Edgy?

After weeks of meaning to, I finally got around to a class at The Edge Performing Arts Center! The West Hollywood studio is crammed a la Being John Malkovich into an old TV studio (I think?) on Cole Street, next to the gleaming Gold's Gym of the area.

I felt like a rock star.

Level 2 jazz classes are my calling: in the brick-walled pipe-ceilinged Studio E (or D, or G, or E again? Get it?) I felt the music was pushing me around, the Death Cab for Cutie bassist making each Graham contraction a little deeper. I've taken, what, two jazz classes? Three, tops, in about four and something years, so it felt good to do some hair-flickingly expressive 5-6-7-8 reaches. I'm inclined to send Mia Michaels my thin performance resume and ask for a spot on primetime Reality TV.

Of course by "it felt good" I also mean that it felt excruciating. Arabesques and Baryshnikov jumps, going through the motions of a deep plie in second... Who knew how many gluteal muscles I'd forgotten about in four years? At one point I think I actually fell over from sheer inability to hold a passe in releve. Oof.

My usual take on "edge," those fringy smarty pants dancemakers and their work, will be back. But for now my inner FAME wannabe feels good!

And sore. Very, very sore.

New Project

I don't know if anyone in LA reads this, but on the off chance anyone DOES: want to get in on a big venue project to make a home base for LA dance? Send me a message...

...or encouragement...

...or checks...

...In the meantime, I'll be blasting away on the great spaceship Arts Proposals. Wish me luck.

Motion, Music, Family

I've never so enjoyed watching hands as I did tonight. At a concert she conducted in a college recital hall in the city, my dear cousin gently, firmly guided her musicians from the Tchaikovsky on the page to the Tchaikovsky I could hear. The baton in her right hand, she closed off passages and egged on the swells with the most articulate motions of her left. Secondary though it may have been to sound, there was a dance to it.