Tag: New York

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Weekend of Trigeminals And Festivals

Trigeminal sounds like a marathon, doesn’t it. Or a graduate school entrance exam. I wish. Instead it’s a stupid neurological condition I suffer from (whose full name is Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia, or TAC) which causes for no apparent reason hideous headaches that feel like someone is stabbing you in the temple repeatedly with a hot poker along with sinus congestion and swelling on that side of your face. (I’d link to a description of it if I could, but the condition is so rare, the only info available on the internet is for medical specialists).

Friday night I came home and was so tired from my work week, I’m embarrassed to say, I fell asleep on my futon while reading. It was only a twenty minute nap, but in that twenty minutes, a TAC headache began to come on (you almost always wake up with them; they happen during sleep, for whatever reason). It was just the beginnings, so the searing pain was not in full radiance, so I quickly downed a couple of Excedrin with a can of Coke. It went away. But then I was scared to go to sleep, knowing full well I’d likely wake up feeling like my head was on fire. So, I sat on my futon trying to force myself to read until 3:00 in the morning, when I no longer could stay awake. I bunched several pillows up against the headrest and tried to sleep sitting up. Something makes me feel like, in part, the problem comes about because of the recumbent position of your head during sleep. I despise sleeping upright but tried it anyway. I was wrong though; I was blasted awake two hours later by the ice pick / fever / mass sinus congestion on the right side of my head.

Since my last experience with one of these things, I’ve visited a headache specialist, who prescribed three different medications — I was to try one, if that didn’t work, another, then a third last resort if the first two didn’t work. The old meds, which were prescribed for migraine headache (since that’s what my old neurologist mis-diagnosed me with), either didn’t work at all, or in the case of one — Maxalt — after making me go completely numb from the waist up, took the most brutal edge off the stabs, but kept the underlying duller pain and sinus-like symptoms intact, and then the stabs would return every eight hours like clockwork. A box of four Maxalt pills costs me $25 after insurance copay, and I’d go through an average of eight pills for one headache episode. So, $50 headache. The expense combined with my neurologist’s shrieks when I told her how many of these blood vessel constrictors I’d taken — one to two are supposed to kill a migraine completely and the pills can be potentially dangerous since they work by constricting the flow of blood to your brain — and her inability to look beyond the possibility that my headaches may be something other than migraines, sent me scampering to another doctor, this time a headache specialist at Columbia University’s Headache Center.

So my new neurologist re-diagnosed me, with TAC, and gave me as I said three meds, since there are different forms of TAC and each responds to something different. The first is Indomethacin, and is basically a massive dose of Ibuprofin. I tried that one. Happily, after about an hour and a half it began to kick in. And, unbelievably, it worked completely! The pain and facial swelling and congestion were completely gone; no remnants like with the Maxalt! I was ecstatic. I thought one dose and it’s over! But that was yesterday.

Today I woke up with my head on fire again. According to the package insert, I’m allowed three doses per day, but I’m so not in love with the idea of taking Indo at all. It can cause stroke and heart attack and a whole host of stomach problems. The sword-fight in my skull necessitated another dose regardless. But this time it took two hours to work and then the pain didn’t completely go away. I was so upset. Not my miracle drug after all.

I thought of taking the second med — injectible Imitrex (another blood vessel constrictor, like Maxalt, but faster-working and supposedly more effective for TACs). Freaking out over being able to effectively stab myself in the thigh, I forced myself to assemble the little shot dispenser and study the instructions, only to realize the sample he gave me had long expired. (Since it’s a liquid, I guess it doesn’t last long). And of course he didn’t give me a prescription since he wanted to see first if the sample worked. These headache episodes always happen on long holiday weekend — always! I thought of calling his answering service and leaving a message for the doctor on call to phone in a prescription, but then I also didn’t want to mix medications and it hadn’t been long since I’d taken the Indo. Massive anti-inflammatory and blood vessel-constrictor don’t seem like a good match.

Enough edge was taken off by Indo that I decided to go out and get some fresh air for once this weekend. So, I went to this Brazilian festival in midtown. In celebration of Brazil’s upcoming independence day (the 7th), they had a big street fair replete with food, music, and of course dance.

 

A televised concert the huge crowd gathered to watch.

