I saw "Swan Lake"

What I saw: Dada Masilo’s “Swan Lake” at the Joyce Theater

What I wore: plaid wool skirt, tights, and boots

What I did beforehand: rode the E train downtown

Who went with me: My husband, who enjoyed it, saying, “In the wild, one swan looks almost exactly like another.”

How I got tickets: online, full price

Why I saw this show: I read a review in the New York Times and assumed I should see this since the last time I went to the ballet (ABT at the Met, June 2014), I saw Swan Lake.

Where I sat: Row J, orchestra; once again, I was next to a woman who laughed at the same things I did

What it is: a re-imagined Swan Lake, choreographed by South African dancer Dada Masilo, featuring Swan Men and Swan Women, with moments of balletic satire.  An amalgam of dance traditions including ballet, modern and African dance, performed by a troop of satisfyingly diverse dancers, this production seemed engaging and honest.  As I sat enjoying all the better, playful things the dancers did with their tutus (other than wear them while looking severe), I started thinking about the way people express their gender, and about dance as an art form, and about how the product of human movement and gesture embodies, at its best, an unspoken discourse. I haven’t yet stopped thinking about the (non-verbal) conversation between the dancers (as the expressive medium of the choreographer) and me. This Swan Lake was about more than Swan Lake.

Other reviews: here and here

Things that were sad: The ending

Things that were funny: The Mother’s opening monologue, the booty-shaking in tutus

Things that were not funny: the music levels were irritatingly inconsistent

Who should see it:  people who admit they don’t understand ballet, people who think they do understand ballet

What we did on the way home: argued over mostly passable tapas at a highly recommended spot nearby; it was uncomfortably noisy. Also, I sat in a draft.

I saw "Matilda"

What I saw: Matilda

What I wore: boots, tights, a denim skirt, and mascara that ran in the rain

What I did beforehand: ate the candy I found in my purse (I jacked it from someone's office when I visited last week)

Who went with me: about a thousand strangers, some with children

How I got tickets: online, full price

Why I saw this show: while my favorite Roald Dahl book now is “Danny, Champion of the World,” when I was a kid I read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” over and over. I would start at bedtime, knowing I could not stop reading until all the golden tickets had been found. I read many positive things about "Matilda" as a show, specifically the music and production. I agree that the music is much, much better than typical successful Broadway shows, and the production is exciting and engaging. Matilda is one of Dahl’s darker books, with many cruelties inflicted on the main character and her classmates. 

Where I sat: Row G, center, on the aisle. I met people who'd come from Philadelphia by train and barely made it on time, and a woman and her daughter from Hawaii. The ushers made efforts in the run-up to curtain telling people to move their coats and tuck away their bags, sometimes revisiting the same people with new issues. Indeed, the actors run into the audience frequently, and I reflexively tucked my feet under me as they ran past. I wondered a number of times how hard it would be to trip them.

Things that were sad: Matilda is emotionally abused by her parents at home and her headmaster at school. The bullies are buffoonish, and their insults are delivered for laughs. The "good ending" involves a lot of nasty revenge. 

Things that were funny: there are a lot of zingers in this very funny show. Early on, Matilda’s selfish mother defensively screeches, "Dinners don't microwave themselves!!" The woman next to me snorted with laughter at almost everything uttered by the character of Miss Trunchbull, broadly over-acted by the hilarious scene-stealer, Christopher Sieber; as it happens, the woman from Hawaii and I kept setting each other off with peals and snorts of more laughter.

Things that were not funny: I got clocked in the head by a leg or arm just as the funny line, "Dinners don't microwave themselves!!" was delivered. I gather that the restless child behind me was being passed from the lap of one parent to the other. There were many children in the audience, not all of them quiet. Wine and candy were offered beforehand and at intermission, and the Skittles were $5.

What it is: a very, very good musical. Songs and dancing are truly superlative. Regrettably shouty, though, which seems to be a Broadway thing. I thought the accents were uneven, contributing to diction problems, especially from the large cast of otherwise amazing kids, and it was particularly distracting in the opening number. I realize that Roald Dahl was English but I've always thought of him as an American writer. The accents seem unnecessary. 

Who should see it: Wannabe Wednesday Addamses, Sally of Halloween Town, anyone who appreciates a weird and wonderfully wicked story, people who can tolerate the ruinous quality of over-amplified singing. I would like to see it again, and next time get a souvenir cup of wine.

What I saw on the way home: a menacing number of NYPD marching up the bike lane on 8th Avenue, looking for all the world like drunken sports fans making their way to their cars, staggering away from the stadium where they just witnessed the disappointment of a tie game.

I saw "Avenue Q"

I had this idea that if I gave myself a more structured assignment for writing in 2016 it would be easier. I am a bubbling fountain of ideas that are theoretically valid and probably actually ridiculous. Maybe like it’s a chocolate milk fountain.

My goal is to see a show in New York every week, and post on Thursdays. Or, almost every week, because you never know. Do I need to explain why a chocolate milk fountain is a bad idea? Stickiness and spoilage are probably the two primary reasons. These might come in handy as reasons why almost any of my ideas is bad. Or should I say, “are bad?”

What I saw: Avenue Q

What I wore: dirty jeans and Danner boots

What I did beforehand: ate ramen

Who went with me: the Graduate

How I got tickets: online, the day before, full price

Why I saw this show: because people ask me if I’ve seen it

Where did I sit: the front row, on the end. It was a bit too close because the puppets never made eye-contact with us.

Things that were sad: (see end)

Things that were funny: (see end)

Things that were not funny: the character whose main comedic attribute was her Asian accent, or her two master’s degrees, or her name; the gentle joy of puppets talking about racism amongst friends, as if white supremacy was a Whoopsy!-side-effect rather than the product of hundreds of years of coordinated oppressive effort.

But, hey, whatev. You can have drinks during the show.

The theater (New World Stages) is in a “Cineplex beaten into a theaterplex;” it has two bars, plenty of women’s bathrooms (I shouldn’t have to comment about this, but I will), and the ambiance of a Futureland amusement park gift shop lobby.

What it is: a funny, snarky musical, conceived about 12 years ago, masterfully executed by a lively cast of talented singing actors, some of whom can do puppets, and a couple of whom can do one puppet and voice another puppet also onstage at the same time. Lots of singing pop songs about the indignities of young adulthood, with puppets. Avenue Q is set on an imaginary street in a make-believe Brooklyn-ish place and has simulated sex acts between puppets and puppet nudity, and some cussing, but not, like, a whole fucking lot of it.

Who should see it: grown-up people who like funny musicals, and people who don’t know what schadenfreude is.

While we laughed a lot, I left feeling like the show is a little dated, though certainly not in subject matter. None of the young people portrayed carried a smartphone all the time, and I felt like the show was missing a song about Snapchat or Tinder.

One of the women next to us has seen it three times. At intermission, her guest pinched the cocktail waiter on the butt, and then told him she needed to pinch the other side so it wouldn’t be jealous. He had a man-bun and a smartphone in his hand, with one of those white square dongles for paying by credit-card swipe, and as he slid past another row of potential customers, uttered the best line of the night, to people behind me, who were not ordering drinks: “It’s ok. I see you’re carefully avoiding eye-contact.”

racler (Fr.): to scrape

Two Sundays ago, a twenty-something friend of mine looked out across the dinner table and said, to no one in particular, “Granny told me she’s ‘Feelin’ theBern.’”

Her mother, Granny’s daughter, turned to another twenty-something-year-old at the table, and asked him which candidate he liked.

I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of, “I like Bernie, and I think Bernie can win.”

It has been in my neighborhood for many weeks.

A week later, we had been invited to have raclette at the home of a new friend.  We didn’t know anyone but the host, but conversation had been lively, and limited to the two ends of the long table until one person spoke up in a lull. A funny and outspoken woman at the other end wanted to hear who was supporting Rand Paul. Or was it Huckabee? I can’t remember which one it was. One of the Republicans. Not Christie, or Trump or Fiorina. Maybe Carson, or Cruz. Everyone stared at her in silence. She kept listing candidates. More silence. No takers.

Cruz was dismissed by multiple people as, “ineligible.”

Kasich, someone said, “is a religious kook.”

As to Trump, another outspoken guest declared, “I know Donald Trump. I’ve had the misfortune to have dealings with him. He doesn’t care for me, either.”

“But,” she continued, “He has a real problem with the truth.”

Someone made a joke about Santorum.

A Frenchman, seated near me, asked, “Is the United States a democracy or a république?”

I may have my first 2016 resolution: More Cheese, Less Politics

— Hamster d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) January 21, 2016

Once the list of Republicans had been exhausted, we got to the meat of the matter; this was Westchester, after all. There are about twice the number of active, registered Democrats as Republicans here.

