Tag: Art / Architecture

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Am I Too Hard on Contemporary Choreographers?

I the weekend largely looking at art. On Friday night, my friend Dee and I went to the Whitney’s Kara Walker exhibit, “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,” about slavery and the Ante-Bellum South, which was excellent, and something everyone who has a chance should see. And the night before, my friend Alyssa invited me an opening of Shinique Smith’s show, “All Purpose,” at the Moti Hasson gallery in Chelsea.

This piece is titled “Thank You, Come Again.” I turned off my flash, because I’m always afraid it’s going to hurt the artwork, so the pics are a bit blurry, but this one’s comprised of several articles of clothing, all clumped together and affixed to the wall, a few scraggly threads trailing from the bottom looking to me almost like blood or tears, and a pile of socks with a sole red rose in the center beneath the wall hanging, on the floor.

Smith basically assembles her artwork from used / found objects, which reminded me of John Jasperse. Alyssa, who’s an Art history grad student specializing in African, told me using found objects rather than buying new is big among African artists right now because it symbolizes a rebellion against colonialism, globalization and the cultural imperialism of the West. (Smith is from Baltimore, but apparently is associated with African artists.)

I thought this one was charming. (Unfortunately, the gallery didn’t have the names of the artwork in its press release or on its website, so I don’t know all the names of the pieces). To me this looks like an animal, like a donkey, and I found the “head” and “ears” sweet because they’re made of a satiny fabric and tulle respectively, making me think of dance of course. Alyssa thought it looked “flamenco.” But the animal, who is carrying several adorable stuffed animals on its shoulders, appears to be carrying heavy bags on its side as well, so it looks a bit overburdened though not downtrodden.I liked this one because it made me think of Ian McEwan‘s novel “Enduring Love.” There was a rope attaching the crate to a pole in the ceiling, so it resembled a hot air balloon, and that book opens with a horrifying hot air balloon ride gone heinously wrong. The doe at the bottom is nostalgic to me, maybe because it looks like something my grandparents would always keep in a glass cabinet in their living room.

This one, the ‘star’ piece, is called “Glutton.” It was made of gilded cushions, with a red velvet blanket spilling out underneath. Alyssa and her friends thought it looked like a Buddha, which I guess it does, but is Buddha associated with gluttony? I found it beautiful but somewhat hideous at the same time; like incredible wealth and how it can be so striking but can also pervert or uglify.

Alyssa in foreground with friends Alison and Kim (who is an artist in Connecticut) in back. We joked about how Alyssa is becoming the “Where’s Waldo” of my blog 🙂 It was a very well-attended opening.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it, just walking around sipping Vodka (compliments of the exhibit’s sponsor), chatting with friends, and observing, investigating the art, trying to figure out how it was assembled, what materials it was made of, what all of the component objects were, what the work as a whole meant, symbolized, or evoked for me. The whole exhibit had kind of an air of nostalgia to me and made me a bit sad, sweet as the sculptures or wall figures were.

But it made me think about Jasperse too. I liked a lot of Smith’s pieces, but nothing really blew me away the way Jasperse’s clothes hanger sculpture / set did, the same way that none of his choreographic uses of found objects knocked me out like the hangers. And yet overall I still really enjoyed the Smith exhibit. But I was hard on Jasperse, coming away from the performance generally more disappointed. And I wonder why that is… if it’s that I expect more from dance (or something different anyway), if it’s that I spend more time with a dance performance, or more money on it (assuming I’m not buying the artwork anyway). Maybe it’s that I was physically closer to the art, could investigate it more thoroughly and take my time with it, or maybe it’s just that the drink and friendly chatter added to my enjoyment? … Anyway, after this exhibit, I felt like I shouldn’t have been as hard on Jasperse.

Another interesting discussion ensued amongst us ladies: whether you need to know something about the artwork in order to appreciate it or whether a work of art should stand entirely on its own. Funny to me because Jolene and I had just had a similar discussion on her blog (see comments here) regarding the two new abstract ballets ABT just put on. Alison said she didn’t necessarily need to know very much about a work, but titles and little notes did help. Sometimes. For example, the title in the top piece, “Thank You, Come Again,” which the artist’s note says is made from “ex-boyfriend’s clothes,” made her realize the pile of socks wasn’t just a mound of dirty underwear sitting on the floor for no purpose, they were remnants of the subject’s ex and they illustrated her sorrow and emptiness, a feeling made all the more powerful by the rose in the middle.

But, Alison added, Mark Rothko (whose art at least in his later years was extremely abstract, usually consisting of a sole geometric shape or different colored horizontal lines on a canvas) could give detailed names to all of his paintings until he was blue in the face and she would still see only abstract shapes.

I remember from the Kara Walker exhibit a drawing of an old white man, shirtless and with saggy male breasts, who was kind of breast-feeding a black baby. But he didn’t look so happy about it; rather, he tried to shield his rather disgusted expression from the baby’s mother. The image was striking and I kind of understood the racial aspect, but it meant so much more when I read in the curator’s explanation that the white man was famous abolitionist John Brown. So Walker is commenting upon the futility of white-led abolitionism and questioning the patriarchal reverence with which this man is held.

Another silhouette appeared to me, on first look, like a woman was jumping up excitedly, kicking her heels in the air, doing a little happy dance. But it also looked like her wrist was falling off and there was a spill on the ground below her that looked like a big mess. After reading the curator’s words I realized it was a pool of blood; she’d slit her wrist, and was dancing in excitement because by committing suicide, she’d freed herself and performed her own small role in abolishing slavery by depriving it of property.

Even just the silhouettes themselves: I hadn’t realized this little decorative art form was a fixture of, first aristocratic, then haute-bourgeois households, the poser usually being a delicate white woman; in fact, portraiture technique in the 1800s became a way of training “good ladies.” So, by painting most of her subjects in this way, Walker was turning an upper-class white art form on its head. The curator’s notes also say that the silhouette mimics the reductiveness of stereotypes, which I thought of as I was viewing the exhibit. But not knowing the history of silhouettes, I would have missed out on the class issue.

Anyway, sorry this post is all over the place. I’m starting to blab so am going to go to bed now. I also just wanted to point out that there’s a great conversation taking place on Apollinaire’s blog regarding dance-makers’ obligations to their audiences. Go here to take part. The dance blogosphere is becoming fun!

