Tag: The Writing Life

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Of Pretzels and Pashminas

“When, in today’s ballet, you see a man express his feelings for his lady by hurling her into the air, catching her upside down, and wrapping her around his neck like a pashmina, you are seeing the legacy of the Bolshoi.”

— this from Joan Acocella in her latest New Yorker article, analyzing Morphoses (whose NY season just wrapped up) and trying to place Christopher Wheeldon in the pantheon of choreographers.

I burst out laughing when I read this quote because that’s a perfect (albeit hyperbolized) description of my favorite partnering moves in my favorite of all dance scenes, the balcony pas de deux from Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet — the scene that made me fall in love with ballet. (See Julio Bocca and Alessandra Ferri go at it here.) Acocella says MacMillan is a disciple of the Bolshoi style with its sweeping expressivity, its Romanticism, its high-theater dramatics.

But:

When, on the other hand, you see a woman in a leotard merely hold the man’s hand as she flashes her legs out in eighty-two fabulous, clean ballet steps, and then, in a change of heart, fall into his arms and do something hair-raisingly sexy, like a front-facing split, you are seeing a child of “Agon.”

“Agon” being one of George Balanchine’s masterpieces, Balanchine style being the antithesis of Bolshoi / MacMillan (aka “the pashmina”).

Acocella goes on to say Wheeldon’s choreography contains a bit of both styles. I hadn’t really seen that though. I saw him as more a follower of Balanchine with everything abstract, subtle, understated, and focused on steps, on movement rather than on creating character or bringing about an emotional response in the audience. Which is probably why I’m not an enormous fan of Wheeldon, though I do value seeing his work from time to time. On the other hand, I can’t imagine ever tiring of a pashmina.

The article is very interesting, as all of Acocella’s writings are. She always makes me see something I hadn’t before, makes me reconsider, want to see a piece again. Here, she finds in some of Wheeldon’s original, intricate partnering (which people have, aptly I think, referred to as pretzel pas de deux) something actually rather unsettling, even sinister in a way. I hadn’t thought of those twisty, undefined shapes that his dancers make with each other that way before. I always spent my time at a Wheeldon dance playing the inkblot test, trying desperately to figure out what exactly the odd, contorted shapes evoke. But maybe they’re not meant to evoke a specific image at all, yet still charge you with feeling, the same as a pashmina but in a less over-the-top way, without the drama. I will look at the partnering in his ballets anew now. (I couldn’t find a video of such a pdd, but here’s a Wheeldon sampling for comparison to the MacMillan.)

In any event, I dearly hope Mr. Ratmansky brings some of the Bolshoi with him to ABT. And I hope Mr. Wheeldon can let loose some more of his inner pashmina 😀 What is life without passion?…

Seriously, here is the full Acocella.

And, while on the subject of the New Yorker, for people interested in books and art and the artistic life and all, here is an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell, on the different types of artistic genius and how each is cultivated, which I think could just as easily be titled, “Why This Country Will Never Produce a Cezanne”… Interestingly, Gladwell seems to locate young novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s genius in the fact that he was a “best-seller” in his twenties rather than the critical acclaim he received. We’re so accustomed to equating success with money in this country, which is part of Gladwell’s point about the Cezanne issue.

Oh, one last thing: I’d written earlier about Acocella interviewing Ratmansky as part of the New Yorker festival. I was extremely sick that weekend and unable to attend, but Evan was there; here is her report. And here is reportage from Lori Ortiz on Explore Dance.

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Last Days of Summer

Today’s such a nice day in NY (70s, woo hoo!), that, although I have an absolute load of work to do inside, I couldn’t resist spending at least a little of the afternoon in the park. I then realized I’d taken a bunch of pictures in Central Park and elsewhere in the city about a month ago and, because of my trip to North Carolina, hadn’t ever had time to post them:

Boaters on the pond.

Water kind of looks a bit Monet, no?

I stopped for a glass of wine in the boathouse bar and sat next to a family of tourists. After the waiter withdrew the cork from their Chardonnay bottle, the woman took it from him, wiped it gently with her napkin, and took a pen from her purse. “Mommy, what are you doing,” the little boy asked. She explained she was saving the cork, as she always does for special events. She still had the Cabernet from the night their father proposed, the Chardonnay from the first honeymoon meal, the Merlot from the family’s first trip to Disneyland, etc. all meticulously labeled and in a glass jar on the fireplace mantle. I thought it was so sweet.

