The Casual Blog

Category: dance

July 24, 2010

A ballet dress rehearsal

As part of our contribution to the Carolina Ballet, we’re sponsoring the pointe shoes of one of the dancers.  Ballet is not ballet without pointe shoes, and professional dancers go through them so quickly that they become a major budget item.  The ballerina we’re sponsoring, Lola Cooper, invited us to a dress rehearsal last Thursday for a program where she had a significant solo.

It turned out that Sally and I were the only non-company people there.  The rehearsal was in Fletcher, a small but elegant hall, where we had the best seats in the house.  It’s rare to see performers in the state of being in between simple practice and performance.  From my high school days at the N.C. School of the Arts, I was familiar with the basic ideas, but it was interesting to see how these artists used the precious time when the show is imminent.  The dancers at times left off steps and did simple blocking, getting a feel for the surface and space of the stage, the lights, and their costumes.  Ricky Weiss shouted a few specific directions during the run throughs, and after each piece went on stage to discuss refinements.

While we waited for Lola’s piece, we talked with our friend Ginny about other dancers struggling to succeed as artists and to get by.  For those just starting out, the wages are tiny, and for the more experienced, they are low.  There’s a huge disconnect between the inherent value of the artistry of these professionals, the amount of physical and emotional effort required for their art, and the economic rewards.  It’s depressing that their brilliant work is priced at a fraction of that of, say, professional baseball or football players (or doctors, accountants, or lawyers).   For those of us who care about ballet, it’s a reminder that we are a struggling minority, while the majority places little value on the art.

At the same time, the disconnect is a reminder that money is far from the only reason for work.  Artists almost by definition are pursuing something outside the realm of the senses, something beyond the everyday.  They explore these other realms and share with the rest of us their discoveries.  These deeper levels of feeling and meaning have no well-developed markets — there’s no effective system of pricing them in dollars.  But humans have engaged in this type of artistic commerce for thousands of years, and they keep on doing it.  This is an admirable characteristic of the species, and a cheering fact.  This does not, however, mean we shouldn’t worry about getting our dancers a living wage.  It’s in our best interest that they be well nourished, well clothed, in safe quarters,with reliable transportation, and with enough left over to have some fun.  Happy, healthy dancers are good for us.

At the rehearsal, Ricky introduced us to his wife and prima ballerina Melissa Podcasy, and  I felt really honored.  I’ve been very moved by so many of her great performances over the years (among others, Juliet, Carmen, the wife in the Kreutzer Sonata, the woman who yearns in Carmina Burana).  We talked a bit about our cats.  At the pauses, she worked with the performers.

Lola’s piece, from Balanchine’s Raymonda, was last.  She came out of the gate very strong.  Her jumps were big, and she had great quickness and speed.  Her solo was long and arduous, and after several minutes the strain was showing.  We talked for a few minutes afterward, when she was still breathing hard, and she was thinking about improvements.  She’ll be great.

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July 17, 2010

A bunion, a birthday, and an edible work of art

While we were at the class at the Carolina Ballet studio last week, at one point Peggy Severin-Hansen sat on the floor beside me and did some work on her feet.  We’ve been watching her for many years as she rose through the company ranks to become a soloist, and we just love her dancing.  Having the chance to see her working on the bandages on her toes was  intimate, like being in the family.  I thought of sharing with her that I too have foot problems (a bunion) but thought better of it.  She probably wouldn’t have appreciated the comparison.

One of the problems of a bunion, in addition to discomfort, is that it isn’t a good conversational topic. Other people’s health problems are usually uninteresting, but not all are equally off-putting.  There’s no particular stigma to talking about knee problems, wrist problems, or back problems.  But bunions are generally an older person’s issue.  Who likes to think about getting old?  Not me.  I do, however, now understand why there is a section for Dr. Scholl’s foot care products in the pharmacy.  It’s become one of my favorite sections.

As of yesterday, I know how it feels to be 55 years old.  I hate to make a big deal of birthdays, but I’m struck by how big a number this is.  It is clearly no longer the early fifties.  It is old enough to be a parent to two full-grown adults, and in theory old enough to be a grandparent.