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Sexy Costumes, Swish Sets, Genius Composers, and, Oh Yeah, the World’s Greatest Dancers: Two ABT World Premieres

I’m still in a state of sugar shock. Like when you’re having a little meal of chocolate truffles (as some of us are occasionally wont to do 🙂 ); the first couple make your blood race in a good way and you’re hyper-aware and -active, but then you have one too many and hyper-activity turns to jitters and your brain starts racing ahead of you and you have no coherent thoughts whatsoever? Anyway, too much going on last night! It was the world premiere of two new ballets: “Close To Chuck,” a collaboration between choreographer Jorma Elo, composer Philip Glass and artist Chuck Close (whose self-portrait is pictured above) in tribute to Close’s body of work. It was also the not premiere but second performance of a new ballet by NYCBallet dancer Benjamin Millepied called “From Here On Out,” set to new music by 20-something composer Nico Muhly, whom I talked about here.

These premieres are so much fun to be a part of, they’re such an event extraordinare. Practically everyone in the ballet world turns out. I’m so thankful to Apollinaire for inviting me since they were nearly sold out. We sat in front of Tobi Tobias — so fun putting a face to writing. I was hoping we’d see some other familiar dance writer names, but they must have been sitting on the other side of the theater. On our side were also NYCB ballerina Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle, and some people who I recognized but couldn’t put names to, including a Paul Taylor dancer.

Okay, first things first: the evening began with another performance of choreographer Stanton Welch’s “Clear” again starring Jose Carreno, which I wrote about in my last post. Last time I saw him it was his debut in the role and I wrote that he concentrated more on the steps than the drama; this time I felt differently. I felt that he gave it much more emotion, was probably just getting the steps down the first time. I was also sitting on the right side of the theater instead of the left this time so I might have had a better view of his face. He danced it gorgeously, perfectly, emotionally, everything. I LOVE that ballet. The more I see it the more it evokes different things for me. Last night, it kind of reminded me of a more abstract version of Death in Venice, where the men, resplendent in pants that are skin-colored but have a bit of golden quality to their sheen, no shirts, have their arms and legs outstretched looking up to the heavens, as if they are both in worship and the objects of someone else’s worship (like the viewer’s). At other points, others of the men act silly and playful, covering their eyes with their hands, much like Tadzio (the older man’s muse and unrequited love interest in “Venice”), at times kind of bouncing around jovially zigzagging their heads. It goes from beautiful and poetic to cute and playful and back again, with the final pas de deux between the lead man and the ballerina ending in a beatific embrace, his head on her shoulder and her head pointed to the sky, her arm reaching upward. People have said they think the ballerina was superfluous, that Welch must have felt he needed to put her in because it was ballet. I thought about it and, though I think that ending scene is gorgeous, she was hardly in the ballet and she didn’t really seem to belong. Why not simply replace her with one of the other men, like one of the young sun-god, playfully flirty Tadzio-types, like the one danced by cute Jared Matthews? I know the ballerina on pointe has classically been the element bringing forth the poetic, but Welch’s whole point is that men in and of themelves can be so. Maybe he was afraid of it looking “gay,” or something, but, please, ballet audiences are more sophisticated than that.

Anyway, the fun thing about sitting on the right side of the theater is that it’s near the curtain, so when they pull it back and the dancers come out front for their curtain call, they’re right in front of you. Completely beyond surreal being that close to Jose. I love him so! You just want to reach out and touch… don’t worry I would never 🙂 Oh, and then at the end of intermission, before the new “Close to Chuck” began, I spotted him in the back of the orchestra section, watching. I had to force myself to turn back to the front to see the ballet. Even standing there in a plain black t-shirt, the man just melts me.

Second on was the “Close to Chuck.” A disclaimer: I always get more out of a piece the more I go see it — I see all kinds of things I missed on first glance — so these are only my initial afterimages after viewing it only once. I have to say the costumes (by Ralph Rucci) and backdrop (various stages of a painting of Mr. Close’s Self Portrait pictured up top of this post) were so stunning, my focus was largely there. In future performances, I’ll pay more attention to the actual dancing 🙂 The audience was abuzz. As the curtain lifted to reveal several people — Marcelo front and center, Herman to his left in back (this after Jose, both on stage and in audience is where my “truffles” were starting to go into overload…) — all covered neck to foot in shiny black, the bottom portion of the costume a long wide skirt for both men and women, the audience gasped in unison. As a curtain against the back wall lifted to reveal a sparsely filled-in black and white rudimentary etching of the portrait, a single person walked around stage, whipping off each dancer’s vest. The men were now shirtless, the women wearing black mesh leotards with a large black cross down the front and back. Everyone wore handless black gloves that started at the wrist, ended at the elbow. The costumes were very reminiscient to me of those used in Nacho Duato’s “Castrati” which I recently blogged about. They were very medieval, religious, but in a retro vogue way, not authentic like in the Duato. The long skirts for the men made Marcelo and Herman — two of the dance world’s most manly dancers– all the more striking, and ironically more rather than less virile, especially with the gloves which looked similar to the leather arm gear in Castrati.

Marcelo walked over to Julie Kent, dancing the lead ballerina here, examined various parts of her body — or perhaps measured her — his movements very rigid and staccato, almost unsettlingly so. After a short pas de deux, everyone left the stage, and the back curtain lowered back down over the painting. The dancers then re-emerged now without the skirts. The women wore simply the leotards, the men these biker-ish looking pants, all black but a darker more textured inky black lining the inner leg, a lighter, more diaphonous black lining the outer leg. A thick piece of elastic hugged the waist, and in front there was a long horizontal rectangular cut-out between the waist and pelvis which I found sexy and suggestive, albeit rather odd. The women were on pointe and then men wore either black ballet slippers or possibly jazz shoes — I couldn’t really tell, but it looked like there was a very small heel. The back curtain drew up again to reveal another black and white version of the portrait, but this one more filled-in than the previous. The work was being created.

Movement — both partnering and solo — was intentionally stiff, rigid, and awkward, but with hints of fluidity, very much like that I described in Elo’s just-premiered piece “Brake the Eyes.” In fact at one point, Marcelo performed the same exact movement pattern as the ballerina in “Brake” as his body was seemingly divided into two, the left half held stiff and bent, the right arm making flowing, wavy watery movements, as if half of his body was struggling to break free from the other. In “Brake,” I interpreted this to be half classical ballet, half puppet and thought of it as some kind of statement on the world of classical ballet. With Marcelo performing the same movement (and it looked very different on Marcelo’s huge body as compared to the petit ballerina’s), I thought of it more as the artist trying to break free of constraints or, in Close’s case, the limitations of his own body.

