I was going to blog about this, but Jennifer beat me to it! Ha ha! Time Out New York‘s cover this week features a fat, fluffy, very cuddly-looking, female-friendly kitty, with the cover story, “Why You’re Single (And What You Can Do About It).” Inside, they list a plethora of reasons for that conundrum, one of which is titled “Because you’re a straight woman who only goes out with her gay friends.” I found it kind of funny that this reason is listed nearly half-way through, and not at the top of the article (this is a NYC magazine after all — don’t a great many women suffer from this here!!!) Anyway, Katharine Rust, who wrote the little piece under this topic, which contains ideas for bars, restaurants and events where such a person could go to to meet Mr. (Straight) Right, begins by noting: “A gal would be crazy NOT to surround herself with fabulous-looking guys who are quick to tell her she looks marvelous, but…” And I started thinking, hmmmm, I don’t get told I look “marvelous” all the time. Hey man, I’m being cheated out of romance AND compliments! 🙂
Lawyers … And Everyone Else
This Wednesday night, the New York City Bar Association is holding a panel discussion on how to promote your law firm through a blog. Bill Gates, the e-flyer notes, says the value of websites and email distribution is declining, and blogs, with their unique RSS technology, are the future of internet business. To be discussed are such topics as how to implement and market a blog, the ethics of blogging, how lawyers have bettered their reputations through blogging, and the value of RSS feeds and other blogging functions.
I’m uninterested in learning how to promote a law firm through a blog, but am intrigued by the discussion because of my general interest in Long Tail trends, and of course my personal interest in blogging.
This panel discussion happens to be given for CLE (Continuing Legal Education) credits as well. New York attorneys need to earn a total of 24 CLE credit hours every two years, so the Bar Association offers several CLE programs throughout the year and gives its members a discount on them. Being a public interest lawyer, discounted though they may be, I still can’t afford the Assocation’s fee for the credits, so I earn mine either through my job (which gives the classes to its attorneys for free) or a criminal defense organization in NYC that makes them available to government and non-profit lawyers either for free or for a nominal fee.
Anyway, I’ve already earned all of my credits for my upcoming registration, so I’m not interested in attending the program for credit. So I called the Bar Association to make sure it was okay if I attended either for free or for a nominal fee since I did NOT want the CLE credits, and was told that I couldn’t attend unless I paid the full amount for the panel discussion — $195 for members, $305 for non-members. This is a 3-hour-long program. I re-emphasized to the person I spoke to that I did not want any credits, I merely wanted to sit in, and she repeated that I still had to pay the entire fee.
Media Bistro, a professional media arts guild here, and the Women’s National Book Association, an organization promoting women and publishing, have both held similar panel discussions. For theirs, Media Bistro charged $25 for members, $30 for non-members, WNBA’s cost was $0 for members, $10 for nonmembers. I understand charging a slight bit more if you’re going to have panelists who will give you workbooks and very specific step-by-step how-to’s, but the panels I’ve attended there have been just as general as the ones I’ve attended elsewhere (ie: people talking about their own personal experiences and successes). Plus, if you’re actually going to buy the Association’s “materials” there’s a separate charge of at least $100 more. And, they haven’t even mentioned who the panelists are going to be. I don’t understand. Does anything really justify this difference in cost?
Othello in the Guggenheim
Last night I went to panel discussion at the Guggenheim Museum as part of its “Works and Process” series, in which artists discuss their current “work in progress” with the public. Last night’s talk was entitled “The Shakespeare Festival” and focused on the American Ballet Theater‘s upcoming Met season, which will include several “Shakespeare ballets” — most notably their newest production, choreographer Lar Lubovitch‘s rendition of “Othello.” This was my first time attending one of these talks and it was really interesting, albeit short. The space, downstairs in the museum’s basement, was very intimate, seating only about a couple hundred, in contrast to the enormous opera houses and theaters the company performs in. The discussion, by Lubovitch, Kevin McKenzie (ABT’s artistic director), and moderator Wes Chapman, was interspersed with performances of pieces of the ballet by the ABT dancers, of course! Our cast was: Stella Abrera as Emilia, Jared Matthews as Cassio, Sascha Radetsky as Iago, Xiomara Reyes as Desdemona, Sarawanee Tanatanit as Bianca, and some guy I’ve never heard of before named David Hallberg?? — as Othello.
When he walked onstage, Wes Chapman (gosh, I keep wanting to call him Wes Craven…) said he first wished to introduce the dancers “since most of you are probably confused by all those names in the Playbills and it would be nice to put a face to a name for once.” He said this totally seriously. And only about two people in the audience (including me) laughed. Are ‘normal’ ABT patrons really this weird, or is it me — am I the weirdo?
Anyway, David!!!!!!!!!! Unbelievably for me, I arrived a little late (cross-town buses on the weekend are evil), and it was general seating so I couldn’t get my usual spot — practically onstage. But even though I was about six rows back, everyone was so CLOSE compared to when they regularly perform. And David looked SO skinny — I couldn’t believe it. He was also wearing all black dancewear (a slimming color we all know — oh also, the dancers weren’t in costume; they wore their normal working clothes), so could have been that — but he just looked so small.
I can’t wait to see the whole production — choreography looks so beautiful, even though it’s a pretty bloody story. I think Lubovitch is so brilliant — I haven’t seen a lot of his work, but from what I have, he is definitely becoming a favorite of mine (and he uses the great one a lot in his work, so clearly he knows what he’s doing…). Seriously, it was the first time I’ve seen him speak and he sounded really erudite and perspicacious. He said he was trying to create a “ballet in pictures” and was not so concerned with a linear narrative (as was the playwright who, he noted, didn’t actually originate the story; rather an Italian man whose name I can’t remember now is credited with that, though it was really originally an orally handed-down folk tale) as with making something that was humanly relatable and emotionally true to the classic story. As someone who’s fundamentally verbally oriented, I have a keen interest in how the poetry of language is translated into the poetry of dance, so I was very intrigued. But, as I said, unfortunately, the discussion was far too short.
But the dancing was brilliant. David is a baby genius. And I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Although, I have to say, it was really amazing just being able to watch them up close in their rehearsal clothes, without all the elaborate stage sets and costumes and props in a huge house. In a weird way all the pomp and circumstance of the theater kind of distances you from what you’re essentially there to see — the dancing…
Anyway, the Guggenheim has several other dance events as part of this series. Go here to have a look.
On the Lookout for Anyone Appearing Brazilian!
So, thanks to several employees of the New York City Ballet (including most importantly dancer Kristin Sloan and her Winger, along with a total of about five State Theater ushers, box office salespeople, ticket clerks, and security guards), I was able to make, and meet, a great new friend 🙂 I finally met Dea, who just moved to the NY area from Sao Paulo, Brazil. We’d met on the Winger message board a few months ago and became friends through our mutual interest in ballet and writing, and my keen interest in Samba and Brazil! She only moved here a week ago, but I couldn’t wait to meet up with her! We decided, appropriately, on a NYCB matinee.
While I was in the shower, I received a message from her on my cell telling me she’d be a bit later than the 1:30 time we planned to meet (which was perfectly fine with me since I was running late!), so I took my time getting ready, headed to the State Theater, picked up the tickets I’d ordered, then waited in the lobby. Before long the lobby was jam-packed with hundreds of patrons. I couldn’t believe it — I’ve never seen it like that before — NYCB is doing some good business this season!
Anyway, I became pretty nervous since I’d only told her to meet me in the lobby without specifying exactly where; there was NO WAY in this crowd she was ever going to spot me. I didn’t really know what she looked like since I’d only seen the picture of her on her blog profile, in which she has her head thrown back and is laughing, so I couldn’t really see details like hair length, etc. There was no way I was going to be able to pick her out! So, I called her cell phone to tell her I was standing at the info booth on the left side of the lobby, but Al, her fiance answered — from home! She hadn’t yet bought her own cell phone and had used his earlier before he dropped her off to catch her train! He assured me she’d find me; she was really good at such things, and that, judging by the time he left her at the station, she should be arriving just about now.
So, I walked around the lobby looking intently for someone who looked like the blog photo. About fifteen minutes later, the first hurry-up-and-get-to-your-damn-seats bell sounded, no Dea, then the second bell, then the last. I knew she’d gotten lost! I was so worried! This was her first time in New York, in the U.S. for that matter, and she had no cell phone! I must have been walking around the lobby with a quite frantic look on my face, because two security guards (one from outside, and one from inside) simultaneously approached me.
“Just give your friend’s ticket to the window clerk and she can pick it up from him, miss,” the one told me, the other agreeing.
“Oh no, I’m not worried about missing the show, I’m worried that my friend is really lost.”
“Can you call her,” he asked.
“No, she doesn’t have a cell phone,” I said.
“No cell phone?” they both said in unison. I know, unheard of…
“No, she’s just moved here and hasn’t got one yet.”
“We’ll tell her where to go when she gets here; you don’t need to miss the show,” the one said. Overhearing our conversation, a third guard walked up handing me an envelope. “Just write her name, put the ticket inside and give it to the window clerk. They’ll give it to her when she arrives.”
“But how will she know to go to the window?” I asked.
“Oh EVERYONE knows, trust me,” the one guard said, with a smirk.
“But she’s from Brazil. What if the customs are different there?” At this the inside security guard, who had a West Indian accent, looked up to the left, contemplating.
“The customs are the same everywhere. She’ll know,” he said after a few seconds’ thought, nodding firmly, like he was completely positive of his assertion.
“And, if not, you’ll direct her there, right?” I said.
“Yeah, of course. What’s she look like?” the outside guard asked.
“Actually, I don’t know.”
“What?” they all said.
“I’m meeting her for the first time today. I just know she’s from Brazil. And she has brown hair … I think.” They all looked at each other like I was nuts.
“Look, miss, we’ll take care of it. Just write her name down and put the ticket in and you go on upstairs. Don’t worry.”
“Well, what if she doesn’t understand English that well?” This seemed to crack everyone up. “No, seriously, I mean, you’ll like walk her straight to the window and everything?” More laughs. I’m a worrisome dork. Always have been. I worry about Everything.
“It’ll be FINE, miss, we’ll take care of her.”
Ugh. They seemed sure everything would be okay. I hesitantly approached the box office window, looking over my shoulder hoping she’d run in just then. But no such luck. I explained everything all over again to the guy at the window. This one was a real jokester.
“She not from this country huh? Ooooh, this could be fun!” he said with an evil grin.
“What?!”
“Ha ha, just kidding!”
“She has darkish hair, I think, and she’s from Brazil.”
“Oooh, Brazil,” he said knowingly. “Oh, I’ll DEFINITELY recognize her in that case.” I assumed he was being sarcastic so I apologized for the vague description. But then he said without any irony whatsoever, “No really, I’ll see her. If she’s Brazilian, I’ll know.”
“What? No you won’t!” I laughed.
“Yeah yeah, I will. Trust me. I will.”
I really didn’t know if he was for real, but I turned around one last time and Dea still hadn’t arrived, and both security guards were looking right at me chuckling and motioning for me to go in. So, I did. I got upstairs to the Fourth Ring and explained the whole thing again to the usher while she was trying to seat me in the dark during the pause in the performance.
When the lights went on signaling the first intermission, I jumped up, grabbed my bag, darted out of theater and headed for the stairs to the lobby. If she wasn’t down there now I was definitely calling Al again. But right then, I heard someone say “Tonya?” In the HUGE crowd of people making their way from the theater to the lobby or restrooms, she actually recognized me! So, Al was right! And I was right that she’d gotten very lost on the subway — oh no! She also told me the minute she walked into the lobby everyone seemed to know who she was — probably because she had a ‘lost look’ on her face, she surmised! Ha ha — thanks New York City Ballet ushers, security guards, and ticket clerks 🙂
So we saw last two thirds of the matinee’s repetoire together (one a Balanchine, the other Robbins’ “I’m Old Fashioned” — which we both loved!), took some pictures in the lobby, then had lentil soup and these enormous cups of organic soy tea at Le Pain Quotidien, where Kristin had taken the blogger gang the week before! We ended up having a wonderful time and I’m so glad she’s moved to NY so we can talk about dance and writing and hang out and go to ballets and Winger stuff, etc. etc. etc! I just feel so bad that she got lost. But all’s well that ends well, right!
LVHRD, Dewars, and Dueling Architects
Last night, my friend, Alyssa, and I went to an event that Kristin had told me about when I met her on Sunday. (She also posted about it on the Winger, here). LVHRD (live hard without the vowels), an arts organization whose mission is to bring together progressive artists, holds events throughout the city in which different kinds of artists compete against each other. The materials to be used in the competition and the location of it are not disclosed until the day of the event and are then relayed to participants via text-message. They’ve previously held competitions between dancers, visual artists, and fashion desingers, but last night’s duel was the ‘Battle of the Architects.’ A duo of female architects from two firms were given a limited amount of time in which to plan and design a layout, then build a model of it. The main material to be used was — cheese, which female registrants to the event were told in the text message to bring. I had a Media Bistro panel discussion to attend immediately before, so Alyssa bought our cheese — Alyssa rocks!
After letting the architects go at it for three hours (oh, by the way, the competitors are separated by a big screen so they can’t see what the other is up to), we voted by text message for our favorite.
Field Operations (above) was the winning team. I think everyone liked them mainly because they wore dresses made of material that they used in building their model — so throughout the competition they ended up cutting off large portions of each other’s costumes (the one with the more geometric design ended up with a rather short skirt). Interesting schtick. Below is the other team, Balmori Associates:
The LVHRD people all had cameras and video recorders and were going around snapping pictures, which they’d then post on the giant screen behind the action. In the very top picture above, if you look hard at the screen, you can see Kristin. They got two silly ones of me — one where I look like I’m on something serious while talking to Tony Schultz from the Winger, and another where I’m at the front of the crowd at the stage looking a little too excited about getting a shot of one of the models.
So, as I just mentioned, Tony was there too, and Alyssa and I spent a lot of time chatting with him. Found out that I totally got his bio wrong in my last post — oops! But, he said he rather liked my reinvention of him, so didn’t correct me 🙂 Anyway, he’s really a PHYSICS grad student at CUNY (which explains why 99% of what he says is way over my head!) and teaches at Sarah Lawrence — go here for his real bio.
Scariest thing about the night was that Dewars had hosted the event, so there was a free Dewars bar. Alyssa and I each got a cup of Scotch and gingerale. Alyssa was practically on the floor after finishing about 2/3 of hers, but somehow I downed my whole glass without feeling a thing — extremely weird since I am usually a complete lightweight… Either the bartender must have taken one look at my face and thought I couldn’t handle much alcohol, so went heavy on the soda, or else I am becoming a lush 🙂
NYC Dance Blogger Get-Together!
Doug Fox, who runs the excellent, extremely informative and technologically innovative blog, Great Dance, was in town this weekend for a dance conference he was covering. So, several of us NYC dance bloggers arranged a little get-together with him. From right to left is: Kristin Sloan (ballerina with the New York City Ballet, in case you’re new to my blog and didn’t know that from the umpteenth times I’ve talked about / linked to her!) who created the best-known and I think first (?) diary-esque dance blog a couple of years ago — the awesome Winger — and is hence really the mother of all dance bloggers!; Tony Schultz, a modern dancer and PhD candidate in dance and technology at Sarah Lawrence who contributes to the Winger (and has a very fun personality by the way 🙂 ); Parker, a ballet dancer, turned Belly / Latin ballroom dancer AND law student by day who writes the sweet Salome Justitia; Doug; and on the end, little ole me (with extremely flat New York winter hair!) I love how Kristin is holding that light away — in true pro dancer fashion with the flair of her hand!
We met at a little bistro across from Lincoln Center — where else! — and chatted for a couple of hours. Everyone is working on such fascinating projects and is so interesting and ambitious and inspiring. I was so happy finally to be able to meet everyone. I’ve been faithfully reading Kristin’s blog for almost a year now — it was actually the first blog I ever really read (at least daily … okay, hourly…) and is what made me want to start my ballroom one, so it was really kind of surreal meeting her! 🙂 And I can’t wait to read all about this event that Doug attended. It seems that he saw tons of great performances and met many interesting people, so check Great Dance, where he’ll be posting about it for about the next week or two.
Fun fun time 🙂 If you’re a dance blogger and you’re in the area and want to be included in the next get-together, it looks like Doug is setting up a list, so contact him!
"Dirty Talk"ing Angry Macho Homophobes
Who us? Of course not!!! Above is a picture taken last night of my good friend Evangelina (who is on the right) and me (sorry for poor picture quality; could my camera please not have a nervous breakdown whenever both zoom and flash are used simultaneously???) We’re in the very comfy lobby of the off-off-Broadway theater Center Stage, waiting to see a new play called “The Dirty Talk.” It was a special occasion because it marked the foray of Evangelina’s husband, Michael, an accountant and actor, into theater producing — go Michael!
The play was good. It was about these two men who agree to meet in person after having met online in one of those naughty-talking chat-rooms. Only the one guy, characterized by the title of this post, thinks he is going to be hooking up with a Hooters-working nursing-school student with the stereotypical enormous breasts, instead of a sensitive bisexual man. The two end up stuck alone together in a Jersey cabin out in the woods during a nasty thunderstorm, and the encounter eventually compels the first man to explore the reasons underlying his, shall we say, problematic personality traits, which are partly responsible for ending his marriage, and which stem from upsetting childhood experiences in which his father attempted to “make a man out of him” via various disturbing rituals.
Why do men do that to their sons??? My grandfather and grandmother did that “becoming a man” b.s. to my dad by forcing him into the army. But he was far too sensitive for the military, and I think it’s permanently damaged him psychologically.