 

I wanted to try something Braziliany for lunch, but all those people eat is carne, carne, and more carne!

 

If I ever go for Carnival, would I survive?

I finally found these little cheese-filled fried doughy things.

Which I had with a can of this, which tasted like cherry-flavored gingerale. Pretty good!

What would a Brazilian festival be without sambistas! There was hardly any place to dance, though, the streets were so full. They should probably have some risers set up so onlookers bearing cameras could sit down and watch the commotion without standing right in the middle of the band, leaving no space for the dancers.

Another band, on a side street. I really liked this one, called “The Berkshires Samba Group” — very fun percussion. I bought their CD.

I didn’t join the samba mosh pit– my head was hurting too much, but was fun to watch!

Mmmm, dessert! I don’t know if these candy-covered fruits had anything to do with Brazil, but I justified a chocolate-covered banana kebob anyway…

Now I’m home and the dull pain is back and getting stronger. I took another dose of Indomethacin. Pain is abating, but I’m afraid to go to sleep…

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A Little Overwhelmed!

Each day yet more of the splendid Fall Season’s offerings flood my mailbox. So exciting! But a little nervewracking, given all the things I have to order tickets for! This is why I so love NY though — that unique combination of intoxicating stimulation and potentially migraine-inducing excess… (or in my case, TAC-headache-inducing excess … am trying to tell myself I do NOT feel one coming on, but am armed with meds just in case…)

Well, I guess this is what the holiday is for, to breathe deeply, lounge around, rest up for the happy hubbub to come 🙂 Happy Labor Day, everyone, have a long and relaxing weekend!

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Hahaha, Where’s the Dorky Waldo?!

ha, I can’t believe it but Barbara recognized me in this picture, in the Times today, accompanying Jennifer Dunning’s article on the “States & Resemblance” piece I blogged about earlier this week. How did you see me, Barbara; I almost didn’t see myself?!! Haha, how embarrassing 🙂 (I’m in back, holding the paper in front of my face, a shiny pink metallic purse at my side, and head cocked and looking all pensive — what a goof!) Thanks for pointing it out to me, Barbara! Okay, this is the second time I’ve been nameless in the NYTimes! 🙂

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Postmodern Dance Can Be Fun!: "States and Resemblance" Near the East River Piers

Last night I went to see the second in the three-work series “Sitelines” — site-specific dance performances organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, taking place at various downtown locales. This one, entitled “States & Resemblance,” was choreographed by Dean Moss and Japanese video artist Ryutaro Mishima, and took place on a nice little elevated park overlooking the East River that I hadn’t even known existed.

Above is a picture of the scene. Painted on the ground was an ambiguous grey splotch dotted with several large black spots that spilled out of the grey and all around the park’s winding paths. One such path led to a larger grassy lawn, where they are apparently showing a series of several old films shot in NY as part of the River to River festival (all these fun outdoor festivals in NYC during the summer!)

Well, I’m not entirely sure what to make of the piece, so I’ll describe it. The performance began in the lawn area, with Moss and Mishima running and jumping around playfully. I’d seen an earlier draft of this at the Nothing Festival at Dance Theater Workshop a few months ago, and there the men were naked. Here, they were nearly so, wearing only resplendent white dance belts, which, because of their sheen, were actually rather beautiful.

After cavorting around the lawn with each other for a few minutes, an Asian woman (whom the program notes is Indonesian mask artist Restu Imansari Kusumaningrum) dressed in shiny skirt and top, emerged from the park and walked to the edge of the lawn ringing a bell. That signaled for the men to walk into the park, where, in the center atop the dots, they slowly and soberly put on pants and button-down shirts — casual work clothes. The woman wandered around the park for a while, ringing the bell every so often while the men, after dressing, stood on the main grey area, first doing a series of poses during which their hands then arms would slowly begin to quiver, then a series of balances on one foot.

Suddenly, Mishima turned on Moss, attacking him. The men fought, jumping at and bouncing off each other, struggling with each other, with Moss trying to make peace with Mishima but Mishima resisting. While this happened, Kusumaningrum found a place in the grass to sit peacefully, where she donned a face mask.