I don’t know a huge amount about Close, but I do know he was a promising youngish artist when struck with an aneurysm, which rendered his arms and legs nearly useless. He then developed a new kind of painting method, by which he would photograph his subject, then employ others to put various computerized graphs over the photo, over which he would, using an arm brace, paint in the little graphic squares, making a colorful complex portrait that was almost industrial-looking if viewed from up close, but poetic if viewed from afar. I felt like Marcelo symbolized the artist / subject (since Close was both) and both his personal struggles and his work process; a lot of the movement evoked the artistic struggle to create.

The dancers again left the stage, the curtain fell and rose again, this time revealing a colored, fully-painted portrait, very majestic.

Marcelo was the perfect body for Elo to create this piece on. With his large bone-structure, every awkward movement he made, a hip jutting out due to intentionally uneven weight distribution, a shoulder asymmetrically hung down, made the awkwardness of his body contortions all the more obvious. At one point, he almost looked like Billy Crudup’s Elephant Man that played on Broadway several years ago (Crudup, by the way, wore no makeup or prosthetics in that play; rather the way he moved his own normal body in such a distorted, awkward manner illustrted both the burden he bore from the disfigurement and how beautiful he was underneath it all). In the final segment of the ballet, the dancing becomes more mellifluous. The work is created, beauty triumphs. I’ll be seeing this ballet again at least one more time before the season ends, so I will likely, well definitely, get more out of it, and will report back when I do.

Oh, almost forgot: the curtain call was fantastic. Not only was Elo there (the choreographer usually takes a bow at the premiere), but Mr. Close came out onstage too! He was wheeled out in the most artful wheelchair. Instead of the regular four wheels on the floor, this one had its wheels stacked, two top two bottom, so it was like he was riding a permanent wheelie, making his height far above everyone else’s. Marcelo ran over and gave him a hug, as he’d done seconds earlier with Elo. Marcelo is happiness 😀

The third ballet of the evening was the other new one, Millepied’s abstract “From Here On Out,” with original music by Nico Muhly. I’m sure that I’ll get more out of this ballet upon my second and possibly third viewing of it this season as well, but my initial thoughts are that the music far outshone the choreography. Muhly is a genius, make no doubt about it. After I’d seen Muhly speak about the project at the Guggenheim, I’d joked that I was excited to “hear” the ballet. Well, that’s exactly why you should go. I don’t know much about music but there were so many different kinds of instruments, I think a xylophone even, mixed with computerized sound to miraculous effect. And the way the percussion or horns would build into a crescendo then subside, then build again when you’re not expecting it, like a wonderful surprise. The music was enchanting, there was so much going on, it’s just a feast for the ears. I just felt that the genius of the choreography didn’t match that of the music. Which is not at all to say it wasn’t still interesting, it just didn’t take my breath away.

It may partly be that the choreography just didn’t start out strong enough. It opens with several dancers, all wearing purple unitards bearing various cut-outs — one on the side of the waist, another on the opposite hip, for the men over one breast — all standing in a huddle, simply shifting weight one foot to the other. There’s some partnering, then ensemble work, and eventually a pas de deux between a man and a woman takes place. For the most part this duet doesn’t do much for me save for a few longing stretches and holds. (Go here to see one of my favorite shapes from that duet performed by Marcelo and Paloma Herrera.) From there, the ballet builds up a bit then ends on a stronger note: several women get whisked up and carried off into the wings. It’s a rather lovely end. I just wish it had the same momentum throughout. But as I said, I’ll be seeing it some more this week, so will report back on what further viewings yield.

Until then, I just discovered that Muhly actually has a blog! Go here to read a cute post about his freaking out at the last minute over a note. Go here for a Times article about a couple of things ahead in the coming week for ABT (a revival of a piece by Antony Tudor and Tharp Tharp Tharp!), and go here for the rest of the season schedule and tix. Only one week left 🙁

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David is the Next Nureyev, Herman is a Man-God, Jose is a Legend, and Marcelo Brightens the Whole World!!!

Yay, my favorites returned to City Center last night 😀 😀 😀 I feel like I should call them DOC (“Danny’s old company”); can’t figure out if that sounds funny or obnoxious: ABT/ DOC… Hmm, guess it depends…

Okay, well, I gave my sum-up of the evening in the title’s post, above, I have nothing more to say now… No, seriously, I felt like there wasn’t a whole lot to the gala program, it was a pretty short evening of excerpts, but nearly everything I saw was spectacular.

First, I just have to say, I found the perfect place to sit in City Center with its universally acknowledged evil sightlines: the very last row of the rear mezzanine. You sit all the way back there, you fold up your seat til it’s against the seat back, and then you sit on the top of the seatback. You’re not blocking anyone since you’re in the back. Of course I have a permanent indentation on the tops of my back thighs and I could hardly walk afterwards since my legs were numb from cut-off circulation, but I could see!!!

First on was David in Ballo Della Regina, a pretty, pastel, story-less Balanchine with about 10,000 women wearing simple light-colored leotards and flowing diaphanous skirts, and one man in a white blousy top and pastel tights. David was the man. Well, I just said that… I don’t know if I’m “supposed to” feel this way since Balanchine’s ballets are so female-centric, but David made the ballet for me. He was by far the most beautiful, poetic element in the whole thing. His high high HIGH demi-pointe (tip toes), the way he just flies about the stage with those ethereal jumps — forget Balanchine’s gender divisive, man is human, woman is soul universe. David is the consummate combination of both. In her 1996 New Criterion essay, “Figures in the Carpet,” (contained in her book “Landscape With Moving Figures”) Laura Jacobs wrote this, “When you first see this dancer set foot upon the stage, though blond and not overly muscled, you can’t help thinking of Nureyev. He has the deliberate walk and the stage-bound self-containment … Where Nureyev brings a dark force to his dancing, he brings lightness, restraint… He can break your heart with a tendu.” She was talking about Vladimir Malakhov; David was a child then. (I feel that unfortunately, being relatively new to ballet, I’ve all but missed the era of Malakhov.) But I feel like she could easily be talking about David here. He’s not so ferociously feline or animalistic like Nureyev and he’s certainly not dark; he’s sheer radiant perfection. And talk about “breaking your heart” with a simple point of the foot… By the time the ballet was over I had this pit in my stomach and I felt kind of sick, like when you see something truly sublime and someone so perfect. I don’t mean to be corny. Gillian Murphy was sweet and danced beautifully as his partner, as well. David just stole the show to me. I think he’s the greatest dancer in the world right now.

