An alternate mascot for InfiniteBody?

From the You Just Never Know Where You'll Find Dancing in New York file

A fellow birder posted the following message to the eBirds NYC list, and I'm reposting it here with her permission.

While enjoying a stellar day of birding at Prospect Park this afternoon, which was awash in hordes of warblers, vireos, et al pushed in by the previous evening's north/northwest wind, I observed a little brown wren doing an odd little dance.

The wren was perched on a log by some broken down cement steps, near a culvert by the main road, across from the zoo. As I slowly walked over with my pit bull, it began to raise its wings, drop them down, and frame its lowered head with the fanned, stubby wings. It performed the display several times, in a ritualized manner, facing me and my pit bull (though any number of other intruding birds in the immediate vicinity could have been the target of the display).

I'd never observed this behavior in any bird before, so a little research on the Internet was in order upon reaching home. I found a pdf study of Chickadee anti-predator display patterns. The wing wave was clearly illustrated and perfectly matched the wren's antic display. Basically, the bird faces the threat, lowers its head, and waves its wings downward around its head.

The wren was found in an area where I have frequently observed both winter wrens and house wrens for at least 10 years. This individual sported a distinctive white eyebrow marking, so may have been a Carolina wren.

I still don't know how that wren thought she was going to initimidate a pit bull with that cute little performance.

Kim E.

Thanks, Kim, for that stellar bit of dance writing! As for the wren's strategy: whatever it takes, cookie! But click here and on the Play button to see InfiniteBody's considerably fiercer official mascot.

Podcast interview with Camille A. Brown

Body and Soul (formerly Great Dance Podcast) presents a conversation with dancer-choreographer Camille A. Brown. Click here.

Official mascot of the InfiniteBody blog

Lovely...but don't mess with them!

Gil Scott-Heron notwithstanding, this Revolution will be televised.

Time Out New York considered the marriage of rock music and tap dance at the Joyce Theater and predicted disaster. But having actually seen Revolution--now in its two-week stand through October 7--I would not go that far. But I do have some serious questions for co-creators/choreographers/dancers Joel Hanna (the Filipino-Irish Dave Navarro lookalike with the Riverdance chops) and Michael Schulster (whose exuberant strumming while tapping ups the ante for air-guitarists everywhere).

A tap show with a live rock band so loud you can rarely hear the dancers' feet? An ensemble where male tap dancers--who show genuine spirit and kick ass--are the main event while the comparably nondescript female dancers, including a So You Think You Can Dance finalist, look and move like glossy, pliable dolls? (My invaluable companion, taking in the girlie action onstage, refreshed my memory with just a few words: "Solid Gold" and "Thank you, Darcel!") And a female rock singer (Sonia de los Santos) whose lyrics are impossible to decipher? And exactly how fresh is the idea of live videotaping and screening of the performers or having the men tap dance atop equipment trunks?

The richly-produced, rollicking show looks pitched at Broadway, and indeed the older, Broadway-type audience at the Joyce seemed to warm to it after the initial shock of bright rock-show lights in their eyes and the first blast of drums in their ears. (Speaking of drums--why the elaborate Plexiglas shield around the drum kit? Protection from dancer sweat?) The program notes actually refer to Revolution's intended market as "the much sought-after 18-35 bracket." Yes, you read that right: crass marketing strategy right there in your face. But that's not who was sitting there last night and, to all appearances, loving it.

I grew up in the 60's, loving rock--among a rich feast of other forms of music--and I don't take exception to this show on the basis of musical taste. But I do wonder if it didn't occur to Hanna and Schulster that tap dancers are musicians first and foremost, that tap fans want to hear them as well as see them, and that their best number is danced--by the male dancers, of course--when the band is silent.

You say you still want a Revolution? Rock on over to the Joyce.

Nonfiction Forum: Joan Acocella

The New School Writing Program presents Joan Acocella, author of Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints and staff writer for The New Yorker. Moderated by Robert Polito, director.

Monday, October 15, 6:30pm

Admission: $5

The New School
66 West 12th Street, Room 510
Manhattan
212-229-5488 or click here.

Jane Goldberg taps volunteers

Jane Goldberg--famed Tap Goddess of the Lower East Side--has put out a call for volunteers to help her with her Changing Times Tap Archive, "going through great pictures, tapes, transferring old videos to dvds...any spare time welcome.  Call 646-334-5726....leave name, number."  Jane adds, "get college credit! get knowledge credit! must be an ot (organized type)." 

