the seventies don’t fit into that picture. The ballets are still interesting and they’re a challenge to perform, but their aesthetic is dead. Often the sentiment is dead, too. Audiences can’t get excited about them in the old way because the life of the period that produced them has receded and they’re insulated from the way we think and move today. When they are presented as they were at the gala … it’s hard not to see their position in a contemporary repertory as an extended irrelevance…” (WRITING IN THE DARK, DANCING IN THE NEW YORKER, pgs 86-87).

First, I find it rather funny that these are exactly the same ballets that ABT is putting on today, thirty-two years after she wrote this. And it’s true that “Fancy Free,” while a cute and fun ballet for its time, is largely lost on contemporary audiences. I recently took friends to see ABT and this was on the rep. They mostly thought it was mildly cute and engaging, but mainly silly and somewhat sexist. I said, well yeah, it was created in the 40s, but I mean, what about Marcelo — isn’t he so great with his hip-swaying “Rhumba”, didn’t you love Craig’s splitting jumps off of the bar!?” They laughed — they didn’t know the dancers like I did but thought it was cute that I attached to them so. I think Robbins, Balanchine and all of that great choreography of yore is lost on today’s audience, and not because today’s audiences are stupid philistines, but because, to use Croce’s words, these ballets’ “aesthetic is dead. Often the sentiment is dead too. Audiences can’t get excited about them in the old way because the life of the period that produced them has receded and they’re insulated from the way we think and move today.”

I think Macaulay’s pointing out the revolutionary quality of Balanchine’s work is tremendously important if younger audiences are going to understand and value his work. But that still doesn’t mean they’re going to be moved by him. American Jazz is a hundred years old now; seeing it combined with ballet doesn’t do much to the average dance goer; it certainly doesn’t, as Macaulay hopes, “make many new dance-goers … surely feel that [his ballets] still matter now.”

Hip hop, ballroom, and other social and ethnic forms of dance are the most living, breathing dance styles right now because they mean something to viewers. Hip hop emanates from ghetto life and much of the moves are a kind of recognizable street vocabulary of movement, ballroom is about two people working together and connecting with one another — which everyone can relate to (I don’t think Dancing With the Stars would be popular if it showcased solitary dancing), and a lot of social dance today in the U.S. comes out of Latin American and African countries — they’re fun and rhythmic and contain cultural lessons of strong interest in today’s global world. I feel that contemporary ballet choreographers need to merge these forms of dance with ballet to create something new, original, and beautiful whose meaning and movement resonates with contemporary audiences, the way that Balanchine and Robbins did nearly a century ago. I also think there need to be more writers like Macaulay to point out the historical import of the former greats, and he seems, at least thus far, like a positive return to the Croce style of writing. But, while everyone needs to read a classic once in a while as an historical lesson and an example of true literary genius, if there weren’t contemporary novelists pushing the art form further, the novel would have died long ago. Obviously, Balanchine and Robbins should be kept in the rep of the big companies, but they can’t be the main focus if this art form is to be kept alive as well.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Dirty Dancing, the Tribeca Film Festival, which is now underway, is showing the film at the Tribeca Drive-In, located outside at the World Financial Center Plaza, for free, tomorrow night, Thursday, April 26th. I already knew, and blogged about it earlier, but what I didn’t know is that one of the teachers from my studio, the amazing Anna Garnis, is going to be one of the pro dancers doing a little pre-movie pro ballroom dance demo.

I’m so upset because I have tickets for something else and can’t make it! Figures! Anyway, Anna is one of the very best Latin ballroom dancers in this country; she and her partner, Pasha Kovalev (my former teacher ), always place in the finals at the national competitions, and they really have the best show-quality of anyone, IMHO She is most definitely worth seeing if you can make it down there tomorrow night. Here are deets on the show.

Anyway, DWTS: So, Heather got booted, leaving only one woman — the amazing Laila — who I don’t think is going anywhere for a while — and nearly all of the men who started. The former cultural history grad student in me just wants to look at this as an interesting cultural phenomenon. I wish they would do a demographics study on who is watching the show — well, I’m sure they have but haven’t revealed it to the public — but from reading the message boards anyway, it appears that it is mostly women watching and voting. So, it’s interesting to me, women really want to watch the non-pro men dance. Which makes sense — the men are rather fun; even if some of them aren’t that good, it’s just really kind of fun to see these guys who complain about looking “girly” and “sissified” (and all those annoying terms) doing the Latin hip-swaying thing, being forced to duke it out with each other on the dance floor. Adult men who did not take up dance as a profession and who’ve never taken lessons are often more reticent than women to learn or even to just get out there on the dance floor, so I really think there is some of the fun of watching that going on. I think Laila is different than “normal” women since she’s a boxer. And I LOVED her lifting little Apolo in that group swing! I do hope anyway that she stays a little while longer for more moves like that I just think it’s interesting in general, from a larger cultural perspective, to ponder who likes dancing, who watches dancing, who follows dancing, what it is that turns those people on to dance, and whom they want to watch dance…

Sad night. Tonight marks the beginning of my hopefully brief hiatus from ballroom dancing lessons. I called the studio to tell them to cancel my standing appointments with Luis indefinitely and I almost felt like crying afterward… I guess the good thing is that I can now shamelessly promote the student showcase that I won’t be performing in:

Dance Times Square does put on a very fun student / teacher ballroom dancing showcase — the only of it’s kind really (the only one that I know of anyway that takes place in a theater and not a studio and that contains both amateur and professional showcases), and for those who enjoy watching ballroom dancing, it is a nice little event. Go here for tickets.

I really shouldn’t be all that sad, seeing as how I made my B&B reservations today for Blackpool! This year I’ll be staying right across the street from the Winter Gardens, instead of about fifteen blocks away, as I did last year — sweet people who ran the hotel, but it got a little seedy walking back at 2:00 in the morning after the comps ended. I’m really getting excited, as it’s only a month away now! Should be perfect time for me to re-assess my dance goals (and finances…)

And, regarding that other kind of dance that I so lurve:

three, three, three weeks

Yesterday morning, I got up way too early (for me, on a weekend anyway), to run down to Lincoln Center and take some pictures of what I just knew would be a huge line. The New York City Ballet distributed free tickets to the April 29th dress rehearsal of their new production of Romeo & Juliet. Tickets were given out on a first-come, first-served basis, and distribution was to begin at 9:00. I got there at 8:50, and here was the line:

It wrapped all the way around the State Theater to Fordham Law School! There was no way I could take the time to wait in it, and, from what I heard later in the day, you really had to have got there around 7:30 or earlier to get a ticket. Although, apparently, from what we heard later, they gave people who waited in line but were unable to get a ticket, a free admission to a non-dress rehearsal, that normally only sponsors are invited to, which sounds really nice as well! Anyway, very happy to see so many people interested in ballet

Then, it was such a nice spring day — the first in New York! — so I walked through the park to what seems to be becoming a weekly event for me, the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series. This one, “Slow Dancing,” was super cool. David Michalek, a film director and portrait photographer, as well as husband of New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan, is currently creating a public art film installation to be viewed during the Lincoln Center festival this summer. Basically, he took five seconds’ worth of footage of 45 different dancers from various dance styles — ranging from flamenco, Indian, break-dancing and krumping to of course Ballet — slowed it way way WAY down, using a highly specialized camera that has heretofore been used only by the military and NASA for weapons and rocket launch analyses respectively (!), and projected them onto a 50-foot high screen. During the festival, three such enormous screens will be hung on the outside the walls of the State Theater (pictured above in the top two pics) and, each night after dark, the images of the dancers — three at a time and moving in extreme slow motion, will be projected onto them.

So, we got to see how this was made last night. Three dance giants — Wendy Whelan (of course!), Herman Cornejo from ABT, and Desmond Richardson – each came out onstage and did a five-second solo. (Michalek joked that this was the only time we’d ever see dancers of this stature dance on a stage for a mere five seconds!) The camera recorded the movement, and after each dancer finished and exited the stage, we viewed what had been recorded in the slow timing.

It was so incredibly amazing it’s hard even to describe. With the image slowed to such a great extent and projected onto such a huge screen, you could just see so much that you never saw before, and it gave you so much more respect for the dancer to see how perfectly, how miraculously really, his or her body actually worked to make the huge jump, difficult turn, or beautiful line really happen. Richardson, exclaiming that as a dancer he was “ecstatic and inspired,” said that “to see the actual muscle fibers … really shows the work.” It’s so true: I noticed with Richardson, whose musculature is so pronounded, that, in contrast to a photo where you see the muscles but without seeing them actually work, viewing them contract, lengthen, expand, and flex during each part of a jump is so incredible that it makes the jump so much more astounding than just seeing it caught in a still picture. With Herman, I noticed that his feet practically make semi-circles when he points, and they remain pointed right until the very millisecond he lands. I noticed the gorgeous lines Wendy made with her arms, legs, feet, and hands, and her defined leg and arm muscles as well.

Of course as a dancer you’d have to have an ego of steel to allow yourself to be filmed in such a way! You see every detail, and every asymmetry, every flaw, if you could even call it that. Michalek said that Whelan, upon seeing herself onscreen for the first time, was really upset about her knees “buckling” when she jumped, and, during the panel discussion, when asked how she now felt, with sweetly self-deprecating humor, she just exhaled and said, “oh, I’ve come to embrace my imperfections…” Everyone laughed because, it’s like, what imperfections?!… I did notice she was pretty nervous when being video-taped though — you could really see her left hand tremble during the slowed film.

What impressed me most though was how it really had an iconic effect on the, literally, larger-than-life performer. Michalek said, seeing so many pictures of his beautiful wife and her colleagues made him dismayed at the limits of traditional dance photography to capture the monumental nature of the body in motion.

