Tonya Plank's Blog, page 11

Rhea's Laser Light Show

Thought I'd let my cat people readers know about a fun new cat toy that Rhea loves. With my long work hours and kind of crazy commute I've been having some issues with kitty lately – namely that she doesn't want to let me sleep at night because I haven't played with her all day. I was complaining to one of my friends at work and she asked her sister, who works at a company called Lucky Litter, to send me a couple of play-by-herself cat toys. The company specializes in self-cleaning litter, which I haven't yet tried.

Anyway, Rhea absolutely loves this laser toy. What I like about it is that you don't have to flash the wand all about but can set it on a shelf or a table, push the button, and it shoots a bouncing red light all over the place all on its own. So I can just set it up and go do my things and Rhea plays with it by herself.

The instrument the laser emanates from is the cute little white robot-looking thing at the bottom center of this picture.

Fun fun! Thank you, friend at Lucky Litter

Ballet Arizona’s SLEEPING BEAUTY, and Phoenix Society For the Arts Reads SWALLOW!

I feel so badly that I haven’t had time to write very much here lately. Writing doesn’t come close to paying the bills right now (will it ever??) so I do legal contract work, and I have a really time-consuming assignment right now. When I’m between assignments, I’ll try to write as much as I can, but otherwise it’s going to be slow going, sadly…

Anyway, I spent last weekend in Phoenix. I was a guest of the Phoenix Society for the Arts book club whose February read was Swallow! I was so honored, and it was such a wonderful experience. People asked all kinds of interesting questions, and they pointed to specific scenes and characters in the novel that they found particularly entertaining or related to well. One of my early writing instructors – the illustrious James Conrad   – once told me that you can tell if people are really into your book if they talk about specifics; if they just say general things – even nice things like “I really liked it,” or “I thought it was really good” – they are probably just b.s.ing. So it made me so happy that people were remarking on how horrible the sister and her nephews were or how wicked Alana was or how they couldn’t believe what Sophie did with the wedding dress or how the judges behaved in the courtroom.

They also asked me a lot of questions about how real everything was – how autobiographical the novel really was. I found that so hard to respond to because the inciting incident – Sophie’s globus hystericus – came from a very real experience, and yet I don’t think there’s a single scene in the book that actually happened, from start to finish. Most of the characters are combinations of so many people I’ve known and then added onto that they’re virtually made up. In order to make something dramatic and interesting that will keep readers’ attention, you really have to work with climax and character arcs and creating a twisting turning plot that will surprise and maybe even shock. You have to make stuff up, and a lot of it or the book just won’t compel readers to turn pages. And then at a certain point you get so carried away with your characters, they start to have a life of their own. And then that removes it further from “reality.” Yet everything is true with that proverbial capital T, you know. Anyway, I got very tongue twisted trying to explain that.

It was such a wonderful experience, though, and I’ll be forever thankful to the Phoenix Society for the Arts for having me, and for giving me such an engaged, inquisitive, alive audience of extremely thorough readers. It was one of the very best experiences I’ve had yet as a writer

That Saturday, my dad took me to downtown Phoenix to see Ballet Arizona’s production of Sleeping Beauty. (This was also with Phoenix Society for the Arts). I was so happily surprised by how excellent the company is! I really didn’t know what to expect, because once you see dancers like Alina Cojocaru and Veronika Part and David Hallberg and Marcelo Gomes in all the main roles, you really don’t know if you’re going to be able to have a favorable response to anyone else. I thought the company very much resembled New York City Ballet, which isn’t surprising since the director, Ib Andersen, was a Balanchine protege and a dancer with NYCB. He really has a wonderful little company of dancers. The principals stand out with their charisma, their very strong dance technique, and their good acting, but without being flashy and star-like – just like NYCB.