Next, they juxtaposed Balanchine’s beatific feminine universe with some excerpts from “Clear,” Stanton Welch’s glorious male-centric ballet. Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes had the pas de deux leads here. The more I see of this ballet, the more I’m loving it, and I’m realizing that though it is abstract, there is a little story in it. And I really love its spirituality. Herman is really starting to come alive to me. When I first started watching him dance I thought he was technically spectacular, but didn’t show enough emotion and so kind of bored me. Now I feel that he is really putting a lot of thought and emotional strength into everything he does. He was really intense in “Clear,” the way he’d brush off Xiomara’s advances, then hesitantly succumb to her. And the way he raises his chest, the way he jetes and pirouettes, he’s like a demi-god. He’s the antithesis of David, not ethereal at all but totally somehow grounded even when airborne (and he flies high). He’s a virile beauty.

Then there was a very short excerpt duet from Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves are Fading.” It was danced nicely by Michele Wiles and Alexandre Hammoudi, but the pas de deux was so short, it didn’t leave much impact.

Then there was a fun, flirty, Latiny pas de deux from the classical Petipa ballet, Don Quixote, danced by the now legendary Jose Manuel Carreno (one of my longtime favorites, and, for SYTYCD fans, Danny Tidwell’s chief idol!) and Paloma Herrera. I love Jose so much and I miss not seeing him as often as I used to; he doesn’t seem to dance all that often anymore. This fun, sexy Latin role is so perfect for him; he owns it like no other.

And last was Jerome Robbins’s 1944 ballet “Fancy Free” about three sailors on shore leave and the comical little troubles they get themselves into trying to pick up women in a bar. This one “starred” (because that’s just the word that most comes to mind when I think of him) Marcelo, along with Herman, and Sascha Radetsky as the sailors, and Julie Kent and Stella Abrera as the unsuspecting pick-up-ees. So fun. I always love this little romp, especially when ABT does it. The guy next to me and I giggled throughout the entire thing. Marcelo is the best dramatic dancer out there, no doubt about it. He just brings the stage to life; he brings the whole theater to life. If anyone wants to learn how to have absolute massive amounts of stage-presence, look no further than the master!

That was it; then the party began (which I am far too poor to attend). Their City Center season is only two short weeks this year; usually it’s three. Two world premieres happen later this week: the Millipied, which I blogged about here, and the Chuck Close / Philip Glass / Jorma Elo collaboration, which I blogged about here. Just too much excitement for one week… Visit CC for tix.

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Lit ‘N Latin Lunch

Help. I’ll usually find an intriguing-looking book on a blog or at a bookstore, then order it online at NYPL and have it delivered to my local branch. It often takes a matter of weeks, sometimes even months, to arrive, but somehow this time they all came in at once. I now have two weeks to read all these books, and I’m still only about half-way through the Kavanagh.

Anyway, the book on the bottom left, The Epicure’s Lament, is not an NYPL order, it was actually just given to me by my friend, Dee, when I met her for drinks Saturday night. She was raving on and on about the author, Kate Christensen, whom I hadn’t read. Now, I see that today, one of my new favorite lit bloggers, Maud Newton (whom Terry Teachout led me to) has posted a short interview with the author. Funny, Dee actually told me she likes Maud too (though my friend never reads my blog! It’s okay, she’s not a dancie… 🙂 )

The book in the top middle is a collection of Laura Jacobs’s dance writings from The New Criterion. I think it’s such a lovely title, “Landscape With Moving Figures,” because that’s one really nice way of looking at dance: a painting, but one with moving instead of still figures. I was led to the book after a dance writer friend pointed out to me, regarding a recent ranting post of mine, that a NYTimes review just can’t be compared to the longer, in-depth articles the New Criterion allows. So, I decided to check out those articles. Will post more as I read along, but so far am really enjoying it. Her prose is very poetic and it really immerses you in the world of dance; she calls the arabesques of the great dancers “more than a pose … a phenomenon…”

Last night I went to Dance Times Square‘s biannual pro / am showcase, at the Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. It was sadly Pasha and Anya-less, although maybe I shouldn’t be too sad: if Pasha was still there, I’d be spending loads more money that I don’t have on exorbitant privates. Happily, though, there were some new teachers, lots of new students (and a lot more men, which is great to see since ballroom classes are usually quite women-heavy), and some really cute routines Tony and Melanie designed that perfectly showcased the students’ varying levels of ability. In the pro section, Jose DeCamps and Joanna Zacharewicz, the new national Rhythm champs, performed a couple of fast fun Latin routines, likely in Pasha & Anya’s stead. I’m sad that Andrei Gavriline, former U.S. Latin champ, is no longer teaching at the studio, because it was always hugely exciting to see him and his partner, Elena Kruychkova, perform. There were a lot more people in the audience than before, likely because of Tony and Melanie’s now regular stints on So You Think You Can Dance (people behind us were definitely new to the showcase as they kept saying things like, “yep, yep, that’s her, that’s the one that danced with Pasha on the show!”), so it seems to me this is a great opportunity for all the ballroom pros to be seen by a larger audience than just the regular dancesport fanatics (like me). I know they’ve been on Dancing With the Stars before, but that show just doesn’t highlight the professional dancers so much. Now they’re having Jennifer Lopez on tomorrow night. She’s not a dancer. I knew continuing the streak of Savion Glover-caliber results-show performers throughout the season was too much to expect.

Speaking of that show: I found it very frightening when Marie Osmond fainted. Ridiculously, I was sitting there on the edge of my couch all throughout the commercials waiting and waiting to see what happened. Right before the show returned, I realized I was watching a tape and could have hit fast-forward. I’m glad it was nothing. I was very annoyed how the judges were harping so on Helio. I thought his rhumba was so cute, so sexy in its own charming way. Why can’t a smile be sexy? And why can’t rhumba be romantic or beautiful or soft and sweetly lyrical instead of some kind of lust-filled mating dance where everyone has to make goofy sex faces at each other? It’s just not natural for some people; let them be themselves. And that car, that car, THAT CAR 😀 I still worry about him getting hurt, but when he pulled up in that thing to scoop Juliana Hough off to the beach…ooh la la! Also, Mark Ballas is starting to annoy me. He’s such a show-off, doing all those cork-screw jumps and high kicks and snake dive things all over the floor while his partner dances by herself. A ballroom man is supposed to be the frame, not the picture, or the picture and the frame. And it’s just my pet peeve when pro men out-dance their female students like that. I was so glad when he went to do some crazy trick and the camera homed in on Sabrina. Thank you, camera man.

