I couldn’t resist spending an hour down at Ground Zero today. It was crowded, mainly with people taking pictures, many of whom appeared to be tourists, and reporters – loads and loads and loads of them. Above photo is taken at the entrance to the cemetery in the back of St. Paul’s Chapel, where a man was singing John Lennon’s Imagine, and another man was holding an American flag above him.
Inside the chapel grounds.
Across the street, outside the construction zone where the memorial’s being built.
You can’t see but the man in blue was holding a photo album of his pictures of the World Trade Center taken both years before 9/11 and that day. He saw some young people wearing anti-bin Laden shirts and seemed intent on showing them just what was lost.
Someone photoshopped this picture of the Statue of Liberty holding bin Laden’s head instead of her torch and pasted it onto this street sign.
A big line of press tents and camera vans from all major TV networks.
Construction underway, with new glass on one of the buildings. The memorial is set to open this year on 9/11.
In my last post, on NYCB’s Swan Lake, I railed against what I saw as race-based casting, which led to a good discussion on race in ballet thanks to some very smart commenters! Marie mentioned the ballerina who’d been with NYCB and it made me nuts that I’d momentarily forgotten her name. So, I did an internet search and found her – Aesha Ash – via Eva Yaa Asantewaa. It turns out she’s just started her own blog, Black Swan Diaries. She has some really good posts up already, about dancing Arabian in NYCB’s Nutcracker, and about touring Brazil, amongst other things. So another addition to your blog reading!
Did you guys watch last night? I thought she looked radiant, and her speech was really sweet. She seemed genuinely happy about both the film and her personal life. She still seemed to be in a state of blissful shock about the latter. I found the part where she reminded the audience about Benjamin Millepied’s character smirking when Vincent Cassel’s character asked him if he would sleep with Portman’s black swan, then said, “see – he’s a good actor because he really does want to sleep with me!” sweetly innocent, though I can imagine some might have thought it a bit crass or childish. Millepied to me looked a little out of his element though. He looked uncomfortable when the camera focused on him.
Some dance fans on Twitter noted that Portman thanked everyone involved in the film but the dancers. I think that’s more of a testament to the fact that this wasn’t really a dance film – the other dancers had the relevance and necessity of extras – than to any forgetfulness on her part.
Dance film or not, I’m glad she won. I think she was by far the best of the actresses nominated in her category.
And did you guys see Jackie Reyes sitting next to Aaron Sorkin! I know one person did! I guess she’s no longer with ABT though; she’s now a student at Columbia. I wonder why she left ABT. Though she was in the corps she always stood out to me and she was only 24 and had time to work toward a promotion…
I’m also glad The Social Network won so many awards, including the biggest – best film. I think it had the most reach and breadth and depth and importance of the films nominated. It also had great acting by everyone all around, great writing, great story-telling – everything you’d expect an award-winner to have. I wished Jesse Eisenberg could have won for best actor because I think he did a tremendous job. He found the vulnerability in that character and really created sympathy for him – that’s hard to do when your character is generally a supreme jerk. But there was no way with him going up against Colin Firth.
And speaking of social networks these days, I don’t know how many of you are on Twitter, but as I was watching I was following the #goldenglobes hashtag. I love doing that now when I’m watching something popular. I do it often during big sports games now. It’s one of my favorite things about Twitter because you can connect with people all over the country – all of the world really – who you don’t know but who are doing the same thing you’re doing at that moment. And sometimes people say very funny, clever things – especially during a big celebrity fest like this.
Anyway, Twitter puts the “top tweets” on a given subject at the top of its hashtag list. These are usually – or have been in the past – the tweets that have been the most re-tweeted. This is a way of rewarding the funninest, wittiest tweets on something, or a tweet that has resonance to many – people re-tweet and those tweets rise to the top of the list. Well, last night as I was following along on the hashtag, all of a sudden a tweet by Paramount was suddenly planted at the top. And it was obviously an advertisement for one of their films. It wasn’t a tweet that was clever or funny and had been re-tweeted. I assume the studio had purchased it as ad space from the Twitter execs. That’s what it seemed like anyway. And then several tweets like that started appearing at the top of the hashtag list. If you were reading on a cell phone with a small screen, you had to do some real scrolling down every time you refreshed the page to see the newest tweets.
