A Week in Missouri!

I'm back! Here's three images from my week in Missouri. The first is my best friend, Laural, and I at her wedding. The next is my niece and nephew hanging out with me at my parent's house, and the third is me with my two childhood dance instructors: Maggie Dethrow and Marie Robertson.

I've got lots to say: A little politics, a little family, a little flattery for my boyfriend, but that will all have to wait until later. Right now I'm off to watch a debate between Jerry Sanders and Donna Frye, our two mayoral candidates. John is directing the telecast and I am very interested to see how these two candidates match up. I lean towards Donna Frye just because she's been fighting so hard. She wants to turn this city around and I want to believe she can do it. We'll see...

You Can't Go Home Again

So, as mentioned before, I'm in Missouri for my best friend's wedding, and the truth is, you CAN go home again, it's just never the same. Last year my parents sold my childhood home and purchased a farm in Rocheport, about ten miles from town. They bought Alpacas and my mother took up spinning their wool. They've gone back to the land and I come to their house and see the same paintings on the wall and the same dishes in the cabinets, but a wholly different lifestyle. It's wonderful to see them happy but it is a surprisingly difficult transition for me.

Being here makes me miss my childhood but understand why I could never have lived the way my parents do as an adult. We are very different people. My mother would be happy living in the remotest house in the middle of quiet, star-filled country for the rest of her existence. I need people and car noises and city streets and cement and bus fumes . . . something. I crave the city. I did as a child too. I remember road trips when I was in grade school where I would be bored in the back seat, my brother and I making "do not cross" lines with the middle seatbelt, until we would come to a metropolis and I would press my face to the window, wishing I were out in the mass of people and action and excitement. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to find my own urban niche.

Tomorrow is the beginning of wedding madness. I picked up my dress today, which isn't half bad. Tomorrow is the bachelorette party which I planned and am nervous about. I want it to go off without a hitch but parties rarely do this. I need to be better about rolling with the punches. Already I've heard that none of my friend's flowers have shown up (they were supposed to come this morning), and she and her fiance just found out that there is a three-day waiting period between getting a marriage license and getting married in Missouri, so they have to go to court on Friday at the butt-crack of dawn to get a judge to waive the three days. Logistics are a nightmare.

Tonight, however, I had my first rehearsal with the high school girls at my old dance school. I am doing a piece with them that I have titled "Midwestern Makossa." It's a classical guitar version of a Makossa, which is a rhythm/music style from Cameroon. These kids are working fast. I'm already half way through after only a two-hour rehearsal. I am so happy with them. Most of the pieces I put on the Dancearts company dancers are downers and this one is really joyous and euphoric, so it's been a wonderful change seeing these girls rise to this place in only two hours. I can't wait to see it polished and performed.

No politics in this post. I am still jet lagged and trying not to miss John, who will be here on Friday. I will say, however, that Rita is looking like a record breaker and if one more hurricane hits the gulf this season after she dies away, it will be a wonder if the gulf coast is livable at all...my heart goes out to everyone trying to stay alive down there. (and I thank my lucky stars that the coast I have chosen to inhabit rarely sees storms at all..)

Normal?

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann called the elections a "great success," putting an optimistic cast on reports that voter turnout appeared lower than for October's presidential election.

"In America, only half of the people vote," Neumann said. "If people are getting a little more used to elections, then maybe Afghanistan is turning into a normal country."

The above quote is from an article on Yahoo News about the Elections in Afghanistan. I am slightly confused about the statement that Ronald Neumann is making. Is he actually saying that "normal" countries (presumably he's talking about us) have low voter turnout?? Is he actually intimating that low voter turnout is something that Afghanistan should strive towards in order to become more like the United States?

John and I both scratch our heads in disbelief.

(For another country who's recent election shows them seemingly attempting to become normal like us, click on the link below . . . it's like the USA is a disease..)

I always figured....

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test


Yep, I'm a heretic! I guess I always knew it. Found this interesting little quiz on Alank's Blog. Thought it would be amusing to see where I will be spending all of eternity . . . and there it is.

