I saw this yesterday — one of the best films I’ve honestly seen in as long as I can remember. It’s a perfect tragicomedy for our times. It’s about a couple of Japanese businessmen who lose their jobs to outsourcing, and the chaos — sometimes devastating but usually sadly hilarious — that ensues. But don’t worry if you hate dark comedies — it ends on a beautiful note — literally.

If it’s playing anywhere near you (and it’s one of those small arthouse films, so unfortunately, it may not be), definitely do not miss it!

Last night I went with Dance Times Square on their holiday party outing to the Latin Quarter, a salsa nightclub in midtown on the east side, near Grand Central.

It was fun — I haven’t social danced in a really long time! Do think I might have hurt my knee though. How, I have no idea. I’ve damaged my meniscus coming out of a fish dive weirdly, trying to force turnout on an arabesque in attitude (back leg up, bent knee), trying to force turnout on rhumba walks, trying to force turnout in samba walks, trying to force turnout in ballet, yadda yadda, but I didn’t know you could really hurt yourself doing basic salsa steps?! Hopefully it’s just a bruise…

Anyway party started at the studio, where we had an hour-lesson in open Salsa taught by Tony and Melanie (who are back from Canada’s So You Think You Can Dance). Picture above, student Elaine (my friend) is in foreground dancing with Tony. After the class, we had food (lots of good munchy things like pate and cheese and meat slices and this enormous cheesecake, and bottles and bottles of wine ), then walked several blocks to the club.

The club was nice, but small dance floor … although I have nothing to compare it to since I don’t go out to a lot of social dance clubs. They had a few bars (although, I find it a bit hard to dance drunk) and little areas for sitting around and chatting. We took an area on the second floor, and, when it got too crowded on the main floor, just danced up there. I danced mostly with my friend Steve, but then this guy who was not in with our group kept asking me to dance, which was nice at first, until I realized he was kind of a pelvis-grinder. Just too close for comfort. So, I told him I was tired the next couple times he asked, which of course made it hard to dance with others then. Steve told me I was fun to dance with because I unwind (out of a turn) like no one else, thanks to my “sinuous” body!

Salsa band was fun, but it’s kind of funny; I’ve mainly been to parties at dance studios where they play a variety of music. So, I kept getting ready for a samba or rhumba or swing or something, and it never happened. Also, I really kind of wish people danced more in groups here, like they do in this video (when you get to the salsa club part, around 4:50). How fun would that be? And would seem to cut down on someone’s hogging another person all night. But I guess that kind of group dancing necessitates sharing a culture where you all know the same words and funny little moves, which doesn’t really happen these days … I guess except for the Electric Slide.

Anyway, very fun to see old friends again. I really should start taking a group class again at some point because it’s good for socialization, and, I realized after the night was over what a real workout it had been.

More formal review coming soon on ExploreDance.com.

Tonight at 8pm, Deborah Friedes will livestream Misnomer Dance Company’s Being Together on The Winger. You can watch and chat with other viewers. I wrote about the dance here. If you can watch, please tell me what you think!

(photo by Rachel Papo from NYTimes)

I guess the Brokeback Mountain opera (to be made by composer Charles Wuorinen) is on hold for the moment (hopefully, it’ll still happen eventually). But mainly over curiosity over the Brokeback-composer-to-be, I went to the Guggenheim recently for a Works & Process event celebrating Wuorinen’s 70th birthday.

The first part of the program consisted of Sean Curran Dance Company dancing to Wuorinen’s The Mission of Virgil, a deeply tense, dramatic piece for two pianos that took as its inspiration Dante’s Inferno. The dancers appropriately thrashed about in frenzy, crawled around the floor looking animalistic and like creatures from a netherworld, and stomped in unison evoking Satanic wrath — all with immense expressiveness and very good precision of form.

But of course I’ve seen dance performed to classical or modern music before. I was most interested in the second part of the program — Ashberyana — in which Wuorinin had set to operatic music (baritone with four stringed instruments, a piano and trombone) four John Ashbery poems from the poet’s book Wakefulness.

I don’t know that much about music (yet; am learning through Tchaikovsky!) but from what I’ve heard thus far (John Adams, Wuorinen), modern opera music is so harsh, so severe, to me, and it all seems so low-keyed and monotone. With Adams’s Doctor Atomic, that made sense given the intellectually dense, emotionally heavy nature of the story, but the set of poems Wuorinen chose of Ashbery’s seemed not so much so, but instead, by turns humorous, playful with words and logic, dreamy, surreal, rhythmic. And yet it seemed the intensity of the music — violins sounding like slashes of a knife, the cello a blow to the head, and the baritone’s voice so virile, powerful, menacing, almost as if he were threatening with each word — didn’t ideally mesh with the poems.

I don’t know… judge for yourself if you like: go here to read at least one of the poems in the piece (“Dear Sir or Madam”) — scroll down; and go here to hear the poems set to music and song.

I wonder if a Brokeback opera will / would sound similarly furious and damning.

I saw this movie yesterday and highly recommend it. I found it through Lauren Cerand’s weekly Smart Set column on Maud Newton’s blog. She often has very good suggestions for offbeat cultural things to do in NY. I wrote about the movie here.

(David Hallberg and Nicola Curry in Citizen, photo by Rosalie O’Connor)

Sadly, today is my last ABT performance of the fall season. I’ve been to two others in the last week that I haven’t had time to write about, but will do a wrap-up soon. Finally got a picture of Citizen (above) that shows the costumes I was going on about pretty well. And below is Company B, probably my favorite dance overall of this season, or at least one of my favorites.

(Craig Salstein in the middle, Misty Copeland on the far left — two of my favorite, most dramatic, dancers — and Mary Mills Thomas and Simone Messmer on the right. Photo by Gene Schiavone.)

Did you guys see Center Stage: Turn it Up last night? What did you think? There’s a discussion going on in the comments section of this post.

Okay I am off to my last ABT performance… Oh, don’t forget to turn back your clocks today, you guys. My main clock (that I rely on) automatically turned itself back an hour last week, since that was the old daylight savings time, and I was almost late for a performance…

Interesting decoration I saw on the street.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Also, don’t forget, the night after Halloween, (Saturday, November 1) Oxygen cable network is airing the premiere of the new movie Center Stage 2, or Center Stage: Turn It Up. According to the network’s website, it’s scheduled to show a couple of times that evening, as well as the following Sunday and Wednesday. So you have plenty of chances

(photo from ABT)

Blah! I had a very strange dream last night in which this one basically told me in his own sweet way that I need to calm down and not stress over blogging like a mad fiend. I have no idea why Angel Corella was on my mind since, although my favorite ballet company begins their City Center season tonight, he, for the second CC season in a row now, is not participating (likely to work on his own company, in Spain). Which is probably why he invaded my dreams — I’ll be missing him badly these next two weeks.

I do know why blogging like a crazed nutter was on my mind. I’m trying to juggle way too much. I’m like a rabbit on speed these days. While I love blogging about dance, sadly, it doesn’t pay and I need to spend less time writing ridiculously long reviews (which I don’t think people appreciate anyway) and more time on paying work (and on writing the two novels I’m currently working on simultaneously, as well as revising my first, and on legal CLE courses so I can keep my license). I honestly think I was less busy when I was practicing law full time.

So, in the interest of shorter reviews (there will be a couple of longer ones in other publications, and I’ll link when they’re up), here goes my last, insane, week:

1) Chase Brock Experience:

Went to this last night. Was supposed to see Danny Tidwell perform as a guest artist but he didn’t show, nor did Neil Haskell. Edwaard Liang did, and he and Elizabeth Parkinson (Tony-nominated star of Tharp / Billy Joel project, Movin’ Out, pictured above in John Bradley photo, taken from here) were, by far, the highlights. Parkinson, in specific, showed me how a great dancer can make any choreographer look good. Everything she did had meaning, even basic choreography (and Brock’s choreography is very basic) like rising to the balls of her feet. The way she went on releve was heavenly.

I hadn’t heard of Brock, but he’s a 25-year-old choreographer who makes theater, modern, and ballet (non-pointe) dances. His modern and ballet were lacking — choreography was very basic, very unoriginal. It was like he was a Larry Keigwin but without the ingeniousness, originality, and sophisticated sense of humor. He’s young though, and can learn a lot by watching other, more sophisticated artists.

2) Three Movements

This is an off-off-Broadway play on Theater Row I saw on Sunday, about the Balanchine, Tanaquil LeClerq, Suzanne Farrell true-story melodrama. The characters were given different names, but playwright Martin Zimmerman made clear it was based the Balanchine story.

First, I finally got to meet (NYTimes writer and now blogger) Claudia La Rocco, in the elevator of all places! Fun fun – -by far the best part of the afternoon, as well as hanging out with my ballroom friend, Mika.

If you’re not a balletomane, story is basically this: Balanchine, the Russian / American choreographer, could only work, and could only fall in love (non-sexually, as many contend he was a closeted gay man) with ballerinas who could be his muse. He often married his muses, but of course, no sex. He married his muses, then obsessed over their bodies, every little flaw, and starved them (in the documentary Ballets Russes, many of the dancers remember him taking food away from his wife Maria Tallchief, because she was too “fat” — ie: large-boned; their marriage lasted approximately 5 minutes, because Tallchief had a brain). Is it obvious yet how much I like Balanchine as a person?

So, he married Tanaquil LeClerq, up-and-coming ballerina extraordinaire, his main muse, and therefore star of all of his ballets. After driving her hard in rehearsal — the choreographer comes across here as completely impossible to please — she collapses, tragically stricken with polio, unable ever to walk again. I don’t know why more writers don’t focus on her — her story seems the most awful, the most pathetic, the most heart-wrenching. Because she can no longer be his muse, he falls out of love with her. He must look for a new one, which he finds in 18-year-old Suzanne Farrell. Of course he falls in love with her, dumps bedridden LeClerq, and proposes to Farrell (he’s 60, mind you, and is dumbfounded when she doesn’t accept). But Farrell is in love with a male ballet dancer in the troupe, Paul Mejia. In a jealous rage, Balanchine fires Mejia (yes, the man is a walking advertisement for the need for sexual harassment law), fires Farrell, and threatens she’ll never be anything without him, etc. etc.

It’s very hard to make Balanchine likeable. Here, I could tell there were many in the audience who knew nothing about him, judging by all the snickers and harrumphs when the actor (Mike Timoney) recited his more misogynistic fare (telling Farrell her tiny thighs were too fat — which the dancer recounts at the beginning of her autobiography, so it’s not untrue — and screaming at her later when she tries to leave him, telling her he didn’t teach her, but “created” her — the man had a major God complex, to put it mildly). To me, this play did nothing to make me feel any sympathy toward Balanchine whatsoever. Nor did I feel what it was about him that made his work genius. But, then, I already knew the story and had preconceived notions of how I’d feel upon seeing it dramatized. Perhaps someone who didn’t already know the story is a better judge here?

