2008 – it’s a wrap
December 30, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
With one day to go before the end of the year, you can now check out my brief summary of 2008 as published in The Age newspaper. To read the full article, click hereFor those of you short on time, here's an even briefer summary of what happened in Melbourne's dance scene this year:
- Our local contemporary dance companies made some great work, though oddly a lot of them relied on text
- The Australian Ballet were conservative in their programming, as usual, but the dancers were excellent
- Despite the release of the Australia Council's latest strategic plan, there doesn't seem to much hope of dance becoming a viable full-time career option any time soon
My Performance Pictures!
December 29, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
After much procrastination… here are some of the pictures from after my performance! We still haven't recieved any of the pictures taken from the actual dancing, but when we do I will be sure to get them posted! That last pictures is one of me and my little sister (who wants to be a ballerina horse rider when she grows up ;D )
On India
December 28, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
(I planned to see Pina Bausch’s “Bamboo Blues” so I’d have an excuse to write about India; I decided I could miss the performance and simply write about India instead.) I start with a sound. An aching, melancholy call to prayer joined by the scratch scratch of a young man sweeping the sidewalk. It is the sound of religion, and class, and dirt.
Before my husband and I arrive in Mumbai, my father’s friend who is Indian and who we have never met asks if this will be our first time. When we answer yes, he says he will be there to pick us up. We find him slightly to the side of the people pushed up against a metal gate waiting for passengers. He greets us with a restrained (and most-loveable) warmth and nods towards a waiting car. Cigarette in hand, he points out his city as the car lurches its way to our hotel. He sees us in and I am embarrassed by how fancy and western our hotel seems. He says he will meet us in the morning, show us around.
He brings his wife and charges ahead to museums, the zoo, the restaurant. He is funny and warm (I have to use the word again) and cynical. We hear about government and history, flora and fauna, beggars and money and the US. We are jet-lagged and also swept away by his embrace and his plans.
He gives us his time in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. Eases our transition to a foreign world. Is my favorite person I have met in a very long time.
He tells us he grew up an Untouchable.
(When I checked in a few weeks ago, he said he listened for many hours to gunshots during the recent terror attacks. Housed refugees in his apartment.)
My husband and I make our way from Mumbai to Delhi. The physical chaos overtakes me now that we are on our own. The mass of people and cars and motorbikes and bicycles moves fast and furious. I am scared to cross the street.My body remembers the dance classes I’ve taken in which we practice moving in chaos. In those classes, we learn to stay grounded in the midst of upheaval and the unknown and passionate, crazy dancing. In those classes, we look for the empty space, find ways to slide and swirl around each other, never bumping in.
When my husband and I ride a bicycle rickshaw, our western bums don’t both fit fully on the passenger seat. We half-sit and grip a metal bar. We swerve down roads with cars much faster, and heavier than us. We hit a traffic jam in the old part of Delhi, try to stay in our seats amidst rickshaws and cows and horse-drawn buggies. I notice that I am the only woman not wearing a burka. I feel a little scared. I am a visitor. I am different and I don’t know if I am welcome here. And I remember to find my center, the one that is grounded and resilient, quietly present.
I begin to see the speed and the chaos as a wild and quite functional dance. The people of the city know how to ride this rhythm, just as New Yorkers ride theirs.
In Delhi, I alternate between being timid and being engaged with the city. I walk around walls. (There are so many walls.) And I hide behind them. I walk down tiny alleyways with stray dogs and chickens getting their heads cut off. I enter an old courtyard near a mosque where an old man offers me a candy, nods to the sun. I see a very old dance form in a very new and desolate skyscraper-mall-town. I listen to an electric tabla played by a robot developed in California.
We listen to the call to prayer and the street sweeper from a hotel room in a gated area. Children, many holding children, walk into the middle of the busy smog-ridden streets to tap on the windows of our air-conditioned taxi. As we make our way to the airport, they ask for money.
We go to Varanasi. Ganges River. Hindu holy place in which to die and be cremated. A little girl sells candles to light and float on the river. 10 rupees for good Karma. The smell of a human body burning. The price and weight of the wood with which to burn the body. Death as a part of life. Commerce as a part of death.