But I feel young!  Both in good ways (plenty of energy and enthusiasm) and not-so-good ways (areas of uncertainty and insecurity).  In many ways, I’m healthier and happier than I was in my twenties.  I never completely lose sight of the possibility that there could be a piano hanging over my head and about to drop, in the form of a serious illness or random accident.  But with enough time and some good luck, perhaps I’ll someday look back over many years and think how young I was in 2010, but how I still feel remarkably young, all things considered.  Of course, this may turn out to be my apogee.

To celebrate the day, Sally got us a table at Second Empire, one of our favorite restaurants, and we walked there from our apartment.  It’s a restored grand old residence with elaborate ornamentation, and very traditional in a way.  But it avoids being stuffy with eclectic art, jazz, a great staff and highly imaginative food.  Our server was Katrina.  She was lively, smart, and friendly, and completely undaunted when I told her that we were vegetarians and wanted them to create something special for us.  She assured us they liked vegetarians and would enjoy the challenge to their creativity.  Music to my ears!

In fact, everything on the menu looked great except the animals, and our only suggestions were that there be pasta and perhaps a Spanish theme.  The dish that arrived had rigatoni and spices, with a unique combination of textures and tastes.  It was excellent!  For dessert, I planned to sample Sally’s cake, but they brought me delicious ice cream with a candle in it and a happy birthday message written on the plate in chocolate.  When we got the check, I thought they’d accidentally undercharged us, since there was just one main dish listed.  When I asked Katrina, she assured me that they’d considered the dish that we shared to be one.  Truly, this a great and wonderful restaurant.

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July 15, 2010

Ballet class and open source

This week Sally and I went over to the Carolina Ballet studio at lunch time and sat in on a class taught by Ricky Weiss.  We needed to return a borrowed DVD, and also to meet Lola Cooper, a dancer whose shoes we’d decided to pay for.  We sat in front of the class close to the first line of dancers, which felt awkward at first.  I wondered if we would be a distraction or otherwise be inhibiting.  I would certainly feel ill at ease practicing the piano in front of strangers.

I gradually realized that our presence mattered little if at all.  The dancers were deeply focused on their work.  Their dress was varied, with some in leotards, some in sweats, some in shorts.  It was, of course, an attractive group — youthful and graceful.  Also remarkably strong and powerful.

Weiss didn’t have to say very much to direct the dancers.  A couple of comments, a couple of gestures, and he’d have the dozens of dancers moving in a new complex pattern in unison.  There is, of course, a ballet vocabulary of movement that has a long history, in which all these  professionals have long been schooled.  But the complex combinations of movements were demanding.  There were, not surprisingly, struggle and mistakes.

Practice makes perfect.  This aspect of ballet is very like classical music.  The musician’s performance is the net of hours and years of diligent practice, considering each tiny detail, shoring up each possible point of failure, developing the mind and body to serve a particular musical message.  It takes repetition, with the challenge of somehow avoiding mindless repetition.  I think of practicing the piano as a tool for exploring something inside that is otherwise unreachable, for connecting with both the deeper self and something greater than the self.  But it also is a discipline that looks toward the future, and the possibility of greater transcendence, paid for by hard, diligent effort.

One important difference from music was the social aspect of ballet class.  The dancers worked very hard, but there was also laughter.    A few times, they applauded for the extraordinary sequences of their colleagues.  At one point, Weiss directed the dancers to spin and do enormous hurdling leaps towards the corner where we sat.  Teams of three dancers at a time came flying at a high rate of speed directly towards us.  I tried to stay cool, but I was aware that  a small miscalculation by one of them could result in serious injury — to us!  They came close.  Ballet is more dangerous than you normally think.

After the class, we met Lola.  In the class, she showed grace and powerful technique, and in conversation, she was poised and confident.  She told us about her early enthusiasm for horses, her six years as a student at the American Ballet school, and her time in Seattle.   Along with seeking her pursuit of artistic excellence, she’s also a communications major at N.C. State.

She asked what we did, and I told her a little about my work with open source software.  I tried out on her my idea that open source methods are actually close to how a ballet is made.  A choreographer borrows freely, taking preexisting ideas from all available sources, and modifies those materials to make something new.  It’s very similar to the method of open source software developers.  Lola didn’t appear to buy it, but I still think the idea has merit.  She invited us to see her do a solo in a couple of weeks, which should be fun.