Like I said in the first post, "We laugh to keep from crying."

The sun is shining, my boyfriend is sitting next to me, my cat didn't pee on the floor last night, and I get to see my niece and nephew in less than a week. I guess life - for all of the crap it deals to us on a daily basis - ain't all that bad.

We Laugh to Keep From Crying

The title of the post? My boyfriend just stated it as he was walking out of the office, after he was looking at ridiculous t-shirt designs bashing Bush and Cheney and I was reading various, randomly-selected blogs about our scary, scary future. John often speaks the truth.

I'm a nervous wreck right now, and not just because our government (our country....our world...) is going to hell in a handbasket. Everything in this little world of I, me, my is about to turn on its head. Tuesday I leave for Missouri. I'm there for several reasons. One, my best friend in the whole world is getting married. That's a pic of her and I at our ten-year high school reunion. Laural and I have known each other since we were nine years old. We shared lockers at various times all through junior high and high school, and we danced together. I've known her for so long that I don't really remember not knowing her. She doesn't dance anymore. She's a nurse in New York City and she's marrying a guy we both knew in high school, but they didn't start dating until much, much later.

I am her maid of honor. This is my second time in that role. The first time was for my friend, Susan's wedding. She is my other friend from high school (I actually have one other friend from high school: Margie. She is getting married in October but it's a private ceremony, so Laural's wedding is probably my last time as an attendant. Thank god). Susan got married in Breckenridge, Colorado outside overlooking a mountain lake. It was a beautiful ceremony but we were hideously cold in our little strapless dresses standing right in the path of the wind as it howled through the mountain pass. If I remember right it started pouring down rain right after the ceremony ended. I think I drank a lot of wine that night.

I'm in a strapless dress again for this wedding, but it takes place in mid-Missouri in September. I'm not worried about being cold. Laural chose to get married in her hometown. I guess it's good because it lets me get back home since that isn't going to happen over the holidays this year. I also finagled a job with my old dance studio. When I'm not running all over Missouri throwing bachelorette parties, attending showers and walking down someone else's aisle, I'll be choreographing a piece for a group of high school kids. It should be a great time . . . the nerve-wracking part is that I will be away from my cat who is not well at all right now. John is coming out to meet me (thank you god!) so someone will be taking care of Lucius who doesn't know all the ins and outs of his regimen. I am really worried that his health will tank or he'll pee all over the floor or some other hideous thing will happen...silly probably.

The other reason I'm a nervous wreck is my massive trip to Miami is coming up four days after I get back from Missouri. I am down there for nearly six months to work at Florida Grand Opera and will be without my sweetie for a very long time. Fortunately, Lucius will be with me for that trip so I'll have a little white, furry guy to keep me company. John IS driving down with me which I'm REALLY looking forward to! We've taken a road trip before and this time it's paid for by the opera company, so it should be doubly fun.

I've never been to any of the deep South states. I'm a little nervous about passing through some of the Katrina-ravaged areas. We have decided to take a more Northerly route so as not to pass right on top of New Orleans (not even sure if it's possible at this juncture), but I am still nervous about the amenities available down there and what the area will look like. Hopefully my tiny bit of commerce will help them all out in some small way.

Regardless of a cool road trip and having my cat with me and John driving down with me, I am still nervous as hell! Things change so fast in this career and who knows how this will all turn out. Who knows how anything will ever turn out. Things switch up on a dime. One day you're sitting on your front porch in Gulfport, Mississippi, and the next day your entire house is washed out to sea.

I think that's the root of my nerves...I'm sick of being away from my loved ones all the time. We have to hold the ones we love. We can't let them go in this world. We have to laugh with them and cry with them and let them in on all of our life. I'll be alone in Miami and being alone isn't acceptable to me anymore.

Votes of Confidence

For all intents and purposes I am a teacher. I got my college degree in dance education. I teach at conservatories and colleges for workshops and master classes throughout the year. Even when I am an assistant for productions I'm still a teacher - I teach the material, I teach movement to reluctant singers. When I was in college I taught dance at a parochial school. I am a teacher and I have the upmost respect for teachers because I know what a hard job it can be.