Allowing — almost forcing the viewer to examine closely what it is that makes each particular dancer so great — Richardson’s musculature and strength, Wendy’s beautiful lines, and Herman’s beyond perfect technique and the personality emanated through his eyes — has a kind of heroizing effect. Regarding those eyes: perhaps I am weird, but I seem to focus a lot on faces a lot when I attend a dance performance. I noticed that both Richardson and Whelan closed their eyes a lot, or looked down so that it looked as if they were. I wondered how they did that — if I closed my eyes I would lose all sense of place and direction; I would have no idea where the floor was. It was this, I felt, that gave their dancing a very ethereal feel and was part of their own particular artistry.

Herman was the exact opposite. His eyes never closed. At the beginning, when he first took the stage, they were focused straight out at the audience; I was sitting in the center of the fourth row and it was kind of freaky how it looked like he was looking right at me, in a proud, but almost confrontational way. Then, as he began his jump, his eyes remained wide open and directed firmly out at us; it was only when he went to land that they briefly glanced down at the floor so he could get his sense of place. Then, he immediately went into another jump, this time with a turn, and it was so incredible to see his eyes remain widely, alertly opened, and his gaze directed in the same place, until he had to rotate his head to complete the turn. His eyes, I felt gave him a very solid, very masculine “thereness” or presence, that I suppose is perhaps a Latin thing. I bet if Jose Carreno or Angel Corella were filmed, their eyes would be the same. I think that is what so draws me to ABT.

Anyway, the reception was a lot of fun as well. Doug Fox was in town, so I convinced him to meet me there, and he was very glad he did since the techie aspect of it was right up his alley. And, speaking of other brilliant techies (not to mention great dancers!), we ran into Kristin Sloan and her boyfriend, Doug Jaeger, as well

All of these dancer whom they chose to exhibit last night, though, were pretty similar in terms of body-type and obviously style of dance. It’ll be interesting to see the break and belly dancers. Definitely do not miss this spectacular celebration of dance. It’s showing outdoors at Lincoln Center from July 20th though 29th, from the hours of 9:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m.

Sorry, I had to delete this post because YouTube removed the video

Okay Doug Fox came to NYC this weekend and, being the amazingly sweet guy he is, helped me figure out how to embed YouTube videos in my crazy blog. Wordpress is officially a pain in the butt… Anyway, if this works, here are two of my favorite U.S. Latin dancers doing their Samba from last year’s Ohio Star Ball / America’s Ballroom Challenge.

Note: I had to end up deleting this post because it made my blog all crazy-looking. Methinks Wordpress does not take kindly to YouTube…

Last night I went to see the last third of a three-part dance series on the theme “Gender Benders” at Symphony Space. This one was by Monica Bill Barnes & Company and Nicholasleichterdance. (Unfortunately, I missed the second part of the series, by Les Ballets Grandiva; the first was Keigwin Kabaret, which I blogged on earlier). Like the Keigwin, this was comprised of a series of short pieces, some mostly dance, others more like wordless skits, some containing both, and all presumably aiming to challenge our notions of gender.A couple of the pieces choreographed by Barnes and performed by her and Deborah Lohse that stuck in my mind were these cutely humorous Vaudeville-esque sketches featuring the two women in overdone makeup and platinum blonde wigs and wearing maid-like aprons over ruffly skirts, who were kind of simultaneously sexed-up — one kept bunching her skirt and wanting to lift it — and naively sweet and confused. It was very funny, very cute, and Lohse’s expressions were brilliant. She has a tall, thin, somewhat gangly frame, and she really seemed to know how to use that to maximum comical effect here. I recognized her name in the progam then her face as soon as I saw her onstage, and I realized where from when I read her bio: she has her own newly-started company, ad hoc Ballet, whose website I’d visited after the introduction of a new Winger contributor from that company. Anyway, I’d actually like to learn more about Vaudeville since I’ve seen a few modern companies use it now. Kind of ridiculous that I know so little since my boyfriend in grad school was writing his dissertation on its history, and I read Fred Astaire’s autobiography…

I really LOVED Nicholas Leichter though. My favorite pieces were his “Baby Doll,” a solo which he performed, and “Undertow,” a piece for four men wearing tight form-fitting skirts with sexy thigh-high back slits, leather jackets with nude mesh undershirts, and finger and toenail polish. That piece explored in a short time a rather large panoply of male interactions, as the men, flirted with, hugged and caressed, lifted, fought with, and threw each other about. The costumes, along with some of the snaky Samba-y hip swaying would have been very “sexy” on women — but how did they look on men, I felt Leichter asked.

In “Baby Doll,” Leichter came out onstage alone, dressed in a man’s pinstriped suit, then, pretending to have a conversation with someone else — initially maybe someone gazing at him, then coming onto him, then perhaps a lover who was jilting him — reacted against what that absent other was doing. Initially, he seemed embarrased about being looked at, then nervous and somewhat frightened, then burst into hysterical laughter, then hurt and crying, lashed out. At one point, he pulled his pants down and mooned the absent other, then waddled around the stage, too lazy or angry to pull them back up. It was funny but disconcerting to see a man do such a thing, do all these things. Also, I thought how “feminine” the emoting and the reactions were, which contrasted sharply with his muscular “masculine” physique.

The thing that threw me was, I hadn’t known who Leichter was before this, so I looked in the program and saw the name of the performer for this piece listed as “Clare Byrne.” I then looked at the insert, and saw that they had changed it to Leichter as the performer for tonight’s show. I thought, huh, “Clare” is a strange name for a man … then when I got home looked up the name on the web and found that she was not a man at all. (In fact, she’s the one who’s doing that Kneeling piece throughout next week at various NY locations, which I am definitely going to scope out!) But, unless the whole thing was just a misprint, I couldn’t believe he had choreographed this piece for a woman — it would have been so completely different for a woman to have performed it — gone would be everything I just said above. And that made me think that, of everything I saw in this “gender bender” series, it was really only the men’s performances that I found “gender-assumption” challenging. Not that I didn’t find the women’s dancing beautiful or remarkably athletic. But, I guess women can kind of look or act any ole way — we can wear short sexy skirts, pantssuits, men’s underwear, army camoflauge or ruffly skirts, and we can be ballerinas or pole dancers or breakers or sexy sambistas and it’s all just that; nothing looks out of the ordinary. But for a man to cry or emote at all, to don nail polish and a skirt with a high back-slit and move his hips in a sexy figure eight motion… it just makes you stop, look, and think. And, I mean, how many of the DWTS celebrity males have (beyond annoyingly) freaked over looking too feminine in the Latin dances — Ian and Billy Ray this time around, George Hamilton last time; and there were several guys in my old social dancing school who dropped out of the international Latin classes because they were “too girly”… It’s interesting though, because at the same time, I don’t think this greater gender flexibility amounts to women actually having more power…

Anyway, this was a short program, but it’s inexpensive and thought-provoking. Visit Symphony Space for tix; it’s on through the 21st.

Sorry this post is about so many diverse dancey things; just too busy and have to blog all at once…

Last night I went to see the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company at the Skirball Center at NYU. Three works were performed, two of which were world premieres: “Little Rhapsodies” starring Dance Magazine readers’ “sexiest dancer of the year,” Rasta Thomas

(above pic taken from his website)

along with Jay Franke and the amazing Sean Stewart; and “Dvorak Serenade,” featuring Drew Jacoby, one of the most beautifully muscular women I’ve seen. I really liked “Rhapsodies,” the piece for the three men, which, set to Robert Schumann music, was by turns cute and sexy, humorous, jazzy, and lyrical. And, Thomas He really is good-looking, with a very charming stage personality. The piece was kind of quietly, sweetly understated until about three-quarters of the way through, when he came running out and did this spectacular tour jete (that’s a turn and leap all in one — go here and look up jete entrelace to see Vladminir Malakhov demonstrate). The Serenade was beautiful as well: lyrical with light, diaphonous costumes on both women and men. A contemporary piece, there was no pointe work, so you could really see the dancers’ gorgeously arched feet, particularly Jacoby’s.

My favorite piece of the night though was “Love’s Stories,” from 2005, with three pretty, lifty duets by various couples, and two jazzy solos by Stewart. That man has no bones in his arms at all — they moved so fluidly and at times with such speed they were a shadowy blur. The second pas de deux was my favorite: “Prelude to Kiss,” danced by Marty Lawson and Kate Skarpetowska. One of the most romantic, sexiest I’ve ever seen — at the end he tugs her top straps down her shoulders and plants a passionate kiss on her neck; she collapses in his arms … yes, if a man wants to kiss you, he should be so bold — but only after picking you up and carrying you all around the room for a good 10 minutes

Also, I just have to say, there were all these good-looking guys in the audience. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many at one performance. I wondered if they were dancers. During the first intermission, Mr. Lubovitch quietly, nonchalantly walked into the orchestra and took a seat two rows down from me. At the second intermission, all the cute guys immediately gravitated toward him, where they hovered about, chatting him up. So, they were dancers, or at least involved in dance, and with Lar. So, there it is: go to a Lar Lubovitch performance and see hot guys — both onstage and in the audience

Anyway, I was surprised to see that the house was not very packed. People are paying big bucks to see Thomas dance Othello at the Met in the spring, but you can see him up close for only $40 here… There are two programs; Program B, which I didn’t see, includes a piece performed by the Limon Dance Company but excludes Stewart’s solos from Love’s Stories. It’s on through the 21st; go here for tickets.