It’s no mystery why writers choose to re-tell this story. It makes for great drama. Of the fictionalized accounts I’ve read though, I like Adrienne Sharp’s the most, and recommend it, particularly if you don’t know the story (it’s a short story contained in this collection, all about dancers). She most softened Balanchine’s edges, making him human, vulnerable, and to some extent, even forgivable.

(all photos from the play, by Jacquelyn TerHar, above, Erin Fogarty as Farrell, Mike Timoney as Balanchine)

(Timoney, and Maria Portman Kelly as LeClerc)

(ditto from above)

The play runs through October 26th and tix are $18.

3) San Francisco Ballet

(photo Andrea Mohin, NYTimes)

Went back for more on Saturday, and loved them again. Dancer-wise, they are one of the best companies in the world. Everyone, down to the most recently-hired corps member, is just flawless. Standing out to me again were the same ones as before – Lorena Feijoo, Davit Karapetyan, Pascal Molat (their bravura dancer), and the newbie Cuban guy Taras Domitro — probably because I was looking for them; they also had main roles though.

As far as the dances go, my favorites (I saw two out of three programs) were Concerto Grosso and On a Theme of Paganini, both by the company’s artistic director, Helgi Tomasson; Ibsen’s House, by Val Caniparoli, whose work I’d never seen before; and Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments. Sir Alastair did not like anything on that list besides the last and, though I disagree with him, I can see his point. Tomasson’s choreography is very basic, very classical ballet, nothing out of the traditional vocabulary, and nothing like the richness, the variety, the suspenseful development, and the engrossing intricacies of Balanchine. Seeing the Balanchine next to Tomasson makes you realize Balanchine’s genius (the way a play about him likely never could).

But what I like about Tomasson is that he knows how near-perfect his dancers are, and he showcases that to maximum, brilliant, spectacular effect. Concerto Grosso is basically a male ballet class, beginning with simple tendus, all the way up to the super-advanced ginormous leaps, barrell turns, and twisty, impossible-looking corkscrew jumps. These men are such excellence personified, I could sit there and watch that ballet repeat all day long. In fact, I recommend to anyone seriously trying to learn ballet to see this company, and watch very closely. The dancers are not only perfectly precise, every movement perfectly, fully executed, but they somehow add so much character and passion to every little thing they do. Even non-story ballets grow to have little narratives with this lot.

Which is why I liked Ibsen too. This is not so much a rendition of any of Ibsen’s plays as a kind of an expressionistic work of Ibsen’s universe. Women wearing richly hued fabrics in 19th Century designs, dance in solo, in units, and with their men, all of their stories fraught with drama, with anger, conflict, love. I didn’t know what exactly was going on in each little segment, and I don’t think the choreographer meant for you to, but watching the dancers lament, cherish, struggle both internally (which, brilliantly, could be read on both face in movement of the body, particularly with Feijoo) and with each other, was deeply engaging. And made me want to read up on my Ibsen!

Philip has some more great pictures of the company on his blog, here and here.

4) Cynthia Gregory at Barnes & Noble

On Friday night, I went to see the legendary ballerina give a talk with writer Joel Lobenthal at the B&N at Lincoln Center, basically to promote her new DVD, of her dancing with equally legendary Fernando Bujones (now deceased). We saw some clips of that DVD, particularly of her dancing Strindberg’s Miss Julie (had no idea there was a ballet made from that play!) and excerpts of her dancing Sleeping Beauty. She was a truly gorgeous dancer, moved with a great deal of emotion and purpose and fluidity, and with her size, seemed to devour the stage (kind of like a Veronika Part). And she was very dramatic, very expressive — would have been my kind of dancer, and I can see why Apollinaire loves her. Apollinaire’s also right about Bujones: he does resemble my favorite!

Gregory has a sweet, very charming personality. She talked about dancing with Bujones, and her various other partners, including Erik Bruhn, and Nureyev, whom she characterizes (unlike many who’ve worked with him) as very sweet and mild-tempered, albeit passionate, and said she was thinking of writing a book about all of her male partners — she danced with basically everyone who was anyone in the 70s and 80s. She was greatly encouraged to do so (write the book, that is) by the crowd (which pretty much packed the reading room).
One thing I found interesting, she said Bruhn taught her how to make up words to her movements and her miming gestures, which helped a great deal with her acting. Brilliant, Erik Bruhn! So, inside, she was singing words to herself while dancing. I think all dancers should do this, so they know what they’re trying to do, all the better to show us.

She talked about what she learned from other female dancers of her day, Carla Fracci (how to imbue her roles with humanity), Natalia Makarova (making the most of slow, dramatic developpes), how she coaches today, what it was like to work with big choreographers like Ashton, Tudor, and Balanchine (only worked with the latter once), traveling with the company, and just her life in general. She also mentioned she’s taken up painting and there will be a showing of her work in December at the Vartali Salon (yes her hair salon!), in NY.

5) Doctor Atomic

(photo, Suzanne DeChillo, NYTimes)

I saw this opera at the beginning of last week at the Met. It tells the true story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his work in creating the world’s first atomic bomb, which we of course dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during WWII. The opera takes place before we bombed Japan, though, in July 1945 when Oppenheimer and his crew were testing it in New Mexico. It deals with the different personalities involved — Oppenheimer and his wife, his co-workers, the demanding military man who oversaw production — and each person’s internal conflicts and power struggles with the others.

Because I am tired and hungry — I started this post nearly 4 hours ago — I’m just going to refer you to Anthony Tommasini’s review for description, to scenes of the opera on the Times website, to the Met’s mini-site, and to Alex Ross’s blog where you can listen to one of the best arias in the work.

As I said before, I don’t have a lot of opera-going experience, but I liked this and think it’s definitely worth waiting in line for one of those $30 tickets, as I did. In particular, I liked: the sets — the mobile art-work suggesting pieces of debris hanging from the ceiling, the enormous bomb itself (anatomically correct, as the artist worked from a model), the cubicle-d office the physicists worked in, the posters of the actual people involved posted at times over the cubicle holes in place of their bodies, the gorgeous Native American katchina-like statues that at one point stand atop the the cubicles in warning; some of the choreographed movement — at one point singers are contorted in their cubicles, limbs askew, doing a prolonged handstand, their legs and feet bent awkwardly, shoved up against one side — in synecdoche of the effects of the blast; the libretto, comprised of actual documents from that period, writings and speeches of Oppenheimer, and the poetry of Baudelaire, John Donne, and Muriel Rukeyser, beloved by Oppenheimer; and of course the John Adams score itself, creating the whole atmosphere of horror, conflict, fear, and at the end, right before the blast, the drums just beat through your body — I was actually shaking — and this is followed by the voice of a Japanese woman searching for loved ones, for water, asking for help. The whole thing is spectacular, chilling, haunting.

Okay, I don’t know how well I obeyed, Angel, but it’s time to stop, time for my poached eggs & croissant

(photo by Linda Vartoogian, from The Ballerina Gallery)

On October 17, at 7:30 p.m., legendary ballerina Cynthia Gregory will speak to Joel Lobenthal (dance critic of the now sadly defunct NY Sun) at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center. She’ll be promoting a new DVD, Together, of her work with Fernando Bujones.

My review of the movie “Whatever Lola Wants” that I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival is now up. I feel badly for disliking it so. I really wanted to like it…

The filmmaker spoke after the showing and he seemed like such a nice guy, but I had to be honest about my reasons for not liking his movie. I’m sure he got lots of good reviews, even though it is a small film. I wonder if critics always feel badly when they write negative reviews?

Before I left for the Caribbean, I saw several films at the Tribeca Film Festival, which I still have to blog about. The first was the documentary “Gotta Dance” about the NetSationals, the first ever senior citizen cheerleading dance team, which entertained at halftime during New Jersey Nets’ home games. It was a sweet film. I wrote about it for Explore Dance here. Above are some blurry pics I took in the theater, where, after the film, some of the dancers came up and did a little hip hop performance, then spoke briefly about the movie.

Soon to come on Explore Dance will be my review of the other dance movie I saw, “Whatever Lola Wants,” a narrative that I didn’t like as well.

Crazy day yesterday. I waited in line for nearly two hours to buy my Tribeca Film Festival tickets. The festival takes place April 23-May 4. Tickets went on sale to American Express cardholders yesterday, they’ll go on sale to downtown residents on April 18, and on the 19th to the general public.

I always love this festival. My dad is a big film buff, a would-be filmmaker really, and he’s gone to practically every film festival in existence. But I feel like this one is kind of my own; I feel a special fondness for it since DeNiro established it in the aftermath of 9/11 in order to re-charge the lower Manhattan economy. I worked two blocks from the World Trade Center and frequently hung out in Tribeca, and it took me a long time to get over 9/11. I remember sobbing while waiting in line to see a festival movie the first year, standing on an upper floor of the Regal Battery Park Cinemas, standing by a window overlooking Ground Zero.

Anyway, this year there are two movies related to dance — I mean, there are lots of great-looking movies, but two involve dance: “Whatever Lola Wants“, a narrative about a struggling NYC dancer who follows an intriguing man to Morocco, where she becomes enthralled with belly dance; and “Gotta Dance“, a documentary about the first ever cheerleading team for seniors.

Funny, but while I was waiting in line at the festival’s new Village box office for tickets, I ran into an old friend, Claire, from my former studio, Dance Times Square. She and her friend were waiting in line to buy tickets for all of their friends and family to “Gotta Dance,” which it turns out, they are in! She also told me she’s performing in the upcoming Dance Times Square student showcase, on May 19th, and that Pasha Kovalev and Anya Garnis are scheduled to dance a number or two as well It’s so wonderful of them to keep performing in these student showcases and local things, since now, they obviously don’t have to.

Another movie that I’m psyched about is “Elite Squad” by a Brazilian documentarian I really like, Jose Padilha. I’d really liked his “Bus 174” about a young man from the Rio ghetto who held a busload of passengers hostage. Like the best true crime literary journalists, his films have a way of finding the larger significance of a story, bringing out the human element without resort to sensationalism, and making you feel for all people involved. This one’s about police force corruption in Rio. Padilha co-wrote with Braulio Mantovani, writer of the famous “City of God.”

