Just because

In response to my being tagged at something shiny disorder, here is a random sample of information about me:

What I Was Doing 10 Years Ago
Graduate school at Cornell, I believe working on time of flight Monte Carlo.

Five Snacks I Enjoy
cookies
apples and peanut butter
cheese and crackers
nuts
applesauce

Five Things On My To-Do List Today
pick up Gretchen's medicine
fill car up with gas
gestate
determine ionospheric structure functions
write a thank-you note

Five Favorite Recipes
Corn Potato Chowder
Cranberry Orange Apricot Bread
Crusty Chicken Breast Topped with Salad
Apple Betty Pie
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bar Cookies

Five Jobs I've Had
teaching assistant at a summer science program
modern dancer
nuclear physicist
ballet teacher
senior research scientist

Five Bad Habits
cookies
staying up late
leaving my shoes all over the house
not emptying the dehumidifier when I think of it (hey, it's in the basement)
paying bills late

All the Places I've Lived
Texas
California
New York (upstate)
Georgia

Five Random Things About Me
I enjoy Willie Nelson's music
I'm right handed, but my left eye is dominant and my left foot is bigger
I spend a significant fraction of my income on health care for my dog
I secretly long to work in movies
I'm allergic to cats (that means you, Mr. Bigglesworth)

Jon Stewart, May 10, 2008, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center

Yes, it's been almost two months since I saw this standup performance by the host extraodinaire of The Daily Show. What with Mr. Silvershoes starting a new job that requires him to be out of town a great deal AND with a baby on the way, blogging just hasn't risen to the top of the list lately, so I have a few things to catch up on. Don't expect much; I simply didn't want to leave this performance off the list.

What can I say? Jon Stewart is a funny man. While some of this routine was lifted from The Daily Show, most of it was new to me. Of course the joke lineup included several pointed political observations, but the funniest part was when Mr. Stewart started talking about his pets. I nearly rolled into the aisle when he went on a riff about his dog getting sick, having experienced something similar with Gretchen in the not-too-distant past. Isn't it funny (peculiar) that something so disgusting can turn funny (ha ha) in retrospect?

Atlanta Ballet, March 14, 2008, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center

The Atlanta Ballet has a new home. Much as I liked the Fox Theater, their former home, it isn't the best venue for ballet performances. There's also the fact that parking was a pain and I didn't always feel safe walking to my car at night. The shiny, new Cobb Energy Center offers improvement on all fronts, plus it's closer to my house! It's not quite as chichi as the Wortham Center or even the Hobby Center, but it's still quite nice. I have hopes that the move will elevate Atlanta Ballet's stature and ambitions.

But enough about that. AB's first production in its new home was a mixed rep of pieces by George Balanchine, Diane Coburn Bruning, and Twyla Tharp. The first piece was Balanchine's "Serenade," which was performed for the most part rather sloppily. I also simply CANNOT get over the fact that the dancers use rosin on a Marley floor and, as a result, squeak like rusty huinges whenever they move, something that's particularly unappealing against the exquisite calmness of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings. While dancers must feel secure for their comfort and safety, other professional companies routinely find a quiet way to achieve this goal. I mean, come on!

Fortunately squeaky shoes were not a distraction in the rousing "Ramlin' Suite" by Diane Coburn Bruning. Set to music by the Red Clay Ramblers, the piece was a lighthearted fusion of contemporary ballet and Appalachian charm.

Tharp's "In the Upper Room" closed out the show and, frankly, left me stunned at the choreographic accomplishment of the piece. As far as I can tell, the music was written by Philip Glass specifically for this piece. It reminded me of the music for the film Koyaanisqatsi, which was also written by Mr. Glass at about the same period. Or at least I think it did; it's been a reeaallly long time since I've seen that movie. The music contrived to have a beat without having a rhythm; the driving sounds evolved from one place to another but did not develop. Going on for a continuous 40 minutes, it had the drawn out qualities of Ravel's "Bolero" without the repetition or crescendo (a plus, in my blog). Tharp's choreography was divided into sections, and there was some development as the costumes lost layers to go from black-and-white with red highlights to red with black-and-white highlights. This helped things from becoming monotonous. The set was two stories, but the dancers stayed on the floor, dancing underneath an ever-present fog that added mystery to the proceedings.

I confess that it has been long enough since I saw the piece that I am unable to characterize the movement beyond saying that it was athletic but clearly ballet. The dancers largely directed their attention out to the audience rather than towards each other. The entire experience was mesmerizing and rather like watching a particularly fascinating screen saver. The dancers gave it their all and received a well deserved standing ovation at the end.

Houston, we have a problem (but it could be worse)

I've always thought of Stanton Welch as a competent but not great choreographer, so I was interested to see a reviewer's opinion of his latest work, which premiered last night as part of the San Francisco Ballet's New Works Festival. Writing in today's New York Times, Alastair Macaulay was not shy about saying what he thought of the four works on the program. Mark Morris's piece fared the best with adjectives including "awkward," "tepid," and "static." At least (for Welch's sake) Welch's piece didn't come out at the bottom of the "ghastly" pile.

Welch's new work was title "Naked" and set to Poulenc's "Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos." Macaulay's main criticism was lack of dynamics: fast music got fast movement and slow music got slow movement.

Macaulay's comments on James Kudelka's "The Ruins Proclaim the Building Was Beautiful" fall in the "no, tell us what you really think" category:

[It] lasts no more than 30 minutes, but only by clock time. While you watch, you begin to feel that Bill Clinton probably eloped with Michelle Obama long ago, that the problems of Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan must have all been sorted by now, that whole generations of human life have passed and aliens have surely taken over the planet and then departed, all while you are stuck there in the theater trying to find the least interest in watching the same tepid floozies doing the same limp steps.

Wow.

The other piece on the program was by Julia Adam, who choreographed "Ketubah" for Houston Ballet in 2004.

Maybe you should use a mug?

Here's some sophomoric (maybe even grade school) humor for you. While I understand the image the author is trying to convey in these lyrics to The Shin's "Those to Come," I can't help but giggle every time I hear them:

Eyeless in the morning sun you were
pale and mild,a modern girl.
Taken with thought still prone to care
making tea in your underwear.

Nutcracker memories

As someone who has been a Party Mother, Grandmother, Rat Queen, Snowflake, Snow Queen, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Mirliton, Flower, Bug (don't ask), Dewdrop, and Sugar Plum Fairy in various productions of the Nutcracker over the years, I can really identify with this quote from a December 21, 2007, article in the New York Times by Alastair Macaulay:

And so the changeover of roles goes on from one “Nutcracker” to another. Every performance is attended by ballet mothers who know more about it than anyone else in the audience. When the bed travels magically around the stage, they know there is a little boy underneath. My favorite piece of insider knowledge was uttered years ago by one such mother to another. Watching a young man making his debut as the Sugar Plum’s Cavalier, she whispered, “I remember him when he was the bed.”

Moving Forward, November 3, 2007, Rialto Center for the Performing Arts

This show was a benefit for the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Sadly, it reminded me of the Illumination Project, in that there was really good dancing and no one came to watch it. This is only the second time this benefit has been produced, so maybe word is still getting around. The participating companies were Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre, Northeast Atlanta Ballet, Moving in the Spirit, CityDance Ensemble, The Georgia Ballet, the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra, CORE Performance Company, Atlanta Ballet, and Giwayen Mata. Kudos to all of them for participating.

Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre presented "Birthday Variations", a lighthearted piece set to orchestral variations of the song "Happy Birthday to You." (Sadly, music and choreography were not credited in the program.) The choreography reminded me of a silly-in-a-good-way piece I saw last year by Sam Watson, "Hi Jinks,"and I later discovered that he was also responsible for "Birthday Variations."

City Dance Ensemble presented three numbers, one of them being "Forbidden," described in the program as "a Polynesian-inspired love story involving a forbidden attraction and a jealous husband's rage." Choreography was by Saroya Corbett. Also presented was the ballet classic "The Dying Swan," danced by Christen Edwards. Ms. Edwards displayed a rare understanding of the classical styling of this piece, and watching her was a real treat.

Also a real treat was seeing Ben Stevenson's "Three Preludes" performed by Tara Lee and Jonah Hooper of the Atlanta Ballet. The first time I saw this piece was at Houston Ballet's tribute to Mr. Stevenson on the occasion of his retirement as director of the company. I don't recall offhand the dancers in that performance, but I do recall the program notes saying that Mr. Stevenson choreographed this piece for Roberts Scevers and his partner(?), who were students with the Harkness Youth Ballet. I used to take the occasional ballet class from Mr. Scevers, which I enjoyed a great deal, and remember thinking during the HB performance that the choreography suited his movement style. In the Atlanta production, while Mr. Hooper danced well, he was emotionally reserved, especially in contrast with Ms. Lee, whose emotion and beautiful lines brought out the beauty of the choreography.

Closing the program was an energetic and enthusiastic display of dances from the Susu people of Guinea, West Africa by the all-female group Giwayen Mata.

Make no mistake

From today's New York Times in an article by Roslyn Sulcas reviewing a production by choreographer and artistic director John Jasperse:

It will come as no shock to many in the audience that some of the best dancers in one of the world’s cultural capitals earn less money in a year than unskilled workers. But some of the other numbers Mr. Jasperse cites may be more surprising: his own annual salary ($26,000) as artistic director of the John Jasperse Company; Judge Judy’s annual earnings ($26 million more than the combined annual salaries of all nine United States Supreme Court justices); and the daily cost of the war in Iraq, $720 million, versus the $160 million projected annual budget of the National Endowment for the Arts in 2008. (Read that again and marvel: The words daily and annual are not mistakes.)

(Emphasis added, not that it really needed it.)