Onto Dancing With the Stars. The highlight for me this week was definitely Julianne Hough’s samba. When I first saw her walks, I thought, wow, she’s a pro and she’s not doing those cruzado walks with the proper technique at all. But boy did they look enticing. And they also looked familiar. After she did that mad fun squatting pelvic roll with undulating rib cage, which I’ve never seen in ballroom but have most definitely seen in Quenia Ribeiro’s Rio / Carnival-style class at the Ailey studios, I realized that those alternative, rather runway-looking cruzado walks were familiar to me because I’ve seen them on Quenia’s tape, as well as in Carnival videos on YouTube. She was basically fusing formal, ballroom samba with the social, Rio-style form of the dance, and to very fun effect. I thought she was simply beautiful! And obviously the judges felt the same since they had Apolo and her re-perform their routine last night. I’ve often found this rather annoying reluctance by ballroom dancers to think outside the official syllabi so I really appreciate someone who can and will do that. So go Julianne!!!

That said, of course I’m annoyed that Heather was in the bottom two, over John, especially after the judges said something to her that really resonated with me– that she, more than anyone else, really knew how to let loose, have fun, and act like no one was watching, which is, I think, the first hurdle any beginning dancer has to overcome… you can’t free yourself to dance until you’ve made the decision to shed certain inhibitions. Well, she may well not be on the show after next week, and, at this point, I just feel like throwing my hands up and saying, ‘oh well… what can you do?’ I kind of liked Clyde too, personality-wise — he was such a sweet little thing … or sweet big thing rather! — but he wasn’t that good dance-wise, so it’s okay that he’s gone…

I also like that they’re showing the celebrities having “normal” busy lives. This is how real people who take ballroom dance lessons are as well — okay, we’re not out filming episodes of our TV shows and traveling to China and England every weekend, but we have jobs, we work, and we’re not professional dancers who spend 80 hours a week in the studio. So, I felt like that kind of sent a jolt of reality into the dancing aspect of the show: see, you can only get so good when you actually have to work for a living and dance isn’t your full-time occupation.

Tonight I went to see the “The Seagull” by the Eifman Ballet, a company based in St. Petersburg, Russia. When I’d gone to her reading a couple of weeks ago, critic Joan Acocella called choreographer Boris Eifman “a menace to society.” She did this in an eye-rolling, definitely not joking way. After seeing them tonight, I have to say, I have no idea what she was talking about. Actually, that’s not true — I could see how someone might feel that way about his work. But, for me, this was one of the best performances I’ve seen this year. It was fantastically weird, over the top, melodramatic, completely angst-filled, over-acted, by turns mesmerizingly beautiful, creepy, and frightening, and, as one person sitting near me said, “chaotic.” But to me all that’s exactly what made it. For one thing it was the antithesis of boring — don’t think I’ve ever been so entranced all the way through a full-length ballet; for another, I felt like Eifman was kind of ridiculing the melodrama of classical ballet. If he’s a “menace” to the dance world; it’s a menace in a good kind of way — someone who holds a kind of funhouse mirror up to something revered, compelling you to think about what you’re seeing. The main music was by Rachmaninoff, flavored with interludes of hip hop and techno. A modern reinterpretation of the classical and based on the Chekhov play, the choreography was stunning, the sets were used to brilliant effect, and the dancers were just incredible. It was like a company of all Wendy Whelans or something– everyone, men and women alike, had that long, beyond thin, hyper-flexible, sinewy-muscled body that moved as if there were no ligaments or tendons whatsoever to constrict it. And, I just feel like Russians just own the world of ballet, both classical and modern, — they just do. Even the hip hop was rapturous. When I left City Center tonight, I felt more than ever before how much I regret giving up dance as a child…

I am the exact opposite of everyone else on the planet. I am so anal (usually anyway) about turning my cell phone to silent during a performance that I often actually forget to turn it back to ring when I leave. So, today, not feeling so well, I tried to take it easy all day to save my energy for my two-hour-long evening lesson. I managed to haul myself out the door, down the stairs, through the rain and on the crowded subway, to my studio, only to be told by the receptionist upon my arrival that my teacher had to cancel due to illness – -she’d left a message on my cell, she said, flustered and feeling badly. Of course she did, and of course I didn’t hear the blasted phone since it was on silent from when I saw ABT’s Works & Process at the Guggenheim last night…

It turned out okay since I felt on the verge of passing out when I walked into the studio anyway and wasn’t sure how I’d make it through two whole hours of working on a fast-paced routine. Problem is, I’m now about 99.99% sure that I cannot do the performance on May 7th. It’s just too close, and with Luis only being able to be in the studio on Monday nights, that means I only have two more lessons until then, and I’m still extremely shaky on the choreography, which has changed numerous times now.

It’s also very hard for me, because — and this is another way in which I’m weird — I’ve learned that foxtrot, and all of Standard ballroom, is very difficult for me because of my odd tendency to walk toward the balls of my feet, never ever using my heels. I don’t know whether it was taking ballet as a very small child or all the Latin I’ve had, which is always always ALWAYS toe heel, and never heel toe, but I just can’t seem to get the basic walk right. Not that technique has to be perfect for a showcase, but if you don’t walk heel toe going forward and then walk through the entire foot going backward, completely lifting your whole foot except your heel at the end of your step, your partner can very easily trip over you.

My first ballroom teacher, the very sweet Linda Gammon, actually figured out that I was “weird” in this respect. Frustrated with what seemed to be a lack of understanding in class one day, she had me walk backwards around the room, “like normal.” Turned out, my toes never left the floor, and my heels hardly ever touched it. So, I basically looked like I was jogging backward in slow-motion (how you’d keep to the balls of your feet to gain momentum if you were doing such a thing). Anyway, I remember her saying, in her cute, jocular way, that I’d have to learn how to walk like a normal person before learning Standard ballroom. Anyway, since I focused on Latin, I never bothered to learn how to be “normal.”

I don’t know how clear these pictures are but I’ve tried to illustrate what I mean with them: first is the heel toe Standard way; second is toe heel the Latin way:

I mean, the Latin photo doesn’t look completely right because I should be wearing open-toed shoes for Latin; can’t get much of a pointed toe out of these. But, I don’t have a pedicure and I’m not photographing my feet right now in open-toed shoes, so hopefully the picture is still understandable!

Anyway, this failure to ever “learn to be normal” is a problem for me now with this routine since it’s been changed into a basic foxtrot. Originally, I’d taken the DVD of Baryshnikov and ballerina Elaine Kudo performing Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite to my studio to ask teachers and coaches if I could do something similar for my student showcase.

By this I meant I wanted them to take one of the pieces in the suite (they’re all fundamentally ballet, but one of Tharp’s things is to combine popular dance with ballet and so she did that here by combining various standard ballroom dances with ballet, choreographing a tango-styled one, a waltz-styled one, and a foxtrot-styled one), and take out the most difficult things and maybe put in a few very basic standard ballroom steps (from waltz, foxtrot, etc.) and that would be my routine. We’d chosen the foxtrot because, to the original teacher, the music seemed the most fun, though he wanted to change the actual song, and to me, I liked the snazzy, sassy character of Tharp’s choreography (especially as acted by Marcelo ). I knew, though, that that one was choreographically the hardest of all of the ’suites,’ and expected a lot to be changed, but was still excited to work my hardest and really try.

Anyway, I’m not sure what happened, if it was all a misunderstanding or if, more likely, I was asking ballroom dancers to choreograph something for me that wasn’t at its heart ballroom and they just didn’t know how to do it, but I ended up with a very basic foxtrot routine with some fun steps and a couple of cool lifts, but that bears absolutely no similarity whatsoever to what I’d originally wanted. And I tell myself that that’s okay because I’m learning foxtrot, which I didn’t know before, and it is a cute routine, and somewhat Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire-esque (although when I tried to emulate her I was told I was doing it wrong because I was too light and feathery and not bending my knees and going far enough into the ground, as should be done in foxtrot).

Anyway, I hate to be overly practical and money-obsessed, but it’s very very VERY expensive to me to participate in these showcases. I understand why they have to charge so much because there are a lot of people to pay in order to make the show happen… but, I’m sorry for sounding ridiculous but it’s just too expensive for me to do a basic foxtrot routine. I need to be doing things I really really want to learn that are so hard that they push me beyond my natural limits.

I’m going on for far too long, and being very boring, but I guess I’m just having such a conflict because I’m so not a quitter. And I hate the idea of quitting this routine, but I think I have to… because I’m not in love with it, because all I can see is dollar signs, because I can’t get a simple heel toe walk right, and because there’s just no time… Ugh, I just HATE being a quitter!!!!! I HATE it!!!

I’ll still of course buy a ticket and go watch all of my friends perform, but I know I’ll be so sad to not be part of the action myself…

Anyway, on a totally different note: I almost forgot since I was so under the weather today, but:

four weeks, just four more weeks, just four weeks!!!!!!!!!

Last night I went to see a discussion and demonstration of ABT’s SLEEPING BEAUTY at the Guggenheim as part of the museum’s Works & Process series (in which the producers talk about the making of a new ballet and have a few dancers demonstrate some of the choreography). I’d attended their talk on OTHELLO a couple months ago and learned a lot about the history of that ballet and choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s intentions, and got to see some amazing dancing (David Hallberg ) from very close.

Well, I didn’t feel this one went quite as smoothly.

Kevin McKenzie, ABT artistic director and choreographer of this new production, was out sick, so Wes Chapman moderated a discussion between famed former ballerina Gelsey Kirkland who is helping to put this production together by coaching the dancers, and her husband Michael Chernov.