After a while it became annoying and I just stopped following the hashtag. It really kind of saddened me though. What would Mark Zuckerberg say? According to The Social Network, at first he didn’t want advertising on Facebook because he thought it would ruin it by being too intrusive, not to mention corny. And he was right. But at least on Facebook the advertisements don’t interfere with your ability to use the site for what it’s for – to socialize.
Several interesting races happening today in New York. The one I’m watching most closely is that for Manhattan District Attorney. I’m personally hoping for Richard Aborn, who takes a more preventative than punitive approach to crime, advocating investing in after-school programs for at-risk kids, crackdowns on interstate gun trafficking and implementing gun buyback programs in order to decrease the number of illegal guns on NYC streets, and treating drug addiction as a public health problem. And most importantly, he believes in correcting the racial injustices that seem so inherent to our criminal justice system right now.
Anyway, whomever you vote for, just remember to vote.
My friend Alyssa is an independent art curator and she’s working with Art For Change on an upcoming festival in East Harlem, called Hacia Afuera. The festival will take place August 22-23 in the streets and parks of Spanish Harlem.
The festival organizers have issued a call for submissions or project proposals in installation, visual, and performance art, which includes music and dance — that speaks to that community and has a social justice bent. I know some choreographers and dance artists read my blog, so I thought I’d put the word out here. If you’re interested in submitting (and please consider doing so if you have work that fits), go here for more information. The deadline is July 17th.
There’s currently a debate raging in London over Sadler’s Wells (the most important venue there for contemporary dance) and its new season lineup showcasing the work almost entirely of male choreographers. Thanks to Pinballpeople for pointing me to it!
See Guardian posts by dance and culture writers Judith Mackrell and Charlotte Higgins here, here, and here (and read the comments section in that last link; some are by choreographers and are very astute.)
Alistair Spalding, the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells, has apparently responded that he realizes there’s an imbalance but can’t do anything about it; he has to choose the works he thinks best. Spalding posits one reason for the lack of female choreographers as being that women are perhaps not as “assertive” as men, but it’s unclear to me what exactly he means.
I am continuing to get emails from members of the FDNY over this, accusing me of making the whole thing up. Why would I do that? I was obviously really upset about it, which is why I wrote about it. Why are they so threatened and unable to take criticism? And why not limit comments to the post?
Well, the wonderful James Wolcott, whose writerly support I’m always so immensely thankful for, found the story compelling and quoted from it, so it’s not like they can harass me into taking it down.
I just received this email in response to my One-Sided post (which is nonfiction and is most definitely true in its entirety), which was also posted on Huffington Post.
I read your story One-Sided: EMTs Should Not Make Assumptions in the Huffington Post. As a 17 year vet of FDNY EMS I must say I was shocked by your story and your allegations. You have made a lot of disturbing claims against what you call “City EMT’s” and I must say simply based on what you have written I have my doubts about your story.
You are on a train when a person falls “unconscious”. They get the conductor he calls for help and the train waits at the station. Now you write:
“Seconds later, two women saying they were nurses appeared. They carefully turned the man over, felt a pulse, and ensured he was breathing. Sighs of relief spread throughout the car and the West Indian woman squeezed my hand hopefully. One nurse asked for some kind of stick to hold the man’s tongue down. A woman fumbled in her purse and produced a nail file, which the nurses took. They told a burly man sitting nearby to hold the collapsed man’s heavy, boot-clad legs up in the air and asked a woman to search his pockets for identification to give paramedics when they arrived. When the nurses pulled the file from the man’s mouth, it was covered with blood. “Oh no, oh God!” voices echoed. “He probably just bit his tongue,” someone said. Several people had now come from other cars and were looking in, concerned. “Is he drunk?” a man asked. “Don’t think so. I was near him and didn’t smell anything,” said another.”