Okay, that’s all for now. Sorry this post is so all over the place.

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Kavanagh on Nureyev: Part I A (i) (a)…

This book (the latest biography of the greatest dancer EVER imho), which officially went on sale yesterday in bookstores everywhere, is so huge it’s almost overwhelming just to look at. I think it makes more sense for me to give my thoughts on the book in segments, so that I don’t end up with a 100,000- word-long review!

In the first couple chapters Kavanagh paints a fairly well-rounded portrait of Rudik’s parents and upbringing. (I hope I don’t sound pretentious, by the way, calling him that — I just think Rudik is so much cuter than Rudolf and more original and “Russian-sounding” than Rudi 🙂 ) He grew up in abject poverty in a provincial state in northern Russia called Ufa, far removed from any city with its attendant vibrant cultural life. His family is Tatar, which is an oppressed ethnic minority in Russia, and he was raised Muslim and Tatar-speaking; didn’t learn Russian until later in school. (I actually hadn’t known Tatar was a language). He had three siblings — all sisters — and his mother, Farida, who had wanted to become a school-teacher but whose hopes for an education were dashed by pregnancy after pregnancy after pregnancy, took care of the children while his father, Hamet, served in the Red Army, his status forever in frightening limbo by Stalin’s erratic demotion / murder sprees.

Rudik was actually born on a train, when Farida went to visit Hamet at his bunk, which is how Kavanagh sweetly starts off her book. Much of his childhood was filled with such train rides, and the family at one point lived near train tracks. Rudik thus retained a life-long fascination with the locomotives, and when he was older and a professional dancer, part of his performance preparation consisted of leaving the studio and sitting outside near train tracks, listening for the sounds of the engines to get their rhythm into his body.

Hamet didn’t return home permanently until Rudik was well into boyhood, and by then, Rudik had been surrounded by so many women, he didn’t know how to react to the presence of a male; he seems to have been a bit afraid of his father. Hamet, well-liked by his comrades, was a real “mensch” type, and freaking out a bit over his son’s effeminacy, tried to make the proverbial man out of him by taking him on hunting trips, etc. Sensitive and quiet by nature, Rudik didn’t fare so well, needless to say, beginning a lifelong struggle with his father, exacerbated of course by his desire to become a dancer. Rudik had the best relationship with his older sister Rosa, the most intellectual and artistic one in the family who took dance and piano lessons and would teach her younger brother what she had learned in her ballet history lectures and bring him home costumes which he would (in his words) “gaze at so intensely that I could feel myself actually inside them. I would fondle them for hours, smooth them and smell them. There is no other word to describe it — I was like a dope addict.”

Rudik was introduced to ballet when he was seven years old and Farida bought a single ticket to a performance in Ufa, and managed to sneak all of her children into the theater with her. He knew then and there what he wanted to do with his life, and he never looked back. But even before that he had shown he was a natural dancer. Starting in kindergarden, as with all Russian children, he took national folk-dancing in school, exhibiting such talent and charisma, he was often chosen as a soloist in his school’s performances which they took on the road, performing in hospitals housing men recovering from war wounds. Kavanagh quotes from the (very well-written and gorgeously descriptive) novel, Dancer, by Colum McCann, which is based on the life of Nureyev. “In the spaces between the beds the children performed . . . Just when we thought they were finished, a small blond boy stepped out of the line. He was about five or six. He extended his leg, placed his hands firmly on his hips and hitched his thumbs at his back . .. the soldiers in their beds propped themselves up. . . Those by the windows shaded their eyes to watch. The boy went to the floor for a squatting dance. When he finished the ward was full of applause…” That’s one of my favorite passages from McCann too and I really love that Kavanagh quotes from a novel.

Because of his family’s poverty, Rudik got a late start on ballet, preventing him from ever acquiring full hip turnout (which must be attained before puberty, when hip ligaments and tendons are still flexible) thus making it all but impossible for him ever to develop wholly proper ballet technique. Poor and poorly clothed (in too-short pants, lacking shoes, etc.), Rudik was often made fun of by his classmates, and he struggled not to let their taunting get to him. When he later began ballet school in Leningrad, he was older than most of the students by several years. In response to their condescending stares, he, rather (in)famously, announced he would outdo them all. Talk about haughty, Shane Sparks (who told Danny Tidwell he was “arrogant”) 🙂 And of course, through eating, breathing, and sleeping ballet basically for the rest of his life, he did outdo them all.

Kavanagh has done an amazing job of gleaning so much information (the book took 10 years to complete), but she includes so much detail that it kind of weighs the narrative down. She also doesn’t footnote, which, I don’t know if it’s the lawyer in me or the former History grad student or what, but it’s driving me nuts. For example, she asserts that Nureyev had a “lifelong willingness to let women martyr themselves for him” (pg. 21) that he derived from his father, then quotes — I guess either Nureyev or Hamet (?) saying, “‘At home she must work harder than her husband and when he is relaxing she must still carry on.'” Where is this from? What’s the context? Who is speaking? I need sources!!!

She also assigns motives to and makes judgments about her subject that to me are a bit ill founded. For example, she argues that Nureyev fabricated that his father had beaten his mother and him, and her basis for claiming that this is a lie is that the other family members denied it — as if a family’s denying allegations of abuse in order to protect one of its own has never been known to happen before. She claims that Nureyev lied because he was angry at his father for his refusal to tolerate his dancing: “There was only one real reason for his contempt: Hamet refused to tolerate his dancing.” (pg. 22). It just doesn’t strike me as all that mind-boggling that someone who’d spent a large part of his life in the military and looked down on his son for his supposed lack of masculinity could be physically rough. Plus, if dancing is your identity, your being, your life, and a parent refuses to acknowledge you, then that’s a pretty profound reason to harbor some hostility.