First, five ballerinas — Maria Riccetto, Kristi Boone, Yuriko Kajiya, Zhong-Jing Fang, and Adrienne Schulte — performed the Fairies Variations. After each danced, Kirkland would come onstage and ‘coach them’ right in front of us! I don’t know if it was intended to be this way — if they were trying to show what a hard life a dancer leads or trying to showcase Kirkland as a strict but brilliant former ballerina and current teacher or what, but I’m sorry, I thought it was just not a good idea. She came across as really quite mean to the dancers. She started with Riccetto, telling her she was supposed to, as she’d told her before, show the audience “the child” ie: Sleeping Beauty, which she was supposed to be carrying in her arms. She had Riccetto do it over a few times, and, at the end of the third, Kirkland turned to the audience and asked us if we “saw the child.” Of course everyone wanted to please Kirkland, and of course we couldn’t see any child because there were no props, as it was a work in progress hello, so everyone said “oh no.” Riccetto looked so embarrassed. I felt just horrible for her.

Then, poor Kristi Boone, who I really like, came out and performed her solo. It seemed like everyone was so scared of Kirkland, like they were trying very hard but were just so shaky. At the end of Boone’s variation, Kirkland told her her movement was so lacking in fluidity she kept looking like she was simply ‘reaching for a bowl of cereal’ when she stretched upward, then kind of scolded her, saying, “I told you how to do this yesterday, we talked about it yesterday. I know it’s hard, but do it again.” And she made her repeat it a couple of times for us.

After she finished with Boone, poor Kajiya, who has the sweetest most innocent-looking face, came out and did her solo looking like she was going to faint from the pressure the entire time. Kirkland was hard on her too, but I don’t even remember what she said; I just couldn’t listen; I couldn’t even look anymore. I just remember she told Kajiya to do something over, and Kajiya tried, but the pianist played the wrong part, so Kajiya performed the part he played, then was told by Kirkland she’d done the wrong part, which she seemed to know but was too sweet to correct the pianist. Nightmare!

After Kaijya fled to safety, Chapman asked the audience, “are you all finding this helpful?” And I couldn’t help it but I shouted out “No,” and shook my head dramatically. I’m sure they didn’t hear my soft voice in the sea of “yesses” and couldn’t see my head shaking, but somehow someone knew it had to be toned down because Kirkland was much better after that. Fang escaped without a single correction, and Schulte only had to do her “trouble spot” over once.

Then they talked a bit about the costumes and set designs. At a few points, Kirkland and Chernov disagreed over whether a particular costume was still in the works or whether they’d changed the design, and then whether they’d completely changed it or slightly altered it. And then there was a bit of disagreement on whether to call the cavaliers (the men) “knights” or “elves,” — Chapman, who seemed like he was trying very hard to keep things running smoothly, nicely asked for audience input, and we all shouted out, almost in unison, “Knights!” I have to say, it was Kirkland’s suggestion to change “elves” to “knights” so she was definitely on the pulse on that one.

After the discussion, Irina Dvorovenko, the only principal who danced this evening, came out and performed the beautiful Rose Adagio (in which Beauty is courted by four gorgeous guys, and which involves extremely difficult balances and partnering). Her suitors were Blaine Hoven (who looked like he had a bit of a cold), Jared Matthews, Patrick Ogle, and Isaac Stappas (who is, hello, really quite good-looking — did I know that???). Anyway, annoyingly, Kirkland was again hard on Dvorovenko, but let all the guys escape without a single word of criticism. I realize Kirkland is a former ballerina, and so is helping to coach the women, but it’s just a pet peeve of mine for someone to be hard on only one group of people.

Anyway, poor Irina, another favorite of mine… To her credit, Kirkland tried to be kind, telling the audience Irina was a great ballerina and it was a true pleasure to work with her, and that there were only a few minor things … then began ripping her. What she wanted Irina to keep doing over was basically an acting job. She said it was very hard for a dancer to keep from playing to the audience, and to maintain “a fourth wall,” then asked her several times to re-perform a look of “wonderment” upon seeing … something … presents maybe? That’s the thing: I don’t think the audience really understood what was even going on between Kirkland and the dancers, what exactly the dancers were supposed to be doing that they weren’t. But poor Irina: the Guggenheim is obviously ridiculously small compared to the Met Opera House, and here she’s standing in front of maybe a hundred people, the closest all of five feet away from her face, having to do this huge, over-the-top acting job of making a face of “wonderment” and pretending to project out into the Family Circle hundreds of feet away at the Met … it was so embarrassing for her. I really felt all of the dancers’ embarrassment.

Then, another discussion ensued, followed by, finally!, newly-promoted Craig Salstein dancing an all too short Bluebird Adagio with pretty (and, by this time, courageous) Riccetto.

I mean, all in all it was an interesting night. I think it drove home to audiences how hard dancers — at least the women — work when being coached by someone with Kirkland’s stature and personality, and how hard the life of a ballerina can be in that regard. At least that was made clear to me. And I have to say, to me at least, it was upetting. Like I said, if they did hear me shout out “No,” I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was just very bothered. Maybe others didn’t care. But, for me, and for many I think, the dancers ARE the company; we see them more than anyone else and we relate to them more than anyone or anything else in ABT, and we don’t like to see our favorites get picked on! (Plus, the gentleman next to me was snoozing, and my “no” did wake him up, at least momentarily, so I feel like my actions weren’t all bad )

The night also made clear how difficult it must be to put something together when people are disagreeing about how things should be. It seems like a pretty ballet, and hopefully it’ll get there by the time it premieres. Chapman, in impressing the importance of this production to us, said, “ABT without a Sleeping Beauty: it’s like we’re not America’s National Ballet Company anymore…” I personally don’t know if that’s true — is it really that fundamental of a ballet? — but, in any event, it should be interesting to see how it all comes together. I’ll be excited to see Marcelo and all my other favorites perform it anyway

I saw this in the Style Magazine of the NYTimes today:

It’s about how ballet-styled clothes and makeup have been all the rage on the runways of late. And, gives a little advice on how to do your makeup like a real prima: for ‘Coppelia eyes’ apply false lashes at the outer corners and blue pink lipstick, it says. Blue pink lipstick? Hmmm?

But, looking at the actual clothes, I don’t think the dresses are anything special at all. Just some light pink and white silk with lacy outer layers, flowers in the hair, and way over-the-top pointe-style sandals with laces climbing all the way to the knee. Why don’t they make dresses is that beautiful silvery lavender from Christopher Wheeldon’s Evenfall… so dreamy… and totally bring on the tulle! It’d make a gorgeous springy dress; I’d wear it!

(photo by Paul Kolnick, from Voiceofdance.com)

Anyway, the weather is absolute crap here:

It’s been POURING all day long. And I have to go out in it later this evening, to see ABT perform snippets of Sleeping Beauty at the Guggenheim…

And, I’m not feeling so hot. Throat’s a little scratchy. I hope I’m not coming down with something. This is so not the time with foxtrot showcase and Blackpool and end-of-the-fiscal-year deadlines at work all coming up…

My yummy lunch:

I know it’s not so good for me; it’s just all I want to eat with a sore throat…

Also, on the cover of the Style Mag was this actress, Paula Patton. I’ve been roaming around YouTube this rainy day looking at new videos of Carnival coverage in Rio and I swear she was one of the celebrities wearing a glamour bikini. Does anyone know if she was there?

I have to say, something really depressed me and maybe – hopefully — it was just the videos I saw, but Carnival looks rather dangerous for women. Lots of men grabbing and groping women and with no accountability for their actions. Like the Puerto Rico day parade here that year when there was all the sexual abuse. Are women respected anywhere in the world? It’s so upsetting to me… Hopefully Craig Salstein and whoever else is at Guggenheim tonight will pull me out of my blue funk…

On Thursday night, Tony Schultz from the Winger invited me to an evening of performances by two fabulously innovative and engaging modern dance companies, Misnomer and Keigwin and Company. It was my first time being ‘comped in’ as a ‘press member’ and it was very exciting! Thank you Tony

After the performances, they had an after-show dance party, so that is what the above picture is about — regular people kicking off their shoes and preparing to take to the stage themselves! Both of these companies seem to have a kind of “bring dance to the people” mission, albeit executed in different ways. Misnomer has a very cool website, one of the most intricate I’ve seen by a dance company, and Chris Elam, the artistic director, has expounded an audience outreach initiative that landed him in the pages of Business Week. Keigwin, on the other hand, from what I’ve seen by him so far, seems interested in questioning / bridging the so-called “high-art / low-art” dichotomy by including in his modern pieces burlesque and vaudeville artists — as in Keigwin Kabaret, which I recently blogged about — or, as in his new piece celebrating NYC life — BOLERO NYC (which just debuted on Thursday) — by involving non-dance-trained actors and just regular people from the streets. So, I felt the dance party following the performance was kind of a continuation of that, a continuation of BOLERO NYC, saying dance is for everyone.

Anyway, this was my first time seeing Misnomer, and they were unlike anything I’ve ever seen. First, Chris Elam performed a mesmerizing solo, CAST-IRON CRUTCHES. The man just moves in the most incredible ways; he’s like a one-man Pilobolus or something. It looked somewhat animalistic but really really beautiful. His solo was followed by a short film depicting busy people on a crowded stairway, which was really cool — sometimes the heads and faces were such a blur I couldn’t tell whether they were going up or down. And, then he premiered his longer work performed by the whole company, FUTURE PERFECT, a sweet, humorous, thought-provoking take on human social and romantic interactions. I’ve read that he gets a lot of his ideas from his world travels and it is clear that he is an astute observer of other cultures and peoples; I think this is what makes his work so different and intriguing. Here are a couple of pictures of Elam from Misnomer’s website.

And go here for video snippets of FUTURE PERFECT during rehearsal.