The problem is that I have very little confidence in myself as a teacher. Silly, I know. People tell me I'm good, that I have a "commanding presence." (In college, when I was a t.a. I was known as the "drill seargant"). I should believe in myself as a teacher but I just can't. I guess I still feel like I have so much to learn that I can't possibly impart knowledge yet. Directing and assisting is also different, so I don't think the problem is being in charge. When I'm directing or choreographing I am putting a piece together. It is implied that the people I am working with already have the skills to execute what I give them.

All of this is leading up to the fact that I walk into class all the time (I'm teaching on a daily basis right now at an arts magnet high school) and teach a planned class but I never stop getting nervous. This is coming from a person who has never experienced stage fright . . . why can't I consider class another performance? Perhaps I feel like there's more at stake and I don't want my students to think that I'm just talking out of my ass.

Every once in a while, someone says something that boosts my shaky teaching pillar. Today I had an old student tell me that they got a role they auditioned for solely because of some skills that they learned in my class. I taught them how to breathe and use their body well enough that they were able to get a job with the skills I imparted. This is the absolute highest form of flattery. Hearing that is better than the best performance review.

The photo, by the way, is me teaching a bunch of high school kids in Columbia, Missouri, my hometown. I go back to my old school every year and work with the amazing students there. I remember when two of the kids in this picture were born, so that shows the kind of history I have with this group. The older I get, the more important it is to me to be an influence, a mentor, a teacher...

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream"

How did I spend September 11th? ("Patriot Day," as it says in my day planner).. I emailed a bunch of people that I love but rarely talk to. I spent the morning relishing the fact that I could wake up next to my dearest love. I hugged my cat for hours.

I spent the evening looking at more coverage of our nation's idiotic government with my honey. When we think of 9/11, we think that we must take steps to never let something like that happen again. Getting Bush out of office is our first step towards that goal. Whenever I think we're done talking about Katrina, the horrid wake-up call that will hopefully get the rest of the country on the page I've been on for some time now, one of us finds or is sent another news article and we fall right back into a conversation of disbelief and frustration. This audio clip of Robert Siegel interviewing Michael Chertoff on NPR is especially appalling.

I have no understanding for anyone who continues to stand by our government at this point in time.

I can't look at anymore of this stuff tonight, but will pass it on to you. The title quote is a wonderful saying by our own President. It links to a quiz of "Bushisms" that had John and I doubled over this afternoon. Humor can save us all.

I'm off to hug my cat some more..

April Tra

This link is for an article by San Diego critic, Pat Launer, about April Tra and her work with Eveoke Dance Theater. The article says she'd be 20 years old now. I think she's one to watch..

I'm off to try and fix my sick cat - Lucius. I can't stop him from chewing constantly on his leg. My vet thinks its a food allergy and the wait to see while he's on hypoallergenic food is killing me. I can't stand watching him in pain or itching...

Dancing with Sadie and Amanda

This was a dancing weekend (is a dancing weekend). First and foremost, I took class and finally made it through an entire one. I've had such a hard time keeping a class regimen in San Diego. I took class religiously in Chicago and was talking to John tonight over coffee from Claire De Lune's (the most brilliant coffee shop with plush couches and window seats and a balcony with desks for wireless users) about why I can't seem to get it together here. Class is the main way a dancer keeps her body ready for performance (and creation) and also keeps her connections to the community as a whole. When you aren't taking class, you fall out of the loop in many ways. I think I've been so disjointed here. I had so many stresses in my personal life the first three years I was here, plus I was working thirty hours a week for Malashock Dance, and when I wasn't dancing at Malashock I was working out of town. Life has been full of massive disruption - finding a class schedule that works is next to impossible. Class is like a diet . . . when you lapse, it's hard to jump back on the horse.