Okay, that’s all for now; more to come as I read further. Here is Joan Acocella’s review. Here is Gia Kourlas’s interview with Kavanagh. And here is a quoted excerpt of a review from John Carey that I found on James Wolcott’s blog. Reading the excerpt prompted me to Google Carey. And look at this book I found! I wonder what he’d have to say about the Ballet versus “So You Think You Can Dance” debate?! Hmmm, this may have to be next on my reading list…

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So Excited: Tonight, Favorites Dancing Swans, and in the Future, a Portrait in Dance of Chuck Close!

Tonight I’m seeing Swan Lake performed by these two above — my favorite Marcelo Gomes and the ballerina EVERYONE’S talking about, Diana Vishneva. I’m so excited — my first time seeing them dance together 🙂

Also, I’m so excited about this. During their upcoming Fall season, American Ballet Theater will be premiering a brand new ballet by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo set to Philip Glass’s piece “A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close,” with set designs by that oh so iconic artist. I just love Chuck Close and I’ve loved everything I’ve seen so far by Elo, and of course Philip Glass is Philip Glass — this is going to be a HUGE collaboration between three spectacular artists from three different fields and is one I just can’t wait to see!

They’ve also got a bunch of other very fabulous stuff on the Fall agenda, including another premiere choreographed by NYCBallet dancer Benjamin Millepied, an ABT premiere of another Balanchine I haven’t seen, and revivals of some of my favorites, including Tharp’s Sinatra Suite 🙂 Robbins’s Fancy Free 🙂 Stanton Welch’s Clear and Lar Lubovitch’s Meadow. Go here to see it all.

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Ad Hoc Ballet, and Final Thoughts on Romeo + Juliet With Major Kudos to NYCB for Audience Accessibility

I’m so behind on my blogging! I meant to blog about all of these things I did over the weekend MUCH earlier in the week, but with ABT opening and all, it’s just been…crazy!

So, last Saturday evening I went to see ad hoc ballet, a very intriguing new company founded by engagingly unique Deborah Lohse, with dancers Amy Brandt, Elizabeth Brown, and Candice Thompson, a new contributor to the Winger and the reason I found about about this cool new company in the first place! I had also seen Lohse a couple of weeks ago at Symphony Space in a work by choreographer Monica Bill Barnes and was immediately drawn to her.

I just love ad hoc’s mission statement: “ad hoc Ballet is committed to creating new works, which incorporate elements of classical ballet and modern dance, while exploring current social tribulations. Drawing inspiration from outsider populations that America tends to ignore and uniting pathology with empathy to uncover new movement, ad hoc Ballet explores the beauty in the alternatives to the classical aesthetic of perfection.” This is just the kind of dance I love — dance with contemporary social meaning that is rooted in the beauty of classical ballet and incorporates modern elements to explore issues and devise new, original forms of movement.

This performance was called “The Lucy Poems,” a title taken from a group of William Wordsworth poems, which Thompson talked a bit about on the Winger, and dealt with mental illness. The hour-long ballet opened with Lohse sitting in the corner in various contorted body positions, surrounded by a circle of very bright lights — so bright, they kind of blinded me to look at her. After she finished her first short piece, the lights went completely off and loud, brash sounds emanated from the speakers. It was really rather frightening, and gave you a sense of what the world must be like to a mentally ill person. Then the lights came on again, the music mellowed, and the other three dancers, all on pointe, took the stage and danced various duets and solos. It was really captivating. At times the dancers would contort and distort their bodies, taking different positions and shapes, then they would be perfectly “normal” and dance in the manner of a classical ballerina, as if mental illness could be something that came in waves or attacks. I went to see the program with Doug Fox and we both found compelling the ways that the dancers at times would visibly struggle to control their limbs, as if their arms and legs had minds of their own and operated independently of their minds. What was so amazing was that you could see this struggle played out in the face and body of the dancers — which I’d think would be really hard to do. Another thing I really liked about The Lucy Poems was, in contrast to for example, Forsythe’s You Made Me A Monster, that, sad subject though it was, there were moments of peace, and even within the contortions, there was a strange beauty to the movement.

The costumes were really interesting too and perfectly suited to the theme. They were dresses of haphazardly patched-together pieces of raggedy-edged blue denim-looking fabric, and were tied tightly around the backs of the dancers — so tightly they resembled sleeveless straight-jackets, if that makes any sense, or perhaps corsets, revealing possibly an underflying gender motif?…

It was a brief and small-scale but really spellbinding production and I will definitely look forward to seeing more from this promising company.

Earlier on Saturday, the wonderfully nice Newsday critic Apollinaire Scherr invited me to NYCB‘s matinee for one final viewing of their new Romeo + Juliet. As Apollinaire’s guest, I actually had a good seat at NYCB for once — thanks Apollinaire!! Though, I have to say, I think all seats in the State Theater, including those in Fourth Ring are really quite good.

So I think this was the cast with the youngest leads of all — Erica Pereira, still an apprentice with the company, and Allen Peiffer. I thought Pereira was really sweet — very small and with fluid movements and really beautiful willowy arms; she just glided around the stage, she was just a delight. She worked well with her Romeo, though, very cutely, she didn’t LOOK at him a whole lot! She kept her bright smile and shining face mostly turned out toward the audience, at least throughout her first pas de deux, as if a bit nervous to regard him. She almost looked surprised when he lifted her, from behind! Adorable given given her age — it is kinda scary to look at the boy 🙂 The couple next to us, a sweet, elderly pair who’d been coming to the ballet for many many years, just adored her.

Daniel Ulbricht was an awesome Mercutio again, and this time Craig Hall was Tybalt — the most imposing of all of the Tybalts. He didn’t have Joaquin‘s virtuostic flair, but he acted the part well and he actually wore well that costume (that everyone but me, basically, seems to have had a problem with).

But, the ballet as a whole … I still had the same problem with the overacting and the lack of interesting choreography. The couple next to us, loving as I said, Pereira, felt the same about what they considered a lack of movement in the choreography. But these are the things that the critics and the avid balletomanes, who have seen every version of the ballet under the sun, are kind of naturally going to focus on. But Martins was trying to reach out to new audiences. And here’s what two such new audience members had to say:

My friend from work and her husband, compelled by the brilliant ads they saw in the Times (the design of which is pictured above on the postcard setting on my lap), along with my offer to buy them $10 discounted Fourth Ring tickets, attended Sunday’s final performance, starring the original cast. My friends, a public interest attorney (meaning, poorer but more arty than the average lawyer 🙂 ) and an actor, have sophisticated aesthetic sensibilities but have not attended a concert dance performance in years. They know the play of course, but nothing of all of the prior versions of the ballet, and almost nothing of the dancers and who’s a big ballet star and who is not (though my friend did know of Kistler).

