You’re being kind-of dopey.

Yes, the fine arts can be fine, but they’re very often fine – if you receive my meaning.  I’ve been wanting to write a straightforward piece on how sexy dance can be, and the latest show from the Arova Contemporary Ballet, La Vie Boheme, provides the perfect chance.

First off, the Arova team collaborated with Angela Karen for (at least) the great promotional picture featured here.  Along with her other work, Angela is responsible for creating pin-up photography at Birmingham Bombshells.  God bless her.  She also distracted me at the performance because she’s beautiful and talented and I had to sit directly behind her.  (I’ve begged at least two friends of mine with any sort of connection to try and set us up, to no avail…)

Which brings me to my point.  If you’re a single man, you really don’t have any reason to miss these dance performances.  Without even mentioning the seven pretty dancers on stage, I think I was seated within sight of something like ten attractive girls.  Most of them weren’t there with a guy.  And I think they were all in heels and dresses.  So your odds are good.  Whatever the opposite of a sausage party is, this is it.

Not only that, but I can script you an easy in: “Hi there, I don’t know anything about dance, and I’m here by myself to check it out.”  You’re immediately good-natured and humble and charming.  She’ll swoon.  Unless you smell like manure or have a swastika on your forehead.  So go from there.

What if you’re already crazy about a particular girl?  The answer to that is easy.  Purchase two tickets to a dance recital in advance.  Then tell her you’ve got two tickets and want her to come with you.  For the most part, chicks dig dance.  I’ve rarely met a girl that would turn down a dance performance.  We’re talking major points.

Not only that, but I’ll admit to ulterior motives in asking a date to this kind of performance.  Half the fun is giving her a good excuse to doll up.  No one’s ever gotten too girly for me.  If I have to put on real pants and shoes as a tradeoff, then so be it, and you won’t catch me complaining.

But I can already hear you saying, “I don’t really like dance.”  First of all, that’s not the point, is it?  The point is them, right?  If it weren’t for them, we’d probably live in little caves and play video games all day.  Second of all, I think you will like the dance.  Maybe not all of it, but that’s okay because even hard-core dance people don’t like it all.  At the Arova performance, for example, they performed eight pieces, but I mainly enjoyed the even-numbered pieces (Surrender, Chants d’Auvergne, Verite, and La Reve Rouge).  In particular, Surrender and Le Reve Rouge were downright sexy – I like a lot of interaction and contact between the dancers.  If you’re unstirred by a dancer onstage who is thoroughly out-of-breath, you may need professional help.

Even though the dances have got fancy French names, I promise that no one’s forcing us to watch ‘em with fancy eyes.  The dancers just move pretty and that’s really all you need to know.  Without understanding a darned thing about dance, I’ve been able to pick out a pair of shapely legs since I was about thirteen.  And there’s great joy in that.  Do you really need to know anything about make-up to be able to appreciate the results?  Heck no you don’t.  You don’t even have to feel guilty about it – whoever does the costuming for Arova is gifted and perceptive and knows exactly what they’re doing.

And guys, it’s not just contemporary ballet.  I just saw Don Quixote by the Alabama Ballet and there were plenty of pretty dancers there who want you to watch.  I just saw Equus by Theatre Downtown and that show is at least half about sex, plus there’s real honest-to-God nakedness in it.  That’s way better than anything pixellated, so get yourself some tickets to a show.

Ladies, feel free to pass this information along to the uninformed.

Your friend,

Daniel

I visited opera rehearsal in the context of just finishing my RPM Challenge album for 2010.  If you’re an opera fan and reading this piece, then you’ll have absolutely no business whatsoever thinking about or listening to my completely amateur musical and singing efforts.  All you really need to know is that RPM challenges musicians to write and record a whole album of music all in the short month of February.  So the time between the creative idea and the realization of that idea is extremely (and perhaps excessively) short – just 28 days.  Which allows precious little time for contemplation or technical mastery.  You just rush to get in, get it done, and get out.

I speak from experience when I can tell you, even in a rush and with simple ideas and limited time, that the original inspiration always gets altered in translation.  There are chord changes, lyrics, or ideas that just don’t fit.  So they get taken out or changed.  The finished product is at least a few left turns and veers removed from how it was envisioned that first week in February.