Someone said with palpable irritation that Bernie Sanders’ candidacy was "unrealistic."  The woman who knows Trump said, after gathering everyone’s attention and promising three excellent solutions, “I just want it to be Biden. Or Kerry. Or Gore.” She paused between each name to let each of her nominees be invited, arrive, and take a seat.

Supportive murmurings rippled around the table, heads nodding with subtle restraint.

Clouds and Rainbows

This morning everyone on Facebook is talking only of David Bowie, who died yesterday. I’ve yet to see people so much of one mind before. His life of public self-reinvention means there will be mourners for each of his many, glamorous, sometimes androgynous selves.

I loved David Bowie because you knew if it was OK for him to be David Bowie it was just fine to be yourself

— shut up, mike (@shutupmikeginn) January 11, 2016

Writing anything more than tweets is still hard for me. It did not get easier last year, even with the deadline regular blog posts. It was only a resolution I had made. By the end of the year I was digging up and revising old things, just to meet the deadline, or miss it by a day. This year seems to have started without me; I’ve barely sat down to write.

My corner of Westchester is tamed and tended but craggy with low, tree-hairy hills. Between those bristling prominences are noisy valleys of highway or silent reservoirs that slake the thirst of New York City, downstream. Jagged rocks the size of houses lurk in the forest and make appearances shouldering the roads. The trees are bare because it’s January, though we’ve yet to have any of the deep cold of last year. I think the trees here are mostly oak and maple and beech, but there are also black birches and shagbark hickory and sycamore. There are eastern pines and hemlocks, and a kind of spruce I’m not sure about. If I can name some of the trees, I feel like I should name the boulders and geologic forces that put them there, but I can’t.

It is the same way with the sky.

I like the sky. I know it. I see it every day. I look at what color it is. Sometimes it is prison gray. Other times it is bright blue. I look at the sky and notice the sunlight, or the clouds. I know the dotty tide of clouds that signal a change in weather, and recognize the looming of a storm cloud. But I don’t know the names of clouds, just like I don’t know the rocks.

I’ve wasted much of my adulthood not knowing clouds and being ignorant about rocks. I can tell the downy from the red-bellied woodpeckers in my yard, and the eastern red cedar from a hemlock tree, but all last year I took pictures of clouds and never once in 77 Tumblr posts did I find out what sort of clouds they were.

I drive from the new house to the new barn almost every day, winding through the reservoirs. Some of the shallower, more protected corners of the water are frozen over, so the mute swans have congregated in flocks in still-open waters. They are big and white and more likely to be floating than flapping their great wings and rising into flight. From the distance of the road, they look harmless and decorative as marshmallows floating in the gray-black cocoa water. The waters are all theirs. The state lists them as an invasive species.

On the coldest mornings, the sun is brilliant in the east, illuminating the trees still white with frost and enticing the open water to expel a layer of mist rising like flames of fog. I feel connected to my past by a strong, thin line on a map, and look forward to the friendly mist of calm of the new barn.

I like the new barn. I am making friends. I am learning a lot. I am one of the newer clients and the most inexperienced dressage rider. I timidly contact the barn manager about scheduling changes, apologizing for ordinary requests so much that I embarrass myself. I still feel like I’m in other people’s way when I ride in the ring. My horse stumbled and almost face-planted one day and I felt like I scared everyone. Saturday I got bucked off my young horse, about whose freshness I had been careless; though I was unhurt, as I walked across the ring to get the naughty gelding from the spot where he halted square, reins wrapped around his neck, looking astonished and guilty, I have never more keenly felt my awkward new kid status.

When I got home, I found my husband on the driveway with the dogs. I parked and joined them. We walked around the yard talking and thinking about future plans. All of Mrs.Gardenwinkle’s original landscaping is now 30 years old and mature. Stopping by the three large evergreens by the driveway, we mulled over the relative merits of planting more evergreens near the property line. I looked up into the tree closest to me, a cedar, and could see a length of broken Christmas lights, at least ten feet up. I stopped listening to my husband and traced the broken strands of lights all the way around the tree.

The next day when the rain stopped we went out to walk the dogs and right when we got back in the house the sky opened up with an onslaught of heavy rain flowed by hail. The light-filled kitchen was lit a surreal green. Our youngest came downstairs, uncharacteristically excited to get us outside to look at the sky. We followed, and saw a bright rainbow arced over the woods below our house, and behind us, the sun, setting in a now-clear royal blue sky.

I came in and got ready to take a shower. Checking Facebook, I saw that my old Seattle friends were all reacting to some sort of football kick. My new barn friends were posting their shots of the rainbow.