A fat old man and his two skinny dogs, all three barking orders to hotel workers. The white woman wandering around with her sari and bindi, seemingly unmoored and floating on her “spirituality.”
Like a picture from the guidebook, women wash colorful clothes in the river. The rhythm of dunking and twisting, laying out to dry. Sunset. Big black plastic speakers set up along the river blast the soundtrack of Varanasi.
And Calcutta. My father’s friend’s family invites us to a meal. (From Mumbai he’s given his mother instructions about what to make for us. How to welcome us in.) I am so touched, in fact overwhelmed. Again. And my husband is sick. And I am a bit scared to go to my new friend’s family by myself. It’s something about the pain of feeling things that are so tender and giving. Someone who’s never met me cooking a whole and special meal for me. I don’t even cook for myself. I give in to my fear and cancel, try to find comfort (it isn’t possible) behind a hotel wall.
Calcutta is about realizing how overwhelmed and saturated we are. We traveled to India for my husband’s photography work. He talks about how his work is to be present and porous, to take everything in. When he is photographing, he cannot hold his breath, pull away from gravity, lower his eyes, indulge those things we do to pretend we’re safe and separate and sterile.
We have taken in a lot. And have still managed to pull away from a lot. It has been a study in culture, and contrasts, and comfort.
We are ready to go home. And yet even the concept of home has been forever dislodged and set in motion. How do we find home in our own bodies? In a foreign culture? How do we make a home? What could possibly explain the vast differences between the physical homes of the poor and the rich, in India and in the United States? What millions of factors converged to birth us into our particular families and circumstances?
.....
After 20 hours in flight, we arrive back in the US. Newark smells clean, almost alpine. New York City moves in slow motion. It is obsessively orderly. It is easy. And it is not the same.
__________
See more of Matt's photography for his project, The Global City here.
Read choreographer Jill Sigman's reflections on her trip to India, "A Postmodern Passage" here.
Some related musings and questions on Slumdog Millionaire will be coming soon.
Christmas Fun
December 27, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
Santa didn’t bring me what I asked for on my ballet wish list, but I was very blessed by what I did receive! I was giving some wonderful things but none of them compare to the feeling you get when you are spending time with family and remembering Gods great sacrifice for us.I hope you all had an amazing Christmas! Did you get anything super cool?
As for my ballet life… it’s been slow. We are in the middle of our 3-week break and I’m going a little crazy! I haven’t danced in a week and a half!
I decided that it was unhealthy for me not to dance (my eye was beginning to twitch lol) so I stretched for a couple hours, and then decided to dye my old pointe shoes green! These are some pictures I took.
I hope you have a wonderful New Year!
P.S. I'll be uploading pictures from my big preformance soon! =D
Review: A Beautiful Tragedy
December 26, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
Today, I was finally able to see A Beautiful Tragedy, a film by Norwegian director David Kinsella documenting Mariinsky Theatre dancer, Oksana Skorik's training at the Perm State Choreographic Institute.
The opening scene narrated how Oksana ended up at the ballet school: after her birth, Oksana's mother realized that she was adequately proportioned for ballet and began stretching her daughter's feet and legs. When she was 4 years old, her mother attempted to "give" her to the ballet school, but she was not accepted until a year later because of her age. Three things about Oksana, then 15, become immediately apparent: her talent, her desire to leave the Perm school, and her skewed sense of reality.
Much of the story is told through Oksana's diary entries, which describe her emotional struggles with food/eating, her strict and sometimes flat out cruel teachers, and her troubles relating to and befriending other students at the school, specifically with golden girl Masha Menshikova. At times, her anorexia and self loathing overcome her; she goes days without food before her end of semester exams and then worries about what her scores will be, assuming that she will get the lowest grades in her class. She receives a 4+, which I understand to be the highest score one can earn in this type of exam, along with a harsh criticism from Sacharova, the main classical ballet teacher at Perm.
Despite her teachers' and mother's encouragement to eat, Oksana struggles with the constant pressure to be a "perfect" thin dancer. She repeatedly denies her talent and thinness, thinking of herself as fat and a horrible dancer.