By the way, the Boathouse has an excellent “house” Sauvignon Blanc. It smelled of a dewy morning meadow. I almost didn’t want to drink it…

At the fountain, a man participating in Burning Man festivities (whom I’d recognized as one of my fellow participants in the Judson Movement Research festival) giving a man and his child some bubbles to play with.

They gave me some spicy red Mardi Gras beads, which went well with my scarf.

And this is in the Mall area across from the fountain where they have that retro disco roller derby thing on weekends. This guy’s always there. I love watching.

More disco rollers, or roller-skating disco dancers, or what have you.

Is anyone else kind of annoyed by this new breed of park transportation: the rickshaw bicycle cabbies? They’re everywhere in the park; they come up speeding behind you, nearly run you over. And for the most part, the guys just sit stationary in the tourist areas, waiting to find a customer. If they’re meant as a replacement for the horse-drawn carriages, then I’m all for it (while those are quaint and all, I’ve seen more than one horse go down, especially in the heat, and I think they’re abusive to the animals), but I still see the horse ‘n buggies aligning Central Park South.

Here’s a pic of the Brooklyn Book Festival (sorry; I’m really behind on my posting – -this took place about a month ago).


And here’s Charles Bock reading from his Beautiful Children at the festival. Charles Bock was the Where’s Waldo of my book-reading-going this summer. The man was at practically every literary festival, read on his own several times, had a full-page interview or review in every newspaper… I’m very happy for him though. His book is a poignant expressionistic tale of the underbelly of “the fabulous Las Vegas,” the real Vegas. And I find him very encouraging to new authors. He always mentions how long it took him to write his novel and get it out there (10 years); that it’s all-important to get it right even if it does seem to be taking forever. Art isn’t something to be rushed. He said he revised countless times before even looking for an agent. When he finally had it down as it was meant to be, he found an agent and publisher pretty quickly. I think I’ve done the exact opposite. I started sending it out after I finished my first draft. I have an agent, but am still revising five years later… So, listen to Charles Bock. Obviously.

Here’s a picture I took sitting outside in City Hall Park at night awaiting Ofelia Loret de Mola’s site-specific dance Available Spaces, the last of the season. I get tired of writing about dance all the time, and go to far many more programs than I can review without getting seriously burned out, but here’s the NYTimes review of that. It was basically a Mexican, Halloween-style carnival. I went at night; Roslyn Sulcas, who covered it for the Times, during the day. If you’re interested, the set of photos I took of that begin here.

Okay, back to work. Happy Friday, everyone.

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Let's Just Do Away With Words

we don’t really need them to, like, communicate intelligently or anything…

(Steve, a ballroom friend of mine, showing me his favorite newspaper for arts coverage last October, during our studio’s “field trip” to see Pasha and Anya on the SYTYCD tour)

For those who haven’t already heard, that paper, The NY Sun, folded the other day (leaving Joel Lobenthal — one of the better dance critics imo — presumably out of a job) along with two other arts-heavy alternative weeklies, The Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper (via Galley Cat).

Another unfolding drama in the literary arts world is that the Nobel prizes winners are scheduled to be announced soon, but the Swedish head of the literature committee has apparently told Americans we’re being left out of the running; we’re too insular, uninvolved in the world, we “don’t translate enough and don’t participate in the world’s great dialog of literature.” Of course this has angered many, including David Remnick, EIC of The New Yorker; here is Galley Cat’s snarling response.

I seem to buy a lot of translations so it would be nice if Mr. Engdahl was more specific on what is not being translated here, and I don’t know what he means by our failure to participate in the world’s great literary dialog, but I disagree with him that all of our writers are insular, though the ones who come to mind first who are not (Junot Diaz, Colson Whitehead, David Foster Wallace, etc.) are probably too young in their literary careers (tragically of course in Wallace’s case) to be considered for this “body of work” award. Still, this line of his resonates: “U.S. writers are ‘too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture,’ dragging down the quality of their work.” I’m not sure if it’s the writers or the publishers, but I do think we’re far too concerned here with how much money the work will make, which in large part depends on how “trendy” is its topic or author. I do think we’d be hard-pressed to argue with him that a work’s artistic merit is generally more important in Europe, its dollar ‘value’ more so here. And where has this fixation on money gotten us?…

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Sorry!

