Several interesting races happening today in New York. The one I’m watching most closely is that for Manhattan District Attorney. I’m personally hoping for Richard Aborn, who takes a more preventative than punitive approach to crime, advocating investing in after-school programs for at-risk kids, crackdowns on interstate gun trafficking and implementing gun buyback programs in order to decrease the number of illegal guns on NYC streets, and treating drug addiction as a public health problem. And most importantly, he believes in correcting the racial injustices that seem so inherent to our criminal justice system right now.
Anyway, whomever you vote for, just remember to vote.
Above image taken from here.
My friend Alyssa is an independent art curator and she’s working with Art For Change on an upcoming festival in East Harlem, called Hacia Afuera. The festival will take place August 22-23 in the streets and parks of Spanish Harlem.
The festival organizers have issued a call for submissions or project proposals in installation, visual, and performance art, which includes music and dance — that speaks to that community and has a social justice bent. I know some choreographers and dance artists read my blog, so I thought I’d put the word out here. If you’re interested in submitting (and please consider doing so if you have work that fits), go here for more information. The deadline is July 17th.
There’s currently a debate raging in London over Sadler’s Wells (the most important venue there for contemporary dance) and its new season lineup showcasing the work almost entirely of male choreographers. Thanks to Pinballpeople for pointing me to it!
See Guardian posts by dance and culture writers Judith Mackrell and Charlotte Higgins here, here, and here (and read the comments section in that last link; some are by choreographers and are very astute.)
Alistair Spalding, the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells, has apparently responded that he realizes there’s an imbalance but can’t do anything about it; he has to choose the works he thinks best. Spalding posits one reason for the lack of female choreographers as being that women are perhaps not as “assertive” as men, but it’s unclear to me what exactly he means.
Continue reading ‘ARE THE ‘BUZZIEST’ CHOREOGRAPHERS MALE IN THE US AS WELL AS UK? AND DO CRITICS IN THE UK HAVE MORE POWER?’
I am continuing to get emails from members of the FDNY over this, accusing me of making the whole thing up. Why would I do that? I was obviously really upset about it, which is why I wrote about it. Why are they so threatened and unable to take criticism? And why not limit comments to the post?
Well, the wonderful James Wolcott, whose writerly support I’m always so immensely thankful for, found the story compelling and quoted from it, so it’s not like they can harass me into taking it down.
I just received this email in response to my
One-Sided post (which is nonfiction and is most definitely true in its entirety), which was also posted on Huffington Post.
I read your story
One-Sided: EMTs Should Not Make Assumptions in the Huffington Post. As a 17 year vet of FDNY EMS I must say I was shocked by your story and your allegations. You have made a lot of disturbing claims against what you call “City EMT’s” and I must say simply based on what you have written I have my doubts about your story.
You are on a train when a person falls “unconscious”. They get the conductor he calls for help and the train waits at the station. Now you write:
“Seconds later, two women saying they were nurses appeared. They carefully turned the man over, felt a pulse, and ensured he was breathing. Sighs of relief spread throughout the car and the West Indian woman squeezed my hand hopefully. One nurse asked for some kind of stick to hold the man’s tongue down. A woman fumbled in her purse and produced a nail file, which the nurses took. They told a burly man sitting nearby to hold the collapsed man’s heavy, boot-clad legs up in the air and asked a woman to search his pockets for identification to give paramedics when they arrived. When the nurses pulled the file from the man’s mouth, it was covered with blood. “Oh no, oh God!” voices echoed. “He probably just bit his tongue,” someone said. Several people had now come from other cars and were looking in, concerned. “Is he drunk?” a man asked. “Don’t think so. I was near him and didn’t smell anything,” said another.”
I wonder why anyone would stick anything into someone’s mouth?
