dance

estrangement

A friend of mine, a dancer, was injured yesterday, in the course of an ordinary rehearsal – but what is “ordinary” for performers is extraordinary for the human body. A joint broken in three places, a cast, and a different trajectory for the next few months are the result. Thankfully, it’s not a serious injury. It’s one that someone in good health should bounce back from with time, as I’m sure my friend will, being in the best health of anyone I know. But it was a rude awakening from the dream that we work in.

I read an article on ArtsJournal a few weeks ago about dancers having a higher rate of injury than professional football players. I can’t find that link again, but here’s a longer and grim post from their ArtsWatch blog about the many things that make a career in that field tough.

It makes an interesting point about “audience estrangement” (their phrase) and the world of dance, as compared to the parallel audience decline in the music world:

Classical music critics point to audience estrangement from atonal music in the second half of the 20th Century as a reason for classical music’s decline with the public. No such claim can be made for dance. Contemporary dance has continued to evolve and produce stars. Small modern companies do some of the most exciting work in all of contemporary arts, and the field is vibrant with new ideas. More traditional companies never stopped offering plenty of classic fare.

And yet, even the top companies are a difficult sell when they tour [SJ Mercury News] outside the largest cities…

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theater

the limitations of science

This afternoon, I have a job interview, and then I’m going to see a reading of Elaine Romero’s play WALK INTO THE SEA, at the Goodman, as part of their Latino Theater Festival. Ricardo Gutierrez, who I know from the LYDIA cast, is in it. Here’s the theater’s blurb:

The fault lines in Karl and Virginia’s marriage are revealed when their son Edward, diagnosed with autism, retreats behind a mask of silence. Karl, a microbiologist who specializes in viruses, buries himself in his work, while Virginia embraces religion. This haunting new play offers a complex and moving look at the limitations of science and the importance of family.

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quotes, style, workstyle, writing

Who are these people?

Q: Are you one of those writers who keeps a regular schedule?

A: No. How I wish! Who are these people? That sounds marvelous. It takes me a long time to write, because I think out everything before I write it. When I write something, even a tiny section of a long thing, I think about it for many weeks. Perhaps that’s why my work is always so much “my work.”

– Jamaica Kincaid in a Salon interview. I read her collection of Talk of the Town essays, TALK STORIES, today, and was overwhelmed by the exact simplicity. Every word means something. She has an overheard person at a party say “Sensation, as you know, is the tyranny of Los Angeles.”

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quotes, writing

Who would not be poor if he could be sure of possessing genius?

“Sir,” says the Colonel, “I hope it is not your practice to measure and estimate gentlemen by such paltry standards as those. A man of letters follows the noblest calling which any man can pursue. I would rather be the author of a work of genius, than be Governor-General of India. I admire genius. I salute it whenever I meet it. I like my own profession better than any in the world, but then it is because I am suited to it. I couldn’t write four lines in verse, no, not to save me from being shot. A man cannot have all the advantages of life. Who would not be poor if he could be sure of possessing genius, and winning fame and immortality, sir? Think of Dr. Johnson, what a genius he had, and where did he live? In apartments that, I daresay, were no better than these, which, I am sure, gentlemen, are most cheerful and pleasant,” says the Colonel, thinking he had offended us.

– from THE NEWCOMES, by W. M. Thackeray

Why have I waited this long to read more Thackeray? I only picked up THE NEWCOMES in the Ravenswood library because it had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone, who I have loved since seeing his illustrations of Eleanor Farjeon’s THE LITTLE BOOKROOM when I was a kid. Little did I know how good it was going to be. I find myself slowing down in deference to the density of Thackeray’s writing. I’m going to have to start over again from the beginning and read it at the pace of a snail – but what a happy snail. I think I’m going to enjoy this as much as the time when I was in Berlin and I decided to read every novel Thomas Hardy had ever written.

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poetry

Alice was eating grapes in the park when…

she learned that Poetry Magazine is hosting the 4th Annual Printer’s Ball at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art on August 22nd, including a staged reading of a radio play by Yehuda Amichai and something about which I can only speculate called the “Gnoetry poetry machine” – it reminds me of the Curious Sofa. I’ll have to wait and find out!