So anyway, I took Jean Isaac's class at Academy of Performing Arts (the only dance school in existance that makes its place in a glorified storage locker . . . there are huge garage doors that open up in each studio). Her class is relaxing to me. I get the way she moves. I think it was the first class of hers that I've made it all the way through since my appendicitis last year. She noticed; gave me a little one-person applause as I packed up my bag. I think she's an incredible mentor. She's always been nice to me, even when I was dancing for "the enemy." (Malashock's reputation in the community is not always stellar for reasons i care not to go into at this time).

Regardless, I felt like a somewhat overweight, older woman in class. Getting back into it is harder than I thought. My stamina is not what it used to be. I was inspired by dancers I saw in performance this weekend and now need to whip my ass into shape, but it's not easy. Class makes me realize why I was interested in making a career shift in the first place. I'm floating in this place of uncertainty right now. I'm not ready to give up performing.

So . . . performances. I saw Sadie Weinberg and Brittney Brown Ceres at the North Park Arts and Entertainment Center - a storefront gallery/performance space that has potential but is in bad need of some risers to make any show watchable. I was two rows back and completely lost all of the floor work. Tragic. I am obsessed with Sadie Weinberg as a dancer right now. I first met and worked with her in 2002 when Malashock asked her to dance with us for "Apologies from the Lower Deck," at Sushi, The picture above is of the two of us in our duet, "Culpa," from that concert. She and I had a rocky start but I gained more respect for her when I got to dance in her own work a year later. Her choreography is mathematic in nature - very organized and emotional only in spurts. It's the way it's performed that brings out its genius (a little like Merce methinks). This concert demonstrated this beautifully. She had two solos sandwiching a duet entitled "Stuck on a Diagonal: A Quiet Tantrum, 1 and 2." Each solo was a carbon copy of the other but performed by different people. I love watching Sadie dance; her movement quality is almost beyond words. She makes me well up to watch her....not many dancers do that to me.

I wrote on the back of my program, "Frenzied, nerve-tingling energy with a fluid, almost drone-like through line that makes her mesmerizing to watch." I think this is her. I eat up all of her movement.

Britney Brown Ceres didn't really get me, I must say. I actually hate saying that because I want to be supportive of everyone's work (just as I hope they are supportive of mine) but I just wasn't into it. I feel that same way about Amanda Waal's work that I saw tonight at Stage 7. Amanda and I were first introduced last month when we worked with Allyson Green. She is tall and funny and has a quirky movement style that made me always interested in improvising with her. The problem is that choreographically, I don't feel that she gets out of the improv stage and into the development stage. She has great ideas (the best one being her solo in black, white and gray, ending with her rolling on her side and then releasing a bright red balloon up to the ceiling. We don't see the balloon -hidden under her skirt - until this moment), but I need to see them develop more in order to pique my interest.

April Tra, who I know nothing about, blew me away this evening however. She was also doing a solo at Stage 7 and her movement and invention and heart and emotional rawness made me sit up and take notice. I'll be seeing more of her I hope and will comment along the way..

I am inspired. Seeing interesting work always inspires me. Class is the first step - so is going to see more work. Part of being an artist is being seen in the community; it's networking opportunities and means of inspiration (and casting). All I need to do is keep the momentum going and not settle back on my hands like I sometimes do....

Outrageous!!

"It's a matter of how paranoid you are," Andrew Patel said. "What it could mean is that the president conceivably could sign a piece of paper when he has hearsay information that somebody has done something he doesn't like and send them to jail — without a hearing (or) a trial."

I just saw this and had to post it. The article is linked at the title or on the bottom of my post. As John says, "This news has much more desctructive and far-reaching implications than anything else reported today."

What's most alarming is that this headline was buried in the list of stories on line...

About Damn Time!

So...they've removed Michael Brown from onsite duty for Katrina. He should have resigned, or been fired from FEMA altogether...read the linked article, even Trent Lott feels that Brown was acting like a "private instead of a general." It is, however, a step in the right direction, and perhaps it will ultimately lead to an resignation if he is continually asked to account for his actions (and inactions).