Afterward, I walked around the corner to the Strand bookstore, and bought these three books. I’d gone for the new Pulitzer prize winner (the first for a Dominican author), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, which I can’t wait to read, but ended up not wanting to spend so much money, and these, being older, were on sale. I’ve been scouring NYC bookstores for anything written by Pauline Kael for some time now, and ridiculously haven’t been able to find a thing. She’s only just about the most famous art critic ever, right?! It’s been only seven years since her death and now bookstores are no longer bothering to stock her; horrible. Anyway, at least the Strand came through. And, I also got this book by Dominick Dunne, since apparently I’m into true crime lately, and Norman Mailer’s advice to writers. I guess I’ll wait for a 30% discount Borders coupon for the Diaz.

Last, I was so famished and with all that standing in line for the movie tickets, I knew I couldn’t make it home without passing out, so I ended up at “Buono Sera” on University Place. They don’t seem to have their own website, but here’s the New York review. The maitre d looks and talks just like Vincent D’Onofrio, which was fun, and they had a great small band playing in the back, near a little screen showing filmed aerial views of various parts of Italy — very interesting idea for a restaurant, showing video clips of the homeland like that. Service was excellent; I don’t think I ever had a water glass that wasn’t filled to the brim, and when I noticed the films projected on the back wall and turned around to watch, ‘Vincent’ apparently thought I was looking for the waiter and came over, apologized, and told me he’d take my order instead! I only wish their food had been as good as their entertainment and service. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. The wine was excellent as was the panna cotta dessert. The only thing I wasn’t in love with was my main dish — the gnocchi. It was fine and everything I’d expect from a plate of potato dumplings covered with marinara sauce, but there nothing extra special about it; it was just there, unlike the panna cotta. Also the foccaccia was hard on the edges and I wasn’t in love with the dipping sauce — just a basic marinara.

Anyway, okay enough blabbering. I have to go read my books.

Although I really don’t like this picture of them (taken from America’s Ballroom Challenge website — it was the only one they had of them; copyright of Jeffrey Dunn); the only thing I didn’t like about their showdance was that ending pose. Kind of a fish dive but not a real one or her arm wouldn’t be wrapped around his neck like that, and her bottom foot should be touching her top knee and it’s nowhere near it. Lifts actually always look a little weird in Standard because the shoes aren’t flexible and you can’t point your toes, so the line is off. Anyway, aside from the ending pose, I loved them — both their showdance and their group dancing. In particular I love him — better than her old partner Jonathan Wilkins even. He’s faster, swifter, and sharper — especially his Tango. That really blew me away. I’m happy for her that she ended up with someone like him. I had thought Jonathan retired from competition and that’s why they broke up, but I was wrong; he’s just moved back to his native England and is now competing for the UK with Hazel Newberry, a former British champion. It’ll be very interesting to see how they place respective to Katusha and Arunas in the world championships this year!

I also really liked the showdance of Igor Litvinov and Yulia Ivleva.

This is a photo from their group dance number (all photos by Jeffrey Dunn), not their showdance — they were the ones dressed in the Mod Squad / Elvis outfits who danced to the James Brown medley. Normally I prefer traditional ballroom dance to the more “creative” caricatures, but this one I liked because their use of the music wasn’t at all what you expected. Who would have ever thought of putting a Viennese Waltz to Brown, a Tango to “I Feel Good”! And it all worked — the rhythm as well as, unbelievably, the style. It was fun and their transitions between styles were excellent.

And I liked Urs Geisenhainer and Agnes Kazmierczak for almost the opposite reason.

They performed only to one song, but put several dance styles to it, including some Latin, and at the end even some breaking isolations. At points, such as the beginning, they uniquely combined Tango, a Standard dance with Cha Cha, a Latin. I’ve seen Latin dances combined with each other and Latin and Ballroom in one routine but with transitions between them. But I haven’t often seen Standard and Latin steps actually combined into one like that — it was like a Tango promenade / cha cha chas. Very cooly unique. And all of the dances looked equally good on them. Talk about versatility!

For exhibitions, as I said earlier, I love Austin Joson and Elizabeth Lakovitsky.

He keeps growing and growing; he’s starting to look like a little man. And only two years ago Elizabeth was a little girl. I know they’ve worked hard on their Paso Doble and it shows. They have a really cute jive and a sweet rumba too, but I think Paso is their favorite. That routine, with that kind of foreboding music, was rather mature, as cohost Ron Montez said! They have some polishing to do (and he has some more growing to do so he’ll catch up with her ) but I think they’re going to be really great someday.

I liked this couple too, Anton Belyayev and Karolina Paliwoda, who recently turned pro.

Sometimes the best dancers are just coming from the amateur ranks. I thought her form was fantastic, and I love the simplicity both of their routine and costumes. As Montez pointed out, she had no rhinestones on that dress and I love that somone has the courage to do something different. There’s too much glitter in some of these ballroom comps and sometimes it’s meant to compensate for lack of quality in the dancing. And they performed basic steps with such clarity, Montez was even able to use them as a model for pointing out to the audience the elements of a proper rumba. Montez is a good host: he notices small details and he’s interested in imparting the mysteries of technique to the audience.

The only thing, Standard in general is just kind of boring on TV; it doesn’t come across the same as in a live comp — somehow part of the magic is lost, kind of like with some of the filmed ballet (particularly ensemble work). I don’t know why that is exactly. I guess it’s the weightlessness factor: dances that are more grounded, like Latin and Tap have more weight and don’t lose much resonance when reduced to two dimensions. More light, feathery, weightless dances like ballet and Standard Ballroom just lose impact when not three-dimensional. That’s Paul Parish’s theory anyway. Hmmmm.

Also, extremely annoyingly, the ABC website no longer contains an email address where you can email questions, and ABC isn’t a part of the Great Performances series, so I don’t know how to get a hold of them. A couple of people asked me about songs they used in the group dances. I’ll try to find out how to contact them, but often, the event organizers don’t even remember which songs they used. They usually have a bunch of songs suitable for each dance style already downloaded into the computer, so that someone just hits “Cha Cha” for a cha cha heat, or “Rumba” for that dance. I was so disappointed when I’d hear a song I loved and would ask around and no one had a clue what I was talking about. If you ever go to competitions, though, visit the shopping pavilion (where they have all the costumes). There’s usually a music vendor there and they have TONS of ballroom CDs for both Latin and Standard. They have tables and tables of headphones and walkmans and you can sit there for hours and listen. If you’re in NY, Worldtone has a decent selection. If you’re neither in NY nor have any comps near you, you can visit DanceVision website. A lot of the songs are repeated on numerous tapes, but even if you don’t find the particular song you heard that way, you’ll definitely find a million others. I’ll let you know, though, if can find ABC people! Annoying that they took the email address down!

Glogg at cafe lalo

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.

Mmmm. Delicious on a cold winter day. This restaurant is always insanely packed, owing largely to the movie “You’ve Got Mail.” I’ve never much cared for their main courses or even their desserts (most of which I find too sickeningly rich). But their specialty is definitely their cocktails, and this is their latest — mulled hot wine with a big cinnamon stick scrumptiously spicing it up. Worth the noisy crowd … once in a while at least. Also worth it to see cute Ariel all giddy about finally being in the place, being new to NY and a lover of that film We’d tried to go over the summer, with the wonderful Mr. Terry Teachout, who very graciously met up with us to give us career advice, but the crowd was out the door and all over the sidewalk, so we went instead to his favorite place, the cleverly-titled Good Enough to Eat, around the corner.

I’ll just make this into a foodie post: I must take back what I said earlier about Magnolia Bakery’s somewhat flavorless frosting. I recently had another mini-cake (okay, two) and the frosting was divine. Must just have been opening day jitters.

I haven’t liked many of the recent dance movies, so I went into this one with a bit of trepidation. But I was very pleasantly surprised. “How She Move” tells the story of Raya, a smart, hard-working high-school girl from a poor, drug infested Canadian town who manages to get into an elite private school that she hopes will lead to college, then medical school. After her sister dies of a drug overdose, however, she must return home, her parents having spent all of their savings on the rehab. Of course she faces a great deal of ridicule and taunting from her former classmates, jealous and bitter about her escaping the ghetto. Through step dance, she regains both their friendship and the funds necessary for her to continue her education. The plot isn’t fully formed, and characters’ motivations are sometimes questionable, but because it offers a clear portrayal of a specific community, is well acted, and the dancing is so strong (and dance scenes so well-filmed!), it won me over anyway.

And the plot has some nice little wrinkles stemming from the specifics of the dance. After being baited into a fight / ’step-off’ with a former rival, Raya gets the idea to join a team of step dancers, compete at an upcoming “monster” championship in Detroit, and hopefully win the $50,000 cash prize. One impediment to the award money is, these step dancing competitions in their sexism never give the top award to a girl group, and the groups are firmly gender-segregated — not because those are the rules, but because that’s just the way it’s always been. After winning a dance-off with a pompous macho shit, Raya manages to convince a male group to let her in. This of course causes some problems with the girls who’ve just come to accept her. After a few more obstacles are thrown into her path, she performs a winningly kick-ass routine with the guys, involving some unique choreography that makes humorous use of her sex, and all’s well that ends well.

So the dancing: I’ve actually never seen Step before, though I found out after the movie, over dinner with Ariel, that it’s hardly new; her mother used to dance it in college, where the sororities would organize team competitions. I love it! It’s likely evolved over the years though. To me it looked like it had roots in Irish Step dancing and Tap, and it possibly even borrows a bit from West Indian Reggae (?…), and in its current form is combined with Hip Hop and maybe Krumping, with some break-dancing tricks (head spins and arobatics) thrown in, though the emphasis was definitely not on the tricks. Dancers would swiftly raise a leg, clap hands together underneath it, slap a hand on an opposite knee, then on a heel raised up in back, all at lightening speed. This was combined with snaky, undulating body rolls, a super-fast back and forth swing of the pelvis, stylized rhythmic one-footed hops, throwing oneself bumping and grinding to the floor for body-rolling push-ups – just a lot of fun basically, and not easy-looking moves. Teams were also judged on originality of choreography and theme.

And the filming of the dance scenes is excellent. You don’t even think that much about camera angles unless you’ve seen the typical PBS-aired Ballet where someone has just plopped a camera up at the edge of the stage filming the whole thing straight on, and you moan, ugh, dance just doesn’t translate to film. It can though, and this is a perfect example of it. Camera lenses home in on a particular dancer, a body part making a most impressive movement (never smutty though!), pan out to the entire group when it’s making a cool pattern or to emphasize the synchronicity, gaze down at a lift or tumble from above or peer up at a jump from below. An experienced filmmaker with a vision is so necessary to filmed dance. I do wish, though, that at some point someone would film a turn or jump from the dancer’s perspective… I think that would be very cool.

