Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
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Scribner’s publicity department is not doing its job. This came out in may and not a single blogger seems to have been alerted.
Why Thinking Lawyers Leave the Law
“Shortly after the article [in the New York Times, about murder convict Gary Gilmore] caught his eye, almost immediately in fact, Susskind’s old friend and associate Stanley Greenberg called, and they had a good conversation. Stanley had written a TV story fifteen years ago about a man awaiting execution. The man had been so long on Death Row that he changed in character, and the question became, “Who was being executed?” Metamorphosis the play had been called, and Susskind always felt that it had had some effect on the end of capital punishment in New York State, and maybe even a little to do with the Supreme Court decision that saved a lot of men’s lives on Death Row.”
From The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer.
Intelligent lawyers leave the law because they know art produces social change, not legal arguments.
Blogging Is Good For You
Very interesting article. Via Mr. Elegant, whose novel I’m reading right now.
Pictures of My Frolic in the Caribbean are Up!
Hi everyone — so sorry it took me so long to post! I finally have my little photo album of my trip up here. Click on the thumbnail for a full picture and caption.
Here are a few of my favorites:
coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
the Bacardi mascot! And the only picture with me in it — my reflection, looking a little cross-eyed trying to get the perfect shot, is in the back mirror…
Puerto Rican folk dancing show in the San Cristobal Fortress in central Old San Juan.
long, dark, kinda-scary-if-you’re-alone tunnel leading to the Fortress’s courtyard.
colorful buildings of old San Juan, on a busy street at night-time.
pastel-colored, yacht-ridden Tortola, capital of the British Virgin Islands.
“Treasure Island” in the back through the haze, off the coast of Tortola.
beautiful clean water!
climbing the long, tortuous, dirt roads of the immensely mountainous island. Houses are sparsely located; each owner seems to have their own latitude (or is it longitude?) of mountainside…
about half-way up to the top. How large does our ship look down there?!
mural of Tortolan folk dance known as Bamboshay, which our tour guide described as a cross between Dominican merengue and Cuban / Puerto Rican Salsa.
Samana, a very rural, agricultural area on the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic. In sharp contrast to the very middle-class Tortola, Samana is very poor.
children would see our open-air tour bus approach and would run outside hands opened begging for American money. This little boy started to cry after our tour guide told him to get lost. After that, people felt sorry for the little ones, so they’d give them dollar bills, which really opened up the flood gates of every house along every street…
They’re building a dam so hopefully by this time next year they will have running water. Right now people — mostly women and children from what I saw — had to walk to a well or a local proprietor with imported bottled water for sale and carry large bottles back to their houses. Most people didn’t own cars. Some had a mule or horse, and a lucky few had scooters, but most just walked everywhere.
a man on his chicken farm. People here were so unused to tourists, everyone was so nice. They’d all come out of their houses, wave at us, or come up and talk to us — or our tour guide anyway, who would translate their Spanish into English.
man washing his hands in the ocean.
artwork for sale on the beach.
hehehe, I was one of the two Americans brave enough to eat the local food. At a beach restaurant (basically two picnic tables set up outside of woman’s kitchen) I tried to order rice and beans, but the restaurant owner / cook couldn’t understand my Spanglish. A man ordered fish, so I asked her if she had “pollo / chicken?” Her face brightened into a big smile and she screamed “yes, yes!” It was definitely her specialty — the best barbecued chicken I’ve ever had!