So, their verdict: they couldn’t get enough of Ulbricht 🙂 🙂 , they thought the leads — Fairchild and Hyltin were lovely, their dancing was beautiful and they captured the innocense of youth. They thought the minimalist sets were fine, but the costumes garish, particularly Tybalt’s, and unlike me, had a hard time appreciating Joaquin’s brilliant dancing because of it. They thought the choreography was a little “fast” in places — such as the balcony scene, when Juliet only has a second to look down and find Romeo before running down the steps; they wanted her to do a little lyrical dancing up on the balcony ballet before slowly spotting him and then processing whether or not she should go to him, then excitedly skipping down) and the death scenes at the end happened too fast to be believable. And, like me, they thought the acting was way too overdone. My friend laughed this off though, thinking it was silly but not a huge deal, and telling me her father-in-law, a ballet fan, won’t go to the story ballets because of the “bad acting. I mean, everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet,” she said, “we don’t need all the extreme gestures.” So, to them, it didn’t ruin the ballet at all, but was just a silly but inevitable thing that one should expect to see in a story ballet.

My problem with the overacting — and it was the same way with all three casts that I saw so I’m now assuming the dancers were only following Martins’s instructions — is that, I really believe in a story ballet it’s of the utmost importance, it’s what emotionally moves the audience and propels the drama along, and if it’s totally overdone, it ends up looking cartoonish — resulting in the exact opposite effect. In the Saturday afternoon cast, Jonathan Stafford played Paris and his kissing Juliet’s hand in an attempt to win her over at one point was so abrupt, so overdone, it just looked comical. As revealed by the excellent Tragic Love videos made by Kristin Sloan (discussed further below), the company spent so much time on the sword-fighting — and it shows; that scene is by far the best. Mercutio doesn’t toss up his sword the moment he is fatally stabbed, clench his chest and fall straight to the ground screaming; rather, it takes him a lot longer than that — as it would had he actually been struck. Tybalt’s death is the same. If they would have just had some actors come in and instruct the dancers on how to emote without overdoing it to a ridiculous extreme, I think the whole would have been so much better. I realize these dancers are used to performing abstract ballets; so much more reason then to have actors come in and help out for this kind of ballet.

Last Thursday evening, I attended a studio talk at which members of the original cast — Robert Fairchild, Sterling Hyltin, and Joaquin De Luz — spoke. I have to say NYCB people are really some of the nicest people. Originally the talk was to be held in the Rose Building, where apparently they normally take place, but it was moved last minute to a studio in the State Theater, so there were a lot of lost people wandering around in the bowels of the studio corridors! None of the young dancers made fun of me in the least, annoying though I must have been holding them up on stairs and in narrow hallways trying to figure out where in the world I was supposed to be! When I finally arrived at my proper destination, the moderator and the other organizers actually congratulated me 🙂

Anyway, the discussion was very interesting. One thing the moderator asked the dancers was how they dealt with all the criticism of this new production. (I actually didn’t think there was that much harsh criticism though.) Hyltin was sweet. She said, after a bad experience once reading, in the midst of the run of a particular ballet she was performing, a critic’s harsh words about her, which really hindered her next performances, she no longer reads reviews until the run was finished. I think that’s very wise. Although all artists put themselves in the public eye and must be able to take criticism, dancers in general tend to be the youngest of artists, and these dancers in particular are very young, so it’s got to be hard on them. DeLuz, older and more jaded, with a good sense of humor, shrugged his shoulders and said he stopped letting it get to him: they’re gonna say what they’re gonna say you know; you can usually predict at this point who will say what. Fairchild, called “Robbie” — how cute! 🙂 — ran in late and sweaty from a rehearsal. I realized listening to him talk at this, just how young he really is. All wide-eyed and smiling brightly, he chirped, “Well, I’m totally new at this, so I read EVERYTHING!!” He sounded pretty happy about it and I don’t remember any bad reviews of him. But, in general, I have to say to Hyltin (and to Morgan, whom I was a little hard on in my last post!), maybe sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the critics are harsh because they see a kernel of something there and are anxious to see it taken to another level. I’d think that a critic’s not noticing you is worse than them saying something critical. A critic is writing for the general public and readers of his or her publication rather than the dancers and ballet-makers, but maybe, taken the right way, a critic’s words can help improve something. Assuming of course that the critic is open to looking at the next performance with fresh eyes, which I think was what Joaquin was complaining is all too often unlikely. Hyltin said after she finishes her run, she will read some reviews, take what she can of the criticism, and learn from it, and leave the rest. I think that’s so smart — she’s a wise young woman 🙂

And one other happy thing about ‘Robbie’ 🙂 🙂 : the dancers were also asked how they prepared for their roles. Apropos of what I said in my earlier post about watching the greats dancers of the past, he said his sister, the magnificient Megan, gave him a DVD of Nureyev and Fonteyn dancing the ballet 🙂 So, see, the good dancers do agree with me!

One last thing about R+J: I feel that something that was left out of many of the reviews was recognition of all the hard work the company put, especially Kristin Sloan, into making this production publicly accessible to everyone, both in and outside of New York, and to attracting new audiences. That Tragic Love video series broadcast over the internet, originally on NYCB’s website and now on bliptv, here, is downright trailblazing. Also, the advertising, with those very cool designs, the already inexpensive but further discounted seats in honor of Kirstein’s birthday, the studio talks allowing audiences to hear directly from the dancers — invaluable to me for one — for all of that, NYCB is really on the forefront of promoting ballet and expanding audiences, particularly through internet use, and for that alone it deserves MAJOR KUDOS.