At times, her mood changes: she is hopeful, finds joy in dancing and rehearsing, and realizes her tremendous grace and talent. Eventually, in the epilogue of the film, Oksana is shown in her final year at the Perm State Choreographic institute. She is happy again, has overcome her anorexia, is awarded the lead role in her class's graduation performance, and is offered a job at the Mariinsky Theatre, where she is currently dancing in the corps de ballet.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but I thought the media I had seen about it was a little misleading. The film is much, much more focused on Oksana's weight and social problems than it is on her dancing, which I would have liked to see more of, especially in the classroom scenes, which were portrayed, I'm sure intentionally, as a place more for scoldings and criticism than for learning to dance.
All in all, A Beautiful Tragedy was definitely worthwhile and provides much insight, somewhat biased as it may be, in to the lives of the young kids at the Perm school. I highly recommend it to any ballet lover.
Stay on your toes,
Selly
Selly
Cheers!
December 23, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
The past four months have been of little blogging and lots of working. My internship with Parsons Dance is 3/4 of the way complete. It will be culminating in a big 2 week company run at the Joyce Theater January 6-18, and it's not too late for you to buy tickets! During this time I will be working to assist with production and backstage needs to assure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.So whats next for me? I wish I knew. My compass is leaning towards choreography once again ( I am feeling the itch...) I have begun taking steps to apply for several different choreography initiatives that would allow me to produce new works for concerts in New York City. My research feelers are also out to figure out the best places for renting rehearsal space. Dancers looking for opportunities in New York stay tuned!
At the same time, I am still in need of a full time job. With the internship ending in less than a month the resumes and cover letters are flying out in every direction. (ouch... papercut) But seriously, could I have picked a worse time in the economy to be job hunting?? I think not. I'm not worried though because I still have my waitressing job at Arte Pasta to pay the bills. When the right job comes along, it will find me.
Happy Holidays to everyone!
Holiday Greetings
Happy Holidays from Elisa Monte Dance
Your support in the past has been indispensable to the success of our company and your continued support will help us to keep pursuing our mission of bridging cultural barriers through the universal language of dance. Because of you, we have reached our 28th Anniversary and can continue to explore, create and present works throughout the world.
There are numerous ways you can help us this year!
- You could donate, at any level! If done by Dec 31st you could use it for a 2008 tax deduction.
- You could subscribe to our email newsletter
- We have one for general information
- and one for classes, workshops and auditions
- You can subscribe to this blog!
- You can purchase a ticket to our show at the Joyce.
No matter what you do we appreciate the fact that your part of our family. Happy Holidays from everyone at Elisa Monte Dance.
My Ballet Christmas List…
December 22, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
I wonder if Santa can give me these things instead of presents!Higher Extensions like this…
Amazing turns like this…
A ballet body like this…
Benjamin Ford Asriel: Body and Soul podcast
December 22, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
As the arts world struggles to cope with the global economic crisis, dancer-choreographer Benjamin Ford Asriel outlines his strategy of using the Internet to open the process of creating new work to his donors. Learn more at Project Paper Trail (http://www.basriel.com).
Program notes at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Guest information at http://www.basriel.com/Project_Paper_Trail/me.html
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Dancers are the Face of Dance. AND we have a Voice.
December 19, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
I have had a few recent forays into the journalistic world; perhaps inspired by the thoughts of this blog.The first includes a Dance/USA article published in the quarterly publication. My intent was to provide a dancer presence in the the organization. The article is attached below.
The second was a personal reaction to some recent dance news in a large newspaper. I responded to the journalist both praising their dance coverage, but also pointing out some incongruities in the statements in the article. To my incredible surprise the writer responded to my email within 24 hours with a great dialogue on the subject.
It amazes me to think that these journalists and critics have such an influence on how work and the industry is perceived by an audience. But the artists themselves are not powerless in this influence because the writers can be so open to discuss their thoughts.
That is where it becomes our job to be engaged and active in the public relations of the dance world. Staying abreast of the news and commentary, and responding to it is a place to start.
Here is the Dance/USA article.
Mind of an Artist