I especially loved Astrit Zejnati (above, click on photos for original source) as Prince Desire and Natalia Magnicaballi as the Lilac Fairy. And I thought Tzu-Chia Huang was a very sweet Aurora who acted each of the three acts very well. She and Zejnati got loads of applause in the third act, not surprisingly, for their gorgeous fish dives – and her legs were straight up in the air, like Cojocaru’s. Some of the best fish dives I’ve seen! Her Rose Adagio balances were good – not the best I’ve seen – but she held onto them long enough for the audience really to applaud her. Zejnati is small – he reminded me a bit of NYCB’s Joaquin De Luz – but with a very commanding presence. He was a true prince. And he had the ever so engaging expressiveness of Gonzalo Garcia, and everyone knows how I feel about him It’s so hard for me not to think of dancers back home when I write about dance now – sorry if that’s annoying!

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Magnicaballi (above, second photo of Swan Lake, with Zejnati) was one of the most magical, larger than life Lilac Fairies I’ve seen. She reminds me a bit of San Francisco Ballet’s Maria Kochetkova. She was the perfect embodiment of the “fairy godmother” as she blessed baby Aurora with her beautifully eloquent port de bras, countered Carabosse (Nancy Crowley) with a swift but elegant flick of her arm, and she captivated the audience along with the Prince at the end of the Vision scene as she whisked him off to the real Sleeping Beauty.

Ib Andersen has a wonderful company. It’s too bad they don’t have a very long season – they seem only to perform for two or three days every two or three months. They do mainly classical ballet and Balanchine, with some Robbins, and some of Andersen’s own work, which I now really want to see. Fans of NYCB would definitely love this company.

Ballet Arizona's SLEEPING BEAUTY, and Phoenix Society For the Arts Reads SWALLOW!

I feel so badly that I haven't had time to write very much here lately. Writing doesn't come close to paying the bills right now (will it ever??) so I do legal contract work, and I have a really time-consuming assignment right now. When I'm between assignments, I'll try to write as much as I can, but otherwise it's going to be slow going, sadly…

Anyway, I spent last weekend in Phoenix. I was a guest of the Phoenix Society for the Arts book club whose February read was Swallow! I was so honored, and it was such a wonderful experience. People asked all kinds of interesting questions, and they pointed to specific scenes and characters in the novel that they found particularly entertaining or related to well. One of my early writing instructors – the illustrious James Conrad   – once told me that you can tell if people are really into your book if they talk about specifics; if they just say general things – even nice things like "I really liked it," or "I thought it was really good" – they are probably just b.s.ing. So it made me so happy that people were remarking on how horrible the sister and her nephews were or how wicked Alana was or how they couldn't believe what Sophie did with the wedding dress or how the judges behaved in the courtroom.

They also asked me a lot of questions about how real everything was – how autobiographical the novel really was. I found that so hard to respond to because the inciting incident – Sophie's globus hystericus – came from a very real experience, and yet I don't think there's a single scene in the book that actually happened, from start to finish. Most of the characters are combinations of so many people I've known and then added onto that they're virtually made up. In order to make something dramatic and interesting that will keep readers' attention, you really have to work with climax and character arcs and creating a twisting turning plot that will surprise and maybe even shock. You have to make stuff up, and a lot of it or the book just won't compel readers to turn pages. And then at a certain point you get so carried away with your characters, they start to have a life of their own. And then that removes it further from "reality." Yet everything is true with that proverbial capital T, you know. Anyway, I got very tongue twisted trying to explain that.

It was such a wonderful experience, though, and I'll be forever thankful to the Phoenix Society for the Arts for having me, and for giving me such an engaged, inquisitive, alive audience of extremely thorough readers. It was one of the very best experiences I've had yet as a writer

That Saturday, my dad took me to downtown Phoenix to see Ballet Arizona's production of Sleeping Beauty. (This was also with Phoenix Society for the Arts). I was so happily surprised by how excellent the company is! I really didn't know what to expect, because once you see dancers like Alina Cojocaru and Veronika Part and David Hallberg and Marcelo Gomes in all the main roles, you really don't know if you're going to be able to have a favorable response to anyone else. I thought the company very much resembled New York City Ballet, which isn't surprising since the director, Ib Andersen, was a Balanchine protege and a dancer with NYCB. He really has a wonderful little company of dancers. The principals stand out with their charisma, their very strong dance technique, and their good acting, but without being flashy and star-like – just like NYCB.