Speaking of . . . well . . . nothing, I'm completely non sequiter this afternoon. I had a bunch of blood drawn to coincide with my physical this morning. John was an absolute dear and came home from work so that he could take me to the lab and drive me back home. The last thing I needed to do was get blood drawn, get in a car, and pass out while driving down Washington St. Not as unhappy an experience as the physical itself, even though the woman was sticking a needle in my arm. She was very sweet, despite the fact that I have tiny veins and she had to stick me three times. "You're very brave," she says, as I'm hiding my eyes in my other sleeve, breathing in short bursts, acting like a relative three-year-old. It's just a line.

I'm reading three books right now. This is a real problem I have - I don't know if it's obsessive multi-tasking or minor ADD, but I can't read one thing at a time. My night stand is always piled with at least two books and sometime three or four magazines. I grab a different book every time I walk out the door. I think the only books in recent history that I sat and read all by themselves were the Harry Potter books...but don't even get me started on that; that's a post in and of itself.

So, I'm reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran," by Azar Nafisi. This book is really beautiful and fascinating to me. Ms. Nafisi has such a love for her country and people and such a fear and ire for her post-revolution government. How lucky I feel when I read her story of women forced into veils and a lifestyle/role that many of them were not ready for. Images of these women, huddling together in the author's house to read pieces of literature that we take for granted, worried about being in trouble by their families, by the government. For these women, freedom and hope and future were embedded in the pages of Nabokov, Henry James, Mark Twain, Fitzgerald. That part of their story I DO understand.

I'm also reading "Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space and Time." (see Merce's photo above from the 70's or 80's). This is a book of essays about Merce Cunningham and his development of "Chance Dance." This book is very good thus far - perhaps because I idolize Cunningham and his company. I remember watching them rehearse when I was at Jacob's Pillow in the early '90's and thinking that I could never acheive the level of technical proficiency that these dancers could do in their sleep. The last bit I read was a conversation with Remy Charlip, Marianna Simon and a composer who worked with Cunningham and Cage as Chance Dance was hitting its heydey. Everything they did was new . . . how amazing to be living and making art in a time when everything had not yet been done.

The last book I am reading is "The Complete Adoption Book." I've been thinking about the idea of having a child. This isn't an immediate thing - something I am looking at a couple of years down the line. John and I have both been seriously discussing this and think it would be a good idea as my career starts to solidify (especially if I can get a staff job at an opera company and be in the same city for huge chunks of time). I've thought about actually being pregnant and I just don't think my back problems could handle the added stress of carrying a child. Socially, I don't know if this world could handle the added stress of one more child. The more I read, the more I see how many children are out there hoping for homes in their hearts. John and I could love one of these children and my back would still be in good enough shape to pick him or her up after they're born.

Lot's of things to think about....always. Books, magazines, online news sites make it more so. What would my overactive brain do without them?

Lucius (Again)

Okay, another picture of myself with Lucius. He is the sweetest thing. Holding him makes my soul smile.

Bedside Manner

Here I am sitting at home, watching E.R. reruns with my sick cat on my lap and wondering about health care. I just got back from a doctor's appointment. I asked for a full physical because I haven't had one in years.

To digress a bit, this is because I went about five years without health insurance. You might wonder why me, a healthy woman in her twenties, didn't have any insurance. Was I too poor? No, I COULD NOT get insurance because I had tourette syndrome and some degeneration in my cervical spine. These preexistings made it impossible to get health insurance, so once I went off my parent's insurance I was totally out of luck - turned down by everyone. I don't even want to start on how ridiculous this is.. Why, for instance, couldn't I get insurance that covers everything but my preexistings??

I had to go five years without going to a doctor for my neck in order to erase the preexistings and get insurance. Finally, I'm on Blue Shield (thank god!) And so now, here I am, and I've been feeling a little under the weather - perhaps a little stressed out and I go to the doctor for a physical. I wait half an hour in the waiting room where the only magazines available were Field and Stream, Golf Digest and a magazine called Reminisce which is filled with old photographs sent in by readers and is apparently in existance so that people can look at the pictures, read the captions and cry about how good life USED to be. I am in the actual office for two minutes. It is unbelievable to me that a doctor can assess the entire situation in such a short amount of time. She barely looked in my eyes or ears and listened to me breathe for two breaths. She was halfway out the door while I was asking her the couple of questions I came in with.