If you haven’t yet heard, Facebook has modified its terms of service to say that they now own all content posted or uploaded to the site and can use it in any way they wish without compensating you. This is of particular interest to the dance community because there are a great many of us using Facebook and uploading all kinds of pictures, videos, dance reviews, blog posts, etc. Not only can they now use without your permission anything that you upload, but, if you have a Facebook widget on your site inviting readers to post a link from your site to Facebook, it’s treated the same as an upload — you’ve automatically consented to giving full rights over that material to Facebook.
I’m not an IP lawyer but this looks on its face like unenforceable dumbassery — look at this NYTimes review for example: according to Facebook’s new TOS, they own not only Sir Alastair’s words, but the photos and slide show of Evidence as well because of the Facebook widget that pops up when you click the “share” button. So under these new terms it seems that they could sell the photos for use in a commercial or advertisement without any compensation to the dance company or newspaper. Obviously, ludicrously far-reaching consequences.
But since this has a lot of smart people up in arms, I think everyone would do best to reconsider what they upload to Facebook, at least until it’s all sorted out. For more information on this issue, go here, here, and here.
Update: Here’s the latest, kind of summarizing the whole thing.
I was riding the Brooklyn-bound 2 train during evening rush hour when suddenly a man sitting across from me collapsed onto the woman next to him. The man was white, mid-forty-ish, with oily hair and lines of black under his fingernails and in the crevices of his hands. His jeans and jacket bore caked dirt and his pants were very worn. He may well have been homeless.
Of course people often fall asleep on the subway, and their head ends up on the next person’s shoulder. But they usually wake up, embarrassed and apologetic. This man didn’t budge. And I remembered him appearing fairly alert; when I boarded he’d made eye contact with me.
The woman next to him tried to inch away. When his body trailed hers as she went, she tapped his shoulder. When he still didn’t move, she took both hands and tried to push him upright. When she let go, he lurched slightly left, then fell forward, straight to the floor, crashing head first into the metal gear box under the seats.
Everyone in the car heard the thud and gasped. He remained motionless and I started to worry he’d had some kind of seizure or stroke.
Continue reading ‘One-Sided’
As one of my Twitter friends said, “Feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. When I wake up, the world will be glorious, full of hope & promise & wonderous things to discover! Obama!”
(photo by Paul Kolnik, of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations)
It’s actually very early in the morning (like, still last night), but when I get up, I’ll probably be adding to this post, live-blogging the events throughout the day as I watch them (sadly, only on TV)
Happy happy day, everyone!
So, I’m watching on TV now but am thinking of going to one of the common areas in NY to watch on a big screen TV. I know I’ll be cold (I think the Apollo theater is the only inside venue and I’m sure it’s full by now) and probably won’t see as much, but sometimes it’s just fun for a sense of community.
I’m actually liking NBC’s coverage better than CNN’s. NBC has some knowledgeable people on — I liked the presidential historian who talked about the first inauguration (Washington’s of course) and the most difficult transition of power (1953, Eisenhower) — CNN is just interviewing people and the commentators are saying such cliched things: “It’s a new dawn, “it’s a new day,” “this is historical,” etc. What would David Foster Wallace have said…
Continue reading ‘Today is Here!’
(photo by Paul Kolnik, of Clifton Brown from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, in Love Stories)
Happy Martin Luther King Day, you guys! Happy week!
Not to sound melodramatic, but it just seems like the recession is really changing the way some people live. My apartment building seems like party central during weekday days now. Halls are filled with the cacophany of TV cartoons, soap operas, talk shows, and blaring stereos, all of which easily penetrate walls, floors, and ceilings. Either a lot of people are out of work or they work at home and enjoy lots of background noise. And people are up all night, blaring stereos, the same noise, till all hours of the morning. You ask someone politely to please turn it down a bit and they mumble and slam the door in your face. And the other day I smelled pot coming from someone’s apartment, again, during a weekday day. This used to be a professional building, with lawyers and journalists and the like as residents. Now everyone’s rude and antisocial. Maybe the middle-classes are starting to get a small sense of what those in poorer communities have had to deal with: hopelessness, frustration, anger, boredom…