The film is very low-budget, which I liked — I felt like its grainy quality gave it a kind of home-made, authentic look, like you were getting a real glimpse into someone’s camcorder-eye view of their world. I also thought the acting was good. Melanie Nicholls-King, who played Raya’s mother, in particular stood out. Malvin Jacobs, as the Tolsoy-toting dork also won my heart (at least I think it was Jacobs; most of these actors are new and don’t have imdb photos so I can’t be sure). Anyway, it’s a sweet movie and a nice portrait of a dance form and a community.

I’m behind on my blogging. Last Sunday, I braved the freezing cold (I HATE NY when temps drop down to the teens and single digits; all I can think of is death) and ventured up to the Guggenheim for another Works & Process event. This one, entitled “Ballet in Sneakers,” was about the making of a new film of Jerome Robbins’ 1958 jazz ballet, “NY Export: Opus Jazz.” Two New York City Ballet dancers — Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi — are the impetus behind the project. The filming is still currently underway and, in fact, is not very far along unfortunately. I was hoping they would have more clips to show other than that which I saw earlier at NYCity Ballet (which I blogged about here), but so far the duet I wrote about in that post is the only one that has been filmed. The (very young!) filmmakers — director Henry Joost, along with Jody Lee Lipes and Ariel Schulman, were there to discuss a bit of the logistics of filming that piece and the locations in which they’re thinking of shooting other parts: a tobacco warehouse under the Brooklyn Bridge, a hidden area in Staten Island under the Verrazano Bridge, and they’re looking for a low rooftop surrounded by high rises. Joost gamely asked the audience to let him know if they knew of such a place. Basically, they are seeking to film one of each of the five parts of the dance in each of the five burroughs, which I thought was sweet, and fitting since Robbins was a quintessential New Yorker who loved this city, and made his ballet in honor of it. I’ll be interested to see the finished product.

I do wonder how long it’s going to be, though, since the ballet itself is not as long as a full-length feature film, and whether it’s going to show in regular cinemas, art house theaters, the New York State Theater, PBS, go direct to DVD, etc. I really wish the Works & Process organizers would allow some time for an audience Q&A. They do have a cocktail social afterward, but it’s often difficult to track down the speakers, and Sunday night it was impossible since the lobby is currently being used for the filming of another movie (don’t know which, but I heard Clive Owen was spotted in the museum earlier that day) and so was unavailable to us.

Speaking of movies, “How She Move,” of which they showed a trailer during “Dance War” on Monday night, looks kind of good. Well, the dancing at least looks decent… It opens here tomorrow night.

And speaking of “Dance War” — really, I’m sorry this post is so all over the place! — I wasn’t tremendously impressed with Monday night’s first team dance-off. I liked Team Carrie Ann’s last performance the best, mainly because they did what I said I’d most prefer in my last post on the show: put the divas up front and center and have the men as backup dancers. The women can really sing (at least four of them can), and though I’m not sure I’m tremendously impressed with anyone’s dancing, at least the choreographers seem to be entrusting the men with somewhat more interesting moves than the women. I didn’t much care for Carrie Ann’s first team performance, though — the hip hop with all the posturing. I thought it was interesting at first, and very initially reminded me of Camille A. Brown’s “Groove to Nobody’s Business,” but it got old fast and went nowhere. I couldn’t much appreciate Bruno’s first piece, with all the pimpish sex kitten crap. He basically said he wants “sexy women and strong men,” so that is apparently where it’s at for him. And I honestly can’t remember his second piece…

I saw a documentary last night at New York City Ballet’s State Theater that I really really loved. AND it’s going to air on PBS on April 8th, so everyone can see it! Don’t worry, I will definitely be reminding you all closer to April It’s called WATER FLOWING TOGETHER and is about the life of recently retired and widely beloved New York City Ballet dancer Jock Soto (pictured above after the showing speaking with photographer / filmmaker Gwendolen Cates — whom I’m told is related to Phoebe, though I don’t know if it’s true — and a moderator whose name I didn’t get).

(image from here)

There was some real hype over this, and I’m always ready to pounce in such instances, but in this case the hype was deserved. Although the film gets off to a slow start, it quickly gains momentum. I think what makes it so engaging is Soto’s interesting background and wonderful personality. He’s part Navajo, part Puerto Rican, and he grew up on a reservation in New Mexico, before moving to Phoenix (!) for ballet school. The film’s title is the name of his mother’s clan. There’s some great footage of the West, and my favorite parts of the film are (in addition to clips of his rehearsing Christopher Wheeldon’s tear-jerking duet “After the Rain” with the equally engaging Wendy Whelan, who is interviewed as well) those about his Native-American roots. (This could be partly because I have a Native American great-grandmother — Blackfoot to be exact — though I know next to nothing about her since, sadly, she’s been all but erased from my family history). Anyway, Jock’s mother was an artist and used to make Katchina dolls (how I miss Arizona…) and ceramic bowls, and he and his brother used to make and sell Indian Fry Bread (how I SO miss Arizona…) when they were kids. After he retired from NYCB in 2005 he went to culinary school and he and his partner, professional chef Luis Fuentes, have just begun a catering business, so I guess those foodie roots were always there!

Another thing that struck me: Jock’s homosexuality has always been accepted by his mother’s side of the family. American Indian culture, she says, holds homosexuals in high esteem because of their difference. (His paternal Latin side: not so accepting; aunts and grandmas keep asking when he’s gonna get married and, because his father hasn’t said anything, he feels uncomfortable revealing his sexuality to them). But interestingly, Indian society is also matriarchal. So, where women are valued, so are gay men.

(photo by Paul Kolnick)

And, like his longtime partner Wendy Whelan, Jock has such a sweetly endearing personality and a great sense of humor. He laughs easily at himself. Upon entering his apartment (which he openly tells you is a typical NYC dancer shoebox that he nevertheless pays $1,850 for) there’s a sign that reads, “No liquor served to Indians after 6:00 p.m.” Later, while preparing for a performance, he says, “as I put on my makeup and my costume and do my hair, I think, what a strange occupation for a 40-year-old man,” and at another point, trying hard to conceal his fear of and heartache about permanently leaving the stage says, “well, June 19, 2005 will be the last time I’ll ever have to dress in drag.” At one point, he actually lets loose and cries over his eternally pained body and his pending retirement. The scene makes him human and vulnerable and it really drives home that it must be so awful for a dancer to have to leave what he’s lived his entire life for at such a young age.

Anyway, it’s an excellent film and I left out a lot: his meeting and befriending Andy Warhol (I wish Cates had actually gone into a bit more detail on this); his ruminations on his coming to NY at only age 14, living without his family and dropping out of school in the 7th grade; and a lot of amazing dancing, including some great footage of him flying all over stage with his young little sprightly teenage body! Please do watch it on PBS in April, though they have to chop a good twenty minutes off for TV, which seriously frightens me since PBS seems to have a knack for making everything they show as bland as possible. If they cut any of the parts I just mentioned, there will be hell to pay!

It already seems this film is a slightly different version than that others have seen. In her lengthy review, Tobi Tobias mentions several classroom scenes where he’s teaching students at the School of American Ballet (from which aspiring NYCB dancers must graduate), which seemed to be missing from last night’s version. And smartly so, I think: “Classical ballet being the last bastion of chivalry in our disheveled era, Soto works continually to encourage a worshipful attitude in the gentlemen toward their ladies.” Considered the quintessential “manly” dancer though he may be, something about that line kind of makes me want to vomit.

Sometimes it can start to feel a bit stiflingly cliquish inside the State Theater if I’m there for too long, but I had a nice time hanging out before and after with Philip and Ariel, whose reports are here and here.

Spent a lovely early evening at the New York City Ballet watching wonderful short film of Jock Soto’s life (more on that soon!), then came home to watch the art of dance be totally and completely demeaned worse than I’ve ever seen by the insulting new TV show, Dance War. I’ve never in my life seen more people with less dance training seeking to become “stars.” They sang their hearts out and wiggled their butts and seemed in all honesty to have no clue that ass wiggling did not constitute dance. Some actually tried to do jumps but didn’t understand the concept of line (amongst many many other things) and so looked like monkeys.

But I’m more horrified that judges Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba (from Dancing With the Stars) actually praised them. Carrie Ann said of one woman who did a single fouette then stumbled on the very second whip around, that she had “technique.” A man did a grand battement (really fast high kick — anyone can do one) and Bruno jumped around onstage orgiastically screaming “excellent extension, did everyone see that extension?!” I’m not even going to bother criticizing this assininity; suffice it to say the judges know the fraud they’re perpetrating on the public. They know.

On one hand, I seriously feel like boycotting “Dancing With the Stars” unless they resign. On the other, I guess what can you do when you have a TV show and these are the applicants? You’ve gotta pick someone or the show’s off the air. And you can’t call everyone a bad dancer. So you shrug your shoulders and say, as Carrie Ann did, “Well, it’s easier to teach someone who can sing to dance than someone who can dance to sing.” Could anything be more of a smack in the face to a person who deeply respects dance?

And yet I’m very conflicted. I just can’t understand why people would try out for a show that necessitated the ability to dance when it’s obvious they’ve never had a single dance lesson in their lives. But I also don’t want to sound like the horrendously elitist critics and ballet dancers and afficionados I abhor who insist that in order to be a “real” dancer, one must have “proper training,” which, to them, just happens to include a very expensive education affordable only by the very rich, who are, in our lovely society, usually the very white. A friend and I were talking the other day about how wealthy many of the New York City Ballet dancers are (NOT the aforesaid Jock Soto, by the way).

So, I say, the only way out of this dilemma is to “buy” Cuban! There dance is highly respected as an art form, it is taught by some of the world’s greatest, and it’s also completely free. And free doesn’t exactly produce shoddy. And, if you don’t believe me, take Danny Tidwell’s word More Jose’s, more, more!

Okay, it’s late and I’m tired and being a bit goofy all because I got so worked up I got over a stupid dance show… But, seriously, everyone please just watch this! Why oh why isn’t there more dance like it on TV?…

…in giving this film an overall not so fresh tomato. And I mean second literally — everyone is raving about this movie; Lane (my favorite of all art critics) is the only one who hasn’t. Of course I’ve been looking so forward to seeing it, and of course that’s never a good thing, with me at least. With the exception of Alvin Ailey, it seems that everything I’ve looked forward to lately I’ve ended up being disappointed with.