Blogging will resume as soon as a Wednesday deadline passes, I promise!

In the meantime, here are a few things to keep you entertained:

1) Christopher Wheeldon (choreographer and artistic director of Morphoses — upcoming next month at City Center) talks ballet and creativity on Big Think here, here, and here; general Wheeldon link here. (Also, read some Morphoses dancer and choreographer blogs here);

2) check out Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet‘s Project 52, a year-long documentary on the company in weekly video installments;

3) Claudia La Rocco discusses the new Broadway musical Fela!;

4) a discussion I found interesting about whether J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye should still be required reading for high schoolers, or whether it no longer has adequate “currency” so as to resonate with young people today, here, here, and here;

and

5) if you’re interested in the writing life, guest blogger Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony, turned The Elegant Variation into a crash course on creative writing last week. His entries begin here.

Okay, wish me luck!

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Poets & Dance Writers and Romantics & Poseurs

I’ve been so busy lately trying to juggle various things I got very behind on my reading, particularly dance reading. So I spent part of my weekend browsing the online arts sections of my old favorite magazines and newspapers and found a few interesting things. I’m really loving some of Claudia La Rocco’s recent reviews. This Bayadere piece is really beautiful in her descriptions, and this one had a poetic charm to it as well — look at the Ravel simile! Made me wonder what her background was — if she was a fiction writer or poet. So, I did a Google search and found several of her poems, like this one and this one, and this one on Shen Wei. (At least I assume this is the same Claudia La Rocco!) It does make perfect sense; poetry, fiction, and dance (and perhaps music) writing have a good deal in common. It’s so hard to write about something so inherently visual or sensual and it really makes you strive for that perfectly specific adjective or metaphor or simile that will convey to your readers as precisely as possible what you saw and what it felt like, how it touched the senses and the soul, without resorting to cliche (which tells the reader nothing). Of course you also need analytical faculties, but I personally find the most challenging part is just getting a well-written, apt description down without over-using the “amazing”s and “beautiful”s, etc. etc.

I was also looking through Time Out, after Ariel pointed out a few Gia Kourlas pieces, and found this interview with Tom Gold, who recently retired from New York City Ballet, particularly interesting. About halfway through he talks about how City Ballet has changed over the years and how technique now seems to be stressed over developing the dancer’s personality, conveying the humanity of the dance. I think that’s all important. I feel like, with a few definite exceptions, dancers are focusing so much on the steps, on making them perfect without thinking about what’s behind them, what they’re trying to convey to us with those steps. Didn’t Damian Woetzel recently say people don’t go to the ballet to see technique? We don’t! Gold said he hopes we return to the age of Romanticism soon and I couldn’t agree more. He also has a few amusing expressions of annoyance at artists who are so insistent on being the “new thing,” on being original, that they seem to lose focus on what they’re doing, on the joy and spontaneity of dance, and their work ends up being contrived and derivative anyway. There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new ways of bringing things to light and exploring them.

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The Power of Words Versus Pictures Versus Video

You guys, I’m wondering if people can answer a question for me. I guess this applies mainly to my readers who are not located in NY and who have never before seen American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, or any of the companies I write about. But it also applies to anyone who has an answer really.

Do you think if a writer is really good and can convey the beauty of a dancer or of a dance, that pictures are unnecessary? Are there any such writers? Joan Acocella, Arlene Croce, Edwin Denby, Julie Kavanagh, Laura Jacobs? (I use those examples because those writers have published books, in which there are few if any visuals). Is it even possible to convey the beauty of an inherently visual art form in words? Do pictures even do justice since dance is not just visual, but inherently movement-oriented?

Do you need a combination of writing and visuals? Is there a difference between blogs, books, magazines, and newspapers in terms of what you expect?