One final thing about Romeo + Juliet and then I swear I’m done, is this from the Wired blog. Which prompted me to write this to Apollinaire, who sweetly posted my thoughts. I fully realize this writer, Todd Jatras, who from his oeuvre appears to be of the Sebastian Junger uber-mensch school of journalism, is writing for a certain audience and is trying to convince his readers to try a ballet performance, as he did, after meeting Kristin and viewing her awesome Tragic Love videos. And I’m very happy that he did and that he admitted his formerly-held prejudices about “muscely men in tights”, etc., were silly. But it just worries me that promoting a ballet on the bases that it’s just like action-packed film with lots of sword fights is problematic … I mean, what are people then going to think of the more abstract ballets, which is what NYCB primarily puts on? And why must one go to the ballet in order to see the same thing you can see at the movies? For a Schwarzenneger film, you need simply to run up to your local mulitplex; ballet is art; it’s like the opera, it’s like an art museum — people should go for the same reasons they’d go to those things, to be exposed to something different, to have a cultural experience. I mean, I obviously love a good drama too, which is why Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorite ballets, and I CAN’T WAIT to see ABT’s Othello next week (!!), but ballet is drama mixed with poetic movement and beautiful music, or it’s abstract beauty and lyricism … it’s just so much more than a Schwarzenneger film! And that led me to wonder why the same people who don’t mind spending an evening at the opera or afternoon at an art museum — who are NOT expecting to see Schwarzenneger action in such a place — are hesitant to go to the ballet, when it’s the same art form… I don’t get it.

Okay, one more thing, not related to R+J but to NYCB: Sarah, a friend who I met on the Winger (where I’ve made many new ballet friends 🙂 ) sent me some information about a talk hosted by the Jewish Community Center next Monday, in celebration of the centennial of Kirstein’s birth, on the making of Dybbuk, one of Jerome Robbins’s ballets. NYCB dancers will be there performing and there will be a talk on staging this ballet and the music used in it. For more information, go here and here.

Okay sorry for the hugely long post; I’m done, for now!

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Gender Trouble

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

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

“What do you mean?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No no, it’s okay,” I laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minutes later:
“Hey Tonya!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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GAGA and Joan Acocella

 

Last night, my friends, Alyssa and Angie, and I went to the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet studios in west Chelsea to take a GAGA dance / movement class from an assistant of Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of the Israeli dance company, Batsheva. From now through April 27th, the company is in town performing their most recent piece, Decadance, at Cedar Lake’s studios, and during that time, they are teaching daily weekday classes in Naharin’s unique dance methodology, in which his dancers train daily. The cool thing is that they have classes for both professional dancers (during the day), and for non-pros like me in the evenings!

Okay, I have to say, this is one of the best dance classes I’ve ever taken. There was no technique taught at all; rather it was all about utilizing your senses, letting all movement be ultimately about pleasure, and really letting yourself go. First, we began simply by feeling our weight shift, one leg to the other. Then we felt our hands kneeding dough, then the sensation of making circles with our hands, then our feet, then our legs, then our whole body, including internal organs. We melted into the ground, turned our bodies into water, rubbed imaginary oil over ourselves soothingly, used our bodies as drums and our palms as drumsticks, fell to the floor, jumped up quickly, fell again, jumped up again, again and again till we should have been out of breath but somehow weren’t, lay down, pulled ourselves up again and again till our abdominals (or at least mine) should have ached but somehow didn’t, bounced around the floor, bouncing and bouncing as much and as quickly as possible, feeling like complete idiots and laughing madly at ourselves and each other. “Yes, laugh at yourself, feel silly,” the instructor said.

At one point — my favorite — she had us balance on one leg and kick out, back, and all around with the other. Of course, I have some balance problems from an earlier inner ear problem, so had to concentrate on holding my center properly while balanced solidly over the middle of my standing leg, feeling my full foot spread out to grab the the floor, then concentrated on doing the perfect developee with my other leg. Well, she could read my mind, I swear. “No!” she yelled at me, lose your balance, don’t be afraid, lose it, LOSE IT!” So, I stopped concentrating, and let my standing leg wobble all about, kicked the other out randomly, haphazardly in every direction paying no mind to control or line. And, amazingly, AMAZINGLY, I didn’t lose balance at all! My balance was even BETTER than in ballet class where I’m often holding onto the barre for dear life! I don’t know if it was a fluke, but something, something worked! She smiled at me at the end because I think I really made progress in letting myself go and not giving a crap about what I looked like.

Oh, and the other thing — NO MIRRORS!!! It made ALL the difference, I swear! For the first time ever in a dance class I was not hystericizing about how awful I looked — about how I was the skinny spaghetti girl who could not move her hips or whose … everything … looked too big and oversized in the leotard (does ANYONE over the age of 12 actually look good in one?). Matt once blogged about some choreographer issuing the directive, “Banish All Mirrors,” and I don’t know if it was Naharin (Matt has no search function set up on his blog, grrrrr…), but all I can say is the no mirrors thing here really helped me to feel the movement coming from within my body, to sense the space around me, and really help me to keep my balance and to move without over-analyzing and obsessing how I looked doing something. Anyway, if it’s not clear, I highly recommend this class to anyone in NYC! Classes are $12 and are ongoing through April 27th. Look them up here.

Then tonight, I went to hear one of my favorite dance writers, New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella read from her new book, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, a wonderful-looking collection of essays on artists of all kinds from Baryshnikov and choreographer Jerome Robbins, to food writer M.F.K. Fisher, to authors Dorothy Parker (a favorite of mine), Susan Sontag (another fave), and Philip Roth, to visual artist Louise Bourgeois (whom I LOVE). I feel like I have all the same favorites as she. I’d never met her before or heard her read in person, and I didn’t know what to expect since she can be a pretty severe critic in her writing. But like most writers, she was a completely different person in real life from her writing voice. She was immensely personable and down to earth, funny, downright encyclopedic in her range of knowledge, very grateful for her fans, and very humble and embarrassed when one praised her, calling her Mark Morris book “Blakeian” and comparing her to film critic Pauline Kael. She read from her Baryshnikov essay because that one, she said, was the most popular. Of course this made me happy, since he is the one dancer profiled in the book. I wanted to ask her two questions: 1) if she felt there was anyone who was a contemporary Baryshnikov and if not, why; and 2) if she had any advice for an aspiring critic. But there was such a plethora of questions, and she was so generous in answering them all, we ran clear out of time before getting to me.

When I approached her to have her sign my book, I did ask her the second one though. Unfortunately her answer was one I didn’t really want to hear. “Oooh,” she moaned. “Oooh, dear, there are just no jobs, it’s just bad…” “Dance?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said. “Ooooh,” she moaned louder shaking her head. Apparently all arts criticism is bad off, but dance is particularly a no go. “I had to take non-writing jobs to support myself all the way up until eight years ago when I got the New Yorker job,” she confessed. “It’s just so hard to make a living.” Ugh. If there are no jobs for writers, who is there to promote dance?…