Mishima eventually broke free from Moss and walked to the outer edges of the sidewalk, to where the crowd was sitting, and began laughing and singing at us aggressively and haughtily, momentarily a bit frightening. Kusumaningrum, disrupting the crowd by moving to various areas of the park, tried on a series of masks. Moss, now walking very slowly and hunched over like an old man, approached Mishima, who picked up a television set whose screen bore a close-up of an elderly person grinning widely, many teeth missing, and confrontationally thrust the screen out at the crowd.

Eventually, the two men went into a back area of the park and sat down in the high grass, hiding themselves from the audience. Kusumaningrum walked out to the center area, lay down and thrashed about on the ground, donning another mask. Eventually she stopped and pointed to the area where Moss and Mishima were sitting. The men slowly rose. Over each of their faces was taped a large black dot, the same as were spotting the ground.

So what does all this mean? Well, the little blurb on the Sitelines flier tells us that it is intended to be “a meditation on the pain, beauty, and inevitability of how things, people, and experience pass away … reflect(ing) on the process of aging as one of the most binding aspects of our existence.”

I could definitely see the aging in the way the men acted boyishly, playfully on the lawn, near naked, in an innocent beatific state, then as if called by their mother, or by time, to grow up and don career clothes. I could see Mishima’s attempt to defy the passage of time by lashing out against Moss, who nevertheless eventually grew into an old man, taking Mishima with him. At the end, the large black dots covering their faces suggests ashes to ashes, dust to dust, our bodies do eventually become part of the earth, part of the environment, and thus timeless. I didn’t completely get the significance of the masks, unless they were meant to convey in another way how we try to evade and hide, pretend, develop facades?

I’m sure there are plenty of other interpretations as well. In general, I find this kind of postmodern / experimental dance intriguing and fun so long as there’s enough there for you really to cull something from it all and come up with various analyses. I definitely felt like there was enough here to do that. Here’s a write-up on the piece by Gia Kourlas in TONY. It’s showing a few more times this week and next; go here for the schedule.

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Brief Snapshots From Downtown Dance Festival

I’m exhausted from spending the weekend down at the lower tip of the island watching other people dance (how does that happen?), so this is going to be short (word-wise at least). The Downtown Dance Festival took place during lunch hour each day last week at Chase Manhattan Plaza in the Financial District, then moved for the weekend to a nice little outdoor amphitheater in Battery Park. I wasn’t able to see all of the dance companies (nearly 20 in all), but here are some highlights from what I did see.

First, sorry, but I simply must bombard people with just a couple more photos of Quorum Ballet, who performed again Saturday in Battery Park. They were really so lovely… so, just, HOT for lack of a better word 🙂

 

I wrote in my last post on them that their lifts looked a bit “trick-happy” and on watching again I think that might be in part because the lead female dancer, Theresa da Silva, would often look out into the audience and choose someone to flirt with, which seemed to happen most often while she was airborne. Very interesting, and something I haven’t really seen in concert dance before, only in ballroom comps and some club acts. Anyway, their next performance in NY will be February 13th at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. I urge everyone in the city to check them out!

 

I also liked the Ashley Browne / Kinetic Project. Some very sweet duets with fun, pop music from Jill Scott, Mos Def, and Fiona Apple.

 

Ms. Bne is a choreographer I could really see working on SYTYCD. I really wish they would open the show up to other choreographers besides the same ole Mia Michaels and Wade Robeson. I mean, keep them, but instead of having them choreograph something practically every week, let the country see some of this other awesome talent!

 

Another favorite, Vissi Dance Theater. I loved them! Their mission statement reads, “Vissi is committed to art that explores moral and social issues… Vissi seeks to speak to the human condition, lift the spirit, ask questions, celebrate the joy of life and reflect the truths of human nature.” I felt they did that splendidly. This piece above, danced by four women, reminded me a bit of Alvin Ailey’s Cry with its upbeat celebration of womanhood, and was kind of a combo of modern dance with disco / hustle, to music by Macy Gray and Jocelyn Brown.

 

 

Their second piece, named “Melbabcd,” was a combo of all kinds of stuff — modern, hustle, hip hop, Latin, African, you name it. Great fun, as dance that makes you think and has social relevance can often be 🙂 This one kind of reminded me of Bill T. Jones with its very colorful cast of characters. I’d love to see more full-length work by this company.

The choreographer, Courtney Ffrench, by the way, is another whom I can really see peppering up SYTYCD with some romping group numbers. C’mon Nigel, expand those horizons!

