Month: March 2008

Tap

Tap is an otherwise ordinary dance movie from the late 1980s, with just enough plot and characterization to string together the dance numbers. But there’s a gesture about 13 minutes in that’s worth the rental; it tells us a lot about our protagonist Max (Geoffrey Hines), and about what it is to do creative work.

Max is just getting back on his feet; he’s just out of prison. He walks into a tap dance studio, it’s a little grungy, but he knows his way around. He walks three flights up to a private studio. He’s got his shoes in a brown paper bag. He dumps the shoes out of the bag onto the floor, slips off his jacket, strokes the wood of the floor briefly, and then he begins to practice.

It’s not about the best equipment, it’s not about the bright lights, it may not even be about having heat in the building: it’s about the work.

Mr. Brightside

there is always
something to be thankful
for you would not
think that a cockroach
had much ground
for optimism
but as the fishing season
opens up i grow
more and more
cheerful at the thought
that nobody ever got
the notion of using
cockroaches for bait

—Don Marquis, the Archy and Mehitabel poems, 19 April 1922

At the park: 12

Our gang of four nest box monitors got started early again this year, but a Hooded Merganser hen was ahead of us, with 6 eggs already on box #7.

The water had a good crust of ice, but it was easily breakable. A good number of teal and pintail on the ponds of the wetland. Red maples in bud. As we stowed excess wood chips in the shed at the visitors center at the end of the morning, a large flock of grackles blew in, to be snagged by the trees above.

Yay, us! 2

Last spring’s production of Never the Sinner, directed by Michael Kharfen, received three awards for outstanding achievement at yesterday evening’s WATCH awards, including Outstanding Play. The candidate pool was 79 productions by 29 member companies, so, yeah, this is kind of a big deal.

Ordinarily, I don’t get worked up about things like this, but as Ted says, awards programs are bunk until you win one. I was definitely tingly when I came over to congratulate Michael and the rest of the team. I am honored to have been a part of this fine show.

7×7: Love Duets

The WB brings us seven sketches on the theme of love, some of them duets, others with more complex groupings. In the leadoff pair, Elizabeth Gaither reminds us that a dancer’s hands are an important expressive part of her instrument in Stephen Mills’s “Desire.” Adam Houghland’s “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” is a flirtatious punk-inspired piece for two couples, set on music of the same name by Soft Cell. The groupings in Nicolo Fonte’s “Aria 1&2” (music by Handel) are more complex: one woman and three men, arranged into a two-man pair with the other man and woman providing an ostinato behind, followed by a reversal of figure and ground. After the break comes the Philip Glass-scored “2 Long 2 Love,” a lush, dangerous piece by Nejla Y. Yatkin danced in soft slippers on a deck strewn with red paper rose petals: a man, a woman loved, and a woman spurned. After this piece, the company appears with dust mops to Zamboni the dancing surface in preparation for “Falling Away with You,” choreographed by company member Jared Nelson. This is a sharp, fast, go-for-broke piece for two pairs, well-executed by Runqiao Du, Aurora Dickie, Corey Landolt, and Giselle Alvarez.

  • 7×7: Love Duets, Washington Ballet, England Studio Theater, Washington