Anyway, this is a graphic film, in French with English subtitles, based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoirs about growing up in Iran during the country’s political turmoil of the 1970s: first the displacement of the Shah, followed by the violent revolutionary war, then the oppressive regime of Khomeni. At the movie’s start, the Shah is being overthrown and of course there are all kinds of imprisonments and murders. Marji’s father and uncle are supporters of the revolution and the movie begins with them telling her (and us) in detail about the politics of the period, and why the Shah is bad for the country. To me, this is not only confusing but becomes very boring very fast: I like my narratives to be character-driven; if I want to know about the politics of a time, I’ll consult a history book. Plus, Marji’s only about four years old when they’re feeding her these views, so how much can such a young child take in anyway? Just showing Marji’s family and friends being taken away and not heard from again from her child’s point of view makes enough of a statement. But, fortunately, we only get this for about the first twenty minutes; then we delve more into the characters.

I think my biggest problem was that I couldn’t fully connect to Marji. Having learned from her outspoken grandmother and mother to speak her mind, she challenges her teachers’ authority when they spout political propaganda in the classroom, then flouts police commands to wear her veil on the streets. Fearing for her safety, her parents send her off to a French school in Vienna. But several other people, including her grandfather who is severely in need of medical attention unavailable in Iran, have been denied passports, so I was curious at how quick and easy it was for her parents to obtain the necessary documents. That’s never explained.

It’s at her school in Vienna where she reaches puberty and begins her studies in earnest, discovering major philiosophers and knowledge she’s been denied in her home country, as well as lipstick, fashion and boys. She falls in with a group of young French intellectuals, which seems to suit her well, she has fun going to parties and meeting new people, and she gets her first boyfriend. But she has problems generally getting along with people. Though most of the students at her school come from international backgrounds, she feels out of place as an Iranian. And her aunt, to whose security her parents had entrusted her, promptly and inexplicably throws her out of her house and into a convent. Marji doesn’t get along with the nuns and their strict rules, so she runs away and becomes a border at the home of an older woman whom she fights with as well. Then, most astounding to me, after surviving the horrors of wartorn Iran, witnessing bombs destroy neighboring houses and their inhabitants, watching relatives be hauled off by the police, and hearing of their murders, she ends up having a breakdown over her boyfriend’s unfaithfulness. In a fit of anger, she leaves the house where she has been staying, begins living on the streets, catches bronchitis and nearly dies — supposedly over the boy. In the hospital, she calls her parents and asks to return.

She returns to Iran grown, the war now over but the oppressive regime firmly in place: the police are everywhere making arrests if women don’t wear veils in public, if they suspect people of going to or coming from a party where there’s been alcohol consumption, if someone is dressed in too Western a manner, etc. etc. Her family organizes a sweet extended family reunion for her, but, having come of age in the West, she now feels disconnected from everyone she knows. She begins seeing a shrink (how middle-class, how American?…) who pronounces her depressed and gives her meds that don’t work. Eventually, she is able to pull herself out of it and begin an Art degree, but after police arrest her and a new boyfriend for holding hands in a car, she decides, at 21, to marry the man and give up her education. And this is where I really felt like walking out of the theater. After surviving all that she has, she makes so many ridiculously stupid choices: nearly killing herself over a cheating boy, getting married and giving up her education because she can’t hold hands with a man in public?… I can’t even understand what she’s doing back in Iran in the first place and I want to scream at her to go back to Europe.

Anyway, eventually a resolution is reached and the ending hints that Marji has been able to find a kind of peace with herself. I’m definitely glad I saw the movie because it does give you a good sense of what it was like to live in Iran during the reign of Khomeni. But as an examination of displacement, exile and identity, I felt it was lacking, that it didn’t hold a candle to something like Andrei Makine’s brilliant “Dreams of My Russian Summers.” When when when are they going to make that into a movie?! (Actually, I have no idea how they’d make a film out of that book — it is so perfect as a novel; I just want everyone I know to be exposed to it, and unfortunately many more people see movies than read…)

But having said all of this, Persepolis has been nominated and received all kinds of awards, and everyone besides Lane is raving about it (and he wasn’t that harsh, for Lane anyway; only said it was “simple”), so I’d be interested to hear what others saw in it, if anyone did?

(image linked from here)

Just quickly before I go out to meet Ariel (who’s now living in NY ), here’s my review of “Rhythm of Love” on Explore Dance. Basically the same as what I said here on my blog, but more critical. I sometimes feel badly being critical (especially when reviewing ’small people’ — biggies like Christopher Wheeldon and Jerome Bel can handle it), but I tried to be constructive and respectful.

Also, for people in New York, the Dance On Camera Festival is currently underway at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center. A lot of the films are experimental, and most programs have a combination of shorts with small documentaries. On opening night I saw Program 2, which included, most excitingly for me, a 45-minute documentary about (in)famous (depending on your perspective) German choreographer Pina Bausch. This was my first Bausch experience and I definitely can see what people both love and hate about her. Funny because, according to the critics, she doesn’t seem to talk much about her work, so to big Bausch fans the fact that she was actually talking was the draw. To me, though, I wanted her to shut up so I could see more of the excerpts of her work the film provided! In one excerpted piece, women wearing very flimsy nightgowns were violently thrasing their bodies about from the waist down, their hair flying about wildly. It was both beautiful and disturbing. In another, one woman screamingly commanded another woman to smile, the woman being yelled at tried but her smile wasn’t big enough to please the first woman, so woman #1 violently dunked the second woman’s head into a bucket of water several times. You can hear the audience’s upset. In another excerpt, a man reaches down under a woman’s dress and lifts her up, seemingly by the crotch. In its awkwardness, it is both unsettling and comical. If you saw the film “Talk To Her” by Pedro Almodovar, her choreography is performed at the very beginning, but from what I saw on Wednesday, that seems to be a very watered-down version of her work.

Anyway, I am now dying to see her dance group (Tanztheater Wuppertal), if they ever make it to NY. Art had his first Bausch experience this year as well, live at UCLA, and he seems as smitten as I! Here’s dance writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s take on the Bausch doc and another short in Program 2, and here is a post on the same by Anna Brady Nuse (who is a dance filmmaker). For a good, detailed break-down of the whole festival, visit Anna’s blog post here.

I was recently reprimanded by a co-worker at my office holiday party. He told me, “You used to be interesting. You used to know about all the cool small independent films and off-off-Broadway plays. Now all you ever go to is dance stuff.” So, in an effort to revisit my days as an “interesting” person, over the holidays I went to see a little independent film, which I really liked.

The movie, based on the book of the same name, tells the true story of the Editor-in-Chief of French Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke in 1995 and was henceforth in a “locked-in” state. This horrendously frightening situation means he was completely paralyzed throughout his entire body, and could not speak, but could still hear, see, and understand everything happening around him. The sole part of his body that was not paralyzed was his left eye and eyelid and, through the help of an ingenious speech therapist, he learned to communicate by blinking that one lid. Basically, the therapist devised this method where she would begin reciting letters of the alphabet to him, beginning not with “a” but with the most often used letters, such as “r,” “n,” etc. (think “Wheel of Fortune”, not that I watch the show…). When she arrived at the letter contained in a word he needed to express his thought, he would blink and she would write down the letter. They went along this way until he had an entire sentence. It sounds extremely cumbersome, but he was able to write his entire memoir this way. And it wasn’t really as time-consuming as it would seem: just like with your cell phone when you go to text message, the therapist would be able to figure out the entire word based on the initial letters long before she had to go through the entire alphabet.

Anyway, I found both this method of communication and watching how Bauby’s friends and family react to him as well as the way he deals with his situation simply fascinating. Director Julian Schnabel included a bunch of flashbacks to Bauby’s life pre-stroke, as this flashy womanizing powerhouse of a fashion editor, which I guess makes sense, because it’s such an obvious contrast, but I actually found those to be the most boring parts of the film. The present, with this man confined to a wheelchair hooked up to an IV and a breathing machine receiving visitors and learning to communicate (and giving us his often rather satirically amusing thoughts through a voice-over) was just captivating. And the actor who played Bauby, Mathieu Amalric, was beyond amazing. The acting job he did with that left eye — whoa!

And his voice-overs are hiliarious. At one point his friend comes to visit and he’s trying like hell to get the hang of the communication method. But of course he keeps looking at the letters on the page that he’s supposed to recite and in what order, so he keeps missing Bauby’s blinks at the proper letter. “You have to look at me, you idiot,” Bauby yells, without being heard by the offending friend of course. And it’s such a human thing to do, because who can remember the order of letters you’re supposed to recite? That same friend also keeps pacing back and forth while speaking his thoughts, which I do all the time. But Bauby can’t move his head, which sits still in the wheelchair’s frighteningly enormous padded headrest, and he can’t see through his right eye, so, with the camera situated through his vantage point, we see the friend mumbling first off-screen to the left, then off-screen to the right, popping every so often into view. “He can’t see you…” a nurse finally calls out, and the friend yells, “oh shit, oh shit.” You feel both the extreme frustration of Bauby as well as the annoyance and embarrassment of the friend for screwing up.

My only qualm is that, for an artist, Schnabel can really be annoyingly literal with those voice-overs. At the beginning, we see the operating room through Bauby’s working eye. The doctor asks him, “can you tell me your name?” Bauby answers. The doctor again says, “your name, can you tell me your name?” Again, Bauby answers. “It’s okay,” the doctor says, “it just takes time. It’ll come to you.” Bauby says dejectedly, “they can’t hear me.” But he hardly needs to; we get it! Later, two technicians from the phone company come to install a phone in Bauby’s room so he can “talk” through the speech therapist to friends and family. They manage to get in without going through reception, and they begin asking Bauby, in his bed, where to place the phone, until they take one look at his completely immobile body and extremely animated left eye and become thoroughly bemused. Just then the nurse arrives, furious that they’re in the room without her permission, and explaining he can’t talk. The workers regard each other, thinking the obvious. One hesitantly asks her why then he needs the phone, and the other says under his breath that he must be a heavy breather. We hear three people laughing — the two workers and Bauby himself, but then Schnabel has Bauby say anyway, via voice-over, to the nurse’s horrified face, “Henriette, you have no sense of humor.” But by this point in the film, we’re well used to the sound of Bauby’s voice, and his laugh, so we don’t need the added obvious commentary.

Anyway, it’s a really fascinating movie and I think it’s going to do well at the Golden Globes. I may even pick up the book; from some of the voice-overs it sounds really beautifully poetic.

I love this dance company so much. And I love Alvin Ailey’s work in particular. AAADT artistic director Judith Jamison quotes Ailey as having said that his choreography is the result of his “blood memory” of his southern boyhood. He said the greatest works of art are the most personal, come from the deepest-rooted place. Nothing could be more true.

(Above photo of “Revelations;” all photos courtesy of Paul Kolnick.)

