Smooth Criminal

Skip to 22 seconds in and watch home boy strike some poses and WERK.

I saw this video this morning at the gym and couldn't help but smile. Love to see people... and animals... enjoying le dance!

Also, if you're ever in a work out funk, try slamming your hamstrings in a spin class or two with an Olympics soundtrack that ends with Queen's "We are the Champions."  It sounds corny as hell, but dayum did that work for me this morning!

When Your Heart's Not In It

So I haven't been feeling the usual umph of joy that reminds me why I love dancing so much while I take all the abuse and rejection that is the nature of the performance industry.

Languishing in indecision... do I admit defeat and say, hooray, I got one job at the Metropolitan Opera? I can say that at least I tried... do I go back to grad school? Or do I give it a few more weeks, months, years?

For each of us, the decision takes a different tack. Dancing is not a thing that can be done forever, the body physically cannot withstand it. Yes you can teach, blah blah blah, but to perform and perform well, each of us has a tremendously finite window of opportunity.

I have heard many a dancer philosophize that if you have a back-up plan, you'll never truly make it because you'll never NEED every dance job so badly that  you cannot help but go hard or go home. I get the logic in that, though the sentiment still escapes me.

So... my heart's not in it. If I'm honest, my heart hasn't been "in it" for months, not since I was in final callbacks for Can Can at Broadway Theater and didn't get that call we all hope to get.

I could go to the Mary Poppins auditions this week, even though I know they're not actually casting. I could go through the paces, taking class, hitting up auditions to tell myself I'm just racking in "no's" as I progress toward my next "yes"... but that is not quite doing it for me anymore.

Instead, I'll be glad I've found another extension of my position at Kaplan where I can make good money doing data analysis. I'll work 9 hours a day,  at a desk, in business casual, every day before I go to Tanzania, Africa. I'll try to deserve my twenty day siesta.

Eight days and counting until it's good bye New York City, hello Serengeti.

Hugs,

A Broadway Baby

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,

And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;

       Before this strange disease of modern life,

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

       Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife—

               Fly hence, our contact fear!

Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!

       Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern

       From her false friend's approach in Hades turn,

Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,

Still clutching the inviolable shade,

       With a free, onward impulse brushing through,

By night, the silver'd branches of the glade—

       Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,

               On some mild pastoral slope

Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales

       Freshen thy flowers as in former years

       With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,

From the dark tingles, to the nightingales!

Appreciation

As seen in the West 4th F train subway station:

An attractive, tall man in the skinniest black jeans I ever did see plays the violin as though he were an indefatigable virtuoso in a three piece suit. From where I am, I cannot hear him over the din of passing trains, though I can tell by the way the man moves with his instrument that his is a considerable talent.

An eager, bright-eyed little boy is closer than me. Close enough to catch the strains of Schubert melody pouring from the graceful wooden device and to have eyes widen in delightful response.

The boy stops his mother in her tracks and gestures for her to move her ear closer to him. I don't need to speak his language to understand what he is after. The little boy motions emphatically to the player, then to the money in the violin case, then back to his mother to speak a few words. The mother is only half listening to him until she realizes that the boy has not stopped pointing for several minutes.

The player smiles gently, almost imperceptibly, and inclines his head with his violin toward the little boy, who is enraptured. This man has brought beautiful order to the cacophony of sounds in the universe that exists under New York ground for the little boy and me. The boy is so taken with the music that he tries to leave the yellow toy school bus he had been clutching to his chest as a donation.

The mother stops him and scrambles to find money to give to the boy, which he then throws gleefully into the case, before he is hassled by his mother to board the uptown A express train.

All this was over in a matter of moments, but as I was boarding the train in the same car as the boy and his mother, I felt it a privilege to behold the intensity of focus that was that little boy's appreciation of art. Still holding the little yellow school bus toy, the little boy did not stop straining to see the violin player until the train was well on its way into the tunnels of another New York night.

Let others go first

That was my fortune today. I don't put much in store by astrological charts, but today's seemed an apt commentary on the past few weeks.

As someone who used to get everything they ever interviewed for, it's odd to have one month of final callbacks  for multiple performing artist jobs, then have two weeks straight of cuts. I've become much stronger over the past two years of working in this industry, but even I am not made of stone when it comes to rejection... even the rejection I make myself susceptible to by choice.

That said, sometimes all it takes to get through the rough patches are a little commiseration, a lot of working out, and a renewed commitment to doing what you love. I've got the first two, and I hope the third comes before I go to Africa. If not then, I definitely know I'm coming back from a month in another country with a different perspective and a renewed zeal for something, one way or another.

Keep your head up y'all. You don't always have to be happy, but you better damn well be sure you create space for optimism in your life. Treat yourself right. Go do something that makes you feel sexy, that makes you feel in control, that reminds you of what you love. It feels good.

Picture > Words

Don't stop til you get enough. Don't stop then either.

The Abs were out today

Impressions were made. Auditioning for West Side Story is such a rogue experience. Sometimes he loves me, and I get through all three dance cuts and sing. Sometimes he cuts me in the first round (he being Joe McKneely, the choreographer responsible for restaging the original Jerome Robbins movement on Broadway and all the tours).

Just to mix things up, I went for a mostly naked approach (two piece swimsuit, a dance skirt, and heels today), which seemed to go over well and carried me through the later rounds of the audition. We'll see what comes of that.

This industry is so bizarre, and I fully accept responsibility for submitting myself to it. Slowly, but surely, I am seeing the yields of focus, hard, work, and acceptance of the factors I cannot control about auditioning and character type.

Also, the trick of not drinking too much water before dancing totally works! Les abs were out in full force, as was the recently accumulated tan that's taken residence on my epidermis. Sometimes it feels so vapid to focus so aggressively on building myself into the kind of dancer-athlete I always dreamed of being, but it's also so fulfilling to watch the fruit of incremental goal pursuit take shape on my body, in my voice, and at the auditions I go to.

Tonight's inspiration and food for dreams:

YUM.

I plan to be the lady version of this. Shortly.

Business Time July

By the way, it's business time July. Conditions are perfect.

I'm one squishy butt away from the best shape I've ever been in in my life. Since my body is my brand in the performing arts industry, I better make the best of it!

What does this entail, you might ask? Cardio every day since June 28th, until I leave for Africa, August 8th, not to mention a much more aggressive approach to weight training and healthy eating. Bye bye sugar and bread and cheese.

Hello health and lower body fat.

Cross your fingers that my abs decide to make an appearance for the West Side Story call manana. I'm told the director/choreographer likes abs! Lovely.

And for the funnies, not because this is the kind of business time I'm talking about, hope you enjoy the ridiculousness that is the Flying Concords' version of Business Time:

ANGST

Lord help me, but I am not made to suffer fools, douche bags, and tired angsty men. I am being TESTED of late, and I am doing everything in my power to maintain a modicum of the balance of calm that has graced my life over the past month or so.

Sometimes, you've just gotta run until you're so exhausted there's no angst anymore. Even with my bum back, the best thing I've done for myself in a long time was to go run, even in a 98 degree New York evening, post July 4th celebrations.

Most of my energy, especially angry energy, works therapeutic wonders when converted to workout energy. Thank goodness for that and for blaring Fire Island pines dance music that my gays gave me to work out to.  This is good sh*&, especially with the sound all the way up so you feel the bass in your bones:

Tomorrow's another day!

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Fourth of July!

(almost a month until I'm off to Africa!!! Eek!!)

Cheers,
A Broadway Baby

JOY

Everyone deserves it.