Thursday, December 10, 2009
a peek into my vie bohème
Ah the artist's life... This studio (rent stabilized!) isn't where I live now, but it was my place for nearly 12 years and witnessed the creation of quite a few dances and sound scores, several frantic costume-sewing marathons, and of course... a few cast parties. Take the tour and see if you think you could fit your life into this little Manhattan box.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Birdsong Sketches (excerpt)
Excerpt from Birdsong Sketches; performed at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, April 2007. Choreography by Lacy James; music by Olivier Messiaen. The development of Birdsong Sketches was supported by The Swarthmore Project, a residency at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and by a summer research grant from UNC-Greensboro.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
seasons, seasoning
Finally getting to work in earnest on the new tracks these past few weeks! It's been going well -- getting back into the groove! One song that's been driving me crazy for more than a year has even come around and found itself. The music was strong, but I just could not like my original lyrics for it -- and yet they kept sticking in my head. I kept trying to fix them and failing, putting it aside and thinking it was just never going to work, yet somehow I knew that I could not throw this song away. And now, finally, I went back to it yet again and it just seemed to sort itself out. Just like gardening or cooking, each song might have its own germination timetable and its own recipe. And yeah... pulling out a thesaurus does sometimes help too.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
great new review of Lovefeast CD on The Ectophile's Guide
Wow, so exciting -- I just found a really great new review of Lovefeast! It's on the website of The Ectophile's Guide to Good Music. They focus mostly on female artists working in experimental pop/rock genres. Their reviewers wrote some really lovely things, which you can read here.
It's so encouraging to hear that people are digging the tunes... especially when I'm (finally) making some more of them :) Thanks so much, Ectophiles!
It's so encouraging to hear that people are digging the tunes... especially when I'm (finally) making some more of them :) Thanks so much, Ectophiles!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
some memories of Pearl
These are just a few of many memories from the years when I was taking
Pearl Lang's classes at the Martha Graham center (1991-2003).
One of my favorite things that Pearl would say was for when we were doing a particular floor exercise. To give you the feeling of how you should jump up and forward onto your front "sit bone" while you were down on the floor in 4th position, Pearl would suddenly say "It's Christmas!" I can't remember if she said this was something that Martha herself used to say for that exercise, or if it was Pearl's own image, but I can still hear her saying it... each time her joyful excitement was just like a child on Christmas morning. At other times (most especially if it was St. Patrick's Day), she would say to the pianist, for the 4th position turns around the back: "An Irish air!" She brought us to live and dance in the moment.
When I first came to the Graham school, I was so caught up in experiencing Pearl's classes for the first time and I remember thinking that she wore this special blue shawl around her shoulders each time that she taught, and how it made her so mysterious and glamorous. After a few weeks I noticed that actually, it was just a regular old sweatshirt. But it was the way that she wore it... I guess it was the most glamorous plain old sweatshirt I have ever seen.
I don't remember what this was in context of... but sometime in the 90s, one day she suddenly reprimanded a student in class by bursting out with "that is so totally not cool." This was not a phrase that Pearl normally used -- as far as we knew! She was in her late 70s then, I believe.
I loved to sit near Pearl in the audience during dance concerts, because anyone within a few seats of her would get to find out a lot about what she thought of the performance. I liked to see if I agreed with her (usually, I did). It means more to me than I can ever say that she came to see my own company perform. But maybe I'm glad that I wasn't sitting near her in the audience then!
Dear Pearl, I was hoping that you would someday get to see that I had finally fixed my arms like you wanted. Well, I guess now maybe you can see what I'm doing all the time, so hopefully I've managed to fix them. I will never forget the particular kind of profound intensity that your classes embodied, each one like a glorious battle of life and death. There is no adequate way to express the role that you have played in my life, and in the lives of so many others. Love, joy and peace be with you and your family.
Pearl Lang's classes at the Martha Graham center (1991-2003).
One of my favorite things that Pearl would say was for when we were doing a particular floor exercise. To give you the feeling of how you should jump up and forward onto your front "sit bone" while you were down on the floor in 4th position, Pearl would suddenly say "It's Christmas!" I can't remember if she said this was something that Martha herself used to say for that exercise, or if it was Pearl's own image, but I can still hear her saying it... each time her joyful excitement was just like a child on Christmas morning. At other times (most especially if it was St. Patrick's Day), she would say to the pianist, for the 4th position turns around the back: "An Irish air!" She brought us to live and dance in the moment.
When I first came to the Graham school, I was so caught up in experiencing Pearl's classes for the first time and I remember thinking that she wore this special blue shawl around her shoulders each time that she taught, and how it made her so mysterious and glamorous. After a few weeks I noticed that actually, it was just a regular old sweatshirt. But it was the way that she wore it... I guess it was the most glamorous plain old sweatshirt I have ever seen.
I don't remember what this was in context of... but sometime in the 90s, one day she suddenly reprimanded a student in class by bursting out with "that is so totally not cool." This was not a phrase that Pearl normally used -- as far as we knew! She was in her late 70s then, I believe.
I loved to sit near Pearl in the audience during dance concerts, because anyone within a few seats of her would get to find out a lot about what she thought of the performance. I liked to see if I agreed with her (usually, I did). It means more to me than I can ever say that she came to see my own company perform. But maybe I'm glad that I wasn't sitting near her in the audience then!
Dear Pearl, I was hoping that you would someday get to see that I had finally fixed my arms like you wanted. Well, I guess now maybe you can see what I'm doing all the time, so hopefully I've managed to fix them. I will never forget the particular kind of profound intensity that your classes embodied, each one like a glorious battle of life and death. There is no adequate way to express the role that you have played in my life, and in the lives of so many others. Love, joy and peace be with you and your family.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
beloved dancer, choreographer and teacher Pearl Lang
I cannot find words to express my feelings at the loss of Pearl. I just wanted to share the following information with anyone who may be interested. The musician Geoffrey Armes has posted a beautiful piece of music that he improvised as a requiem for Pearl while playing for Christine Dakin's class this week at the Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC. Anyone who took Pearl's classes would recognize how much she would have loved this piece. Geoffrey has made a free MP3 of it available here.
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