Anyway, my only gripe with the play was with the second character, who I thought was just not fully fleshed out enough. I understood his need to pretend to be a woman online, but couldn’t fathom what he was thinking by actually showing up at the cabin as … himself. At one point, the other character asks him, “what were you thinking?” and he doesn’t really have an answer. So, he seemed to be more of a catalyst for the other, more compellingly dynamic character’s self- exploration.
The acting was excellent, and the play was by turns hilarious and sad. I used to go to these small off-off-Broadway plays all the time when I first moved to New York, and haven’t been in a while. I’d forgotten how much I like them. You can sit practically onstage, where you can see the action up close and really feel like you’re a part of it. To me, you get so much more out of the production than you do a big Broadway play, which, in those huge theaters, is so distancing in comparison. Evangelina and I have both been so busy — me with dancing and writing and working, and she with her new marriage and her and Michael’s decision to buy some property upstate and build their first house (!), that we haven’t seen each other in nearly a year. But, as with all close friends, the minute you plop down next to each other on the sofa with a glass of wine and start yapping away, it’s like you just saw each other!
I hope everyone had a nice day off today in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. I didn’t have to go into the office, but I brought some work home, which makes me feel a bit guilty, being from the Evan Mecham state and all… But, at least I only read the transcript from my next case’s Voir Dire (Jury Selection), which I don’t see so much as work: it’s one of my favorite parts of the trial since it’s where I get to “meet” all the different kinds of New Yorkers who are considered for selection on my client’s jury. Anyway, WordPress blogs don’t take kindly to YouTube embeddings, so I’m linking to Doug Fox’s post today, for The Speech!
Front Page of New York Law Journal!
So, the story about my case made the front page of the New York Law Journal yesterday! (It’s the one at the bottom, titled “Judge Faulted For Offering Defendant ‘Game Show’ Choice”) My quote is on page two.
Mr. Perrotta actually closed the article with my words, which made sense because it was a good sum-up of the strange case. He just quoted me saying I was happy that Mr. Nicholson (my client) had the conviction removed from his record now and that the case was very odd and I’d never seen anything like it before. So I managed not to sound like a Valley Girl after all! (I think…) At least if I did say something nutty over the phone like, “I was like, I totally can’t believe the judge did that!,” Mr. Perrotta used the coherent sentence! The reporter’s first name is Tom, by the way, so he shares the same name as the novelist who wrote Election and Little Children. I assume it’s not the same writer — maybe I was interviewed by a famous novelist! Anyway, I’d link to the article online but you can’t access it unless you’re a subscriber to that newspaper. All the guys in the mail room — Pete, Anthony, and Craig — were jokingly calling me “Miss Hollywood” all day and asking for my autograph 🙂
Then, later in the day, Pete brought me this sweet Christmas card from another of my clients, from prison. Look how cute this angel is…
And, this must be my fifteen minutes of fame weekend, because Kristin Sloan posted the picture I’d sent to the Winger of my first performance as a child!! She’s still taking Winger reader submissions of their “First Performance” pieces, by the way, so everyone who has ever performed should send one in to her! Do it! It’s fun 🙂
Crap Friday, Sobering Saturday…
Ugh, horrible night last night at the studio. First, the second I exited the subway and saw what I saw, I had to ask myself why, why, why do I have to go to a studio located in the Times Square area??? And, if I must go to a studio located in this madhouse, why did I not remember to cancel my two-days-before-the-ball-drops lesson???
Needless to say, it took me twenty minutes to get from 42nd Street all the way up to 44th, two whole blocks… Why do tourists want to visit at this time of year??? Maybe I should listen to myself and go to Rio some time other than Carnival… Hmmm..
Anyway, then the lesson. I just couldn’t understand anything Jacob was saying, and he was being really rather impatient. We practiced my kick splits in the air — where he gives me his arm and I push down and propel myself up about three feet, do the splits as quickly as I can, pointing my toes of course, then come down about 1/10th of a second later. So much harder than it seems to split, straighten legs and make the perfect line, point toes, then come down right away, and remember to do so on bent knees, bent ever so slightly — not so much so that the audience can actually TELL they’re bent, but bent enough so that you don’t kill your knees coming down on straight ones, and in HEELS… Ugh. We did it about twenty-five times. I was finally getting the hang of it, when he wanted to start on these crazy stretches, where I lean away from him as far as I can but while holding his hand. Apparently, I’m supposed to kind of give him my body weight, but kind of hold my own weight — which I don’t get AT ALL. Pasha always used to tell me, “you have to hold yourself; you’re responsible for your own weight, not me,” and sometimes he would even let go ever so quickly to see if I’d begin to fall. Of course I always would, scaring the crap out of me, and making me hold myself completely up giving the man NONE of my weight now. Now Jacob is telling me, “you’ve got to trust me and give me your weight; you’re not trusting me, and it’s not going to look right if you don’t lean completely away me so much so that you’ll fall if I let go.” What? I swear it’s the antithesis of what Pasha said, but he said it was not, and tried to explain how to both hold myself AND trust the guy and give him my full weight, but I didn’t really get it. I guess as time goes on, I will. Hopefully.