I especially loved Astrit Zejnati (above, click on photos for original source) as Prince Desire and Natalia Magnicaballi as the Lilac Fairy. And I thought Tzu-Chia Huang was a very sweet Aurora who acted each of the three acts very well. She and Zejnati got loads of applause in the third act, not surprisingly, for their gorgeous fish dives – and her legs were straight up in the air, like Cojocaru's. Some of the best fish dives I've seen! Her Rose Adagio balances were good – not the best I've seen – but she held onto them long enough for the audience really to applaud her. Zejnati is small – he reminded me a bit of NYCB's Joaquin De Luz – but with a very commanding presence. He was a true prince. And he had the ever so engaging expressiveness of Gonzalo Garcia, and everyone knows how I feel about him It's so hard for me not to think of dancers back home when I write about dance now – sorry if that's annoying!

[image error]

[image error]

Magnicaballi (above, second photo of Swan Lake, with Zejnati) was one of the most magical, larger than life Lilac Fairies I've seen. She reminds me a bit of San Francisco Ballet's Maria Kochetkova. She was the perfect embodiment of the "fairy godmother" as she blessed baby Aurora with her beautifully eloquent port de bras, countered Carabosse (Nancy Crowley) with a swift but elegant flick of her arm, and she captivated the audience along with the Prince at the end of the Vision scene as she whisked him off to the real Sleeping Beauty.

Ib Andersen has a wonderful company. It's too bad they don't have a very long season – they seem only to perform for two or three days every two or three months. They do mainly classical ballet and Balanchine, with some Robbins, and some of Andersen's own work, which I now really want to see. Fans of NYCB would definitely love this company.

WE ARE THE WEST, in a Santa Monica garage

I had a cool L.A. experience last night that actually felt rather New York-ish. I drove out to Santa Monica to see a band called We Are The West perform in a parking garage below an office building on 7th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. Above is a photo of one of the two warm-up bands, Zenda Marie, who were also really good and whose lead singer was a charming guy who once lived in N.Y as well (I'm finding a lot of New York transplants here). With the candles, cozy seating, and decorations (including a Mustang, whose front bumper you can kind of see in the lower right corner of the photo), it was a pretty cool venue. Felt very underground.

We Are The West is a two-man band – Brett Hool and John Kibler – whose music I find very poetic, which makes sense since Hool was in Columbia's MFA program where he focused on poetry. (I know him through a New York artist friend, and he invited me to the event via Facebook). They seem to have a very loyal following and have played in upstate New York and the Netherlands as well. Below are a couple of videos, the first shot in that same Santa Monica garage a few months ago, and the second in the Netherlands.

New Haven by We Are The West from kristopher Kasper on Vimeo.

Made My Acting Debut, on Gloria Allred’s WE THE PEOPLE!

This week I made my TV acting debut on NBC’s We the People With Gloria Allred. Several weeks ago, a casting agency I registered with sent me to audition for a part on the show.

I ended up getting cast as a plaintiff who was suing the owner of a small airline for emotional distress and the cost of her therapy sessions after her vibrator accidentally went off in her luggage. The baggage check guy alerted the airline owner who made my character take out the vibrator in front of everyone on the plane, to her great humiliation. It’s based on a real case.

Haha, my first Hollywood experience, my first role, and this is how I’m cast! It felt very Jonathan Ames! So I did it. And it was a lot of fun, and a really interesting learning experience. I figured, so L.A., right?! I don’t know how much acting I’ll do – what I really want to do is write, but I wanted to see what it was like on a TV set, how things were done, what auditions were like, etc.