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June 12, 2010

Money, and the ballet

There’s a tension between art and money.  Money is instrumental, a means to an end.  It’s associated with commerce and a variety of  tawdry of human attitudes and behaviors. Randy Newman’s song, It’s Money that I Love, is deliciously ironic, since it’s simply pathetic to love money.  Art is different.  It’s nourishing.  It opens doors.  It expresses our best, and makes us better.  Art feels ambivalent about money, but somehow they need to get along.

Last week I found myself reflecting on art and money after Ginny Hall invited Sally and me to take a tour of the studios and offices of the Carolina Ballet with Ricky Weiss, the company’s artistic director.   We’ve had season tickets for the last decade, starting shortly after the beginning of the company, and have seen all or almost all of Weiss’s ballets, some of them multiple times.  He’s a great choreographer in Balanchine tradition.  He has achieved something truly incredible in building a very strong company in our own Raleigh, North Carolina, and we’re so grateful.

As a longtime fan, I looked forward to talking with Weiss, but felt some anxiety about the money issue. I was well aware that the company needed it to survive.  Sally and I had discussed a possible contribution several times and agreed that we’d feel good about making a meaningful gift.  But it was not something I looked forward to discussing.  Where I’m from, we didn’t like to talk openly about money.  I’m not clear on the reasons, but we didn’t talk about things like salaries and prices for big ticket items.  It was taboo.

In the end, though, our meeting was surprisingly fun.  Weiss and Hall walked us through the studios and work spaces, which were not especially beautiful, but that was part of the point.  He made clear that he’s very conscious of managing money carefully, not spending it on things that don’t matter, and spending as much as he can afford on what counts.  He talked in detail of the cost of point shoes, costumes, and sets, of paying the dancers and staff, and of expenses such as disability insurance.  He compared his productions to those in New York, and admitted his sets were less elaborate, but he took pride that his productions cost a fraction of those.  As a person interested in the backstage, I found all this really interesting.

Weiss told us about falling in love with the ballet as a kid, dancing for Balanchine for 19 years at the City Ballet, leaving to become artistic director for the Pennsylvania Ballet, and leaving there under difficult circumstances.  He also described a six-year period of free lancing and searching without success for  the right position.  He said that during this time he considered leaving the field.  (This would have been a tragedy.)  He talked about the Ward Purrington’s long effort to bring professional ballet to Raleigh with no idea of the long odds against success.

I’d wondered whether Weiss, with his enormous and continual creativity, would find it interesting or helpful to have a philosophy of art and dance.  He did.  He seems to view ballet as not simply expressive, but also magical, transcendental, and yet at the same time basic to human existence, like food.  I was surprised, then, that he had no real trouble with the idea that some people don’t especially enjoy ballet, or even actively dislike it.  He didn’t feel compelled to win over everyone.  He noted lightly that someone once took him to a hockey game, and he didn’t particularly like it.

It turned out that Weiss had an unexpected gift for asking for money.  Without any hints from us, he at last said he’d like us to consider giving the exact amount that we’d already decided we wanted to give.  It was uncanny.  I felt happy and excited.  It’s wonderful that we can help with something that has brought us so much joy.

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May 22, 2010

Daunting derivatives and Sleeping Beauty

Tuesday evening I boarded the flight from RDU to Dallas, and was confused at first as I looked in the coach section for my seat.   5E wasn’t there.  It slowly dawned on me that I had a first class ticket, either as a result of a computer glitch or some unexpectedly generous rewards system.  After I wedged my way forward through the human tide and found my seat,  I tried not to look too ecstatic.  Ah, such a comfy, roomy seat.  And so sweet to have a flight attendant who’s attentive, and little luxuries like warm peanuts and hot towels.  My neighbor was a precocious nine-year-old boy with a stuffed toy traveling to see his mom.  He’d flown this route many times.  He wanted to be an inventor when he grew up.