The other Americans, though they wouldn’t order food, had no problem ordering drinks. They all ordered pina coladas, but I took the tour guide’s suggestion and ordered a local “coco loco” which I discovered was simple coconut juice and rum. The woman who owned the restaurant came out to our table bearing what appeared to be a machete. I jumped in my seat, almost threw my wallet at her and ran off. Everyone must have had the same facial expression as me, since she looked at us all like we were nuts. She soon returned with some pinapples and a coconut for me, hacked off the tops of the fruit, plopped some straws into each and set them before us, along with a big ole bottle of rum. We all looked at each other quizzically. We were supposed to decide how much rum to put in our own drinks! I’m not a bartender! I had to ask her to do mine for me. She really thought we were a crazy group. That was an excellent meal though…
One woman felt sorry for the dog sitting at my feet and ordered a chicken plate just to give to him. Of course after she was all done feeding the cute little guy, her hands were covered with barbecue sauce and grease (I ate mine with fork and knife). She then asked for a faucet. There’s no running water on the island, hence no such thing (we had to flush toilets with buckets of water — I never got the hang of it to be honest and just resigned not to have to go to the bathroom the whole time I was there). When the restaurant owner simply frowned, the American woman of course began to hystericize — “what do I do, what do I do, my hands, my hands!” The poor restaurant owner had to bring out a jug of very coveted water and pour it over the tourist woman’s hands. Then everyone else wanted some. I was so embarrassed!
some more houses amidst the beautiful, lush greenery.
now taking a private scooter ride into the town to shop. The tourist shops were overpriced, but I felt like it was such a poor country that so needed tourist dollars, I bought a couple of things — a cute little monkey made out of a coconut and a little hand painting.
Anyway, I have many more pics, here!
Next is dominican republic – yay!
Dostoevsky Ballet, Interview With Pasha, Akram Khan, and Dance Schools for Autistic Kids?
Just a few random things:
Here’s an interview with Pasha Kovalev (thanks to Sharon for the link);
There’s a ballet just opening in London that is inspired by Dostoevsky’s many changing drafts of “The Idiot”, and stars Carlos Acosta, which sounds really interesting (via Maud);
And this looks fascinating!
Also, a friend of mine teaches autistic children and wants to know if there’s a dance school, preferably in Manhattan or Brooklyn that caters to special needs children. Does anyone know of one?
I Love You, Colson Whitehead
Mr. Whitehead, you’ve made me cry uncontrollably and now you make me laugh hysterically.
What is up with this ridiculously over-long memoir moment anyway? I don’t care that they’re all turning out to be fake — it’s completely understandable to me that they’re made up — life just doesn’t happen well-plotted and with the perfect dramatic arc that editors demand and audiences desire, and it’s certainly not as over-the-top as the public for lord knows what reason needs to believe. What upsets me is that I don’t understand why people right now are so untrustworthy, so disrespectful of the artistry of the novelist.
Night of Premieres
Just a reminder, tonight Randy Jackson’s new reality TV dance show, “America’s Best Dance Crew,” premieres on MTV, 10 p.m. ET (although it looks like it’ll be rebroadcast a bunch of times). Mario Lopez from “Dancing With the Stars” co-hosts and Shane Sparks from “So You Think You Can Dance” is one of the three judges. In this show, whose orientation is mainly toward hip hop, the competition is among several dance teams. But these teams are already formed and have been working together for some time, so it’s not another “Dance War.” For more info go here.
Tonight’s also the premiere of — don’t laugh, I’m honestly kinda excited to see it 🙂 — “Lipstick Jungle,” starring Brooke Shields and based on Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name. That’s on NBC also at 10 p.m. ET.
And finally, if you’re in New York, tonight is the premiere of the last ballet Christopher Wheeldon will choreograph for the New York City Ballet in his job as resident choreographer of that company. After this season he will leave his post (possibly to be replaced by the Bolshoi’s Alexei Ratmansky), to concentrate on his own company, Morphoses. That’s at the State Theater at 8 p.m.
Happy night!
Oh, and also, speaking of ballet, look at these gorgeous pictures by Patricio Melo of Ballet de Santiago’s “Swan Lake”! Wow!
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!
Lobenthal, Tobias and Gladwell
I don’t have much time to write today, so just want to point to a few good articles on the web.
