In Defense of the Eifman

Last Sunday I had the invaluable privilege of attending the Eifman Ballet’s production of Rodin, an original ballet about the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin and his apprentice and lover, Camille Claudelle. On Monday morning I half-begrudgingly looked up Alastair Macaulay’s review of the performance. As expected, the New York Times dance critic couldn’t be more off the mark.

Occupy Wall Street: Notes from an Ardent Observer

I got involved in Occupy Wall Street a few weeks ago when I joined 15 thousand protesters in a march down Broadway to Zuccotti Park, the home base of the movement and literal home to many participants.  Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has been alive since September 17^th, when a group of about forty people installed themselves at Zuccotti (which they are calling by its former name, Liberty Plaza) to protest the gaping inequalities of wealth in our country.  One short month later, Occupy Wall Street is a household name and a national phenomenon.  The number of protesters camped out (or just hanging out) at Zuccotti Park has ballooned into the hundreds-to-thousands at any given time, and cities around the country have become host to their own occupiers.

I too have gotten sucked in.  Since that initial march I have returned to Zuccotti several times to support the movement and attempt to satisfy my curiosity about what is really happening there and where it all began.  With each successive visit, I find myself more viscerally excited by the level of organization, the energy, and the radical potential that I see and feel.  Handmade signs abound; a drum circle keeps up a constant rhythm in one corner of the park.  People talk to each other, share information and exchange ideas. And despite all the media grumbling about incoherent messaging surrounding OWS , everyone seems to be on the same page.

Of course, that isn’t such a hard thing to be when your slogan is “we are the 99%.”

Oswald: A Review

Last week I went to see “Oswald,” a play written by Dennis Richard and directed by Richmond Shepard that tells the unembellished story of Lee Harvey Oswald’s interrogation.  For two days after John F. Kenndy was shot, the number one suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was interrogated by Dallas Police Captain William J. Fritz. 

Time Stands Still: A (somewhat belated) Review

The new Broadway hit, “Time Stands Still,” written by Donald Margulies and directed by Daniel Sullivan, is a simple story and an elegant portrayal of the major predicaments of modern life.  The play focuses on two ambitious humanitarian professionals who are thrown into an unexpected and reflection-rousing reprieve from routine that quickly becomes a significant turning point in their lives.  There are four characters total, and it is the dialogue and interplay between them, more than any exciting plot-line, that lays bare the contradictions we all face in a globalized world where both opportunity and suffering abound. 

The Anatomy of Longing

I saw “The Social Network” last Tuesday.  I loved it.  Great script, endearing characters, interesting presentation of intellectual property rights issues – and plenty of that mysterious sheen of Hollywood magic that makes reality at once so real and so very larger-than-life. It’s that Hollywood magic that gets me every time.  Gets me, these days, into a state of familiar longing—the same longing I feel when I see a great performance, watch an Olympian going for gold, or even hear a friend get really excited about a project they’re working on.  It’s a longing to achieve and to feel the heady rush of achievement in process. 

Fearful Sanity

On September 16, 2010, Jon Stewart finally delivered his long-anticipated ANNOUNCEMENT to end all announcements, unveiling the Daily Show Rally to Restore Sanity scheduled for October 30^th, 2010: a day when perfectly reasonable people and Daily Show fanatics from round the world will unite on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for what will, obviously, be the greatest rally of all times.  The cause is worthy, the principles just.  And we the soon-to-be-ralliers aren’t asking for much.  In fact, our request is pretty simple: it’s a plea for the restoration of some respectable degree of sanity and intelligence to a national news frenzy that we find riddled with disturbingly-influential pockets of polarized madness.

Mika’s Magic

(also published here: http://www.singerevolution.com/1/post/2010/08/show-and-tell-mikas-magic-from-clarapys-blog.html)

I don’t know anything about music.  I don’t know about music on a technical level, a terminological level, or even a historical-cultural level.  Growing up, I missed the music trends – just like I missed the t.v. trends, the movie trends and all the other pop cultural elements that seem to do so much to define a generation.  I am frequently asked if I grew up under a rock, and sometimes I think I must have.  But one thing I do know, about music at least, is what I like.  And I know that, in the spring of 2007, I made one of the most important musical discoveries of my life to date: I discovered Mika, pop (or pop-rock, according to some sources) artist and man-boy extraordinaire.