On the trip, I finished The Big Short by Michael Lewis.  I picked up the book on the strength of his earlier book, Liar’s Poker, and out of concern that I probably didn’t fully understand the drama in the U.S. and world economy in the last two years.  After reading the book, I’m quite sure I didn’t.  I now know a little more, but my larger takeaway is that part of the cause is that the mechanisms involved are so complex that they defy conscious human understanding or control.  I don’t think this is Lewis’s intended message.  He tries to create some heros and villains, or at least intelligent actors and dupes.  The intelligent actors had rational thoughts, and realized that subprime-mortgage-based derivative investments were much riskier than advertised.  He casts some blame on clueless regulators and unscrupulous investment bankers.

Lewis implicitly suggests the slightly cheering possibility that if people were more reasonable and diligent, they might set up regulatory and other systems to avoid financial catastrophe.  I found this encouraging message not very persuasive.  There were surely some monsters and frauds involved in the recent debacle, and plenty of examples of unsavory pure greed and indifference to human welfare.  But right now it looks to me like the big driver was the financial engineering of investment vehicles that were practically impossible to understand, even for professional investors and regulators, never mind individuals.  Creating them was far from unnatural.  In nature, technology, and other human  systems, greater and greater levels of complexity over time is generally the rule.  At some point, there’s simply too much for the human mind to deal with.  Our rational systems are overwhelmed, and our fallback emotional systems have no guideposts from experience.  Disaster is not necessarily inevitable, but we are less and less in control.  Yes, it’s scary.

But life, amazingly, goes on.  Sally and I went to the last program of the season for the Carolina Ballet last night, which was Robert Weiss’s version of Sleeping Beauty.  The music is by Tchaikovsky, and as Weiss explained at the beginning, the choreography comes in significant part directly from Marius Petipa’s nineteenth-century work.  For the most part, this was a very traditional, classical form of ballet.  I generally prefer the more abstract athleticism of Balanchine and his school (including Weiss) with modern dance inflections.  No matter.  Sleeping Beauty was wonderful.  Even the junior members of the corps de ballet showed considerable authority with classical technique, and the soloists were masters who communicate emotional depth within that framework.   Margaret Severin-Hansen as Aurora was etherial.  The costumes were also classically inspired (gowns and embroidered waistcoats and many tutus), and gorgeous.

We got a backstage tour courtesy of our friend Ginny at intermission.  It turned out, the action hadn’t really stopped.  On the stage behind the curtain, some of the dancers were practicing difficult passages or doing deep stretches.  It was disconcerting at first to shift from observer of a carefully planned spectacle to quasi-participant in the assembling of the spectacle, but fascinating.  We met Lilly Vigo, a great favorite of ours who was off for the night, and talked about her new baby, who was six months old that day.  We examined up close the intricate costumes and saw the swan boat and the huge dragon puppet in the wings.  A friend once told me that I was the kind of  person who likes to look behind curtains and see what’s really going on, and it’s true.  One of my fantasy careers is to be a stagehand.

After the show, we decided to have a drink at the Foundation, a tiny bar on Fayetteville Street that features a huge menu of American-made designer spirits.  The downstairs space was crowded, so we settled on stools at street level and did some people watching.  Two of our favorite soloists from the company, Lara O’Brien and Eugene Barnes, arrived shortly afterwards, and sat down next to us.  They seemed pleased that we were big fans, and we really enjoyed talking with them about favorite ballets, goings on in the company, and the travails of the professional dancer’s life.  This is the end of an arduous season for them, and both are looking forward to recovering from injuries over the summer.  We’re looking forward to seeing them again.

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February 20, 2010

We won the lottery, ate, and were transformed by the ballet

I was terribly embarrassed to forget about lunch on Wednesday with my good friend Jay B.  After dealing with a series of absorbing if not gut wrenching legal puzzles through that morning, I paused around 12:15 to check the headlines in the NYT.  At that moment Jay called to ask where I was. I remembered instantly that I was supposed to be with him at noon at the Remedy Diner.  I also remembered I had put the meeting on my electronic calendar when we scheduled it, but somehow it was not on the calendar now.  After fifteen minutes of rushing and apologizing profusely, I was in my seat at the Remedy and catching up with Jay.