1) Joel Lobenthal’s review of recent Alvin Ailey Dance premiere, “Groove to Nobody’s Business.” I loved this dance, as I wrote earlier, but Lobenthal makes me realize why with his discussion of how choreographer Camille A. Brown carefully worked out what I called the kind of spazzing out of anxious would-be subway riders to the rhythms of the music and orchestrated the dancers’ movements into a coherent whole, so that it only looks like a bunch of spastic frustrated jumping about when it’s really meticulously crafted. Also, he made me realize I’d forgotten to mention the fun centipede shape the dancers all make with their in-sync footwork while seated on the subway!
2) Tobi Tobias’s review of the other Ailey piece I just wrote about, “The Road of the Phoebe Snow.” Scroll down to the bottom of this post: I love how she talks about the advertisements for the railroad and how snow-white Phoebe was portrayed, and how choreographer Talley Beatty, who lived near those tracks and knew well the surrounding area, was showing what really went down along them. I wasn’t familiar with those advertisements and they shed light on Beatty’s work.
3) This has nothing to do with dance, but Malcolm Gladwell has an excellent article / book review in this week’s New Yorker showing how so-called IQ tests measure, basically, class. So all those claims that such tests show one race’s inherent intellectual superiority over another are all enormous mountains of racist idiocy.
Dinner and a Dance Performance While Blindfolded?
As all the restaurants in my neighborhood post their posh New Year’s Eve menus in their windows, I, currently planless, as I seem to be every year until just about the night before, am forced to wonder again, “uh, what am I gonna do this year?” Here’s something intriguing that I found on Gothamist. It’s a five-course dinner at West Village French bistro Camaje, with various performances scattered throughout the evening. Hook is that all guests are blindfolded the whole time. Waiters and aids of choreographer / performance artist, Dana Salisbury, who puts on the show, guide you to your fork, wine glass, and to the restroom if your raise your hand. I actually wouldn’t be all that scared of trying new food, but how would you cut it — I guess things come in bite-sized portions, or do the hosts decide how much each patron can fit into their mouths? Perhaps ridiculously, this is honestly a problem for me — I have an extremely small mouth and an ever so slight disorder that crops up from time to time, usually when least expected. Anyway, more quizzically (to me at least), how do you “see” the dance? Apparently you rely on your aural senses. In years past, the dancer has been a tapping man using his entire body as an instrument. Hmmm. Other aspects of this most audience participatory performance include artists blowing in your ear, running a feather down your neck, and the like. I don’t know if it’s for me but it sure sounds sensually stimulating!
On an unrelated note: for my fellow book lovers out there, The Millions has just published a most comprehensive best-of-the-year list compiled by its various well-reputed contributors. Click on each writer or blogger’s name and you’ll be directed to their recs, as they’re posted. I got the link from The Elegant Variation.
Dance Times Square Showcase Review Up
My review of the Dance Times Square student / professional showcase is now up on Explore Dance. The first without Pasha & Anya. Sad indeed, but, still, a fun-filled night with a lot of great dancing that succeeded in its aim: to propel spectators to want to get up and Mambo, Swing, and Foxtrot the night away themselves.
I’ve spent the weekend sprinting like a madwoman back and forth between 44th Street, where the Small Press Book Fair happened, and City Center, where Alvin Ailey season is currently underway. Yesterday I saw a wonderful program including one of my favorite dances of all-time, “Revelations,” which everyone should see at least once in their lives, along with a cute new western-y piece, “Saddle Up!” and the very jazzy, even samba-y (yes, Alvin Ailey knew Samba very well!), “Night Creature,” a tribute to Duke Ellington. And tonight will be more of the same. Ailey is simple the best. I love this company so! I plan to blog about both performances at some point tomorrow, after a sure to be grueling morning oral argument in court. Grueling because the case law is contradictory and perplexing, and because I have an extremely formidable adversary who is known for eviscerating his opponents alive. I know, all lawyers are scary (except me 😀 ) but no, this one is worse worse worse! Help!