Tonya Plank's Blog, page 13

Brief Update & Review of Peter Martins / Paul McCartney Collab at NYCB

Hey everyone,

Just a brief update since this motel's wifi is expensive and not secure: but I now have a car (a cute little Toyota Prius – used) as well as an apartment in LA that I love but that unfortunately won't be ready for move in for two more weeks. Which means I'm back in Phoenix for the next two weeks, shuffling around between family who have space for me and who aren't allergic to Rhea and pet-friendly motels. Once I'm settled in to my new place – which, again, I LOVE!!! – I will most definitely resume regular blogging.

In the meantime, I did see the much spoken about new Peter Martins / Paul McCartney collaboration – Ocean's Kingdom – at New York City Ballet when it premiered a couple weeks back. NYCB has sent me some pictures but I don't have time to post them now. I will soon! I liked but didn't love the ballet. I thought the story-line was simplistic and not very compelling and didn't love the choreography, although there were some good pas de deux between Sara Mearns and Robert Fairchild – the lovers. I very was impressed with Paul McCartney's ability to create such a rich orchestral score – really lovely. I thought Mearns, Fairchild, Amar Ramasar, and Georgina Pazcoguin all danced very well. Ramasar, who as most of you know is non-white, danced the part of the bad guy… So sigh on that. But he danced very well. For the most part, I wasn't in love with the costumes, designed by Stella McCartney, except Pazcoguin's, which was lovely and worked well. I kept worrying Mearns's was going to come off, an idea my male friend liked and wished would have come to fruition. It didn't; at least not the night we saw it.

McCartney was in the audience and gave a big wave to the audience when Martins introduced him. He has big, big hair! He doesn't look his age at all. Martins toasted him not with champagne but with a cup of tea. Alec Baldwin was sitting right behind him in the audience. I don't recall seeing any other celebs there but I'm sure there were oodles.

Anyway, as I said, I promise to post pictures of that ballet as well as some others from the beginning of the season that City Ballet has sent to me as soon as I'm home and have a secure (and free) internet connection. This afternoon is Charles Askegard's farewell performance, which I unfortunately won't be able to see. I hope to see his new company tour LA though, soon soon soon!

Thank you so much for continuing to read my blog, everyone, when I've been too busy to post much lately! I very greatly appreciate everyone's support through this rather huge transition in my life. Thank you again, and will talk soon!

Table of Silence Project, 9/11/2011

Here are some photos I took of the Table of Silence Project, performed on Lincoln Center Plaza this morning at 8:20 in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks. It was about half an hour long, was choreographed by Jacqulyn Buglisi in collaboration with Italian artist Rossella Vassa, and used 100 dancers, some from her dance company, Buglisi Dance Theater, and some from other companies and from Juilliard. The dancers were accompanied by a small band, consisting of a drummer, a flutist, a small choir, and a woman with a wind instrument that looked like a handmade blowhorn. I thought it was really beautiful.

Go here to read about the project's conceptualization. It's to be performed in other cities as well throughout October.

"You Are a New Yorker When What Was There Before is More Real and Solid Than What is Here Now"

It's time for me to post a link to the Colson Whitehead essay that I link to every day this year, from the 11/11/01 "Rebuilding New York" issue of the New York Times Magazine. I can't resist. It will always be my favorite essay about New York, and it always makes me cry. Usually makes me bawl actually. I don't think I should read it this year though. It'll make me not want to leave New York…

My 9/11/2001 in Photos

Here are some photos I took shortly after 9/11/2001. The first few are of Union Square, where people – mostly young people – were holding candlelight vigils and making art and debating – not arguing, but just talking seriously about what had happened without blame and anger. It was my favorite place to go in those days following the attacks.

The view from Hoboken, New Jersey, where I was living at the time.

You can see some of the Air Force jets that were patrolling the skies for days after.

I went back downtown about a week later to prepare myself to return to work the following week. I worked two blocks away from the World Trade Center.

This is downtown, very close to ground zero.

Buildings were covered with debris and glass from windows and doors was shattered. People were putting up little signs in the windows and writing in the dust.

In the photo above, the flag is draped over the front of the New York Stock Exchange.