I wonder why anyone would stick anything into someone’s mouth?
If you haven’t yet heard, Facebook has modified its terms of service to say that they now own all content posted or uploaded to the site and can use it in any way they wish without compensating you. This is of particular interest to the dance community because there are a great many of us using Facebook and uploading all kinds of pictures, videos, dance reviews, blog posts, etc. Not only can they now use without your permission anything that you upload, but, if you have a Facebook widget on your site inviting readers to post a link from your site to Facebook, it’s treated the same as an upload — you’ve automatically consented to giving full rights over that material to Facebook.
I’m not an IP lawyer but this looks on its face like unenforceable dumbassery — look at this NYTimes review for example: according to Facebook’s new TOS, they own not only Sir Alastair’s words, but the photos and slide show of Evidence as well because of the Facebook widget that pops up when you click the “share” button. So under these new terms it seems that they could sell the photos for use in a commercial or advertisement without any compensation to the dance company or newspaper. Obviously, ludicrously far-reaching consequences.
But since this has a lot of smart people up in arms, I think everyone would do best to reconsider what they upload to Facebook, at least until it’s all sorted out. For more information on this issue, go here, here, and here.
Update: Here’s the latest, kind of summarizing the whole thing.
I was riding the Brooklyn-bound 2 train during evening rush hour when suddenly a man sitting across from me collapsed onto the woman next to him. The man was white, mid-forty-ish, with oily hair and lines of black under his fingernails and in the crevices of his hands. His jeans and jacket bore caked dirt and his pants were very worn. He may well have been homeless.
Of course people often fall asleep on the subway, and their head ends up on the next person’s shoulder. But they usually wake up, embarrassed and apologetic. This man didn’t budge. And I remembered him appearing fairly alert; when I boarded he’d made eye contact with me.
The woman next to him tried to inch away. When his body trailed hers as she went, she tapped his shoulder. When he still didn’t move, she took both hands and tried to push him upright. When she let go, he lurched slightly left, then fell forward, straight to the floor, crashing head first into the metal gear box under the seats.
Everyone in the car heard the thud and gasped. He remained motionless and I started to worry he’d had some kind of seizure or stroke.
As one of my Twitter friends said, “Feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. When I wake up, the world will be glorious, full of hope & promise & wonderous things to discover! Obama!”
It’s actually very early in the morning (like, still last night), but when I get up, I’ll probably be adding to this post, live-blogging the events throughout the day as I watch them (sadly, only on TV)
Happy happy day, everyone!
So, I’m watching on TV now but am thinking of going to one of the common areas in NY to watch on a big screen TV. I know I’ll be cold (I think the Apollo theater is the only inside venue and I’m sure it’s full by now) and probably won’t see as much, but sometimes it’s just fun for a sense of community.
I’m actually liking NBC’s coverage better than CNN’s. NBC has some knowledgeable people on — I liked the presidential historian who talked about the first inauguration (Washington’s of course) and the most difficult transition of power (1953, Eisenhower) — CNN is just interviewing people and the commentators are saying such cliched things: “It’s a new dawn, “it’s a new day,” “this is historical,” etc. What would David Foster Wallace have said…
Not to sound melodramatic, but it just seems like the recession is really changing the way some people live. My apartment building seems like party central during weekday days now. Halls are filled with the cacophany of TV cartoons, soap operas, talk shows, and blaring stereos, all of which easily penetrate walls, floors, and ceilings. Either a lot of people are out of work or they work at home and enjoy lots of background noise. And people are up all night, blaring stereos, the same noise, till all hours of the morning. You ask someone politely to please turn it down a bit and they mumble and slam the door in your face. And the other day I smelled pot coming from someone’s apartment, again, during a weekday day. This used to be a professional building, with lawyers and journalists and the like as residents. Now everyone’s rude and antisocial. Maybe the middle-classes are starting to get a small sense of what those in poorer communities have had to deal with: hopelessness, frustration, anger, boredom…
