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Casellula (and Andrew Nemr’s "Cats Paying Dues" Tap Ensemble!)

 

Last night Alyssa and I went to a tap dance performance at the Julia Miles Theater in west midtown. I’m writing a formal review of it for Explore Dance, which I will link to when it’s up, but, since the show’s only on for two more days, I just want to say now, I loved it. Andrew Nemr trained with Gregory Hines, and it shows in his expressiveness and style. “Cats Paying Dues” is a very young troupe of up-and-comers (my favorite was 17-year-old Orlando Hernandez — wow!), and the performance was charmingly low-key, no frills, no fluff, no pretentiousness (praise the lord), just very good, immensely musical dancing, and excellent jazz band. If you’re in NY, for $39, I think it’s a great value. Go to telecharge (or 212-239-6200) for tix.

I saw a new friend there (a very nice guy whom I met from Apollinaire), Brian Seibert, who writes for the New Yorker — only famous people like Goddess Joan have bylines there, but Brian is a very good writer; here is his brief but well-written piece on Nemr and CPD (you have to scroll down a bit).

Afterward, Alyssa introduced me to this new(ish — it opened last May) lovely little wine and cheese bar around the corner, called Casellula. (They also have a blog, “Spread the Curd”.) Their wine list is amazing and delightfully inexpensive (compared to other nice wine bars), and they have an absolutely enormous list of cheeses, many locally produced, and a fromager to help with your selection. We shared the most scrumptious — and original — duck confit salad I’ve ever had — the finely shredded combo of meat, celeriac, gruyere cheese and apple gave it this deceptively simple “hash”-looking quality — and it was topped with dulcet pomegranite seeds, and baked duck-skin croutons to die for – and I mean die for! Alyssa and I were wondering where we could get more and how unhealthy it would be to eat a whole plate?… Shared desserts were flourless chocolate cake textured with finely ground chocolate chunks and soaked in a light cream that effectively countered the cake’s richness, and coconut crepes oozing with lemon filling and topped with a mound of fluffy, coconut-textured whipped cream. Serendipitously, pastry chef Allen Stafford, who’s in the picture with us, is a former stage designer with the Atlanta Ballet and a big Paul Taylor fan. Funny because when we first walked in, I could have sworn I recognized him; still not completely sure from where but likely some Paul Taylor or other dance performance. He also made the artwork in back of us. It looks like a painting from afar, but when you approach, you realize it’s made all of aluminum wine bottle closures. Very cool! The restaurant is just around the corner from the Alvin Ailey studios as well, so if I can ever get my lazy butt back in gear and start up with classes again, will make the perfect after-workout lounge.

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Danny Tidwell and David Hallberg (and CounterCritic) in the Same Room(!): Cedar Lake Ballet Blogger Shindig

Fun fun night! Big understatement! I didn’t even need to get drunk 🙂

Please excuse the Gawkerish, 15-year-old voice of this post. I waited until this morning to blog in hopes that the euphoria would dissipate and Kristin Sloan might post the group photo her boyfriend, Doug Jaeger, took, but as of yet neither has happened.

I must begin by calling myself a big fat hypocrit. I’ve laughed and rolled my eyes at Philip whenever he’s nearly fainted in front of the New York City Ballet stage door upon receiving a smile and hello from Jock Soto or Albert Evans or Wendy Whelan. Last night Danny Tidwell smiled and said hi to me and I promptly choked on my wine. Of course he doesn’t know me; I was just standing there staring gape-mouthed at him when he walked by with … oh crap I’m so bad, I think it was Jamie??… He was there with a girl from SYTYCD, but I’m not exactly sure who. Since the pre-show party was for bloggers, I was half-expecting his boyfriend to come (whom I was very much hoping to meet!) but Benaym was a no-show. I didn’t expect Danny though!!! Oh he’s so cute, and his smile is so warm and charming and sweet, it really just melted me. I can easily see why he is such a star. I got there earlier than everyone else and was nearly alone inside when the earth-shattering hello happened; each time one of my friends walked in, they greeted me only to get in return, “Omigod, omigod, Danny Tidwell said hi to me, Danny Tidwell said hi to me!!!” He’s so much smaller than he looks on TV or onstage. I couldn’t believe it. He’s always appeared to me the size of Carlos Acosta, but he’s well under six feet. It’s just the proverbial larger than life stage and screen presence I guess… And I’m very very very sorry for any SYTYCD fan who’s reading, but I just couldn’t bring myself to snap pics of him. In New York there’s an ironclad rule against “starf***ing.” Everyone does it, but everyone pretends they don’t and to break the pretense is practically illegal, a violation of the NYC social contract. Taylor and Evan and Ariel all agreed with me that I would definitely be immediately kicked out and may even be executed if I so much as tried surreptitiously to get a cell phone pic. So sorry!!! But Mr. Jaeger had a humongoid camera and was shooting up the place, so I’ll keep checking his site and see if he got any.