So, my own Alvin Ailey season began last Saturday afternoon with Mr. Ailey’s “Night Creature,” one of my favorites and a dance that I would call a combination of ballet, jazz and Afro-Latin / Samba centered on a sweetly spotlight-demanding jazz diva and her man servant, backed by a large ensemble of dancers, and set to Duke Ellington music. The movement was a combination of beautiful ballet — soft, slow, fully extended developped legs, arabesques and partnered lifts; cool jazz hands and rhythmic hip swaying side-together steps; and, yes, Samba! It is so very cool for me as someone who has only very basic ballet training but much more extensive ballroom experience to be able to recognize so many steps!

Near the beginning of the piece, the ensemble circles around the central dancers by doing what are basically Samba voltas (back foot takes a side step, front crosses over and pelvis rotates fully), or even a kind of Salsa Suzie-Q if you know what that is, later, dancers slither forward in sexy, snaky pelvis-undulating cruzado walks, then there are stationary samba walks (feet together, then one foot slides back while the corresponding hip cooly juts upward and outward), side sambas, whisks, everything. It’s so exciting; I just want to scream out, “I can do that!” But of course I can’t — at least I can’t do it anything like those miraculous dancers. If I could, if I could be a real “night creature,” how my dance dreams would be complete! Anyway, I love how this work splendidly blends European Ballet, Afro-Latin Samba, and American Jazz — it’s everything; it’s brilliant.

Second was “Solo,” a shortish piece by choreographer Hans van Manen from 1997, danced to classical Bach. In this piece three men each take turns performing a series of solos, charmingly vying with each other in a kind of ‘who can be the most fast-footed, nimble dancer’ contest, each performing his own staccato interpretation of the very quick-tempo-ed violins. Some solos used a more classical vocabulary and were more poetic, others more of a comical riff on the classical. At times, it would seem that at the beginning of his solo, a man would be playfully taunting the previous dancer by making fun of his routine. This reminded me of a B-Boy showdown, like that I saw in a Tribeca Film Festival film earlier this year. Very fun! At the end, all three men take the stage at the same time and try to outwit / outdance each other. It’s a charming piece, and the classical music and balletic vocabulary is a nice contrast to the jazzy sexiness of “Night Creature.”

The company also premiered “Saddle Up!,” a new comical story-dance by Frederick Earl Mosley, about several ranchhands and their romantic pursuits. The piece begins with a rather innocent-looking new sheriff riding into town on his stick horse, having no idea what awaits him. He “parks” his “horse” and the scene shifts to a wedding he officiates between two doe-eyed young lovers, attended by two sisters — one flirtatious and sultry and donning a bright orange feather boa, which she tries to lasso around various men, the other silently sad but the object of affection of the wedding photographer, who continuously snaps her picture, she smiling, but only briefly and only for his camera. There’s a suggestion of scandal to come when the tossed bouquet is caught by sultry feather boa woman.

After the wedding, the scene shifts to an innocent young woman who is apparently about to be corrupted by a flirtatious womanizing outlaw. New sheriff, however, saves the day after he is victorious in a hilariously acrobatic, laugh-out-loud showdown with said outlaw, which promptly causes the young innocent woman to fall madly in love with her knight in shining armor. She does a beautiful little lyrical dance with the sheriff’s hat, which he has accidentally left behind. When he returns to retrieve it, they skip off together into the sunset, holding hands. Aww

The rest of the scenes consist of a lyrical, tenderly-danced first lovers’ quarrel between the newlyweds, and an equally tender courting scene between the photographer and the sad woman. This is followed by a fast-paced, fun, light-hearted scene in which feather boa woman is pursued by a whole bevy of cowhands who try to wow her with their partnering abilities. Lovely lifts and swingy, waltzy dances ensue. It ends with a big square-dance hoedown. It’s a fun, lively piece and the dancers are marvelous comical actors.

Still, cute as “Saddle Up!” was, it didn’t hold a candle to the last dance on Saturday’s program, “Revelations.” But I guess it’s unfair to compare anything to Mr. Ailey’s masterpiece. If you haven’t ever seen this dance, if you haven’t ever seen Ailey, if you’ve seen “So You Think You Can Dance” and the other TV shows and are now thinking of going to see a concert dance performance, please please please start with this one! Seriously, it’s everything. It’s about spirituality, redemption, grace, freedom from oppression through religion, it’s a celebration of faith and of life itself. It speaks to everyone because everyone — at least in this country (and now Sir Alastair too ) is familiar with the black church, with its celebration of life and freedom, with its history and pride and roots in the civil rights movement. Not to sound cheesy and Oprah-ish, but it’s so uplifting. The first time I ever saw it was not long after 9/11 and I was bawling when it ended. For a work created over forty years earlier, to me that’s the definition of timelessness.

It’s funny but my favorite parts of this dance change every few times I see it. The first few times, my favorite was the very end, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham,” a swingy, very upbeat number involving the whole ensemble dancing in a church setting to a hymnal. Makes you want to get up out of your chair and dance with them, and sometimes, when they do an encore, the audience does! Then my favorite became “Sinner Man” another quick-tempo-ed, but more sober number in which three men run about the stage, frightened, attempting vainly to escape the wrath of God, and in doing so, perform breathtaking jumps, leaps and turns. Then I began to love “Wade in the Water,” the Baptism scene (pictured at the top of this post) in which ladies in glorious white carrying sun umbrellas, men waving two long blue sheets across the stage, and one man flickering small flags about with his arms and rolling his torso as if it was fluid water, all make you feel like you’re at the beach being baptized along with the two young souls onstage. This time, I was blown away by “Fix Me, Jesus,” a slow, beautiful prayer of a pas de deux danced by a man and woman to a slavery spiritual.

The company dances “Revelations” with a great many of their performances; please do try to see it if you never have!

On Sunday, I saw the company premiere of “Firebird,” the version from 1970 by French choreographer Maurice Bejart. Bejart, who recently passed away, was known for taking classical ballets and re-working them using modern dance and just amazing athleticism. His ballets were often male-centered.

Here, the curtains rose to reveal an ensemble of dancers dressed in splotchy gray baggy pants and tops. The coloring of the costumes to me resembled Army fatigues, so, that along with the way the dancers would huddle together in fear, then fall to the ground crouching, crawling toward something they saw far in the distance — safety from an encroaching enemy perhaps — made me think this was a war scene. I later learned that Bejart had intended his “Firebird” to be a kind of salutation to Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army, so perhaps these corps dancers were supposed to be workers. The outfits almost resembled a painter’s garb, now that I think of it. Regardless, the ensemble dancers were downtrodden, the fearful, those in danger. Suddenly, one of them, a man, threw off his drab earthly costume to reveal a bright red body suit; he was their savior. This firebird was danced brilliantly by Clifton Brown (in the picture above), who soared around stage in a series of gorgeous leaps, taking time out here and there to perform more adagio poetic developpes and turns.

The choreography was really interesting to me. The firebird is traditionally female, and here, Bejart’s is male. But his bird is not only powerful, leading the corps to freedom, but is beautiful and delicate and lyrical as well. So the dancer must excel at both the more masculine feats — the grand jetes, the high jumps — and the more lyrical feminine adagio parts, the developpes and arabesques. Brown is such a tall, large-boned man, and it amazes me how soft and delicate and graceful he can be.

Soon, the firebird exhausts his power, dancing his heart out as he does, for the people, and he slowly and tragically dies. The corps is shattered but only momentarily, as, through the aid of another firebird, this one played by equally larger-than-life Jamar Roberts, in an enchanting two-male pas de deux filled with beautiful lifts, the original firebird rises again like a Phoenix.

It’s set to the original Stravinsky music. This was my first time seeing something by Bejart and overall I found it spectacular. There have been all of a bizillion and a half write-ups in NY about this company and, in particular, this piece. Go here for a pretty comprehensive list.

Last on for Sunday was Twyla Tharp’s fast, fun, glittering “Golden Section” from 1983 danced to pulsating David Byrne music, the dancers bedazzling in gold costumes. The movement varies from lyrical ballet to sexy 80s-style body rolls, pelvic-gyrations, partnered “death spirals” the likes of which I’ve seen in Disco / Hustle competitions, and absolute death-defying lifts (a man tossing a woman from afar into the arms of a group of men, a woman running and throwing herself at an unsuspecting man, hoping he’ll catch her). I would be so scared to perform this piece! Jamar Roberts took my breath away with a series of whipping fouette turns with multiple pirouettes thrown in. He blew everyone away actually; he received some major applause for that.

This is Tharp’s Modus Operendi: the combination of classical ballet with other kinds of contemporary dance – social, ballroom, jazz, swing, Latin, disco, whatever the popular dance of the day is. It allows her always to stay fresh, exciting, contemporary and accessible to new audiences.

What I love about this company in general is that they choose to perform choreography like this: pieces that combine different forms of dance that can speak to different generations, but also works that, like Ailey’s, are timeless because they touch your soul, speak fundamentally to the human condition. And the great thing about this company is that they TOUR, so you don’t have to live in NY to see them!!! Go here for their upcoming schedule.

This just in from Hanna Rubin at Dance Magazine. The filming of the movie Center Stage 2 is currently underway in Vancouver. The original Center Stage came out in 2000 and was kind of a cult hit among fans of American Ballet Theater and NYCity Ballet starring as it did several dancers from those companies, including ABT’s lovely Julie Kent and heartthrobs Ethan Stiefel and Sascha Radetsky. It was cute in an ABC After School Special kind of way and detailed the drama taking place at training school for pre-professional ballet dancers replete with eating disorders, body-type issues, harsh disciplinarian teachers, and back-stabbing hyper-competitiveness. And there was a little love triangle in which Ethan, as the cocky womanizing shit, and Sascha, as the nice guy, vie for the attentions of the main female character. Blast if I couldn’t find a YouTube of the little dance competition between these two guys, my favorite part. But here’s one giving a good musical overview of the whole.

Anyway, according to Dance Mag, Ethan will be reprising his role, this time playing cocky-shit dancer as well as cocky-shit teacher This time the main character is a small-town girl, played by newcomer to the big screen (? — I can’t find anything on the web on her), Rachele Smith, who enrolls at the academy with hopes of making it as a pro ballerina but who is also passionate about hip hop, and is hence an object of scorn by some of her ballet classmates. Ethan, it appears, will be dancing some hip hop. Fun fun! And he sounds very excited about it. According to the e-newsletter: “‘It was fantastic! I’m not sure I was necessarily successful, but what was beautiful was the collaboration with the other dancers. At this point in my career, when learning something brand-new like this falls into your lap, it’s challenging and exciting.”

I hope the sequel is more sophisticated than the original, but even if it’s not, watching Ethan dance hip hop should be worth the price of at least one admission.