The flip side of the always-rushing-around coin would be something like The Marriage of Figaro.  Mr. Mozart did his part for Figaro in the 1780s.  That allows over two-hundred years between that particular genius idea and Opera Birmingham’s particular realization of that idea.  It’s a pretty short list of works of art that regularly get performed two hundred years later.

The bad news is that Figaro’s expression is complexicated because – not only is Mozart’s idea as old as our country (and my-oh-my how times have changed) – it’s written in Italian.  It also requires independent interpretation from a full cast of more than twenty singers, an orchestra, a conductor, and a director.  Inevitably, stuff gets edited, pushed, pulled, and altered.  The good news is that artsy, creative, and scholarly people have had over two hundred years to ponder those changes.  And the performers have spent a lifetime on the details of technical mastery.

When something like Shakespeare’s plays, Bach’s fugues, or The Marriage of Figaro are performed, they stagger through your door with these generations of interpretational baggage.  This contrasts with more modern entertainment.  With movies, for example, you can often walk in unprepared and they’ll make a good faith and self-contained effort to explain it all to you.  With that in mind, it’s my belief that every scrap you can learn about works like Figaro – before you go – will pay you back in spades.  But don’t feel bad if you don’t know much about opera.  Just like it was said at the rehearsal, “Remember, probably thirty to forty percent of this audience will have never seen opera before.”  (I’ve only seen one.)

It’s not like you have to do anything highfalootin’ like study.  Take this tidbit for example: Alabama native Susanna Phillips – who is cast as Countess Almaviva – wore her grandfather’s cowboy boots to practice.  Isn’t that cool?  Overheard there: “It’s not often you see a soprano in cowboy boots.”  Do you like her more?  I do.  Will you visualize her in orangey-brown, broken-in boots even when you see her all “divaed up” on stage?  I might.

Howabout this info: Apparently, The Marriage of Figaro is significantly fast for an opera.  Though some others can stretch like five sentences of content into twelve minutes of singing, Figaro apparently requires a nimble tongue, a sense of timing, and some judicious editing of the audience’s titles.  Like a a highly revved engine.  Or an Italian and musical version of the Gilmore Girls.  When you go, doesn’t that make you want to pay attention to the sheer speed?  It does me.  Will you be sensitive and listen for cast members that might miss lines or sing them over one another?  I will.

Finally, back in the 18th century there weren’t any trailers, like for movies.  So I’d imagine that an audience would find some other way of learning the general story before they went to see the show.  Why not take a look at a synopsis (like here) and get an overview even before you get there?  Let yourself concentrate on other things, like just how lovely the music can be.  Even at practice, it was.

Thanks very much to Daniel Seigel and Opera Birmingham for this cool opportunity.  My favorite random line of the day: “I’d pay real money to see Juilliard play Birmingham Southern in football.”

This is my final RPM Challenge post for 2010 because I am finally finished with my album.  Whew!  Both this year’s and last year’s songs are available on the RPM Jukebox.  While you’re there, why not listen to some of the other artists that have completed the challenge?

Written and recorded all in February, first came the Idea Fragments.  Next were the Rough Songs.  Then writing/stealing the words and some quick, first-cut Demo Versions.  I had some collaboration on four different tracks this year – including help from my older brother – but the rest of it is all me.  Now that it’s over, here are all eleven songs.  You’re welcome to download them:

1. Bad For You
2. No Recess Behind The Wall
3. Derivative
4. Mislaid (The Teddybear Song)
5. Little Changes
6. Stolen Away
7. Big Love-Crumbs
8. Oskar Schell
9. Suicide Bomber
10. The Demon
11. Shine

I was surprised that so many people asked for the lyrics last year, so I’ve included them for download here.

I’d love to think I’m on someone’s iPod somewhere, available for shuffle.  I’ve already been driving and rocking out to myself on CD.  Slightly narcissistic, maybe, but you’d do it too after a full month of work.  Here are my comments about each track in five words:

1. Thanks Jacob Talkington – see Phreque.com
2. Chomsky plus Floyd plus Cobain
3. One brother destroys the guitar
4. Teddybear – least rocknroll word ever
5. Aww, aren’t I sweet, aww?
6. Maybe not so sweet anymore
7. Pilfered some e. e. cummings
8. Robbed Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud
9. Song for my FBI file
10. Nothing really to say here
11. The CD’s clear problem child

Enjoy!