It’s always fun to hear about Jay’s doings, but he had a particularly fascinating story this time:  he had arrived in Haiti on January 12 five hours before it was hit by the mother of all earthquakes.  He and daughter Kate were there to do some charitable work in a village some distance from Port au Prince, and got close up view of the incredible devastation heaped on a country already unimaginably poor and broken.  The contrast between the Haitian experience and ours is indescribable.  As I said to Jay, everyone in this country has won a huge lottery prize just by being born here.

But we can’t either celebrate or feel guilty all the time, and we get on with the challenges of our daily lives.  My work Friday was a series of intense meetings with lawyers from all over the country interested in doing business with Red Hat, punctuated by numerous phone calls, emails, and pop-in office questions.  It was almost nonstop activity, but I did manage to take a call from sweet Jocelyn.  She was thrilled with her first powder skiing experience at Telluride, and feeling excited about her increasing skill as a skier.  She also told me about hanging out in a Telluride bar with Ed Helms, a successful actor in The Office.  As I told her, I’d knew from the Oberlin magazine he went to Oberlin, and she confirmed that fact.  Indeed, she told him I went there, too!  It sounded like he was very friendly and quite taken with her but did not attempt anything ungentlemanly.

That night Sally and I ate at Bu.ku, a new restaurant that replaced Fins.  We had liked the food at Fins, but found the place a bit formal and cold.  Bu.ku is warm and interesting, based on the theme of street food from around the world.  The service was very good (thanks, Turner!), and so was the masaman curry.  We’ll go back.

We saw the Carolina Ballet do a Weiss’s Cinderella and several short Balanchine works.  I didn’t love everything equally, but forget the nits.  I still found the experience transporting.  After many hours of computer interactions, talking, and thinking about business and legal problems, the dancers and the dance opened doors to another world — a human world.  They use a vocabulary of movement refined for a couple of centuries to get at a particular kind of truth — emotional truth.  There’s a remarkable purity about it.  The form involves beautiful young dancers, but somehow it isn’t particularly sexy.  Cinderella, in particular, movingly expressed the old chivalric vision of romantic love, and it seemed completely real.  For me, the ultimate test is teary eyes and goosebumps, and it passed.

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July 19, 2009

Anxious moments on the way to ADF

    We got over to the American Dance Festival last night to see Paul Taylor, but barely.   As we got ready to head out, I asked Sally, our tickets custodian (or so I contend), if we had the tickets.  We did not.  Prior to the recent move, all tickets were in the tickets and bills drawer.  Now, with quite a few boxes still to be unpacked, their location was unknown.   As she searched possible spots, I called the box office, and spent a long time on hold.  When I got through, the box office person could not verify that our name was in the tickets system, but said it was possible that another computer could do so when we showed up.

    So, with a late start and no certainty of success, we made our first trip over to the new Durham Performing Arts Center.   The nav system assisted competently.  As turned into the public parking lot, I asked Sally if as I’d requested she’d gotten cash from the bank.  She had not.  Did she have some herself? She did not.  The cost of parking was $5, and I had only $4.  Credit cards, my normal fail safe, were not accepted.  We had no idea where else to park or where to find cash.  I strove to avoid injurious expressions of my unhappiness, but I felt my face forming into a mask of  tension.  Would we find a free parking space?  Would we get tickets?  Would we have time to eat?  Would marital harmony be seriously disrupted?

   We did the first three and avoided the fourth.  There was a lovely free spot near the center.  My box office conversation had apparently been relayed to the staff, and make up tickets were ready for us.  We walked quickly over to the American Tobacco complex and tried Cuban Revolution, a 1960s-themed joint.  Our server, Kirsten, took my urgent request to get us veggie burgers and wine and get us out in 30 minutes seriously, and we did it.   The burgers came on baguette bread and were pleasantly spicey.  We were in our seats with 5 minutes to spare.  Relief. 

   The Paul Taylor dancers were athletic, exuberant, funny, and touching.  Really a great company.  I particularly enjoyed the first work, Mercuric Tidings, but the others, Scudorama and a new work, Beloved Renegade, were good.  In prior years, we’d seen them several times in Page Auditorium at Duke, which was homey, tiny, and funky.  The new venue is brand new and much bigger — less intimate but more comfortable.  The sound system could use improvement, but otherwise, no complaints.  As always, the ADF crowd was an eclectic mix — dancers, hipsters, university people, retirees, etc.  It was good to be back.

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