Look what Canada is doing! Thanks to Apollinaire for alerting me to this. As Apollinaire says in her blog, yes, we’ve been discussing whether Met Opera Director Peter Gelb’s success in introducing new audiences to opera through broadcasting some of the Met’s productions in movie theaters could work for ballet as well. Well, Canada has beat us to the experiment.

And thanks to Matt for alerting me to this: a New York Observer blog post on Kristin Sloan, founder of The Winger and New York City Ballet dancer, indicating that she has retired from dancing to become the Director of New Media for the company. Go Kristin! I wonder if NYCB will now be the harbinger of more great experiments to come? Will NYCB be the first to bring ballet to your local cinema???

I really had a nice time last night at New York City Ballet’s opening night gala program, celebrating the start of their winter season. The highlights for me were the two world premieres — one of a new ballet, by NYCB artistic director, Peter Martins, the other a brief but fabulous excerpt from a new movie-in-the-making of Jerome Robbins’s jazzy cool ballet, “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz.” Rather than go in chronological order of the program, I’ll start with the highlights.

I’ve seen a lot of new ballets lately, and this one by Martins has definitely been one of my favorites. Titled “Grazioso,” it’s set to a score by Mikhail Glinka from the operas “Ruslan and Ludmilla” and “A Life For the Tsar.” I don’t know these operas, but the handy dandy Wikipedia tells me the first is based on a Pushkin poem with a complicated narrative, but at one point depicts three would-be suitors vying for Ludmilla’s hand in marriage. I assume this is the part Martins had set his ballet to, as that’s what I perceived “Grazioso” to be about.

And what a mad fun sexy competition it was! Everyone who knows me knows this is exactly the kind of thing I go for : men trying to outdance each other with bravado galore. But there weren’t only high, twisty jumps and sailing-across-the-stage-in-a-splits leaps, Martins filled his male dancers’ variations with lots of very intricate, fast, complex footwork that required great precision and agility. And of course these men had that in spades. They were: Andrew Veyette, recently promoted to soloist, Daniel Ulbricht, who is known for his virtuosity and wowed audiences last season with his Mercutio in Martins’ “Romeo + Juliet,” and Gonzalo Garcia, a recent NYCB transplant from San Francisco Ballet, who I find to be very Rasta Thomas-esque. The sassy, daring, very athletic Ashley Bouder, whom I am growing to love more and more each time I see, danced Ludmilla.

One of the reasons I love Ashley is that she just throws herself into everything she does with such wild, intense abandon; she’s very much a risk-taker, which is what Balanchine wanted of his dancers. And, she’s a cute actor to boot. If I was a guy, though, I’d be very intimidated partnering her. She doesn’t really wait for the guy to be ready to go into a lift, she just throws herself up and he’d better be there to take her the rest of the way or else! That’s the way it should be of course — do your own thing and let the man figure out how to support you

As far as the choreography: there was some cute partnering — at one point each man takes turns promenading Ashley around slowly and delicately, trying his best to be the most chivalrous. Then she takes off running, fluttering around all three men in an outer circle, like a Firebird, each one taking her hand and doing a little running lift with her before she rejects him and goes on to the next guy. Gonzalo, probably the best actor of the guys, feigned a stunned, dejected look when she threw off his hand and went into a lift with Daniel. Upon her rejection of him, Daniel simply shrugged and prepared for some more crazy bravura turns. Andrew looked thoroughly befuddled by her behavior, in a cute way of course! I liked these duets better than Martins’s “Romeo + Juliet” pas de deux, but I still think where Martins really excels choreography-wise is in the solo dancing, particularly with the men. As I said, some brilliant fast, fun, intricately-patterned footwork that made for a dazzling competition for Ludmilla’s flighty little hand.

The only thing I didn’t get was the costumes. Ashley was wearing this cute A-line cut, slightly puffed shoulder-sleeved dress with an apron-like covering. She looked like a chambermaid. The guys were wearing these 70s-style black tops that looked like they were made out of stretchy lycra with low-cut V necks lined with florescent colors — a different shade for each man. She looked like she belonged in a Dickens novel, they in Studio 54.

Second highlight was the movie-in-the-making adaptation of Jerome Robbins’s “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz.” (above image is taken from the film’s website). Craig Hall is a natural film actor, let me tell you! He’s extremely photogenic and he has the subtle acting skills required for on-screen close-ups. They only showed a very brief excerpt but I think this is going to be fabulous when finished. They filmed it in what looks to be a run-down area of New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River toward Manhattan. There’s a sole train track running through a patch of dead grass surrounded by abandoned buildings, and the filmed piece begins with Craig standing right in the middle of the tracks, a cocky, death-defying look on his face. Pretty Rachel Rutherford approaches him from behind, they perform a series of lifts, she seemingly trying to get him both off of the dangerous tracks and to love her. At the end, he walks away and she looks forelorn.

They were wearing regular, street clothes, I think just jeans and t-shirts. So, the filmmakers are taking the Robbins out of its 50s-era creation and placing it in the present to show how timeless Robbins — and ballet — really are.

And what I really love is that the filmmakers shot the pas de deux from various angles, some from high above, so you’re looking down on the would-be lovers at the different shapes their two bodies are making. It’s so much more interesting than seeing it straight on, from floor level, in the theater. This is what film can do for dance, I believe, really enhance the viewing and interpretive experience by showing different shapes and different viewpoints based on the angle of the camera and the distance of its gaze. I can’t wait for the film in whole to come out. The dancers who introduced it, Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi, mentioned that it had just won an award, though I didn’t get the name of the festival.

So, the rest of the evening: they began with the Rose Adagio from “Sleeping Beauty,” Beauty being danced with the sweet, charming Megan Fairchild. This is the part where she is courted by four princes, who each take her around in a promenade, then let go of her hand while she performs those very difficult one-footed balances on her own. The new Martins ballet kind of had echoes of that now that I think of it. They also performed “Liturgy,” another Christopher Wheeldon Rorschach ballet. NYCB stars Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans (pictured at the top of this post, on the program’s cover) did the physically demanding, at times very beautiful and, as the name implies, beatific, pas de deux. I think I’m learning to not try to “get” Wheeldon — at least not his pas de deux — but just to appreciate Wendy’s mind-bogglingly, seemingly skeleton-less body and the enchanting, spidery shapes she makes with it. At intermission, I saw Philip and he exclaimed, “wasn’t Liturgy fantastic!” Taunting me! They also did a small excerpt from Balanchine’s “Western Symphony” a cutely raucous ballet celebrating the American West, replete with saloon girls, led by dazzling Maria Kowroski, and cowboys, led by Damian Woetzel. I’d seen him in a Fall For Dance Robbins piece several weeks ago and was underwhelmed by his performance then, thinking he didn’t give it his all. But, happily, he was back in full force last night, dancing and acting the rowdy, spur-kicking cowboy perfectly. Damian really is such a cutie.

They ended with a little filmed tribute to Lincoln Kirstein, this year being the centennial of his birth, and then on to the party, which I’m too poor to attend.

But I did see the set-up. Here’s where I stood sipping a glass of wine at pre-performance cocktail hour, apparently across the room from Sandi. I spied Kristin, and was about to say hello when interrupted by a bartender asking for my order. After I was finished, Kristin was nowhere to be found. There was no red carpet bearing famous people, so I guess there wasn’t much for her to film this time, as there had been for Martins’s “Romeo + Juliet” premiere. As I was leaving, I did see David Michalek waiting for the party to begin, which made me wonder if Candace Bushnell was there… the connection being of course celebrated artists married to star dancers, not that Michalek is venturing into the world of social satire / literary chick-lit

(image c. Library of Congress)

Norman Mailer died today of renal failure. He was 84 years old. Here’s a good write-up on his life and work from MSNBC, and here’s the NYTimes obit. He was an incredibly prolific author and won several Pulitzers. He is quoted as having despaired that today’s young writers aren’t even trying to write serious novels anymore; they’re not inspired by the great writing of, for example, Hemingway, the way he was and instead all just want to write screenplays, supposedly because writing movies pays well. I think the problem is not with the writers; it’s more that it’s near impossible to get a literary novel published these days. Agents and editors only want something that has the potential to sell very well. I wonder if that was so to the same extent in his younger days.

I was so sad over ABT season ending, I felt like I needed to pull myself out of my depression. And what better way to do that than by … taking a dance class! I returned to my very first studio, Paul Pellicoro’s DanceSport, where I began three and a half years ago with group classes before I’d transferred to Dance Times Square and started privates with Pasha. It all seems like such a long time ago now, but remarkably, I recognized so many faces — so many of my old friends were still there and I was reunited with four of them in a one-hour period! Passion for ballroom is something that just stays with you forever.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t all that prepared with my dance bag. I forgot to pack a pair of beige tights, so had to look like a bit of an ass with mismatched shoes.

I wanted to ease myself slowly back into it — it’s been six months since my last lesson at DTS — so I decided on a bronze (lowest-level) Cha Cha — always my easiest dance.

Ugh, not anymore! I remembered all the steps but forgot how hard it is to maintain proper technique when the teacher plays the music at full speed! Warm-up went well-ish, but when the actual partner dancing began, I was tripping all over myself in no time. Plus, I forgot how hard it is to dance, to function really, in those blasted high-heeled, open-toed shoes. I’m always sliding forward in them, leaving my heel unstable. I guess it helps if you normally wear similar street shoes, like high-heeled sandals, but I don’t.

Happily, whenever I felt or saw myself in the mirror reverting to a nasty habit — like rising up on my toes during the middle cha cha cha instead of staying grounded with my heel on the floor, or falling backward during an underarm turn because I forget to have my body weight forward — I’d hear Pasha’s voice (“no leaning back, Tonya”), or feel his hand lightly but firmly pushing down on my head (which he used to do to keep me from rising on the cha cha chas). So, even though bad habits die hard, the words of great teachers don’t

So I made a lot of mistakes. But, eh, I’ll get back into it.

Interestingly, I met an old friend from my Swing team, Mark, in the lobby. He was heading to a Hustle class and asked me what I’d signed up for. When I told him the International Cha Cha, he told me he thought the teacher, Werner Figar (who is new since I was last at the studio), was a member of the modern dance group, Elisa Monte Dance. He told me he recognized his name from a recent New York Times article, which I looked up when I got home and is here. The guy in the picture does look like Werner (who was very good — both as a Latin dancer and teacher), but his name isn’t on the company’s website. It’s just so odd to me that someone dances both Latin Ballroom and Modern professionally. They are such different kinds of dance and usually a person isn’t good at both. But very cool if he is! I’ll have to ask him next class…

DanceSport has relocated since I was last there — used to be at Columbus Circle and is now on 34th Street right near the Empire State Building. Their new space is way the heck bigger than the last — really floored me.