Do you care more about the dancers the writer is talking about if the writer posts a picture of them? Do you have more of a human connection to them that way? If so, is a full-body picture of them in a dance pose better than a headshot? Do you connect more to the face or body form? Or do you honestly just not care about them at all if there’s no chance you’ll ever see them perform?

I ask mainly because bloggers are beginning to run into copyright violation issues with videos and photos.

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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.

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Beware of Having Oral Sex With More Than Six People!

Ugh. Last night I had another reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe, as part of the Writers Room member reading series. (above photo is from a reading there last year; I felt like such crap last night I wouldn’t let any friends — including Ariel, who wrote about the evening here — take pictures). I almost didn’t give the reading because I was feeling depressed and sick (the two probably contributed to each other; having grown up in warm sunny Phoenix, I am just fundamentally not a cold-weather person and it seems like I often spend an entire winter down with something off and on). Anyway, another person had to back out last minute so I decided to be an adult and refrain from flaking out on something I’d committed to. Plus, Stan Richardson, playwright and curator of the series, is such an amazing person. He made me feel so much better and talked me out of my insecurities with his spectacular sense of humor. He really is a great person; thanks Stan 🙂

For the above reasons, it didn’t go as well as the first…. although I feel like that’s how life often is. Of all of my many court arguments over the years, my very first went by far the best — the presiding judge actually telling me it was well-crafted and well-articulated. Also, with my first reading, I just gave a brief intro to my novel then began reading; here, I was reading from another section further in, so I felt like I stood up there talking about what the manuscript was about and what came before the excerpt more than actually reading it. Anyway, it was brief and I survived.

The guy on after me though was really good. His name is Steve Reynolds, and he read from his memoir, portions of which will be published in Reader’s Digest, on surviving oral cancer. Oh — the theme of the night was “Doctors,” so all of ours dealt with medical conditions. Mine was about my main character’s having to go for a gruelling Barium Swallow exam after sensing a ball the size of a fist in her throat, and the playwright who followed us, Susan Haar’s consisted of two really good monologues from her newest play about a character who is sexually assaulted while in a coma. So, definitely an uplifting night in Cornelia Street Cafe!… Anyway, Reynolds is a great writer, who has attained enough ironic distance from his condition to write about it with both laugh-out-loud humor and sobering poignancy. He’s really able to make you feel what he’s feeling as he goes through the various stages.

At points, his excerpt even created a bit of commotion. A non-smoker, he was obviously befuddled at his diagnosis. He’s further dumbounded to learn (as are we!), that it’s actually caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV, the same one that causes cervical cancer in women), and whose chances you have of contacting rise the more sexual partners you have. According to stats, he tells us, once you have more than six partners, your chances of getting — either oral HPV or cancer; I’ve forgotten now because I was so blown away by the number — increase 420 percent with every new partner. This is over the course of a lifetime. Afterward, when Stan re-took the mike, he repeated, “420 percent??” “Yep,” Steve responded. Murmurs abounded and everyone’s face seemed to bear a rather horrified look of concentration. “I mean, if you’re a single woman in her 30s there’s no way you haven’t had more than that!” said a wildly gesticulating woman in the audience (okay, my friend! — but not poor Ariel — she looked mortified that people actually spoke about such things in public. I remember being new to New York once too, 🙂 )

Anyway, afterward, I dragged my friends to Caffe Vivaldi around the corner, which is just kind of a nostalgic place for me, since I used to go there frequently when I first moved here. Unfortunately it doesn’t look much like I remember it: instead of being a quintessential cafe with every hot cozy drink and soothing fattening thing imaginable and loads of tables suitable for chatting by the fireplace, it’s now become a small dark music-hall, with the chairs and tables all shoved to one end to accommodate a huge piano and band area on the other. And of course once the band begins playing — they have two sets per night so they start early — conversation must end. And gone is their European staff who made the perfect panini and served good wine. Having said all that, I still rather enjoyed the first musician, a singer and pianist named Jess King. Her lovely, soulful voice and dark, melancholy tunes were perfect for my blue funk. She made me cry at one point and sometimes that’s just what you need — a good cry. Anyway, check her out here or here. And, to hear her in person, she plays there every other Tuesday night. I loved her.

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Sophie is Depressed…

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

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

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

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First Ever Reading Survived!!!

Hahahahhaha — I look SO intense!