Anyway, it aired this Thursday afternoon on NBC. I’m working a job with long hours right now, but fortunately a very nice co-worker who lives close to the office let me use her apartment on my lunch hour to watch the show. Of course all I could do was stress about how neurotic I came across with my shaky voice and how drab I looked, but that was the character, so it was all good. I thought we all – the airline owner, the baggage check guy, and I – came across as very real. So I’m actually pretty okay with the way it turned out despite my blah look.

It’s funny that I’m a former litigator and have courtroom experience. And Gloria Allred is such a huge personality here. So very cool that my first gig was in a courtroom, being on her show!

Anyway, if it ever goes up on YouTube or NBC’s website, I’ll embed or link to it. I don’t think it’s up yet, but if you see it please let me know! The episode is called “Batteries Included.”

Made My Acting Debut, on Gloria Allred's WE THE PEOPLE!

This week I made my TV acting debut on NBC's We the People With Gloria Allred. Several weeks ago, a casting agency I registered with sent me to audition for a part on the show.

I ended up getting cast as a plaintiff who was suing the owner of a small airline for emotional distress and the cost of her therapy sessions after her vibrator accidentally went off in her luggage. The baggage check guy alerted the airline owner who made my character take out the vibrator in front of everyone on the plane, to her great humiliation. It's based on a real case.

Haha, my first Hollywood experience, my first role, and this is how I'm cast! It felt very Jonathan Ames! So I did it. And it was a lot of fun, and a really interesting learning experience. I figured, so L.A., right?! I don't know how much acting I'll do – what I really want to do is write, but I wanted to see what it was like on a TV set, how things were done, what auditions were like, etc.

Anyway, it aired this Thursday afternoon on NBC. I'm working a job with long hours right now, but fortunately a very nice co-worker who lives close to the office let me use her apartment on my lunch hour to watch the show. Of course all I could do was stress about how neurotic I came across with my shaky voice and how drab I looked, but that was the character, so it was all good. I thought we all – the airline owner, the baggage check guy, and I – came across as very real. So I'm actually pretty okay with the way it turned out despite my blah look.

It's funny that I'm a former litigator and have courtroom experience. And Gloria Allred is such a huge personality here. So very cool that my first gig was in a courtroom, being on her show!

Anyway, if it ever goes up on YouTube or NBC's website, I'll embed or link to it. I don't think it's up yet, but if you see it please let me know! The episode is called "Batteries Included."

Happy B-Day, Mr. B

Today is George Balanchine's birthday. Thank you to Toni Bentley for reminding me with her sweet email and link to the beautiful video below:

Palm Springs Film Festival, With a Stop at Cabazon

I spent this past weekend with my dad in Palm Springs. He came down with a group and invited me to meet them, which, now that I'm in L.A., was pretty easy. It was the last weekend of the two week-long film festival there, so we caught a few movies. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see either of the two dance films showing. One was Pina, by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, a biopic – in 3D – about Pina Bausch, which I know is coming to L.A. and which I definitely plan to see. The other was a Russian movie called My Father Baryshnikov, about a Soviet era student at a strict Russian dance academy who pretends that his father is Baryshnikov. It looks like that one toured the arthouse film circuit in N.Y. in October, but that was my moving month, so no wonder I missed it. Did anyone see it?

But I did see a film that involved dance – namely Allegra Kent. Bert Stern: the Original Madman is a pretty good documentary of the photographer, who is most known for having taken the last pictures ever shot of Marilyn Monroe (for Vogue). He photographed numerous famous women, like Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Moss, Twiggy – the list goes on and on and on… and Allegra Kent, to whom he was married for a time and with whom he has three children (two of whom were interviewed in the film, along with Kent). He is also, I guess somewhat infamously, known for taking those Marilyn Monroe-esque photos of Lindsey Lohan for New York Magazine a few years ago. Finally – and most interesting to me – he's also known as a great innovator in advertising for some now iconic photos he took for Smirnoff Vodka, mainly of the Egyptian pyramids, very coolly reflected upside down through a martini glass.

I guess it's no surprise that Allegra Kent was attracted to him – he came across in the film as a huge womanizer, much like Balanchine. He calls women saints and man their slave. How Balanchine is that! And his womanizing is of course what led to their divorce… He says in the movie that the moment he saw Kent, he thought she would make a wonderful mother, and she did indeed become the mother of his only children. But he didn't really want the children, he later admits. He didn't know what to do with children.

He also admits he was greatly drawn to the beauty of the women he photographed, and wanted to have sex with (or "make out with" as he called it) the vast majority of them. But he admits he seldom wanted anything more; he never wanted to marry them, or be more to them than a lover. This is what, he says, made him the photographer he was.

It's a very honest film. A very straight depiction of a man who seems very shallow emotionally, but was an artistic genius.

Anyway, I tweeted a bit about the film, and one of my friends, who's a dancer, said he's reading Allegra Kent's biography and, according to it, Stern is a horror. I can believe he must have been a horror as a husband. But interestingly Kent says only nice things about him in the film.

It's really Stern who makes himself look bad regarding Kent. When she confronted him about his relationships with other women, he remembers, he threw it back on her saying she let men (in the form of dancers) touch her all day. When she finally asked for a divorce, he thought how dare she; she couldn't do that to him.

Their oldest daughter tells the filmmaker (Shannah Laumeister, formerly one of Stern's  models as well) that she is really a daddy's girl, and her daughters – still small children – echo her, giggling that they are grandpa's girls too. But the younger daughter, who also seems very genuine, and a bit more shy than the other daughter, tells Laumeister she never really got along well with her father. She had a bit of a weight problem, though I still thought she was a lovely young woman. But I wonder if that has something to do with her father not getting along well with her, given the way he seemed to think about women.

Anyway, very interesting film and definitely worth seeing if you have the chance. I found Stern to be annoying, shallow, and very unlikeable as a person, and still a genius, an artist and an innovator.

I also saw Haywire, Steven Soderberg's latest, starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, and Channing Tatum. This was almost the complete antithesis of the Bert Stern film. Women here are all powerful but not because of their looks. I loved loved loved this movie! Finally, a female James Bond! And Ms. Carano supposedly did all her own stunts! But I don't think I will ever stop loving Ewan McGregor, even when he plays the "bad guy." This one's opening all over the U.S. very soon.

Finally, I saw a Belgian film called The Invader, by visual artist Nicolas Provost. I joked on Twitter that it was one of those European films filled with gratuitous nudity, gorgeous cinematography and no plot whatsoever. A friend from graduate school promptly reminded me via Twitter that those were exactly the kinds of films I used to love (and would make her watch ad nauseam with me). I do still love them! It's kind of funny though because now that I'm a writer (or trying to become a writer or whatever) I wonder how one pitches that kind of thing…

Seriously, I really enjoyed The Invader – about an African immigrant trying to create a new life for himself in Belgium, and meeting women, and having fantasies (I think) and getting into fights with men who were trying to manipulate him (the outcomes of which may or may not have been fantasies), etc. Beautifully shot, which I guess makes sense since Provost is a visual artist. And the actor playing the main character, Issaka Sawadogo, is absolutely captivating.

Anyway, Palm Springs itself was really lovely – it was the first time I've actually been there, though I've driven by many many times on Interstate 10. Here are some photos (it was a bit overcast, so they didn't come out all that well):

A very popular diner called Sherman's near the main theater and festival center.

The main street – Palm Canyon Drive.

I was very attracted to this cute little smiley face atop a yogurt restaurant.

Sonny Bono was the major of Palm Springs. Here is a statue of him on Palm Canyon Drive.

You can tell you're getting close to Palm Springs when driving on I-10 because you begin to see these modern windmills.

On my way back to L.A., I couldn't help stopping at Cabazon, a town just west of Palm Springs that boasts the largest dinosaur replicas in the world, designed by Knotts Berry Farm sculptor Claude Bell. I remember Dinny, the apotosaurus above, so fondly as a child. We took many vacations to L.A., Anaheim, or San Diego, and on the drive over from Phoenix, I'd always be on the lookout for him. Whenever I saw him, I knew we were almost there.

Inside Dinny's belly there's a little gift shop.

Mr. Rex was built years later, so I don't remember him. I think he might have scared the wits out of me as a child though.

When I tweeted photos of the dinosaurs, a friend told me they were featured in the movie PeeWee's Big Adventure, which I haven't seen.

There's also a creationist museum off to Mr. Rex's side, which I didn't have time to visit. A strand of creationism postulates that dinosaurs co-existed with humans.

And there's a little place to eat in front of Dinny. Ominous-looking clouds, huh? Unbelievably, I didn't hit any rainstorms on the way back to L.A.

"The Suspect" Now in the Kindle Store

Hey Everyone — Just to let you know, my new short story, "The Suspect," is available now in the Kindle store for 99 cents. I plan to put it up, in ebook form, in other online bookstores shortly. It's my first real piece of crime fiction, which I'm really kind of psyched about. It's a short story, and I think works as a short story, but will probably become part of a longer project I'm working on. Anyway, if you have a Kindle, I'd love to know what you think! If you're a reviewer and have a Kindle or Kindle-compatible e-reader, I'd love to send you a free e-copy.

Though there's no dance in this story, I am (of course!) planning to weave dance into the longer project I'm working on. And I promise, nothing Black Swan-esque

Lula Washington Dance Theatre's Kwanzaa Celebration

Last week my friend Debra Levine invited me to another dance performance; this one by Lula Washington Dance Theatre, who were giving their annual Kwanzaa celebration concert. This was one of the most enjoyable dance performances I've seen thus far in L.A. There were many pieces on the program – twelve in all! – and we were there for over three hours. The dances were mostly either African or American modern or a combination of the two, with some ballet thrown in, and music ranged from Fela Kuti to Steve Reich to Quincy Jones' arrangement of Handel's Messiah, to a live Samba band with a medley of conga drums that really made you want to get up and join the dancers. Most but not all of the choreography was by Ms. Washington, and one of my favorite pieces – a modern dance one from 2005 – was a very moving tribute to American soldiers, For Those Who Live and Die For Us.

My other favorite was Washington's 1995 Harambe Suite (all of the photos posted here are of this dance), which encompassed the entire third act. There were a group of what I interpreted to be head tribesmen and women dancing at the back of the stage, behind a table bearing religious candles and celebratory food. A choir dressed in colorful, flowing African garb stood to the side and sang and danced. Children, one by one, would run onstage holding a corn husk or other item of food, which they would take to the table to add to the feast, before going to the center of the stage and breaking into a celebratory dance. Their dancing was accompanied by the singers as well as a live band, seated on the side of the stage opposite the choir.

Some of these kids were AMAZING – seriously; they are going to be stars! There was one little girl, named Tyler, who was the daughter of a professional dancer in the troupe, who just really blew me away. She had so much rhythm and was a real natural. She's small now but is going to go far. And there was an older boy, a teenager, who could do some of the highest jumps I've ever seen. He also did this incredible back bend, bending his knees to lower himself slowly all the way to the ground, only to lift himself back up again by the strength of his legs alone without touching the floor. People went wild. It was incredible.

After the children, the adults came one by one to center stage and danced as well. They'd dance solos, eventually in groups. The children then came back out as a group, accompanied now not only by the choir and the drums but by the audience's applause as well. After a while, the audience got up and danced at their seats, cheering all the way through.

Not every dancer was perfect – and some of the little kids you could tell were just embarking on their dance training, but that wasn't at all the point. The evening was just a pure and simple celebration of movement, of being human. So perfect for the holidays.