This was my second time seeing Keigwin (first was the Kabaret), and, again, I really enjoyed them. His stuff is very fast-paced, sometimes aerobic (as in CAFFEINATED), oftentimes humorous and gender-bending (at one point, in the second piece, NATURAL SELECTION, Nicole Wolcott, whom I just love, carried small but powerful Julian Barnett), and filled with lots of incredible feats (Ying-Ying Shiau running sideways along a back wall assisted by two men), and dynamic, energetic dancing to fast, pulsing music. Liz Riga stood out to me more this time. She has a commanding presence and fills up the stage with her movement. Oh, and correction: I realized, Alexander Gish, who was in Thursday’s performance, was not the guy I said he was in Kabaret, who did the little cherub-faced waiter with the butcher knife number. I’m not sure who that guy was, but I saw him in the audience Thursday night! Here are a couple of pictures from their website:


The show is happening again tonight, Saturday, at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU. Very interesting, very innovative and loads of fun with after-party for everyone including dancing onstage and alcohol and little snacky foods in the lobby

Just got my tickets for Tribeca Film Festival (my first few anyway), which I’ve gone to every year since it’s inception, post 9/11. My dad is a big film buff (and kind of a frustrated filmmaker himself) and has gone to every major film festival in the world. But this is the first film festival I’ve ever gone to. It’s special for me since I work a block and a half from the World Trade Center and was strongly affected by 9/11 and its aftermath, along with the rest of DeNiro’s beloved neighborhood.

Anyway, being the dance fan that I am, I’m particularly excited about the showing of the above film, called PLANET B-BOY, a documentary about the global resurgence of break-dancing which culminates in a World-Cup-esque global break dancing competition. It’s showing at the Tribeca Drive-In, located at the World Financial Center Plaza (which means it’s FREE!! — but likely will be hugely crowded) on Saturday, April 28th at 8:00 p.m. I’m hoping to get a bunch of friends together — should be lots of fun! (Also, in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of DIRTY DANCING, that film will be shown on the WFC Plaza on April 26th.

I’m also seeing ALEXIS ARQUETTE: SHE’S MY BROTHER, a documentary about sex, celebrity, and transgender life filled with drag queens and Hollywood glitterati (just my thing ), and AUTISM: THE MUSICAL, which is, as it sounds, a documentary following a year in the lives of five austistic children as they write, rehearse and perform in their own full-length musical. That one’s almost sold out, so if it sounds interesting, hurry up and get tickets.

I highly recommend this festival to anyone who’s never been. Every year I’m exposed to something new, out-of-the-ordinary, and completely eye-opening. My advice though: DON’T get tickets to something big and Hollywoody that looks like it’s going to get mass distribution (for example, SURBURBAN GIRL, based on the Melissa Bank novel, GIRLS GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING, and starring Sarah Michelle Geller and Alec Baldwin) — stuff like that is going to hit every theater on the planet, and why pay more now (Tribeca FF tickets are a whopping $18 this year, up from $12 last). Go see the small, foreign or American indie stuff that may or may not get a distributor and expose yourself to true originality.

Other stuff that struck my eye, that I’ll probably try to see: THE WORKSHOP (because, clearly, I’m a sexaholic ), WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME IT WOULD BECOME THIS BAD IN AFGHANISTAN (film shot on location entirely with a cell phone!), THE POWER OF THE GAME (kind of a MAD HOT BALLROOM but about soccer), ON THE DOWNLOW (about coming out as a gay black man in Cleveland), THE MAN OF TWO HAVANAS (documentary about a former friend of Castro’s who lives in Miami and opposes the embargo, thus becoming a CIA target and recipient of death threats, etc.), THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN (produced by Rikki Lake and about varying childbirth practices that actually looks quite interesting), THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK (inside look at Darfur genocide), BOMB IT (documentary about the art of graffiti around the world that assures “you will never look at public space the same way”), and short film series ARCHIVING IDENTITY, MOOD ENHANCER, and PORTRAITS OF WOMEN. I’d see it all if I had the time and money! There’s just so much; go here to check it all out for yourself.

Finally, for people who really really love NYC, the OUR CITY, MY STORY is a very sweet little treat. It’s a collection of shorts made by NYC students and youth, and last year, I saw a short in that collection that, to this day, I can’t get out of my mind.

This evening, after work, I went out to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, to visit Latin / Ballroom costume-maker extraordinare, Valentina.

It’s so far out there for me and always seems like such a long way from Manhattan, but occasionally it’s a fun, sometimes even relaxing ride on the subway, which goes above-ground after Park Slope.

Here’s sweet little house kitty, Tosha, napping on a bed of fabrics.

Saw this hanging on Valentina’s wall: it’s a picture of my very first Latin teacher, Kelvin Roche, and his partner, Lori Ann Greenhouse, world Hustle champs for a few years in a row now. They had their costumes done by Valentina.

So, I gave Valentina this picture to show her what I was thinking of for my foxtrot costume:

She asked what color I was thinking and before I answered, she just started laughing. I’m so predictable… can’t help it; I just always want red. It’s just so happy and cheery and bright and rosy and … red…

Kelvin

So, we chose this fabric (she always gives me a swatch so I can show it to the teacher) for the main bodysuit, and then she’s gonna find matching chiffon for the skirt.

Before we started talking about the actual costume design, though, Valentina took one frowning up and down look at me and said, “Tonya, I think I need to do measurement again.” Geez, is it that frigging obvious??? In addition to the late-night fries and martinis with Alyssa, I think it may be my recent reversion to my childhood comfort food:

Mexican; can’t help it — I grew up on it and just love it, especially when I’m a bit nervous about stuff, which I have been lately… Okay, no more beans, no more tortillas, and no more french fries (don’t think I can say no more martinis and red wine ) until after early May…

Sorry I’m so photo-happy today; I think it’s because my brain hurts from working on a crazy hard brief all day… just don’t have the energy to make lots of words … so am making pictures instead…

Got home just in time for Dancing With the Stars. I was happy they had a re-cap tonight because I had to miss it last night for a late dance lesson. Karina’s Paso cracked me up, in a good way. I feel like she said to herself, “Okay, I’m tired of dancing with amateurs. I’m a pro and am going to dance like one, dammit. If I have to lift myself and carry myself all over the floor, I’m damn well going to do it!” And she did — she just flew; and he wasn’t doing a whole lot to help her! Go Karina! And I LOVE the way she does those upper-body isolations in Paso. She just simply rocks. She MAKES that show if you ask me.

And I was also happy that Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruyshkova performed. I was complaining last week that they didn’t have the top couples demonstrating the moves, so am very happy they had the country’s top Latin couple give a sample Samba. Although… I kind of wish they’d have used Andrei and Elena to demonstrate something else, and had Max Kozhnevnikov and Yulia Zagorouitchenko do the sample Samba because those two are really the king and queen of that dance. Until my web guy can set up my blog so it can embed YouTube links, click here for Terpsichore’s posting of Max and Yulia’s butt-kicking Samba, performed at last year’s Ohio Star Ball / America’s Ballroom Challenge. I don’t really know that anyone does ballroom Samba like they do.

Also, while I think Andrei and Elena have near perfect technique, for some reason they just don’t have a lot of showmanship in their routines. I don’t know what it is; can’t put my finger on it, but they’re just not a couple that reaches out and grabs your attention. Andrei is a gorgeous dancer; has a long thin body that can move in Latin like no other, but you don’t really see it unless you see him dance alone, and, perhaps in person. He blew me away the first time I saw him do a very simple basic three chas step in Cha Cha; I couldn’t take my eyes off him dancing alone and in the studio, but I don’t see him so much when he’s out on the floor with all the others and on TV. Still, so bizarre to see someone you kind of know on TV — I mean on a big huge poppy show!

Speaking of which … one of my friends told me at the studio last night that a couple of our good friends there are trying out for the show So You Think You Can Dance. Apparently, they’ve made the first two cuts, which are underway right now. The show premieres at the end of May. I’m so excited! I hope so much they make it — these two are such fascinating, fun, sexy, charismatic dancers with excellent Latin technique; ideal representatives from the world of ballroom And, I just can’t imagine watching my friends on TV like that — so surreal!

Oh one more thing I was thinking about Dancing With the Stars: I also liked how the judges went into a bit of detail on what it is that makes a dancer good, both in terms of overall ballroom technique (and dance technique in general for that matter) and for each individual dance. I think it helps to direct viewers’ attention more toward the actual dancing and away from the popularity contest of it all…

Also, I went to Lincoln Center early this morning to get a few tickets for New York City Ballet’s upcoming season, which begins at the end of this month. It was pretty quiet out on the plaza so early… According to Oberon, yesterday, when the box office first opened for Spring season sales, there was a pretty long line. But today, the only other person there was this Santa Claus-y-looking guy waiting to get a standing-room ticket to tonight’s opera…

Anyway, I got tickets for the opening night on May 1st, when the premier of Peter Martins’ Romeo and Juliet will take place — premieres are ALWAYS exciting! , and one for the farewell performance of retiring ballerina Krya Nichols. I think both are selling out quickly, so if you’re thinking of going, buy now! Visit their website to buy tickets here.

Last night Alyssa and I went to see the closing night of Keigwin Kabaret at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. Here we are with our little silver tambourines that were atop each seat’s armrests when we arrived. If audience tambourines are supplied, you know you’re in for a little zaniness!

Anyway, the show didn’t start until 8:30, so we met at Cleopatra’s Needle beforehand, where we caught the beginning of a jazz band and got some drinks and snacks.