Another highlight:

 

Gallim Dance Group. This piece is from “Snow” based on the novel by Orhan Pamuk and choreographed by Andrea Miller (yet another who could inject that aforesaid pop-fest with a blast of brain power). This was a haunting piece, like I imagine the book to be (okay, admitting I haven’t read it here!). The women bent their bodies every which way, inched forward, ran backward — the movement was beautiful but juxtaposed with musical lyrics like “question democracy…” became chilling. A Juilliard grad formerly with Ohad Naharin’s Batseva, which I’ve enthusiastically blogged about before, Miller’s mission is to “explore issues such as feminity, power, community and solitude.” Gallim will be performing at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea in September. See them there if you can.

On Sunday, we were treated to Darshana Jhaveri Manipuri Dance who came all the way from India, and who specialize in bringing the classical Indian dance, Manipuri, to contemporary audiences. So sweet, so lovely, and so educational.

This guy BLEW ME AWAY. He had this amazingly intense look of concentration the whole time. Sometimes when a performer has that look in his or her eyes, you’re almost mesmerized just by the face. He beat the hell out of this double sided drum, as well as another that required a stick, later on. Not only did he play those drums, he danced while playing. And not only did he dance, he did these continuous barrel turns at whiplash speed. The entire audience sat there open-mouthed.

 

And here he is barrelling all over stage with the other, larger drum. Between turns, he made beautifully intricate gestures with that drumstick. At one point, he put the drum down on the center of the stage and did repeated turns around it, beating it with the stick after each rotation, and managing somehow to hit the stick on the drum right in time with the lightening-fast music. Talk about the necessity of great speed and precision on those turns — if a turn was off, you wouldn’t just see it, you’d hear it. It was breathtaking, and I can’t tell you how much respect I now have for this classical Indian dance form.

Okay, I can’t write anymore. I do have a few more pictures of the whole festival, along with the Sitelines performance series, in my photoalbum, here.

Speaking of Sitelines, Apollinaire and Eva Yaa Asantewaa are having a very interesting discussion of the Macaulay NYTimes review of the Reggie Wilson / Andreya Ouamba work I wrote of earlier. Eva’s review of the piece puts me to shame — she saw all kinds of things I hadn’t thought of — do read it! I do have thoughts on the subject of socio-cultural meaning in dance and whether the choreographic duo’s mission statement should have been confined to grant application writing, as Macaulay argues, but am far too exhausted to formulate them now…

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In The Company of Beautiful People: Quorum Ballet At the Downtown Dance Festival

 

Nice thing about New York in August is that there are lots of outdoor art festivals offering free viewings. I of course have been attending as many of the little dance performances as I can. Many are by very small companies, and the works are brief. Here’s a troupe that caught my eye yesterday, Quorum Ballet from Lisbon, Portugal, who performed at Chase Plaza as part of the Downtown Dance Festival organized by Battery Dance Company.

 

Their movement style was what I’d call contemporary ballet mixed with modern — no toe shoes but some lovely balletic lifts — and in one piece I saw a smidgeon of Flamenco. Music was mainly poppy with a fun, solid beat.

 

Beautifully sexy movement, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a gorgeous group of dancers! It’s a small, very new company founded only in 2005, by choreographer and dancer Daniel Cardoso,

 

(how much does he look like Herman or Joaquin 🙂 — jumps not unlike them too!), who, along with lead dancer Theresa da Silva, was previously affiliated with seminal modern dance company Martha Graham. (The two are pictured above and below, in “Kismet,” my favorite, and the piece that, at least in its solo parts, reminded me of a balletic flamenco).

 

Here are some more pics from their other pieces:

 

My only qualm was that some of their lifts looked a bit too “trick-y” as in, you kind of felt like drum rolls should be preceeding them, similar to what I’ve seen at many of the exhibition dancesport competitions I’ve been to. Suits some people’s tastes but not mine, and I don’t think this company really intended for them to be that way, although maybe they felt they were playing to an audience unaccustomed to dance and felt like they should play up the showy aspects. And some of the lifts seemed a bit out of sync with the style. For example, the “bluebird” lift above (where da Silva is balancing on Cardoso’s shoulder, back arched), a typical ballet lift, seemed to me a bit at odds with the flamenco-y flavor of that dance. I would rather have seen more original parterning, specific to the dance style, such as that employed by Mimulus, which I wrote about earlier. But the solo and ensemble work were just gorgeous.