I’ve downloaded all the band’s tracks and the songs I most recommend are:

• Lazarus Beach – Local Moon
• Lazarus Beach – The Final If and When
• Audio Iotas – Steady As You Go
• Audio Iotas – Picture
• Coin Toss – Coin Toss
• Coin Toss – Gap in the Spark

A quick aside, thanks to the Birmingham Weekly for quoting me in their February 25th “Eight Days” column.

First of all, I imagine that the Birmingham News and our local TV broadcasters would devote a whole section to the arts.  Every day, there’d be some sort of piece which mentioned every upcoming show.  Interviews and press conferences with the dancers and coaches.  No real need to spend the organization’s money on advertising – almost everyone who’s anyone already knows the schedule.  A waiting list for season tickets.  Weddings and fishing trips get planned around important days on the ballet calendar.

Kelly Walsh & Gauen Alexander

As the local dance fanatics “X” off the calendar days before the performance, Head Coach Tracey Alvey could barely go to the grocery store, leave the ballet compound, or make any public appearance without fighting off a stream of standard questions.  “Do you think the team is confident and ready?”  “Are Jennifer and David fully healthy?”  “What’s your gameplan for the tricky table dance in Act III?”  “What do you think about what the Atlanta Ballet did with Don Quixote last year?”  The public would collectively GASP if anybody strayed from the acceptable list of cliches.  “We’re just taking it one day at a time and hoping that everyone gives 110%.”  Those all work for the ballet, too, I guess.

Catherine Garratt & Kelly Walsh

Photographers and reporters might lurk around the practice facility, hoping to discover up-to-the-minute injury information about the dancers. Fans would collect promotional and behind-the-scenes photographs of popular and favorite dancers like trading cards.  Daniel Moore would paint and profit from the most important onstage moments at the Alabama Ballet.

Can you imagine season ticket holders tailgating outside the Leslie S. Wright Fine Arts Center?  Drinking beer, grilling hotdogs, and socializing before every performance?  Girls with spectacular hair walking by in new dresses – seeing and being seen?  While the guys pretend to ignore the girls and kill time by dancing in public – pretending to be just like their heroes on the inside?  Can you imagine a world where being the principal dancer could be cooler than being the quarterback?

In fact, people might get so excited that they’d gather with family and party for the whole day of the performance.  Rather than just go to one game a year – errr, performance – they’d follow and discuss a dancer’s full career.  “Isn’t he incredibly talented to just be a junior?”   “Do you think he’ll be back next year?”  “Don’t you think she’s getting better every week?”  “Isn’t it a shame that he’s leaving us for Dallas after this year?”  “I hear they’re recruiting this great new freshman from Pennsylvania for next season.”  “She was good last week, but she was so good the show before that.”

Something like 90,000 people would show up – or maybe would want to – over the course of the weekend.  Once inside, the room would buzz and there’d be spontaneous cheering even before the curtain.  Almost everyone’s been to the ballet before, of course, so they’re familiar with the choreography of being a spectator – knowing when to sit quietly and when to applaud.  There might be a drunk guy behind you who’ll get overzealous and shout.

Everyone walks out with that jubilant, top-of-the-world feeling of watching your home team win the big game.  Your infectious excitement spills over and you can’t help but make friends with strangers in the parking lot.  You discuss the spectacle of all those dancers.  Everyone’s talking about Coach Wendy Gamble’s beautiful costuming and brags about the experience to their friends who couldn’t go.  For the next week, everyone’s talking about the working windmill, how funny it was, and how the dancers tossed around guitars, fans, drums, and even the other dancers.  For the next month, everyone is still talking about the charismatic pairing of dancers David Kiyak and Jennifer Ferrigno.  And for the years to come, people will still think back on that moment – whenever it was for you – when you knew that they’d won.

And maybe the football score gets just one little paragraph.

Thanks to Leslie Cooper and the Alabama Ballet for the chance to root for the team and support them at this big game – errrr, exhibition – errrr, performance.