The following weekend I saw a man in Central Park playing guitar and singing John Lennon songs. A group of people gathered to listen.

People were trying hard to return to normalcy, by jogging, rollerblading, just taking walks in the park. But I think we were all really shell-shocked.

A photo from 2000. My friend was visiting from Europe and we went to the top of the Empire State Building. You can see the twin towers in the distance.

A photo from 1996. My mom is up in the South Tower's observation deck looking out at the Statue of Liberty.

I took this picture, of the North Tower, in 1997.

More Photos of Marcelo With Cisne Negro

You guys, I am so sorry it's taken me so long to post these when I promised them, what, over two weeks ago?? I had no idea how much went into planning a cross-country move, especially when working lots of overtime… I'll try to get caught up on blogging this weekend when Hurricane Irene (keep wanting to call her Irina…) will likely prevent me from running back and forth between my apartment and The Strand, Housing Works, Goodwill, and various Williamsburg used clothing stores bearing bags of books and clothes to sell and donate… I think I'm giving away far more than I'm taking with me.

Anyway, here are more photos of Marcelo Gomes and Charles Yang performing with Cisne Negro two weeks ago at the Joyce. And a couple photos of Cisne Negro's other pieces. All photos are by Matthew Murphy.

I don't have much time for a review, but briefly: I loved Marcelo's Paganini (two top photos). There were quite a bit of tempo changes throughout the piece, and Marcelo executed them all splendidly, as did Yang. The two interacted very well together. It kind of reminded me of Robbins in that sense, the playfulness between musician and dancer.

The bottom two photos are of the company in Calunga, the last piece on the program, which reminded me of a combination of Alvin Ailey's Revelations and The Prodigal Prince, also performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (though I momentarily forgot the choreographer's name). Calunga was a combination of very Alvin Ailey-esque movement (much of the program was; there was a section in Flock, the first piece on the program, that was almost the same choreography as in end of the first part of Revelations to a tee), with some balletic movement, combined with authentic Brazilian. Throughout there were so many samba steps, I was in heaven The company is very athletic, the men were very acrobatic, many of the women were hyper-flexible, some of their arabesque penchees were quite beautiful. The dancers were definitely remarkable even if the choreography could have been a bit richer. I also liked how ethnically diverse the company is – not all whites like other Brazilian companies I've seen tour here, but more how I expect Brazil to be!

Sorry I can't write more. I have to go to bed now so I can get up at the crack of dawn…

Marcelo Gomes Rehearsing With Cisne Negro

Review of Cisne Negro and Marcelo's Paganini coming soon but for now I just had to post this beautiful photo (by Mark Squires) of Marcelo rehearsing with the company.

Self-Published Success Turned Amazon Poster Girl, Maria Murnane

For you writers and fiction-lovers out there who read this blog, I wrote a profile for the Huffington Post on author Maria Murnane, who originally self-published her novel, Perfect on Paper: the (Mis)adventures of Waverly Bryson (a sweet romantic comedy). After tirelessly promoting the book, and using very clever and original marketing methods, the novel had so much buzz that Amazon picked it up and published it through its publishing arm, AmazonEncore. The book has since been published in Hungarian and German, through Random House, and a film agent is scouting for a film deal. Amazon is also publishing her sequel, It's a Waverly Life, this November. Ahhh, the success every indie author hopes for Here is an earlier review I wrote of Perfect on Paper. And here is my HuffPo profile on Murnane.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE Winner Melanie Moore Explores Reasons for Her Success

On Friday, I was invited to participate in a press conference, via phone, with Melanie Moore, the 19-year-old contemporary dancer from Marietta, Georgia, who just won season eight of So You Think You Can Dance. I thought I'd share some of what she said, especially what she attributed at least some of her success to.

She attributes it to discipline and work ethic, unsurprisingly. She said she and Marko, her partner for the first half of the season, were the only couple to rent studio space outside of the regular rehearsal space they were given by the show's producers. She and Marko would go to the studio and rehearse for a few hours after hours at the regular rehearsal space were over. They'd stay until about a quarter til midnight and practice over and over again their routine for that week. She's thankful to Marko, who allowed himself to be pushed so, and said he was a wonderful partner.

She was surprised she'd won. She really thought it would be Sasha, she said, mainly because the judges kept telling her throughout that she was a favorite, and usually favorites don't win. Plus, Sasha had improved a great deal throughout the show, and audiences love that. They love to root for someone. Another thing she attributed her success to was not allowing herself really to be affected by the judges' continuous praise of her performances. She knew they could easily jinx her or that she could let their praise all go to her head, but she didn't allow either to happen. She just took every week as it came, didn't think about the judges' comments from the former week, and just tried her hardest to do as well as she could with the new choreography.

Asked what's ahead for her in the near future, she answered that she's just going to relax for a couple of weeks. Her boyfriend is returning to school in Georgia and she sweetly said she's going to help him, let it be all about him for a change. She was nice and polite, and sweet, by the way, without being overly giggly. She seemed very sophisticated and mature.

As for her professional future – she's currently enrolled at Fordham University as an art major. She may re-think that and major in dance instead. She'd chosen the art major (she specializes in oil paintings, and likes portraiture) after lengthy conversations with her mother. She realized a dance career could be short – she could be injured – and wanted something else to fall back on. After she tours with the show, she'll move back to NY and likely continue at Fordham, though she'll also try out with various companies. Her goal has been to dance in a company, since that is what her movement style is most suited to and that is what her dream has been. She'd really love to be able to sustain a living dancing though. She said she'd also love to tour with someone like Lady Gaga (Gaga had made that suggestion when she guested on the show), and she'd love to be in a movie, like Dirty Dancing (director Kenny Ortega had also suggested she might be cast when he guested on the show). She has no formal offers for tours or movies at this point, though. She may want to choreograph at some point. She's never considered herself much of a choreographer, though she'd like to get more exposure to that, and try. She definitely wants to return to SYTYCD as an all-star. She laughed when she said she told the producers many many times, since making it into the top ten, that she couldn't wait to return.

The dances she struggled most with were the American-style tango, because of the closed handhold, which was so unnatural to Marko and her. She also struggled with hip hop since it's so far from her style. But tWitch really helped her when he partnered her. She was extremely grateful to him.

When asked what she planned to do with the award money, she laughed and said she really didn't know but thought she'd buy a really nice piece of luggage since she expected to do a lot of traveling. The rest she'd probably put away. One of the media participants asked her if she planned to buy something big, like a car, and she quickly said, "No, no. I don't want to drive. I want to go to New York!"

My Own "Goodbye to All That"

I copied this post from my lit blog, Literary Aperitif (hence the mention of the Sweet Melissa ). I decided to copy it here to explain (kind of) my decision to leave New York this fall. More on that later. I still plan to cover the dance scene, just the L.A. one!

Not that Joan Didion's writing could ever really be characterized as "sweet" but Pier 1 Cafe on the Upper West Side, at the Hudson River, is one of my favorite places in NYC (or at least it used to be), and thus seemed to be the perfect place for me to go when I wanted to re-read her 1968 essay "Goodbye to All That," about her decision to leave New York. I needed to contemplate my own reasons for wanting to leave this city, that I once found so electrifying. The Sweet Melissa (prosecco, peach schnapps, and a splash of orange stoli) is simply what I always have there (though the bartenders seem always to forget how to make it).

When I first read "Goodbye" (which is in her essay collection Slouching Toward Bethlehem), I was new here, and very in love with New York. I really couldn't understand a word of that essay – emotionally, I mean. It's funny, but re-reading it, I still don't understand her exact reasons for becoming so disenchanted. Nor do I understand my own. She opens with the words:

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.

She goes on to talk about that exact moment when NY began for her. I remember my moment with clarity too. It was May 1993. I'd just received my masters from a school in New England and I'd decided not to continue on with the PhD. But I didn't really want to go back to Phoenix, where I'm from. I didn't know what I wanted to do, just knew that academia was not for me. A friend of mine from grad school had a summer job on Wall Street and invited me to stay with him. We sublet his friend's East Village railroad-style apartment.

We drove down from Providence, Rhode Island. My belongings consisted of two suitcases of clothes and a backpack of books. After we unpacked the car, we walked around the corner of Avenue A to St. Marks Place, the busiest street in the hood, in search of food. We ended up at a cozy-looking fifties-style diner called Stingy Lulus, with shiny red glitter-covered seats and the most beautiful entertainer I'd ever seen – a statuesque black drag queen with sky-high cheekbones and a gorgeously rich, deep voice. And he wore bright red pumps that reminded me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. And, cliche as it is, I did have a little laugh to myself: you're not in Kansas anymore! My New York began with that drag queen.

Nowadays, you might, might find such a thing in a tourist spot. Probably not. But this was not a tourist spot. The park at the end of the block – Tompkins Square – was gated shut at night and surrounded by police in riot gear. There'd recently been a squatter's riot in the area. People sold crack on our doorstep. My friend suggested we abide by Abbie Hoffman's dictum and be polite and say "no thank you" to them. He also gave me strict warnings not to walk any direction but west – we were surrounded by very bad neighborhoods: Alphabet City, the Lower East Side, and Kips Bay. Only the west village was safe to venture into. I was simultaneously terrified and thrilled.

Eighteen years and eight apartments later, both of those feelings are gone. My only real fear is that I'll get hit by a car. Seriously. It seems there are more drivers in Manhattan than ever before and they have no respect for the law – not to mention human life – whatsoever. I subscribe to the Gothamist daily and it seems that every other day there is a report of a pedestrian death due to a vehicular assault. In doing research on NYPD for an upcoming book, I read Paul Bacon's memoir, Bad Cop, and he said something like 75 percent of all drivers he stopped as a traffic cop turned out to be driving with suspended licenses. I dunno, to my mind that's pretty astounding.

But the bigger problem is there is no thrill for me anymore. Haven't seen any theater, any dance, been to any restaurants – haven't really experienced anything for the better part of a decade that really made me feel the way that drag queen did. Which leaves me complaining ad nauseam about things that bother me – noisy neighbors, lack of space, lack of peace and quiet, year-round unpleasant weather (freezing all winter, rainy and humid all summer), exorbitant rents that skyrocket even during a serious recession, once New York phenomena – like the Halloween parade – overtaken by tourists and thus beyond borified. (I don't know if it's a word but if it isn't, I just made it up.)

A friend recently asked me whether I think it's more me or the city that's changed. I'm not sure. Probably both. I don't remember drivers being so horrible for one thing. This is, of course, the most pedestrian-friendly city in the U.S. I also don't remember neighbors being so noisy. Everyone in my building used to abide by the 85 percent carpet rule (or, if they didn't, they at least didn't stomp around in hard-soled shoes all night) and no one blasted music after 11:00 on week nights. Of course this building used to be filled with young professionals who worked 14 hours a day and then partied outside at bars in their free time. Our shoe box apartments were just for sleeping. Now it seems all the studios in my building are inhabited by couples – and even one by a family with two children (which makes no sense to me at all) – instead of single people. Because there are so many more people here, it's all the noisier. But a lot of the things – like noise and lack of space – probably didn't bother me as much at the beginning because I was just so excited to be a New Yorker. They came with the package. The fascination far outweighed the annoyances.

All I know is that I need a break. At least for a while. I have two months before I leave and I'm already having bouts of sadness. New York will always be the place where I first felt inspired and then compelled to write. I'll continue to write about this city, just from L.A. As one friend said, "perspective."

Marcelo Gomes to Dance with Cisne Negro

Although we're on late-summer hiatus from ballet season here in NYC, SLSG favorite Marcelo Gomes will be performing at the Joyce Theater on August 15th, with the Brazilian modern dance company, Cisne Negro (which means Black Swan in Portuguese). I've never seen this company before, but of course am now intrigued. They're at the Joyce from August 15-20, but Marcelo is only dancing on opening night. He's to dance a solo, called Paganini, which he choreographed himself but on a female dancer from La Scala Ballet. He's now re-set the piece on himself. It's set to violin music, which will be played live by Charles Yang. Go here for more info on the rest of the program.

Here's a short video clip of the company:

Photos above by Reginaldo Azevedo.