So many rooms!

And here’s the new huge lobby, which even has a little cafe off to the side. Paul, the owner, taught Al Pacino to dance for “Scent of a Woman,” so that poster stays up always.

So, the first round of Morphoses reviews are flowing in. Thank you Tobi Tobias for saying what I was trying so very hard to say way too late at night (there are plusses and minuses to writing immediately after a performance: on one hand the “afterimages” in Arlene Croce speak are the most vivid and fresh that they’ll ever be, but on the other sometimes your brain needs to chew things over a bit). Particularly resonant with me was Tobias’s paragraph about Wheeldon not engaging the emotions of his audience, or even perhaps himself. And thank you, Ms. Tobias for giving me one brief glimpse into the value of “Slingerland.”

One thing Tobias mentions that struck me: she says that she doesn’t know if Wheeldon’s desire to give the dancers too much free reign in the dances’ creations is a good thing. I’ve now heard several choreographers (Jorma Elo, Wheeldon, and most recently Nacho Duato — promise I’ll get to that review today!) say that the way they work is that they have some vague notion of what they want when they go into the studio, they choose the music, they have a general idea in mind, then they let the dancers go and figure it all out, discover the movement and how best to convey that idea. Helen Pickett even said at a Works & Process event that she lets her dancers improvise right on stage, during the actual performance. So what is the choreographer then? The music selector, the originator of the basic idea? I’ve heard theater and film people laugh when someone asks if they’d thought of a co-director. No way, they all say, there’s got to be one person and one person alone behind the helm of a project or everything just gets all confused and there’s no “voice” to the work and meaning is lost. I wonder if that’s partly what’s happening to me, I can’t always make sense of things in dance because there are too many interpretations going on at once on that stage and there’s no single voice or authority (ie: that of an older person with life experience and well-developed artistry) in control?

Anyway, I so would have liked to have gone to the Morphoses open rehearsal yesterday, but unfortunately couldn’t take off work. Kristin went and wrote a bit about it — apparently it was a rehearsal of Mesmerics, one of the pieces on Program 2, wherein Wheeldon corrected and instructed dancers on the movement, but it doesn’t seem that he talked about his process. There was an audience give and take but Kristin didn’t write anything about. I always like to hear what audiences have to say about something, what others get and don’t get and what they want to understand and know from an artist. Oh well, maybe next time I can go. Damn work interfering with my blogging life!! Also, maybe Works & Process can institute a little audience Q & A into their programs in the future?

Here’s Sir Alastair’s review. He echoes others, saying that the most notable thing about the company thus far was the fame of the dancers (true), but also adds that in his opinion, Wheeldon doesn’t take seriously enough his female dancers, makes them too passive. It’s an interesting take and something I hadn’t thought of.

Joel Lobenthal in The Sun gives a very fair, balanced review saying Wheeldon may not be the “great white hope” of ballet but is nevertheless a young, very talented choreographer “still in the process of finding himself.”

Apollinaire’s Newsday review is also fair and balanced (as always with her), and I love this paragraph in particular: “The sculptural twining of limbs yields imagistic sparks, but they don’t light a fire this time. Wheeldon seems to have gotten carried away by his own dexterous invention.” So, my “meaningless weird abstract shape after meaningless weird abstract shape” gibberish expressed much more eloquently She also gives me more to understand regarding Forsythe.

By the way, speaking of my phrasing, James Wolcott linked to my write-up (so wonderfully nice of him!!), calling it “a trembling ordeal of terror worthy of the Simpsons’ Halloween special” as I found myself “buried under a paper mache rock slide of ‘meaningless weird abstract shapes,’ and live[d] to tell the tale.” Hehehehe, I couldn’t stop laughing. I guess it did sound like a nutty Simpsons-esque Halloween cartoon! Good, imaginative writers can make things sound so nice… (Off the topic of Wheeldon but on the topic of Wolcott, he has an entertaining, socio-cultural history of the Twist in the November Vanity Fair.)

And here is Philip, who said what I thought he would, focusing on all of the great dancers involved in the program (although he is also a big opera lover and talked about the beauty of the music a bit too).

Here’s a Washington Times review.

Here’s what Ballet Talk balletomanes had to say.

And, in case I left something out, here is a fuller list of reviews, including those from London, where Morphoses premiered in September.

Last night, I met up with fellow dance blogger, Art, at the NY Library of the Performing Arts to watch a newly restored film of George Balanchine’s 1965 ballet Don Quixote, performed by the choreographer and his then muse (and one of the greatest and most famous ballerinas of the 20th Century) Suzanne Farrell. The film, which is now available for private viewing in the library’s research carrels, was shown last night to an audience.

I’m currently reading Ms. Farrell’s autobio (one of MANY books overspilling my night table…) but this was my first time actually seeing her dance, and, oh my gosh, I was beyond blown away. She was just the epitome of grace and serenity and beatific, angelic, ethereal purity. Her arms were like water and her body at times looked like a candle’s brightly flickering flame. I can see why she was his muse! And she was only 19 in the film; all of those qualities that make a sublime dancer thusly so are present from the get-go, several of us agreed after the showing in the lobby.

The film is a bit wobbly in places. The filmming wasn’t sanctioned (making the movie a piece of bootleg!) So, at times the light is so dim you can’t really make out what is happening; sometimes the camera is focused on a dancer who isn’t dancing, cutting off someone else who is, there’s lots of blurriness, and the sound is often distorted. Somehow you can always see radiant Suzanne, though, which is what is most important of course!

Also, this version of the ballet is rather dark, based closely on the original Cervantes, not on (19th Century ballet-maker) Petipa’s more fun-loving, celebratory classical ballet filled with flirty characters and thrilling, virtuostic dancing. I rather liked Balanchine’s more melancholy interpretation. I wish New York City Ballet was still performing it today. Sadly, the ballet got mixed reviews, so they nixed it.

It was really fun seeing this with an actual audience. I think if I’d viewed it at a private carrel or checked it out and watched it at home on video I might have got bored. But seeing it with other ballet fans (some very long-time), hearing their gasps when Balanchine’s Don Quixote has his feet washed by Farrell’s Dulcinea, then dried by her long, flowing hair (Balanchine, many many years Farrell’s elder, suffered an unrequited romantic love for her), their heavy applauding at the end of one of Farrell’s solos, their enthusiastic whispering when someone who was obviously a famous dancer back then came on the screen, all made it so much more intriguing, made it all come alive. Some of the faces I’m seeing at all of these dance events are beginning to become familiar now, and it’s really nice sensing that you’re part of a community, especially in the hugeness of New York City.

Speaking of familiar faces, Art and I ran into Monica in the lobby and we chatted for a bit, which was fun. Her daughter is an aspiring ballerina and currently studies at the School of American Ballet, founded by Balanchine and connected to New York City Ballet.

Art is just amazing, and, after reading his blog for several months now, it was so great finally to meet him! So knowledgeable about ballet, though so young He lives in L.A. but was here checking out grad schools in art admin. After the showing, I dragged him to Cafe Mozart because I’m a pig and a half to chat more. As an undergrad at USC he took a dance history class with the (in)famous critic Lewis Segal! He said I should be reading Edwin Denby (which Terry Teachout and my friend the great dance writer Apollinaire Scherr have told me as well), so when my next Borders coupon arrives via email, I will have to break down and buy it. We discussed dancers, dance companies, dance journalism, dance presenters, theater, London verses New York for all of the above … he recommended for my next Blackpool trip (in May / June next year), I fly into London instead of Manchester so I can bookend my ballroom dancing extravaganza with some dance at Sadler’s Wells. He even knew what was on their agenda at that time of year! See, smart!! It was so nice meeting you, Art, and I hope you do relocate here for grad school In the meantime, keep blogging!

Watching “window” by bill shannon

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.

This was so cool! Review to come. Definitely try to go if you can!

Okay, now that I’m back at my desk I can write more. Bill Shannon’s “Window” is the last of the works shown as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s “Sitelines” series (consisting of site-specific dance performances) in its “River to River Festival” for this year. (“River to River” takes place downtown each summer). The two others I was able to see, I blogged about here and here.

I really really liked “Window.” Bill Shannon is a disabled dance / conceptual artist who uses crutches. (If you’re in L.A. right now, he is one of the performers included in the David Michalek “Slow Dancing films” exhibit.) Here he and three other men — one wearing black pants, top and hood, one wearing all white, and one dressed in a business suit — performed break-dance and hip-hop out on Liberty Park Plaza while Shannon, skateboarding on crutches, zoomed around on the streets surrounding the park. At points Shannon would skate into the park and dance, very well mind you, on the crutches.

There were two sets of audiences: the random passersby in the park and on the street who got caught up in all the commotion; and us, those who RSVP’d to the event through lmcc’s website and were escorted into the 8th floor of the high-rise at 140 Broadway, where, amongst the bemused real-estate brokers who regularly inhabit the office, watched the scene down below through the window. A couple of camera people outside filmed the performances by Shannon and the three others and those films were projected live onto four screens inside, where we stood. One screen was set up in such a way that it would reflect on the ceiling, where you got kind of an upside-down version of what was going on outside. The filmmakers also played with the projections a bit so that the colors of the dancers’ clothing would change, or, at points, the dancers would be projected onto a different background; at times the images looked rather 3D. So, you had your choice of watching what was actually going on outside through the window, or the way it was projected onto the screen, as intermediated by the filmmakers.

They also had speakers set up inside, which played a variety of hip hop, techno and pop music. Shannon had headphones bearing a small microphone so he danced to the music and interacted with us through the mike.

I preferred watching what was actually going on through the window, partly because, Liberty Park being so big and crowded, everytime I took my eyes off of Shannon, I lost him. I also found it more interesting seeing how normal everyday besuited business people and tourists, not expecting to see a show — and a rather odd one at that (I didn’t see any speakers down there so assumed they couldn’t hear the music and only saw a bunch of guys rocking out to silence), interacted with him. Of course this being New York, most pretended not to notice him at all, although you could kind of see them spying him out of the corner of their eyes. They didn’t have the roads blocked off and at one point I thought he may be hit by a large white van barrelling down Liberty Street, but the driver thankfully saw the crazy guy bopping around on crutches whilst skateboarding and slowed to a stop. “Whoaaa” Shannon sang over the speakers.

At the beginning, Shannon looked up at us and called out, “How do you put rhythm into a city? How do you make a city come alive?” while clapping his hands above his head and shaking his hips to the percussion like a rock star. There was something at first eery but eventually comforting about watching him rockingly skateboard around what was once a triage unit, the construction site that was once Ground Zero and before that the World Trade Center diagonally behind him.