Word Blur

Big A.P.E.

Tiffany Rhynard, a visiting professor at Middlebury College, has recently launched the Vermont-based Big (A. P. E.) Art Performance Ensemble, devoted to making work that "questions the standard conventions of dance and awakens audiences to a blend of performance that responds to the brutality and bliss of living."  I've seen a bit of Tiffany's work over the last year and it interests me:  I like her very athletic, often acrobatic, vocabulary (I loved the technique class she taught at Flynn last spring) and I'm fascinated by her relationship to narrative.  She gives you a lot of clues--boxing movies, rabbit ears, surveillance techniques, insect studies--but you have to work your ass off to figure out how all these signifiers come together.  Can't wait to see more. 

Check out their fall performance schedule.

Dough girls

The secret to the most flavorful pizza is to have the dough painstakingly kneaded by hard working toddlers. Your dinner guests will definitely comment on its unclassifiable deliciousness. The work those tiny fists put in is sort of like adding anchovies to a marinara sauce: you can decide whether or not it should be a carefully guarded secret.

Girls gone wild

Here's some rehearsal footage from the "Twin Study" duet I've been setting this summer on super awe-inspiring dancers Heather Cairl and Lida Winfield:

I love how crazy awkward this is.  I shot this with my Flip Ultra, just like these kids.  Except their footage looks so much better than mine.

Truth

I saw The Truth of Buffy on the new book shelf at work this afternoon, the latest in the slew of cultural studies readers devoted to the Buffyverse.  I never know what to feel about these books--I like that they are out there, but the thought of actually reading lit crit (or philosophy or political science) about Buffy worries me.  My relationship to the show is so pure and nostalgic and beautiful.  There are worse ways for a person to get tenure: somewhere someone is devoting academic study to devising more effective means of torture, for instance.  These guys are watching "Hush" and "Seeing Red."

The morality of resignation

I'm reading Harriet Martineau's Deerbrook, which I bought at the very charming Horizon Books in Seattle last week, and I marked a couple of passages to review.

#1
     "I do not think I could be happy," said Hester, "to be tied down to an employment I did not like."
     "Not to a positively disgusting one.  But I am disposed to think that the greatest number of happy people may be found busy in employments that they have not chosen for themselves, and never would have chosen."
     "I am afraid these very happy people are haunted by longings to be doing something else."
     "Yes: there is their great trouble.  They think, till experience makes them wiser, that if they were only in another set of circumstances, if they only had a choice what they would do, a chance for the exercise of the powers they are conscious of, they would do such things as should be the wonder and terror of the earth.  But their powers may be doubted, if they do not appear in the conquest of circumstances."

#2
     Theirs must be an irksome life enough, as much of it is passed out of their own doors: but they seem to be finding out that it is not so much the where and the how as the what people are, that matters to their peace of mind; and I suppose those who love each other, and have settled what they are living for, can attain what they most want, nearly as well in one place as another.

And then it struck me, as I reread the pages I had dog-eared: I am middle-aged.

This Lawn

The Kitchen Gardener's International wants the next President to grow food on the White House lawn.

You know Dennis Kucinich would do this.

Ice Cream

I'm in Seattle, which may be the loveliest city in North America.  It probably helps that the sun is shining.  Last night, after raw really fishy fish (e.g. mackerel, salmon roe) with Pete and Carrie we stopped for ice cream at Molly Moon's.  The line snaked down the block, everybody waiting to get their hands (lips?) on some local ingredient, mostly organic ice cream.  Salted caramel=buttery, toasty, & creamy with the occasional most welcome fleck or crunch.  Nearly delicious enough to erase my memories of the basil and sour cherry (those were two separate scoops) ice cream I had at Marlow & Sons last month.  Nearly.

This photo of the Molly Moon's Ice Cream sign comes from twatson's flickr photostream and is used in accordance with the Creative Commons license.