The Printers’ Ball is an annual celebration of print literature in Chicago, hosted by Newcity, Poetry, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), in collaboration with CHIRP, MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine, Proximity Magazine, Stop Smiling, Venus Zine, and over 100 local literary organizations. The event showcases a diverse selection of print publications, available free of charge, including magazines, journals, weeklies, posters, and broadsides, plus a full night of live entertainment.

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self-blogerential, theater

extruding audio

I just saw a podcast, Downstage Center advertised on ArtsJournal:

Downstage Center, a collaboration of the American Theatre Wing and XM Satellite Radio, is a weekly theatrical interview program that spotlights the creative talents on Broadway, Off-Broadway, across the country and around the world, with in-depth conversations that simply can’t be found anywhere else.

I think it’s cool, and it reminds me of the conversation I had with Eric L. in Los Angeles about how easy and pleasant it is to podcast. His show, EXTRUDING AMERICA, which he tapes with a long-distance actor friend over the phone, has been successful in getting a large number of downloads, and he’s building an audience for his comedy writing.

When I was at Stanford, I used to want to have a radio drama show, which would be, in effect, an ongoing production meeting of the type I used to have to go to weekly at OSF and Denver. It would have a cast of onerous and sniping characters – producers, directors, overwrought stage managers – talking to each other about the disastrous state of their theatre. Slings and Arrows, I guess. It could be called THE PRODUCTION MEETING, or THE COMPANY MEETING, or something. Everyone would have an absurd name like the list of contributors at the end of Car Talk. (“Heywoudja Buzzoff,” for example.) Maybe we could tape it live – broadcast it live – and podcast it later.

I need to write a post about the many semi-projects I am thinking about launching in Chicago – this is one of them, but there are a lot of others. They are all designed to be high-impact but low-committment, none of them requiring a full process. That seems to be my interest right now.

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quotes, writing

What stories are new?

If authors sneer, it is the critic’s business to sneer at them for sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care about his opinion. Besides, he is right sometimes; and the stories he reads, and the characters drawn in them, are old, sure enough. What stories are new?
[…]
There may be nothing new under and including the sun; but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet. And then it will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it; and so da copa.

– from the first chapter of THE NEWCOMES, (entitled “The Overture”) by W.M. Thackeray

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books, quotes, style, writing

Ken Sparling is in your kitchen, rocking your prose style

I worked at a grocery store and they paid us in cash every week. I would just stick the money in my pocket and never go to the bank. I bought Tutti a giant stuffed animal, a Mickey Mouse telephone, sheets and pillowcases with cats wearing running shoes on them, and I bought a kit and made her a Christmas stocking with her name on it. I can’t remember what else I bought. Anytime I saw something, I bought it. This past year was our eleventh Christmas together, and I bought her a plastic rack for inside the kitchen pantry door, where she can put her rolls of food wrap.

She is lying in bed beside me right now, with her back to me. I think she has finally gone to sleep. I came back from a meeting where I had just been elected to the board of directors and I came home in the rain, and there she was, on the couch, watching TV.

Now we are up here in bed and I am wide awake. I think she’s asleep. But she might just be pretending she is asleep so she doesn’t have to listen to me anymore. She might, at some point, have said to her self, “I can’t listen to this anymore,” closed her eyes, and pretended to be asleep.

I don’t think she’s pretending. I really don’t.

But, the thing is, it occurred to me. There was a time when something like this would never have entered my head.

– from the novel DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL, by the Canadian author Ken Sparling, who has the prose style I want to be when I grow up.

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art, LA theater, theater

bring your PJs

The Traveling Neighborhood collective, which my friend Rachel is one of the founders, is holding an umbrella event, lounge, and sleepover downtown in Los Angeles over the weekend of August 16 & 17. Featuring music, poetry, paintings, short films, and all the art you can eat. $5 at the door after 6 pm. The schedule, which I can’t paste here because it’s a Jpeg (but a very pretty one – handwritten) includes a denouement at 8 pm. Now that’s planning.

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film, opera, theater

the film properties hit the opera world

“As marketing becomes more crucial for the survival of the art form, the appeal of an established title becomes more important,” says F. Paul Driscoll, editor in chief of Opera News. “This is what we’re looking at in opera — whether the franchise can deliver a reliable product.”

– Variety on a new group of operas based on movies. The most interesting one sounds like the Howard Shore opera of THE FLY, directed by David Cronenberg, which is coming to the LA Opera next month after Paris.

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