A few thoughts on Macaulay at Barnard

"I hope I say what I see. I hope I don't just give my opinion. You have to justify it. It's important to discipline your feeling as well as your vision." -- Alastair Macaulay

Alastair Macaulay, the New York Times's new Senior Dance Critic, joined the ranks of dance journalists in 1978--a few years after I did--and now sits in the most visible, most influential and powerful position in our (still rather marginal) field. I greeted the Times appointment of this talented, expressive British writer with a mixture of hope and skepticism, and now my hope has been bolstered somewhat by Macaulay's chat with Mindy Aloff, his American colleague and friend, at Barnard College last evening. As they say in the sports world, that hope comes with an asterisk, and we'll get to that asterisk later.

What I like about Macaulay

Now that I've had a chance to lay eyes on the man and hear him speak, I'm intrigued and can well imagine how the Powers-That-Be--who, according to Macaulay don't know much about dance and small-talked their way through his job interviews--would find him a captivating candidate. Before an audience of Barnard dance students and faculty, with a fair representation from New York's critic rank-and-file, Aloff posed gentle questions and Macaulay responded with all the courtly grace of the ballroom dance student he used to be and the "closet dancer" he says he is today.

His thoughtful replies often took the form of stories--some amusing in a low-key way, some honestly told at his own expense. (Here's one: He must rise very early to draft his reviews at the Times offices because he has yet to set up a computer--or much else--in his apartment.) I was surprised and charmed by his soft-edged, even self-effacing manner. And I recognized in all of this the person whose work first caught my attention--a writer with a very human, personal voice, a clear sense of engagement, a smart but also free, lively, colorful mind. Confident in his writing, but not overly invested in his own cleverness. Authoritative and firm in his opinions but not arrogant. Someone who sounded as if he gave a damn.

His critical expertise and experience extends to music and theater, but he declares a proper respect for dance--"a hard art to write about," which it is. In his work, he recognizes a desire to communicate why dance matters to him, the son of a farmer. As a farmer's son, he knows a thing or two about nature, like precisely how swans' massive wings beat and sound, and that perceptiveness informs his preference for one Swan Lake choreographer's approach to the movement of swans' wings, which he demonstrates impeccably. Even if I were not a birder, I'd have tip my hat to Macaulay for that alone.

What still concerns me
And now we get to that asterisk.
"A critic--if he's going to spend time looking at this art--had better become acquainted with plenty of it."

That was Macaulay talking, not me. But it gave me just the opening I needed for a question I later asked him after listening to him repeatedly (and solely) refer to his gods: Balanchine, Mozart, Cunningham, Shakespeare. Imagine if you took up residence in New York but your exploration extended only as far as Lincoln Center and its immediate precincts and you never ventured down to Chinatown or out to Little India, and you never discovered the amazing variety of little shorebirds (and the occasional swan) at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. In short, I felt that a Senior Dance Critic of the New York Times should be required to get around more.

I've been thinking a lot about this since he got here. My thoughts have not always been as diplomatic as my words were last evening. I posed my question nicely, and he agreed. He mentioned, with pleasure, some initial excursions--to Noche Flamenca, to Reggie Wilson and Andreya Ouamba's Accounting for Customs. Although he declared his intention to critique any dance according to his own sense of what was right, he acknowledged that his inexperience with some forms, histories and legacies could interfere somewhat with the effectiveness of his criticism. In short, he promised to work on it.

One of my colleagues, while trading emails with me about Macaulay's notorious smackdown of Doug Varone's Dense Terrain, described the Times guy as a work-in-progress. It's clear, from the non-defensive openness in his answer to my question, that he'd agree with that assessment. He has hit the ground running, and he says he is interested in seeing more, seeing more widely, and determined to write honestly, based on his perceptions and standards.

I know I will not always agree with Macaulay, but I respect his word, and I want to see him take on the most interesting and remarkable and even the most baffling dance New York has to offer. I'd like to see him show his colleagues at the Times and elsewhere what the Senior Dance Critic of the New York Times should be, and maybe make us all work a little harder to catch up. I remain interested in what a writer of his passion and sensibilities will do with the multifaceted challenge and opportunity that is New York.

(c) 2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa