The scent of lilac
freshens the damp air.
Got an app for that?
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Critique of the Rembrandt Show at the MIA June 2012
Rembrandt says with paint
what Jung said in volumes;
the sitters keep quiet.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The Last Dance
Last night, May 5, I attended a “dismantling” party at 1940 Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. A crowd of over 100 people, made up of modern dancers, choreographers, musicians, and dance supporters, joined together to celebrate Heidi Hauser Jasmin and her husband Paul Jasmin, who have operated the Nancy Hauser Dance Dance Company and School in this space for 26 years. The three-story building, which was being leased to several non-profit organizations, is currently in the process of being dismantled and repurposed. Rumors have it that the street level space, formerly occupied by Burch Pharmacy, will become a steak house. The intended purpose of the second and third levels of the building is not yet clear.
What is clear is that the ample studio space was a place for creative work by many artists for over a quarter of a century. Last night, the third floor was alive with dancers and musicians who collaborated on one final improvisation that lasted four hours. Heidi’s brothers, Michael and Tony Hauser, played guitar in the reception area while jazz band Aurora Club jammed in the main studio. Energizing the space were dance artists of all ages who glided barefoot across these worn wooden planks for the last time.
I dedicate the following poems to this glorious studio and to the people who inhabited it. From them I learned the language of dance.
Begin Like This
Performed at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 2000
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Not in tone-on-tone rooms
not within undersized budgets
not on four-color glossy paper
not around pinstripe suits
not under the table
not over coffee hot, martinis
dry or wringing wet.
You cannot dialogue about dance.
You will twist your tongue parch
your throat trying. So dare you
not speak about lifts and turns;
swings and grand plies’; about rotated
spirals; full-body vibrations;
half curves and glides; leaps and slides
Because you cannot dialogue about dance.
Instead we must be primal instinct, molecules
of e-motion, a flesh-and-blood symphony, body
instruments that bang and twang, staccato
and sustain. Allegro moderato, adagio largo,
bouree’ and presto, andante expressivo.
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Jazz it up with harmonic scales, diminished
fifths, three chords, dis-chords, re-chords.
Breathe. Fast like a starling in mid-flight,
slow as a monk mediating on Monk. Breathe,
sassy and brassy as a strumpet or saxophone.
Like Duncan, like Wigman, like Hauser, like
Graham, Ailey and Tharp: one dance, one breath,
changing times, strident rhythms.
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Find a space; ride a rhythm, start a phrase.
Begin like this: solo, duet, trio, quartet.
Count like this: four for nothing 4-3-2-1.
One and two and three and four PAUSE 5-6-7-8. Again.
One and two and three and four PAUSE 5-6-7-8.
Move your groove, slide your glide, extend your suspend,
bump your jump, swim your spin, burn your turn,
reverb your curve, rift your lift, libate your vibrate,
gyro your spiral, melee your plie’, swing your thing ‘cause...
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Sandra Bestland ©1996
The Soloist
Sestina for Dance
and cueing the audience to silence. Music
is scored as she marks the darkened space:
she is keen to solo across the wooden floor.
Heart and hand, life and limb, she is here to dance.
Her body was pigment and paintbrush, the floor
her canvas, Life her palette. Hers was a time
of suffrage and prohibition, war and peace. The space
she traveled was altered by body music,
shocking all. Isadora Duncan moved to rebel music
painting a self-portrait, a language without words. Dancer
singular, she freed herself to move in space,
untying the whalebone, unbinding her solar plexus. Stage
struck, she was fresh, she was flirty, she was timeless.
In her footsteps, the Soloist moves across the floor.
She undulates, capitulates, modulates in 4/4 time
to rhythms that merge and converge in a dance
birthed an eon ago. The animated stage
resonates with past performance in this space:
Floating and falling, leaping and lunging onstage,
dance is an allegory of body music.
Her dance
is the dialect of a soul that never marks time.
is built from Grace, a place where she dances
energized e-motion. She uses the floor
to defy gravity, to buoy her body in music.
This she does for art. This she does alone onstage.
She spoke modern dance. She soloed center stage.
What is clear is that the ample studio space was a place for creative work by many artists for over a quarter of a century. Last night, the third floor was alive with dancers and musicians who collaborated on one final improvisation that lasted four hours. Heidi’s brothers, Michael and Tony Hauser, played guitar in the reception area while jazz band Aurora Club jammed in the main studio. Energizing the space were dance artists of all ages who glided barefoot across these worn wooden planks for the last time.
I dedicate the following poems to this glorious studio and to the people who inhabited it. From them I learned the language of dance.
Begin Like This
Performed at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 2000
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Not in tone-on-tone rooms
not within undersized budgets
not on four-color glossy paper
not around pinstripe suits
not under the table
not over coffee hot, martinis
dry or wringing wet.
You cannot dialogue about dance.
You will twist your tongue parch
your throat trying. So dare you
not speak about lifts and turns;
swings and grand plies’; about rotated
spirals; full-body vibrations;
half curves and glides; leaps and slides
Because you cannot dialogue about dance.
Instead we must be primal instinct, molecules
of e-motion, a flesh-and-blood symphony, body
instruments that bang and twang, staccato
and sustain. Allegro moderato, adagio largo,
bouree’ and presto, andante expressivo.
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Jazz it up with harmonic scales, diminished
fifths, three chords, dis-chords, re-chords.
Breathe. Fast like a starling in mid-flight,
slow as a monk mediating on Monk. Breathe,
sassy and brassy as a strumpet or saxophone.
Like Duncan, like Wigman, like Hauser, like
Graham, Ailey and Tharp: one dance, one breath,
changing times, strident rhythms.
You cannot dialogue about dance.
Find a space; ride a rhythm, start a phrase.
Begin like this: solo, duet, trio, quartet.
Count like this: four for nothing 4-3-2-1.
One and two and three and four PAUSE 5-6-7-8. Again.
One and two and three and four PAUSE 5-6-7-8.
Move your groove, slide your glide, extend your suspend,
bump your jump, swim your spin, burn your turn,
reverb your curve, rift your lift, libate your vibrate,
gyro your spiral, melee your plie’, swing your thing ‘cause...
You cannot dialogue about dance.
The Soloist
Sestina for Dance
She stretches her lithe muscles backstage.
The lights dim, signaling show timeand cueing the audience to silence. Music
is scored as she marks the darkened space:
she is keen to solo across the wooden floor.
Heart and hand, life and limb, she is here to dance.
Isadora cast off corset and button-top shoes for Dance.
She unfettered herself, tress and soul, for the stage.Her body was pigment and paintbrush, the floor
her canvas, Life her palette. Hers was a time
of suffrage and prohibition, war and peace. The space
she traveled was altered by body music,
shocking all. Isadora Duncan moved to rebel music
painting a self-portrait, a language without words. Dancer
singular, she freed herself to move in space,
untying the whalebone, unbinding her solar plexus. Stage
struck, she was fresh, she was flirty, she was timeless.
In her footsteps, the Soloist moves across the floor.
Proscenium lights up and scrim lowered to the floor,
the Soloist suspends, spins, and shakes to the music.She undulates, capitulates, modulates in 4/4 time
to rhythms that merge and converge in a dance
birthed an eon ago. The animated stage
resonates with past performance in this space:
many have sweat and wept in this space,
have strewn sinew and soul across the floor.Floating and falling, leaping and lunging onstage,
dance is an allegory of body music.
Her dance
is the dialect of a soul that never marks time.
No smooth waltzer, she solos funk time,
with no partner, subject, object or verb. Her spaceis built from Grace, a place where she dances
energized e-motion. She uses the floor
to defy gravity, to buoy her body in music.
This she does for art. This she does alone onstage.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who used the floor
to move mystic through space, to groove to body music.She spoke modern dance. She soloed center stage.
Sandra Bestland © 2007
Technorati Tags: NHDC,Nancy Hauser Dance Studio,dance,1940 Hennepin Ave,Heidi Hauser Jasmin,Paul Jasmin
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Old Bones
Dinner: circa 1965
Dinner is a private excavation into family, a daily social interaction primeval. Dinner is a truce between Mom and Dad who chew their food while holding back opposite views on The War. It’s a lesson in etiquette: what to do when your mouth is full of stories and the phone rings and it’s your best friend and you’re not allowed to leave the table. What to do when the paper boy comes to your front door wanting payment for the latest front-page gore about the War.
Dinner is a mealtime prayer followed by a diatribe against student protesters and long-haired draft dodgers. Dinner is talk about the price of gas and groceries. Dinner is me asking my youngest brother to Please pass the milk and then saying Thank you.
Dinner is tuna casserole spooned like army rations onto Melmac. Dinner is Operation Rolling Thunder and watching Channel 9 news to hear a report on Viet Cong, communists, gooks, guerrillas, and GIs. It’s elbows off the table, chin off my plate, chewing with my mouth closed while listening to yesterday’s body count added to the sum from the day before. It is my oldest brother, his long, red hair dragging in beef gravy, tearing up his draft notice.
Dinner is whispers about friends of friends who bought a car with bloodshed money given to them in exchange for their son’s life. Dinner is me quibbling with Mom about whose turn it is to do the dishes. (Who will clear the table and who will wash and who will dry?)
Dinner, circa 1965, is a knock on the door and Marines bearing the news of a soldier’s death. Dinner, circa 1965, is a heavy body bag that is dragged through napalm jungle to decompose in front of us on the kitchen table. Dinner, circa 1965, is a family in a far-off village who sits down to eat bombs that have fallen from heaven into their bowls of rice.
Dinner: circa 2000
An immigrant family from a bombed-out village lives in the kitchen of my youth. The family eats dinner slowly, with mouths closed, wary of exposing battle scars, wary of choking on old bones that no one else can swallow.
Dinner is a private excavation into family, a daily social interaction primeval. Dinner is a truce between Mom and Dad who chew their food while holding back opposite views on The War. It’s a lesson in etiquette: what to do when your mouth is full of stories and the phone rings and it’s your best friend and you’re not allowed to leave the table. What to do when the paper boy comes to your front door wanting payment for the latest front-page gore about the War.
Dinner is a mealtime prayer followed by a diatribe against student protesters and long-haired draft dodgers. Dinner is talk about the price of gas and groceries. Dinner is me asking my youngest brother to Please pass the milk and then saying Thank you.
Dinner is tuna casserole spooned like army rations onto Melmac. Dinner is Operation Rolling Thunder and watching Channel 9 news to hear a report on Viet Cong, communists, gooks, guerrillas, and GIs. It’s elbows off the table, chin off my plate, chewing with my mouth closed while listening to yesterday’s body count added to the sum from the day before. It is my oldest brother, his long, red hair dragging in beef gravy, tearing up his draft notice.
Dinner is whispers about friends of friends who bought a car with bloodshed money given to them in exchange for their son’s life. Dinner is me quibbling with Mom about whose turn it is to do the dishes. (Who will clear the table and who will wash and who will dry?)
Dinner, circa 1965, is a knock on the door and Marines bearing the news of a soldier’s death. Dinner, circa 1965, is a heavy body bag that is dragged through napalm jungle to decompose in front of us on the kitchen table. Dinner, circa 1965, is a family in a far-off village who sits down to eat bombs that have fallen from heaven into their bowls of rice.
Dinner: circa 2000
An immigrant family from a bombed-out village lives in the kitchen of my youth. The family eats dinner slowly, with mouths closed, wary of exposing battle scars, wary of choking on old bones that no one else can swallow.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
iThank you, Mr. Jobs
There are two types of people: those who have an iPhone, and those who want an iPhone. Thanks, Mr. Jobs, for sharing your genius with the world. May you rest in 
.
.Thursday, September 29, 2011
Cinderella
Cinderella, a red tulip of a girl,
labors to free herself
from her glass slipper.
It holds her fast, prettily,
like a Waterford vase
constrains a flower.
The clock strikes twelve.
Petals fall. Stems droop.
Water evaporates and
blossoms are dumped
from cut glass to haute trash.
In darkness, Cinderella
rummages the dumpster,
searching for her
bygone beautiful self.
Meanwhile, vase and slipper
sit empty, ready to enclose
the next beauty.
Technorati Tags: Cinderella,shoe
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)