Cardoso had some beautiful pelvic and ribcage isolations going on. Very Latin 🙂

 

Okay, that’s all for now. Will likely be more to come depending on whatever else strikes my fancy in the next few days … 🙂

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At the Doors of U.S. Customs

As promised, here are a bunch of pics I took of yesterday’s first peek at the collaboration between Brooklyn-based choreographer Reggie Wilson, and Andreya Ouamba (originally from Congo but now residing in Senegal), entitled, intriguingly, “Accounting For Customs.” The work is part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s “Sitelines” project — comprised of dances that are created specifically for a certain site, outdoors, free and open to the public 🙂

This dance took place on the steps of the U.S. Customs House, which the dancemakers assured was significant. I honestly had to stop and think of what the Customs House represented. I have no background, or interest, in economics and actually almost got lost trying to find the place, since I think of this building as The Museum of the American Indian (which it now is; in 1973 Customs was moved to the WTC, don’t know where it is now…). Well, I guess the work that goes on in an official Customs Building is the setting of tariffs U.S. citizens have to pay on goods over a certain amount that they purchased abroad, right? So, a customs house deals with the price one pays for bringing something “foreign” into one’s own culture. A custom is also of course a cultural tradition.

Wilson has said (see Kourlas article linked to above) that one of his interests is to examine the intersection between “traditional” (by which I assume, in the African context, he means traditional African dance) and “contemporary” (by which I assume he means, in the American context, modern, hip hop, jazz, etc.). How do people react to contemporary dance containing traditional movement, he asks. Do they see the contemporary movement “evolving” the traditional, or “bastardizing” it. And how does innovation happen in this context — which force is credited with being “innovative?”

Thought-provoking questions no doubt. I’m not sure I can answer them, but I did really like what he and Ouamba came up with here. It was short but evocative and fun. The dancers began in a horizontal line on a low step, then two by two they paired off, greeted and hugged each other, then, holding hands, ran up the stairs, both together and apart, as they were separated by a central hand rail. Some dancers fell and lay down on a middle step, forcing others to find a way around them. Soon all dancers had fallen and lay down on a step, some atop each other. After a short silence, a loud bang emanated from the speakers (was it a car’s backfire, a gunshot?…), and the dancers then began rolling up the steps, eventually manoevering themselves to a crouched position, and crawled downstairs. All then stood up and danced, each his or her own way, up and down and all around those steps — at times fighting each other, at times being playful, at times embracing, helping each other up or down, carrying each other, stopping on a step to do a pose — a pretty arabesque evoking flight / freedom, a more urban, hip-hoppish stance — at times they would crash up against the side pillars, pushing and shoving against them, at times holding onto them for dear life while another tried to pry them off. All the while a woman dressed in traditional African costume sat off to the side, under a pillar, making crafts and from time to time looking over at the dancers — the children of the diaspora… her children. The music (not live, but played over loudspeakers that in my opinion were not amped up enough for outdoors) varied between what I assume was Senegalese music, poppy tunes with pulsating drums, folksy guitars playing a melody that sounded like a patriotic American song, and silence. At one point the woman on the side hummed a spiritual.

Anyway, great thing about outdoor performances is that you can take many pics!


I really liked these two guys. At one point they kind of hustled each other down the steps — rather playfully aggressive, each throwing the other down a few notches in a funky little turn. I think I’d be too scared to do that on narrow stairs. According to the articles, they only had two weeks of rehearsal!

In places the scene as a whole was even a little Rent-esque. Very urban. The photographer in the front with the long dreadlocks and the colorful outfit — he must work for some major publication around here because I see him practically everywhere!

Here’s the woman making her crafts and humming spirituals off to the right.


I loved this guy in the front … obviously — I kept taking pictures of him!


As I said, it was short and not entirely fleshed out, but their larger project together is to take place in 2009 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I’ll definitely be excited to see what they come up with given more time!

If you’re in New York, to see this work, about 20 minutes in length, just go down to the Customs House, at Bowling Green station, at either 12:30 or 1:30 today and tomorrow.