And then apparently I am doing too many ballet-like things because he kept telling me, “no releve, this isn’t ballet,” “no ballet hands,” ” no ballet develope; in ballroom we bend the standing leg,” no ballet this, and no ballet that, and so on. Funny thing is, it’s not like I’m a former ballet dancer. I only have childhood lessons taken long long ago, and as an adult, I’m only in basic ballet classes. So, I couldn’t understand most of the terms he was saying, and therefore couldn’t really understand what exactly I was doing that was too ballet. I mean, I go to bizillions of ballet performances, obviously, but can that really rub off in terms of your own dancing? I want to push myself as far as I possibly can, and learn as much as I can as quickly as I am able to, but I just wish so much I had more background so that I would know terms and different dance techniques and be able to differentiate between different styles of dance…
Then, bright and early this morning (sorry, this is total whiner blog today…), my mom called telling me my dad was all upset because apparently he watched the DVD of my most recent studio showcase that I sent him as a Christmas present and couldn’t find either of my routines on it. “Are they on your copy?” she asked. And, if so, can you point to him exactly where? Blech! Of course, I hadn’t yet watched the copy of the tape I kept for myself, because I just hadn’t yet worked up the courage to do so (there’s nothing I HATE more than watching myself dance!). I told her to hold on, popped the blasted thing into the machine, confirmed they were both there while nearly throwing up in digust over my hideous lines, total lack of rhythm, missed steps, horrible gorilla arms, enormous, elephantine hands, etc. etc. etc. I nearly forgot she was still on the damn line. When she later called me back after reporting back to my dad, I found that he actually saw the whole tape and just didn’t recognize me. Lovely feeling when your own parent doesn’t recognize you!!!!!
Anyway, in an attempt to overcome my self-disgust, I marched straight out to my local bakery, and got this perfect early morning meal — chocolate fudge cake and Hazelnut coffee with about four scoops of sugar; a.k.a. the breakfast of pigs:
And, as soon as the liquor store opened,
Spent the afternoon by turns in front of the TV hysterically watching my hideous performances, then in front of the mirror, trying to do the lines Jacob was trying to teach me. Ugh. It just wasn’t going anywhere. Finally decided to just give it a break, and plopped down in front of the computer to read blogs. Serendipitously found these lovely little words of wisdom from Matt — thanks Matt!
When I got bored of blogs, I decided to go visit my local Barnes & Noble, to use the gift card my mom sent me as part of her Christmas present. Came away with these wonderful finds:
Thomas Pynchon‘s new book “Against the Day” is so damn huge (nearly 1100 pages), I don’t even think it’s going to fit in my dance bag (with all the other stuff I have to put in there, I mean), which means I’m gonna have a hard time carting it to and from work on the subway… Well, maybe it’s a better read for home anyway; looks pretty dense. I’m very excited though! This is a first edition by a future Nobel Prize winner after all 🙂 It’s a real investment — both in terms of the material my brain will absorb, and the item itself; am kind of surprised more people aren’t buying them all up…
Also, upon noticing it in the new paperbacks section, I couldn’t help picking up Julie Powell’s chick lit book that evolved from her blog (this is the woman I’d met a couple of weeks ago at the “Bloggers into Authors” panel discussion held by Media Bistro). And, couldn’t resist Dance Magazine which advertised on its cover this article inside entitled “Talking Back to the Ballet Bashers” presumably on the recent Lewis Segal criticism everyone was talking about for a while, which I couldn’t miss…
And then, came home and am blogging while watching
the Gerald Ford funeral. So sad; I feel so badly for his wife… And then, the Hussein execution is of course all over the news. And I have such conflicted feelings. I just don’t think anyone should be put to death for anything…
So, a sobering but less stressful end to a crazy, self-absorbed day… I do think I’m going to leave dance alone for the rest of the weekend. I’ll go back to hystericizing after the holiday! I need a break :/
Happy New Year everyone!
Woo Hoo!