I have GOT to stop snacking at night on chocolate martinis and french fries … I’ve gained five pounds in the last couple of weeks; Luis is going to drop me flat on my butt in my lesson tomorrow night…

Anyway, even with the fries to soak up the alcohol, the martini was rather strong and by the time we arrived at Symphony Space, we (or I anyway) were a little tipsy. When we sprinted into the lobby ten minutes before the show was to begin, and the usher asked us which show we were there for so as to direct us either to the upstairs or downstairs theater, we looked at each other quizzically. I’d completely forgotten the name… Alyssa, quicker than I, blurted out “Gender!” and the guy told us, “downstairs.” No gender upstairs, nope, all gender is downstairs…

When we got downstairs, the place was pretty full and the only available seats were in the first two rows. A bit of a tiff eruped between us and several other near-late-comers, over who would have to sit in the first row. “What are they going to be doing,” one woman shrieked? “I don’t want a lap dance!” No one up front at least seemed to know what to expect. Alyssa and I eventually ended up with the highly coveted second-row seats, I am, as it turned out, very happy to say! Note to everyone who is unfamiliar with extreme hyperactive drag king extraordinare, Murray Hill: if you’re a shy, non-audience-participation-type, DO NOT SIT IN THE FRONT ROW OR ANYWHERE NEAR IT when seeing a show that he emcees. Alyssa and I seemed to be either too non-visible and uninteresting, or else too obviously completely freaked out, to be his fodder, but an unfortunate but well-humored guy in the first row who happened to be wearing a colorful, Christmas-y sweater, was not so lucky. Nor were the people in back of us, nor the guy in back of them … but more on HIM later…

Anyway, the, as the name implies, cabaret-style show, was a lot of fun. The company’s artistic director, Larry Keigwin, was a great dancer (and really cute to boot!), and I LOVED assistant artistic director Nicole Wolcott. She was such a beautiful dancer. I so wanna be like her! Seriously, she really makes me want to learn modern now. She made it seem freeing and fun while also being based in solid formal technique, if that makes any sense, and she just moved so amazingly gorgeously in her solo, to “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks. I also really liked her duet with Keigwin, a tango-y kind of thing to French music, the first part of which involved chokehold-drop (what they’re called in ballroom anyway) after chokehold-drop. This is where the man wraps his hands around the woman’s neck and it looks like he’s strangling her, then drops her into a dangerous-looking dip. Teachers of mine have wanted to put it into my routines, but I’ve refused to do it because it seems dangerous to me (all the more so since I’m a frightened amateur who doesn’t really know what she’s doing) and because I feel like it just looks somewhat misogynistic. But, since this was a gender-bender thing and they were specifically questioning that, it worked here. Although, I would have preferred for her to do it to him a few times as well, but perhaps it is hard for a woman to balance a man’s body that way … but isn’t that what gender-bending stuff is made of…?

Anyway, the show was a combo of modern dance performed by Keigwin and Wolcott and their company, which includes Patrick Ferreri (who’s damn cute! and performed a hilarious drunk-off-his-butt riff on Tharp’s final Sinatra Suite, danced to One For My Baby, which I think Angel should DEFINITELY try out on ABT audiences next time he performs it ), and Julian Barnett (who did this sweetly endearing thing to a heavy mental number on overcoming being a picked-on gay kid). And, there were the cabaret performers including my favorite Mike Albo, who did this scream-inducing parody of TV show “Ugly Betty” by mimicking the gay male character who plays the slavish, somewhat whorish employee of Vanessa Williams’ Cruella deVillish boss and sidekick to her scheming receptionist, Amanda. Other dancers included Ying-Ying Shiau, Liz Riga, Alexander Gish (who portrayed a cute but frightening cherub-faced waiter who got a little over excited about a big ole butcher knife he carried around in his pocket), and Jamacian burlesque dancer Akynos, whose pasty came off at the end of her number, leading her to finish with her left hand over her breast. How do those things stay on anyway???

One of the craziest parts of the evening was when they ran this audience-participation contest, drawing three people out of the audience at seemingly random to compete in ’sexiest in dance’ to Justin Timberlake music. Hill picked on the guy from the fourth row who was cackling loudly throughout, and insisted he come up onstage to be the male contestant. Hill kept calling him “a gay” while he was in the audience, and when he got onstage, Hill said, “Oh, I thought you were a gay out there in the audience, but now that you’re up here I see that you’re not one at all.” Alyssa and I were DYING of embarrassment; he is nuts. Anyway, I don’t know if this guy was part of the act, but after initially looking out at the audience, like, crap, what did I get myself into, he proceeded to, I swear, perform the funniest, sexiest, cutest, lewdest cheesecake / beefcake strip-tease I’ve ever seen. Afterward, Hill asked him what he did for a living and he said vaguely that he was in show-biz. Don’t know who he is, but I definitely want to see him again! I don’t know what the guy’s sexuality was — I try not to make assumptions since I’m usually wrong — but if Hill was right in his final analysis, I think it’s perhaps funniest to see straight men who are freaking out try to do strip-tease…

All in all, I thought it was fun, though, I have to say, it was billed as part of a several-part program Symphony Space is doing entitled “Gender Benders,” and nothing besides the presence of Murray Hill, who is the biggest walking talking gender bender I’ve ever seen, challenged my notions of gender. I guess Shiau and Riga ridiculed the male gaze, the former by standing at the edge of the stage doing nothing more than licking an ice cream cone, the latter by kind of “talking” with her breasts with the assistance of Wolcott, standing behind her; and there were plenty of gay men humorously grabbing their crotches and riffing on both straight and gay male identities, etc. Hill remarked that he’s never been north of 23rd Street (though I saw him at the Supper Club, in Times Square, not long ago…), acting like it’s such a big deal to be all the way uptown, but uptown is still New York City, for cry-eye. This kind of show is more needed for the middle-Americans who frequent Hooters and drool over the waitresses’ tight shirts only to have near-nervous breakdowns when people like Matt and his fellow ABT guys sing at the bar. Also, I found it interesting how the audience would go “woooo” and hoot anytime the women were onstage being ’sexy’, but when the men were on grabbing their crotches, everyone laughed. I just think as a society in general, we’re still very uncomfortable “objectifying” men the same way we do women… Anyway, Keigwin & Co. will be performing at Skirball Center near NYU next week. I definitely want to see more of them!

Just really quickly since this post is now about 100,000 words long, Friday night, on Gia’s Winger recommendation again, I went to see “Becky, Jodi and John” at Dance Theater Workshop. Much more mellow than Keigwin Kabaret, but I found it compelling in its sublelty and bittersweet humor. Choreographed by John Jasperse and featuring him, Becky Hilton, and Jodi Melnick (all 43 years old, oddly enough), it dealt mainly with aging and dance: the dancer’s ‘aging’ body; how changing self-esteem and increasing self-knowlege alters how you present yourself and what you’re willing to do during a performance (after Jasperse asks her to do the project, Melnick goes through a long, humorous litany of problems she’s been having lately with her joints and muscles, and tells him there are certain things she doesn’t like to show anymore, such as her arms); the choreographer’s ‘aging’ mentality and how s/he’s perceived by critics and peers as “old” (at one point, Jasperse came out onstage naked, carrying a load of bricks, placed the bricks down and assembled them into a structure while another dancer read a critic’s review of his work, telling him he was too “formalist” and needed to loosen up); and the power and absolute necessity of maintaining friendships with each other over the years and across the miles (after Jasperse finishes his ‘building’ he walks to Melnick who stares down at his genitals questioningly, humorously, then they perform a beautiful pas de deux illustrating their mutual reliance on each other for physical and emotional support. Like the Forsythe and Young works I blogged about recently, this also was multi-media, using video projections, spoken word, and of course dance to explore its themes. While it was centered around dance, I still think many people could relate to the themes — to the process of aging, feeling your body begin to give, feeling “old” compared to the younger generation, maintaining friendships while people go their separate ways, etc.

Also, I just have to say, I just saw Melnick in another piece, Vicky Schick’s Plum House with Laurel Dugan, also at Dance Theater Workshop, and it blows my mind that she is 43. She looks soooo young. Not that 43 is not young of course! All three dancers did amazing things with their bodies, especially in the first part, where they’re spread out on the floor in various stretch poses. I, for one, could not have the turnout required to do some of that floor work…

Here is a picture of the lobby, where they have a splendid chocolate bar! It was the most crowded I’ve ever seen it, and I think the shows sold out all nights, so hooray for them!

Finally, I just want to point out that Dance Theater Workshop has an interesting little thing on their MySpace blog. In their playbills, they pose a series of questions about the performance you’re there to see, titled “Cat Got Your Tongue?” They are: 1) How did the body move?; 2) How did you feel during the dance?; 3) How was the piece organized?; 4) What was the dancers’ relationship to each other, to the audience?; and 5) What, if anything, do you think the artist wanted to communicate with you? I think they’re interesting questions designed to make you think about what you just saw, thereby getting more out of it. Sometimes, oftentimes, modern dance is difficult to make sense of for the average viewer, which is the main reason, I think, why modern dance does not draw the audiences that ballet and other kinds of dance do. I feel like I get more out of a performance after I blog about it, so I think DTW’s MySpace blog is a potentially wonderful tool.

I don’t want to violate anyone’s privacy so am talking in very general terms, but something that happened at work recently kind of made me go ugh. One of my colleagues is pregnant and, about two weeks ago, a bunch of us were having lunch together and someone asked her the sex of her unborn baby and she said she didn’t yet know but was hoping it would not be a girl. Another co-worker, somewhat shocked, cried out, “why?” Pregnant colleague said she already had a two-year-old girl and she and her sister didn’t get along so well and she didn’t want to repeat that.