When Caleb Custer from Cedar Lake sent out the email announcing the blogger party, I had no idea who all was going to show. I was still swooning over Danny when who should breeze up his hair billowing in the wind but the beautiful one himself! When I spotted him pass by the large garage window (Cedar Lake’s studio is actually housed in a big garage, according to Philip, once used by photographer Annie Liebowitz), I couldn’t help myself. I screamed uncontrollably, “Look, there’s David Hallberg!” Doug (Fox), Philip, Ariel and probably about 75 other people in the lobby followed my point. David looked in at us, horrified. He promptly pretended to get a call on his cell phone and spent the next 20 minutes outside pacing up and down the street affecting a phone conversation, every so often peeking in the window to see if all the commotion at his arrival had died down. Meanwhile Danny remained huddled in a back corner with Jamie. Dancers are weird the way they sometimes crave and are other times embarrassed by attention.

Finally David braved the storm and ventured in. He is soft-friggin-spoken to make a massive understatement! He extended his hand to me and said something I couldn’t hear, I said simply, “hi, I’m Tonya,” feeling like a total ass, and he again said something I couldn’t make out. Soft-spoken or not, he clearly either had no idea who I was or was terrified of me. Ariel thinks it’s the latter, because of things like this and this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the former though; he and Marcelo have got to be two of the only dancers on the face of the earth who never Google themselves. Anyway, the awkwardness was soon quelled by his sighting of Philip, who is apparently a friend of his through Craig Salstein. Philip was standing beside me. David doesn’t need to act at all; his natural reactions to things are so sweetly touching. You could see his recognition of Philip visibly register as his face brightened and he went bouncing toward Philip like a dog when it sees a regular playmate, practically rubbing his pelvis up against him when embracing. He then saw Ariel, standing beside Philip, whom he met when he was guesting once in Mobile, Alabama, and hugged her as well. I was feeling like the consummate dog crap, being the only one who didn’t receive a hug. But I guess that’s what I get for posting naked pictures and yelling at him for not blogging often enough on the Winger 🙂

Another highlight for me was meeting CounterCritic, whose original blog (critiquing the critics) I love. He’s such a fantastic writer whether he’s wickedly taunting critics or writing performance reviews himself, which are always spot-on (almost always anyway!) And he’s the only dance blogger who’s on Alex Ross’s blogroll. Oh jealously uncontained… Anyway, he’s so nice in person; all that blog pissiness is a total cover! I can’t really rib David for his puppyish behavior toward Philip because I followed CC around all night like a little dog, sitting next to him even during the show.

Speaking of which, could I talk a bit about the actual performance? Artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer, who by the way is really good-looking and personable and used to dance with my beloved Alvin Ailey, held a little Q&A with the bloggers afterward. He said he loves blogs: existing in a sphere so apart from traditional media, they bring something fresh and original to the dance world; they bring balance and new voices, and, though you never know what take you’re going to get from each one, it’s always interesting to see… I’m sure he never thought he’d be getting a blog post all about the pre-show hysteria of meeting Danny Tidwell and David Hallberg.

I want to look more at the (extensive!) press materials and the DVD they included (always an immense plus from dance companies), but for now I want to say how much I love dancer Jon Bond. Everything he does is so full-out, his lines are so sharp and even intense if that makes sense. Just little things like flexing a hand or foot, when he does it, it’s so pronounced that it looks all the more edgy in its awkwardness.

We saw three ballets: “Symptoms of Development,” by choreographer Jacopo Godani, a harsh, unsettling piece which dealt with technology and how it works against human interaction (Evan remarked to me afterward that it was an interesting inclusion in the rep they showed us, since we’re bloggers); “Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue,” by Crystal Pite, my favorite duet being one in which Bond struggled to reach the female dancer in front of him, palm open and fingers extended to the max, running in place to catch up with her, but in vain, as she, running in place as well, was always too far ahead; and “Rite” by Stijn Celis, another take on a dance to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” nearly all of which — of the ones I’ve seen anyway — evoke in different ways the chaos bordering on horror of the rite of passage of boys and girls into men and women. If you’re interested, here’s a YouTube clip of Pina Bausch’s take on the theme, and here’s Maurice Bejart’s, which I’m partial to. Celis’s “Rite” was different in that all characters were androgynous, so there was no real distinction between male and female. All dancers — about four men and four women — were dressed in Asian-looking strapless mini-dresses and wore heavy, almost operatic facial makeup. It actually reminded me of Nacho Duato’s Castrati, which I wrote about here, except both sexes were included, though not both genders (that I saw anyway; others may have different interpretations). The dancers darted, leaped over, and ran atop these three long log-looking sets, covered with green material and meant, I think, to evoke a primitive landscape. The dancers almost looked like nymphs as they interacted: regarding each other quizzically, examining the powder and sweat left on the ‘log landscape’ by each other in a somewhat grotesquely sexual way; performing dangerous run-and-jump catches with each other; it was kind of “Afternoon of a Faun“ish (original Nijinsky version) as well. All pieces were abstract, and all unsettling, but I think this was my favorite because it seemed to have the most going on that I could latch onto and make something of, and, because of the other “Rite’s” I’d seen, I had something to compare it to.

This is a new company, only four years old, and this is the third time I’ve seen them. They tend to take on edgy, visually striking and thought-provoking work and their dancers are very unafraid and do everything full force. For more info on their season, go here. Thank you so much to Cedar Lake for organizing this most fun, and thus far original, event. I’ll post pictures taken by the pro photographers if Caleb sends any my way…

For now, here’s a picture of Ariel taken in The Half King around the corner, where we afterward went to discuss the performance. Okay, where we went to discuss David and Danny 🙂

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Sophie is Depressed…

Ugh. Last night my agent sent me another editor’s rejection on my novel. They’re all saying the same thing: ‘I liked it but didn’t love it enough to take it on.’ The vast majority of novels I’ve read I’ve liked but didn’t love — some I didn’t even like at all — but definitely most fall into that first category. The last ‘rejector’ said she thought I was intelligent and at points the book was laugh out loud funny, but she just didn’t fall enough in love. Last night’s said she liked the plot very much but wasn’t “head-over-heels immersed” enough to fight for Sophie “in-house and out in the world.” It sounds like Sophie’s going off to war or something! I guess it is kind of a war to get the average person to pick up a book, particularly if that book is fiction. Which then makes it a war to get the publishing house to invest money into producing it.

Ugh. I guess I’ve spent enough time away from it that I should re-look and make some changes. Or maybe I should just resign myself to the fact that a good many writers never get their first novels published and throw myself into the second… It’s just so daunting because I really think a novel has to be, if not the hardest piece of art to make, then at least the one that takes the longest.

In any event, Cedar Lake Ballet is holding a shindig for dance bloggers tonight and I’ve already told a friend he’s going to have to take notes on the ballet for me because I intend to get thoroughly plastered at the pre-show cocktail party!

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Sitting in the gay man section …

Sitting in the gay man section …

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.


Should be fun!

Update: Actually the whole theater turned out to be the gay section 🙂 Mr. Parsons is very popular amongst a certain population… Hehe, I can see why; it was a lot of fun and he’s got some very good dancers in his troupe. His piece “Caught” appears to be his claim to fame. In it, a man frantically runs toward various lights shining down from above and dances underneath their heat. But then the lights leave him and focus on another part of the stage. At one point, strobe lights just begin flashing all over the stage, completely overtaking him, and he can’t escape. He dances, doing some amazing moves — continuous grand jetes, high twisty jumps — as the lights continue to flash on him. It’s an amazing visual effect — he looks like he’s literally flying, never coming down to the ground — and he must be very focused to be able to dance in all that chaos. I’ve seen things not unlike this before, but the audience was going completely nuts with applause. The guy next to me said to his boyfriend, “it’s worth the price of admission for that alone!”

Parsons also does some interesting things with the body, the male body in particular. His main muse appears to be male dancer Miguel Quinones, judging from the first program. At one point Quinones does these really jazzy barrel turns, where he kind of shakes and shimmies his whole body on each rotation. He doesn’t always gain as much height as a classical ballet dancer, but it’s incredible that he can move so in the midst of the turn. (I was sitting next to a critic — I think the guy from the New Jersey Ledger. His pen started going the same time mine did at those amazing turns 🙂 ) At another point, Quinones did a lovely arabesque, but instead of remaining still, he did these body rolls, starting from his hips and undulating up through his waist, torso, chest, shoulders, then out to the fingers of the outstretched arm — all the while steadily balancing on one leg, the other beautifully lifted behind.

Anyway, I’m going to Program B as well, and I’ll do a write up after! They’re at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea through Jan. 20th.

Okay, gotta go glue myself to the TV — Oh my gosh, Hillary won, Hillary won, HILLARY WON!!!

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Jock!

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).

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.

 

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.

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In Serious Praise of Cuba

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?…

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I Second Anthony Lane on "Persepolis"

 

…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?

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My First Pina Bausch Experience, Dance On Camera, and Writing (Slightly) Negative Reviews

Just quickly before I go out to meet Ariel (who’s now living in NY :D), 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.

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

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.