Yay, just got a belated Christmas present yesterday in the form of an appellate decision. I won a case! I know it’s probably odd to hear a lawyer all excited about a win, but at the appellate level, criminal attorneys so rarely do. There’s currently a one-percent reversal rate in the First Department (that’s Manhattan and the Bronx), and a big whopping two-percent reversal rate in the Second (Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island). So, on average, NYC appellate PDs basically have a one-and-a-half percent chance of prevailing for their clients. Which can be hard if you’re like me and feel a lot for your clients. Anyway, I managed to convince the Court that my guy was unfairly bullied into waiving his right to a trial by jury (and, instead, letting the judge alone determine his guilt). The People will probably appeal to the highest court in NY — the Court of Appeals. So I’ll have to be ready to respond and defend if they do. Anyway, it was exciting.
I think perhaps now I deserve a … trip to D.C. … ha ha!
Also, regarding belated Christmas gifts: how beautiful is this?!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everyone!
This is a Christmas card I received from one of my clients in prison. He obviously spent a good portion of his inmate funds on this, and I found it so sweet when I received it Friday, I burst into tears. Anyway, I will share it with you all, to wish everyone a wonderful holiday. I have to say, Christmas sometimes really depresses me. I start thinking of everyone who is alone — my clients in prison, the homeless, the elderly, the mentally ill who have no one, orphans, etc. etc. etc. It’s just heart-breaking. Since I’m spending the holiday alone myself (though not ALONE alone; I expect to be receiving umpteenth phone calls from relatives 🙂 ), I contacted a local volunteer organization that sends people to soup kitchens and shelters, but they told me that, ironically, Christmas-time is just about the only time they are NOT lacking in help — just about any other time of the year they’d love me. I made a mental note to try to volunteer at some other point, if and when I’m ever not dancing or working!
Anyway, trying to keep sadness at bay and keep an upbeat attitude… this weekend I had another dance / theater marathon. Yesterday, I went to my last Alvin Ailey performance of the season, sadly. I saw some brilliant dancing and choreography, of course! The matinee’s ballets included The River, a gorgeously dreamy ballet choreographed by Ailey himself to Duke Ellington music, with all dancers dressed in light blue, which kind of reminded me of Clear or Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes — beauty for beauty’s sake. And, I saw Pas De Duke for the first time, which was originally choreographed for Judith Jamison and Baryshnikov. I liked, but didn’t love it. Ailey called it a modern pas de deux (dance for two people), but there was hardly any partnering; it was mostly side by sides, with the dancers interacting a lot with each other emotionally, but not physically. I loved Dwana Adiaha Smallwood (probably the most famous current dancer in the company) in the female role — she was a badass! I can only imagine how Jamison must have performed the part! Then, Solo, by Hans van Manen, was next, a beautiful piece designed, despite its title, for three men, alternating between a pas de trois and each man dancing alone onstage. And the last was Love Stories, a very fun ballet choreographed in honor of Ailey by Jamison, Robert Battle and hip hop choreorapher Rennie Harris. It alternated between hip hop, disco-y jazz, and ballet, and had some absolutely spectacular lifts — man carrying woman over his head while circling the stage multiple times — and jumps — twice a woman jumped up on the chest of a man arching his back — crazy!
I sat in the orchestra pit for this one! I don’t know why these seats are so cheap ($25) — they’re so close to the stage, you feel like you’re practically one with the dancers (a feeling that of course I savor!), and, unlike at the Met when you’re so near to the stage, at City Center you can still see the dances’ feet perfectly. Afterward, they held another post-performance panel discussion with some of the dancers, like last time.
This time we had two Frenchmen, Malik Le Nost and Willy Laury (in the glasses — one of my favorites, whom I always seem to see in the Sinner Man part of Revelations which is odd because they always say they alternate between all the roles; I recognize him partly by this cool tattoo that he has on his hip snaking down to his groin area, which is always peeking out from the top of his cinnamon red Sinner man pants 🙂 ), and I think the woman was Khilea Douglass (she was sitting on the far side from me, so I didn’t hear her name clearly or see her face). I really enjoy these discussions — I appreciate hearing the dancers talk about the work from their perspective.
Today, I went to see Spring Awakening, the new big thing on Broadway.