Shocked co-worker (whom I’ll call Alison) then said, “ohhhh, I dunno, there are some … uh, issues … with having a younger boy and older girl…”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, because he’ll look up to her and want to be like her and imitate her and everything, and sometimes you just don’t know what to do…”

I must have looked really confused, so she gave an example. The other day, she said, she’d taken her kids (little girl is 7, boy is 5) shopping for beach attire for an upcoming trip to Florida. They were looking at shoes and the boy expressed a strong preference for a pair of turquoise crocs. “Turquoise!!!” she emphasized. She tried to explain to him that no, he just couldn’t have such a color, but he couldn’t understand why. So, she pointed out to him the lovely shit brown and puke green varieties and told him how much she’d LOVE to buy him one of those beauties! His eyes started to well with tears. “He only wants what his sister has,” she said. “What could I say? I mean, he only wants to be like her; it’s just a phase!”

I was wondering why it was such a big deal to just let him wear what he wanted since he was only five, when someone else said her mother-in-law told her she should start dressing her daughter in feminine clothes so the little girl would have more “self-respect.” Fortunately, to this everyone laughed.

“But but but, I can’t buy him the turquiose shoes,” Alison went on, “I mean, I just can’t; he’d be the laughingstock … he’ll start wanting stuff like that all the time and everyone will make fun of him at school.” To this, no one said anything.

So, as I said, that was about two weeks ago. Yesterday, the kids were on spring break so Alison brought them to the office. We have a little work station outside of my office, with a couch and a little lounge area, and she thought it would be a perfect place to park them (her office is just another door down the hall, so she’s close too). She brought them into my office to introduce me, since we’d be next-door neighbors for a couple of hours.

Hehehe. SO CUTE!!! “Say hello to Tonya, you guys,” Alison said. The girl, whom I’ll call Jennifer, walked in and shyly said hi. The boy, whom I’ll call … Marcelo … no, just kidding Just kidding! I just imagine that he was a very fun little boy too … — actually the little boy looked more like Angel, who had to be the coolest little kid as well … Okay, okay I’ll call this little boy Michael.

So Michael shouts out, “Hi Tonya!!!” with an ear-to-ear grin. Alison and I giggled. “Okay, let’s go out here, guys,” she said taking them to the work station. Jennifer promptly took her pink backpack off, pulled out a Curious George book, sat on the couch, and began reading.

“Hey Tonya! I’m gonna make you some pictures, okay?” Michael yelled out, grabbing a pink highlighter and a packet of post-its.

“Shhhh, honey,” Alison said, “she’s working.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I like pictures,” I said.

A few seconds later, he was in my office posting little yellow squares bearing pink scribbly designs all over the place — on the sides and front of my desk, my computer stand, the bottom shelf of the bookcase — anywhere he could reach. “Oh, pretty,” I said, which made him scribble and post even faster.

“Oh honey!” Alison said entering my office. “No, this is, it’s a mess.”

“No no, it’s okay,” I laughed.

“Sorry,” she mouthed at me and took him back outside.

A few seconds later I heard the copy machine going crazy.

“Mommy!” Jennifer called out. I peeked outside just in time to practically collide with Michael.

“Hey Tonya! Here, I want you to have this,” he said handing me a piece of paper.

“What is that?” Alison said, running up.

“This is my dad’s office people,” he explained to me, pointing at a list of names. “Mom, I made 1,000 copies!”

“Honey, there’s personal information on there, including everyone’s passwords, we can’t just give those out to people,” she said exasperated, trying to figure out how to stop the copy machine.

“Mom, I really think that Tonya needs to have it,” he said. So cute!

I thanked him for thinking of me and walked back into my office to let her get things sorted out in the work station.

“I know, Mom, it’s just that I’m SO excited,” I overheard him say.

Minutes later:
“Hey Tonya!”

I peeked out my office door to see Michael now sitting at the work station computer.

“I’m working on this computer. My mom said I could!”

“Wow, that’s great!” I looked at the screen. He was playing paper dolls. There was a figure of a grown woman, not a little girl, wearing a black bra and underwear. So far, he’d given her a beautiful diaphonous light blue chiffon-looking scarf knotted around her neck. “Wow, that’s a very pretty scarf,” I said approaching him.

“She’s going to the store! She needs to put on her shoes!” he said using the cursor to drag a pair of black pumps over to her feet.

“She needs to put on more than that,” Alison said, flatly, now standing behind us. “It’s just a phase,” she whispered to me while gathering his things. “Come on, honey, let’s go back to Daddy’s office. He has a full-time secretary…”

And then he was off My little buddy! True, I would not have got a single thing done yesterday, but oh he was just so cute. I want one!!! Where do I get one!!!

Today, Alison again made a point of telling me he was just going through a phase and that he was just into whatever his sister was, she’d found the paper dolls on the internet and dressed them all the time and he was just imitating her, etc. etc. When pregnant co-worker popped into my office to chat, Alison told her the whole story of yesterday, and they both said, almost in unison, “oh it’s just a phase.”

But why does this have to be a ‘phase’? Is Jennifer just going through a ‘phase’ too? Is Jennifer’s example forcing a false construct on him and is that construct somehow more true for her? I personally would much rather my son be into wearing turquoise shoes to the beach and decorating the room with pink and yellow designs and dressing paper women in chiffon scarves than pretending to blow off his friends’ heads with toy guns. But then he might be taunted by his lovely peers… which obviously no one wants. I don’t have any kids yet, but if and when I do, I’d like to think that I can teach them to think independently, experiment with identities, and stand up to peer pressure… but maybe it’s a lot harder than I think…

My favorite part of Dancing With the Stars last night was watching Tony Dovolani and… Kim was it?… dance to Josh Groban’s live singing. I was getting a bit bored with the show since it was a lot of singing and not a lot of dancing and so was focused on my computer until I peeked up at the screen and saw the lovely lyrical number they were doing — which is why I didn’t get the name of the female dancer; just know she was one of the blondes… Anyway, I just love that kind of dance; it was closest to a Waltz I guess but resembled more of a lyrical contemporary piece with the beautiful ballet costume (light-colored underlying leotard with diaphonous chiffon pieces strewn about for the skirt) and pretty bare feet.

Funny, I’d wanted to do the exact same thing — balletish costume with leotard and chiffon and dance in bare feet — for my first showcase (our music was Take My Breath Away, Jessica Simpson version — so a soft, lyrical rhumba that would easily lend itself to that kind of style), but my then teacher pronounced emphatically, “NO. BARE FEET AND BALLET CLOTHES ARE NOT BALLROOM.” Okay then. Rules and labels and narrow-minded thinking. Love them all; can’t get enough of them. Sorry, not to be cranky, and I did wake up with a bit of a headache today… I know that dance instructors are excited about teaching us the rules that they’ve taken such pains to learn. But I wish they would understand that when you’re a lawyer and you deal all day with Rules, you want to come to your dance studio at night and just bask in the atmosphere of creative freedom that surrounds you there, or that should. I’m a lawyer all day; let me be meeeee in the evening please please…

Anyway, the second contestant to go was, as I expected, Shandi — just because I know people didn’t like her. I actually thought her Jive was quite good. Those Jive kicks are HARD. It’s very difficult to get that bounce, kick, bounce, kick just right, and she did pretty well with them, especially for a beginner. I was also kind of disappointed to see Leeza in the bottom two since I thought she improved so much from the first night. I guess people have their favorites from the get-go. I also think people just love to judge others; couch potatos are probably the best at that. Dancing is frigging hard; I’d love to see the most judgmental of the spectators (I think Sylvia Plath called such people “the peanut-munching crowd”) get off their lazy butts and try.

Tonight, Magda, a teacher at my studio who specializes in standard ballroom — the only one there who does I think — thankfully offered to help with my foxtrot routine! So, she and Luis re-thought some of the parts that didn’t make a lot of sense in terms of the music (some lifts and kicks didn’t correspond that well to the rises in the music) and she put in some more traveling steps like promenade runs (which are really pretty) and traveling grapevines, so that the dance moves about the floor more, like foxtrot should. She also put in some nice lunges and dips since there’s a lot of “up” in the routine and not a lot of “down.” I like her sense of making the dance well-rounded We didn’t finish, which I think everyone knows is making me really nervous, so, sweet thing, she’s listening to the music and watching my DVD of Tharp’s Sinatra Suite to find a couple of nice lifts to fit into the music, so we’ll be ready to finish up next lesson. Then we’ll have a couple of weeks to go over it. And that’ll be that!

So, it’s back to watching the video over and over until I’ve got it! Magda’s such a graceful dancer… and so nice!

When I got home, I found this in my mailslot! It’s a flier advertising the website I was talking about a couple of posts ago, devoted to showing audiences the making of NYCB’s upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet, which Kristin Sloan has helped to film and broadcast on the internet!

I didn’t get home until 8:35 tonight so missed the first half hour of Dancing With the Stars. I can’t help but like Heather. I just really like her personality. Same with Joey. I’m just a personality-drawn person, I guess… How goofy was that stint in the Chippendale’s place with Ian?! I’m sure the producers tell them to do such things. And Karina with the horse-back riding… I’m not sure what she was talking about regarding Argentine tango. I don’t know the origins of Standard International Tango, which is what they dance in the competitions and what most of the contestants on the show are dancing. Argentine tango, which is danced socially in Argentina, originated out of brothels. And the faces are completely the opposite of Standard tango, where you don’t look at each other but are looking off to the side. In social Argentine you’re practically kissing each other you’re so close, and are definitely face to face, cheek to cheek — which is what I think makes it a bit uncomfortable for Americans. In my first studio, where I learned Argentine, the teachers originally were all American. They didn’t have us dancing so face to face. Then, for some reason there was an exodus of the American teachers and the studio owner brought in a bunch of dancers he knew in Argentina. They were shocked at how afraid of each other we were! “It’s another human being. What is with you people!” I remember my teacher, Beatrice, crying out in horror.