So, now that I've made fun of the magazine celebrating the "good old days," let me ask what ever happened to the doctors I had as a kid who used to answer all of my questions and spend the time that I needed them to spend? Our world moves too damn fast..

Introductions

Before talking incessently about these people and cats that spice my life up so sweetly, I find it only fitting that they are properly introduced.

The In-your-face, black and white cat-with-attitude is Stella. She hails from Tijuana. Was actually rescued by John's friend who found her chained behind a house across the border that was using kittens to blood pit bulls. Horrifying. Stella rules the roost - is most definitely in charge of her two doting bipeds. She spends much of her day patrolling the perimeter of the apartment and the rest of the day either antagonizing Monty or staring disdainfully at Lucius.

The long orange cat is Monty. He is the baby of the family. He's a coy, lithe boneless thing who throws me into fits of giggles at night when he jumps up on the bed and rolls on his back in the most seductive of postures. Stella thinks he's a whore. Monty isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but then John says, "How smart does he need to be?"

So that brings me to John Menier, the human in the photos. He's the love of my life. He's witty and smart (and tall). You can read all of his musings on his own blog, which is linked at the right. He and I have been together for almost exactly a year and live on the first floor of an old Craftsman home with the three beasties you see above. Lucius, the white cat, is the only one who was mine originally and he is extremely attached to me . . . sometimes seems to only be happy when he's in my arms. John says he understands completely.

So now that everyone's been introduced, I can talk about them ad nauseum. Tonight, however, I just want to take a little bit of time to bitch about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. John and I have been talking incessently about this topic. He sends me gads of links to editorials and appalling news stories from work. Why our government couldn't get themselves together enough to take care of the Gulf in its hour of need (not 72 hours AFTER its hour of need) and then continues to deflect questions about why it took so long for them to get there by saying that it is not the right time to play the "blame game," is absolutely beyond me. (See my link below to see a transcript of the press briefing from a couple of days ago - my favorite example thus far) This goes so far beyond Barbara Bush's horrifying and insensitive comments about the poor people of New Orleans being better off in the Astrodome than in their own homes, and Dubya's assinine remarks about sitting on the front porch of Trent Lott's new home and partying down in N'Awlins in his youth. This is a negligence and apathy that needs to be addressed and goddamn it if we aren't all going to sit here and watch these idiot stuffed shirts sweep it messily and quickly under the rug. Bush says there'll be an investigation (self-realization?) but I have huge doubts about it ever happening...

I have two cousins directly affected by this storm. One of my cousins lived in Gulf Port, Mississippi, and is now homeless and living with her mother in Illinois while her husband goes back into the fray to help with the search and rescue operations. Now, this is a girl who lives off the land. She did Outward Bound missions for fun when she was in high school and lived on a huge floating university for a semester in college that stopped off for weeks at a time in third world countries. She's a tough cookie, and when she's terrified and unable to cope with a situation, I know that something is horribly, horribly wrong.

My other cousin is in the military stationed outside of New Orleans and was evacuated and now is back down there doing airlifts. I don't think their home was destroyed but their lives have certainly been upended.

And here I am feeling totally helpless and stupid in California. I'm poor as a church mouse and so am trying to figure out what I can give to my family to help. I just feel like there's so much that needs doing and I am here simply crying about it. It won't be that way for long, however, as I am working in Miami from October through April and so will begin a massive drive in my '98 Hyundai through the deep South. I'm a little nervous. Not sure if the roads I was going to take are still in existance or will be passable by the time I have to leave, but if that's the only way this hurricane affected me, I think I'm doing all right.

Post Number One..

Having always been an avid journaler, I've finally decided to start my own blog. My boyfriend, John, and I are starting up blogs together sitting at our respective desks in our tiny little office. There's much more to come -- right now we're just tyring to figure it all out.. Keturah

p.s. That's a pic of Lucius, my elderly, more neurotic cat, with myself last year.