Tonight I had my first ever public reading of my novel at the Cornelia Street Cafe. I read as part of the Writers Room Member Reading series, which takes place there every third Tuesday of the month from September through June.

Hehe, so much fun. I was so nervous, but once I got started, I was fine… at least that’s what my wonderful friend, Evangelina, told me 🙂

Here I am with Evangelina, my good old trustworthy friend from my writing class days. She’s known (main character) Sophie and all of her nutty problems since her inception so it was PERFECT to have her in the audience! I would have invited more people, but I was really nervous going into it and didn’t know how well I’d do, so I wanted to minimize the number of people to see me screw up!

But as it turned out, it went fine, and now of course I can’t wait to do it again. When I do, I promise to invite everyone I know in the NYC area 🙂

Here’s playwright and Writer’s Room Reading Series host, the hilarious Stan Richardson, about to introduce me.

Hehehe, I’m such a goof. I actually wrote out my intro to my piece that I was reading. I always do such silly things — whenever I give an oral argument in court, I absolutely MUST write at the top of my outline the words, “May it please the court. I am Tonya Plank and I represent (client’s name)” … my friends like to make fun of me — because what, am I going to forget my name?? — but I’m always so nervous approaching a podium, I just must have those words on my paper in order for me to get myself actually talking.

All in all it went really well. Like I said, I was very nervous and shaky-voiced at the beginning — which I felt and Evangelina confirmed — but after I got into it, it got much better. After I read, Stan said my reading made him think and there were a lot of things that he really wanted to talk about but there was no time — how sweet! And then later, he made a couple of jokes about Freud and everything in this post-Freudian universe being sexual, which was a riff on my first couple of lines 🙂

Then, after all readings were over, a writer, Jim Story, approached me and told me he thought I did well and my work sounded interesting but that I read way too fast and needed to slow down. Evangelina agreed, but said I only read how I talk (which is way too fast!). She also said that I need to learn proper comic timing — when I have a funny line, I need to PAUSE afterward to give the audience time to get it and respond. I know, I know, I know, but eeek, I just feel so weird doing that; I feel like I am begging for laughs, basically telling the audience I want them to think this is funny and to laugh by pausing in certain places — no??? I guess maybe just reading slower in general would do the trick…

Hehehe, also Stan asks everyone a question or two when introducing them. For mine, he asked me what I liked best about my website. I was thinking he was going to ask something like when did you join the Writers Room and / or why, what publishing house would you like to publish your book (questions he’s asked others), but instead I got this one and I couldn’t think quickly. I said the first thing that came to mind which was the graphic! I do really like the graphic designer my web builder, Gregory Tomlinson, hired, and those couple of little outlines he did of me and Pasha dancing in my first showcase, one on the main blog, and one on the home page. And then I started vomiting on (when I’m nervous I just start blabbing incessantly; it’s really just BAD), about how I used to take ballroom and, oh can you believe the guy in my graphic, my former dance teacher, is now on “So You Think You Can Dance” and woo-hoo a famous person on my blog, who knew Pasha would make it so big, and how awesome, and blah blah blah… have no idea what else I said; it’s just a blur now! Well, Stan had no idea what I was talking about — he’s like, So You Think You Can Dance, is that American!? I’m such a goof, I have to remember not everyone is as obsessed with dance as I am … And, hello, what kind of writer says their favorite thing about their website is the graphic!!!!!!!

Anyway, it was all so much fun and such a great experience and I so want to do it again. I could totally get used to this writer life 🙂 Thanks to Stan for being his humorous self and easing my nerves, along with my two co-readers tonight Dan Klein and Lauren Yaffe, and Evangelina, friend extraordinaire for her never-ending support :), and to Cornelia Street Cafe and the Writers Room (the most awesome of all urban writers colonies!) — as well as the Jerome Foundation, NYC Department of Culture, and National Endowment of the Arts for underwriting the WR Reading Series — all for giving new writers such a wonderful opportunity to be heard and to engage in the writing life in this way. Happy night!

Front of Cornelia Street Cafe, where Evangelina and I had dinner and caught up with each other after the reading. And, across the street, we noticed this very happening restaurant, Petra or something like that? Hmmm, will have to check it out someday…