Anyway, I’m off on a tangent as usual… It’ll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow night…

Just six weeks til ABT’s opening night at the Met!!!! Unfortunately that means, it’s only five weeks til my little thing…

so not ready. Just sitting here having lunch and trying to go over my choreography in my head and getting really frustrated because I keep forgetting stuff — especially the small stuff. It’s all the silly basics — the slow quick quick slows, the simple box steps, that I can’t remember, not the big things like lifts and fun tricks. I guess that’s normal — when you know something hard is coming you memorize everything around it because you know you have to be ready and psyched up for it, but it’s the little simple basics — which direction they start in, how many there are, which set is slow slow quick quick and which is slow quick quick slow, etc., that you forget. And we don’t even have all the choreography done. I keep telling myself if I’m not ready, it’s okay, I’ll just sit it out this time, enjoy watching my friends, keep this routine for next time, and give myself plenty of time to learn. But I know how mad at myself I’ll be if I wimp out!

I guess I will have to think of my prize for getting through this as the top picture : just relaxing in my seat, having champagne and hanging out with ABT friends during intermission, watching my favorite dancers in the world

Could this post have a longer title?? I just had a crazy weekend… Friday night, my friend Alyssa’s roommate, who is getting her MFA in drama at the New School, appeared in a series of one act plays as part of the school’s student showcase. So we went for support. It was a lot of fun and reminded me of my college days when we would go to downtown Tucson to watch small, but brilliant, theater. My favorite one-act of the night was the one Alyssa’s roommate was in, called “Desire Desire Desire,” by Christopher Durang. It was a riff on Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar” and made me burst out in laughter several times, which I needed since I’ve been kind of stressed lately about dance showcases and other stuff… That also reminded me of Tucson because I remember being introduced to Durang (as I was to so many other playwrights) by some miniscule hole in the wall’s terrific production of “Beyond Therapy” which a friend of a friend was in as well. Fun memories.

Anyway, perhaps the funniest part of the night happened after the performance, during the post-production party. They brought out this lovely display of food, which everyone got a little over-excited about. Apparently no one, including me, had eaten dinner, so the table became a bit overcrowded — particularly the cheese platter (cheese being more filing to an empty stomach than fruit and sweets perhaps…) Well, there was only one cheese tray and a bit of a non-verbal fight actually erupted over it, mainly between two little old ladies, but others, including me I have to confess, got a bit into it as well. This one lady just could not figure out how to work the tongs, which, being made of cheap plastic, ended up breaking, so she stood there frowning trying to figure out how to politely take some cheese. People tried to wait patiently in line while she just stood looking around helplessly, and I for one was getting hungry. Then this other little old lady came from nowhere and basically pushed first lady out of the way, I guess assuming she was done (?), then picked up the broken tongs and looked sadly at them. She tried to slice into the brie with one half of the tong but was taking forever and making a real mess. While we were all trying to be patient, out of nowhere came this guy who, apparently not realizing there was a long cheese line, walked right up behind the lady with the half tong, reached with his fork out right over her head, and began jabbing around at the gouda cubes. When the lady turned around to give him a dirty look, thereby taking more time out of her brie-slicing mission, first lady came pushing her way back through the crowd with another pair of tongs, which she promptly broke on her first attempt to get at a mozzarella ball. That’s when it got ugly. After much harrumphing, people just began reaching over heads, in front of faces, grabbing with their bare hands whatever they could get. Wine cups went flying. First lady, practically in tears over the tongs, picked up an entire goat cheese ball and plopped it onto her plate. “She’s going to get constipated,” Alyssa said shaking her head. Anyway, next time I’ll have to remember to eat before the play, especially if there is an after-party. Above pic is of Alyssa, who is smiling brightly because she ended up with a bit of cheese after all!

Last night I went to another student performance, this one by dancers in the MFA program at Juilliard. The first was a new modern piece by Susan Marshall, the second (and my favorite of the evening) was Twyla Tharp’s Deuce Coupe — a combination of swingy jazz and traditional ballet set to Beach Boys music, and the third a beautifully haunting piece called Soldiers’ Mass by Jiri Kylian. It was my first time seeing the Tharp, which makes sense since this is the first time it’s been performed in NY since 1992 and I haven’t been here that long. I love her work the more I see of it, even with non-professional students performing, and I’d love to see Alvin Ailey do this one. She’s so fun, so funny, and I love how she is able to combine different dance styles to sometimes humorous, sometimes thought-provoking, but always entertaining effect. I know some see her as ‘poppy’ and roll their eyes at the mention of her name, but I stand by my thoughts that if anyone’s work can be used to take off from the current (and hopefully long-lasting!) ballroom craze to revive popular interest in ballet, it is hers.

At the end of Saturday night, I realized that, although I miss seeing all the theater I used to, as I get older I prefer dance. I guess I feel like I can relax and just let my senses take over — listen to the beautiful music and watch the beautiful movement and let it take me wherever it does; I don’t have to listen really intently for each spoken word fearing I may miss something crucial to understanding something else later on.

This is a picture of Lincoln Center, which is currently under construction. Normally, they have a walkway lined with benches passing over 66th Street and connecting Lincoln Center to Juilliard, which is on the side of the street where I’m standing to take the picture. Stupidly, I forgot they were doing construction until I was in the plaza at Lincoln Center, wondering where in the world that bridge went and how I was going to get over the Juilliard! I hate construction — especially since I really liked that bridge! I mean, I like the idea of revitalization, I just wish they could do it, like, overnight!

Today’s New York Times’ Arts and Leisure section contains the first real article I’ve seen by the new chief dance critic, Alastair Macauley. There was a bit of controversy caused by his appointment because of his sex and the fact that he’s from London, not New York (thus arguably bypassing several female critics far more familiar with the New York dance scene). So, since there will probably be a lot of scrutiny of his first few writings, let’s join in and make him feel REALLY welcome, ha ha! Just kidding Anyway, this article is on the current Romeo and Juliet trend: the ballet is being performed by both ABT and the New York City Ballet this upcoming season; ABT is doing the 1965 version by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (my favorite!!!), and NYCB will be doing a new version choreographed by their artistic director Peter Martins. Kristin Sloan of the Winger (and a NYCB dancer of course!) has helped put together a behind-the-scenes video of the upcoming production, which can be viewed on the NYCB website, here. I also linked to it in my blogroll, on the right, under Dance: Ballet, etc. It’s a lot of fun to watch and see how the dancers learn to sword-fight and all that great stuff, so do check it out! Click here to read her post where she talks about it.

So, I guess that’s my biggest complaint about the Macaulay piece — he neglected to mention Sloan’s new exciting project, but then I am partial to her The piece centered on placing the ballet within it’s historical context and comparing the different versions over the years both to each other and to some theatrical, non-dance, versions. He says it’s appropriate for him to write about this ballet as his first piece for the paper because this was the ballet that originally made him fall in love with the art form. I definitely hear him on that! Same with me

He starts off saying he thinks the ballet has been so oft re-choreographed because of the “popular idea . . . that in any case dance is all about sex.” I didn’t know that was a popular idea, and I’d thought of that ballet as being more about romance and doomed love and all that, but maybe that’s just me… But overall, a good article and I learned several new things — one being that the Nureyev version had Mercutio come back to life as a ghost to haunt Juliet and talk her into her final actions! He also talks about different dancers’ interpretations of the roles: Lynn Seymour, MacMillan’s original Juliet from the sixties, for example, danced a rather ‘naughty’ balcony scene fraught with sexual tension. When he’d asked the ballerina why she’d made that artistic choice, she said that she was emulating Judy Densch in the Zefferelli film version! The thing that most struck me though was, when describing Margot Fonteyn’s take on the part, he mentioned she was 56 when he saw her perform. I know she danced all the way up until she was in her mid-sixties, and I wonder why ballet dancers today retire SO young? If she could dance for so long, why not everyone?

I also saw in the Times a full-page ad for ABT!

Under each principal photo, they put a little blurb by a critic praising the dancer Awesome advertising!

Finally in the Times, Style section this time, was a little story on Paulina Porizkova going to get a pedicure in a SoHo salon.

I thought it was funny because I’m pretty sure it was written before she got booted off DWTS (there was only a small parenthetical blurb mentioning it and most of the piece dealt with her new status as dancer and novelist — she has her first novel due out soon, apparently). It was cute, and I’m really glad they still decided to run it after she, unfairly dammit!!! got kicked off.

Finally (and then I’m almost done for the night, I swear), I booked my plane ticket for Blackpool! I’m so excited! But it was a little too stressful, I hate to admit. Ever since 9/11 I have this crazy stupid nervousness of flying, and I say crazy and stupid both because it has been so long since everything happened and I just feel like I should be so over it by now, and because I really do love to travel and this obviously hinders that. For the first couple of years afterward, I wouldn’t even fly — I just kept taking trains and going on cruises — the latter of which can get ridiculously expensive, especially if you’re just using the ship as a mode of transportation and not appreciating all of the amenities like the entertainment and food and all. I started flying a few years ago when, believe it or not, I had to go to a dance competition in Florida and couldn’t take off all the time from work needed to take the 30-hour-each-way Amtrak. So, I guess dance got me flying again I’ve since taken many flights, and I guess I’m okay once we’re in the air, but it’s just sitting on that runway thinking… ugh! It actually has been good for me to read the Winger and Matt’s blog and see all the fearless ABT people flying all over creation — makes me feel like if they can do it, everyone can do it, I can do it, ‘there’s nothing to fear but fear itself’…