There were a lot of people out in NY for it being Christmas Eve day…! This Rent-like musical was recommended to me by my friend, Mark, who knew I liked Bill T. Jones, the show’s choreographer (hi Mark!) and I also saw a fellow Winger post about it on her website. I liked it, but I have to say it didn’t move me hugely on my first viewing. It’s something I may have to see again (when it comes down a bit in price!), but I did like the music, the singing was great, and the staging (which I assume was what Jones was responsible for, since there really wasn’t any dancing) was a lot of fun. I guess what I didn’t like was the basic story — it’s based on a German play from the 1890s — and wasn’t something I haven’t heard a zillion times before, so it definitely told me nothing new. And, it seemed a bit melodramatic and I couldn’t understand the motivations of some of the characters. I also wanted some real dancers for Jones to work with! Maybe I’ve just seen so much dance lately I expect everyone to go soaring through the air like an ABT or Alvin Ailey member. I’ve got so used to seeing abstract expressions of thought revealed through the sublime vehice of a near miraculous human body that I just didn’t want to hear any dialog! — which is VERY odd for me since I used to be so into dramas. But I guess I’ve never been a huge fan of musicals in the first place — the only one I think I’ve ever liked is the Cabaret of the Mendes / Cumming variety. But, everyone seems to love this musical, so I’m sure that whatever I didn’t see in it on first viewing is just me 🙂
So, this will be my single-girl-in-the-city Christmas dinner for tomorrow: an artisanal chicken pot pie made by Just Rugelach and bought at my local Sunday farmers’ market, fresh spinach with Olde Cape Cod honey mustard viniagarette currently on sale at my local Food Emporium, and Barefoot Sauvingon Blanc from Nancy’s Wines, preceded by my favorite appetizer of Greek taramosalata (red caviar mixed with pureed potatoes and other lovely ingredients) on Russian black bread, and for dessert, thick delicious (and immensely fatty) Southern Comfort Egg Nog, and some Haddington Farms chocolate-covered peanut caramel clusters sent by Mom 🙂 Yum!
And, finally, here’s some of my Christmas reading! Two novels I’ve been hoping for time to sink my gums into — Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, which is a dark comedy in the style of Augusten Burroughs and consists of letters an alum writes to his alma mater on the eve of his high school reunion basically telling them how life DIDN’T pan out so hunky dory (just my type of thing 🙂 ), and the other, The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter, was recommended by Nick Hornby to his fans a long time ago, which I never got around to buying, but some nice person in my apartment building left this copy for me on top of the recycle bin! And these two lovely works of fiction sit here atop my stacks of trial transcripts for the next case I’ll be working on. I promised friends and family I WOULDN’T do any work work, but if I get antsy enough….
Anyway, happy holidays everyone!
Downstairs at Cornelia Street Cafe
A writers’ organization I belong to, The Writers Room, hosts readings by its members on the downstairs stage in the Cornelia Street Cafe every third Tuesday each month. I’ve always been so scared to read my work, I guess just because I feel silly reading my own words aloud to an actual audience — I was even hesitant in class once, to the befuddlement of my teacher… But this year I decided just to bite the bullet, and signed up to read from my novel. My reading’s not until June — I scheduled myself that late partly because that month’s theme, “Our (Fore)fathers: (Dis)respecting,” is the closest fit with what my excerpt is about, and partly to give myself plenty of time to freak out! So, I figured I’d go every month until then to see what the atmosphere is like, how the readers actually read (of course I’ve gone to umpteenth readings before, but always got so absorbed in the content I never thought to watch closely how the writer actually went about giving an entertaining read), and to support my fellow writers so they will in turn support me 🙂 Tonight’s theme was on the holidays, and the readers were novelist Eric Zeisler, novelist and screenwriter David Evanier, and this very witty fun poet, Rachel Rawlings. The event was hosted by Stan Richardson, who is on the mike in the above pic. Of course each reader he introduced tonight had a list of writing accomplishments pages long — the first guy I think had won about five major awards and had attended several really prestigious writer programs and retreats, the second co-wrote a bunch of screenplays with super famous people and had about 10 books published … Oooh, what’s Stan gonna say for me??? “Ladies and gentlemen, Tonya Plank, a total wannabe with absolutely nothing published!” (I’ve been told law review articles don’t count in the publishing world). No, seriously, Stan was, fortunately, a very funny guy, who cracked a lot of jokes — after Eric read, interrupted several times by the heat cranking on, Stan proposed we give a round of applause to the plumbing system which was apparently needy for some recognition. I think (hope) he can lighten the situation, calm my nerves at least a bit, and hopefully come up with something goofy to say in my intro that will make people more sympathetic toward me than ridiculing, please please 🙂
I’ll definitely be posting hysterically about this more as the time approaches, but until then, WR readings are every third Tuesday of the month, and I have them all posted under My Upcoming Events, on the right-hand section of the blog!