Italics are mine

On Twyla Tharp's Creative/Collaborative Habit

I recently re-read Twyla Tharp's Creative Habit, which is the single most valuable book on artistic creativity I've ever read (I first bought it in hardcover when it first came out in 2003, I was still in Cambridge back then), and then I finally bought her sequel Collaborative Habit, which is not as good as the first one but interesting nonetheless for someone like me fascinated by her career, although the reader does have to get over the fact that the paperback version of Collaborative Habit seems to be printed on the cheapest, thinnest version of see-through recycled paper you can find on the market today, almost as if someone at the publisher's had wanted to insult Tharp. 

Back in 2003, reading Creative Habit is how I learned that an exceptionally talented woman named Twyla Tharp existed and created amazing choreographies. A few years later, in February 2008, I saw the musical she choreographed on Billy Joel's songs, Movin' Out, when the tour stopped by the Zoellner Arts Center in Bethlehem, PA. And now I'm back going through her teachings again and finding new nuggets of wisdom at every line. I hope she'll update her autobiography at some point - her initial attempt, Push comes to shove, which dates from 1992, has long gone out of print and does not include her most recent works. Judging by The Collaborative Habit, she would have a lot of great material to update her autobiography with, and maybe that should be her next book priority. 

The specificity of her recommendations in Creative Habit really shows her worth as one of the most groundbreaking artists of our time. Every single piece of advice in that book feels fresh and helpful, even to me who has been hyper-creative for a long time and have long built my own creative practice. (More on that some other day.) I particularly liked her advice of writing and reflecting upon your creative autobiography, with very specific questions to help you understand why you create what you create, and her account of starting each project with a box to put all her research materials in. This is something I've ended up doing myself without knowing other people did it too, to keep track of the prep work I've done for my novel without mixing it with my other stuff. She also makes good comments on the way she reads when she researches a project (with connections from one book to the next) and on some well-publicized choreographic failures she's had. Her explanations of what went wrong were very incisive. (Hint: constraints are sometimes good for you.) Tharp is not someone who comes across as "warm and fuzzy"; yet she appears deeply caring about her dancers and creating the best dances she can for them.

Here is a link to an article published in The New York Times about her fifty years of choreography.

Below, two YouTube videos of Movin' Out, one about the premiere at the Richard Rodgers theater in October 2002 and the other about a PBS special with highlights of the show. Enjoy!

Fifteen years: New York, Montreal

Not too long ago it occurred to me that this month marks the 15th anniversary of my discovering New York City. Yes, I remember things like that. It was on a weekend trip organized by the European Club back when I was in graduate school. At the time I couldn't have known the importance NYC would later play in my life, and frankly I wasn't particularly taken by the city the first time I went. I liked it enough, but the trip didn't kindle any specific dreams of moving there. (This might sound incredible given my love of performing arts, but mostly on that first visit I felt that Manhattan was a crowded tourist trap. It wasn't until I returned to NYC in the fall of 2004 that I started loving the city.) 

I remember that for that first trip we stayed at the Vanderbilt YMCA on 47th Street. One night we ended up at the bar of a restaurant nearby where we had frozen margaritas, and I couldn't understand the concept of a frozen drink. (Bubbly is usually my go-to drink... Don't you ever freeze my prosecco.) I have many more vivid memories of that trip - curiously, since it has been followed by many other trips, to New York City and elsewhere, but I can tell you a lot more about that trip than I can of many trips I took more recently.

For instance, I remember that we had great weather that Saturday and ended up strolling through Times Square, but the following day surprised us with snow (and not just a little bit of it), so we all ended up at the old MoMA - this was before the renovation and before the onslaught of tourists - where we enjoyed a quiet Sunday afternoon with great art and great company. I also remember, because it seemed like the perfect scene in a NYC movie, that we stopped by a Dunkin' Donuts nearby (the one on East 46th St?) to warm up and avoid the snowfall. And on Saturday we had also strolled through the Village near NYU and were supposed to meet with other people from the group but they were waiting at West Broadway and we were waiting at Broadway (or was it the reverse?) so we never connected. People didn't have cell phones in those days. Or at least not us.

The last thing I remember about this trip is wandering into the now defunct Borders on Park Avenue, and for years when I found myself in that part of NYC I would often stroll through the many floors of that store and I wouldn't say I thought about my first NYC trip every time but that first trip certainly was a big reason why I often returned to that store, although there were better bookstores elsewhere in the city.

About three months later, I discovered Montreal for the jazz festival, on a trip organized by the Graduate Student Council. (Another bus trip.) I was thinking about Montreal the other day because I'll be going to a conference there in a few weeks - another great city, and unsurprisingly - being French - I love the food. I still listen sometimes to the albums I bought there. We went to the museum of fine arts and wandered into a creperie (in a different part of town) and the food turned out to be delicious. Later when I returned for a conference I ended up by coincidence in the very same creperie. I'll have to look up the name if I find the place again and post it here. Good memories there too, and the crepes were still delicious. 

Details of later trips are all blurry now - I've traveled a lot in the past fifteen years - but those trips were the first two trips I took after moving to the US, and how well I remember them surprises even myself. I guess they also mark the beginning of my wanderlust, since I wasn't much of a traveler before. It's telling it all started with a trip to NYC and the most French city in North America... Hoping that I discover many more cities in the next fifteen years!

Old Vic production of "The Crucible"

(Photo credit: Old Vic.) I've seen a lot of plays - many live, some in movie theaters, especially at the Coolidge Corner cinema. I love theater. I like to think I know what makes a play memorable and perhaps have a bit more discernment than most when it comes to evaluating a production. I've seen some remarkable live theater, such as Death of a Salesman with the late Philip Seymour Hoffmann on Broadway. Yet, nothing prepared me for the sheer, stunning magnificence of the Old Vic production of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", which I've seen thanks to Digital Theatre. (I can never be grateful enough for the performing arts productions they've made available to people like me around the world!)

It is a tough play to watch, because of course Miller's play isn't really about the Witches of Salem but about McCarthyism and jealous, vengeful or simply clueless denunciations wrapped in the aura of saintliness and good citizenship. Rumors. Girls who want to detract attention from a tiny little thing they did and one who wants revenge. People who convince themselves that the lies of those girls are the truth and soon have too much at stake to accept they've been manipulated. The inexorable progression of the play toward the destruction of its hero, John Proctor, played brilliantly by Richard Armitage.

Even now, "The Crucible" remains chilling - and the Old Vic production unleashes the full force of the play with extraordinary acting, breathtaking visuals (lots of black and grey with a touch of light/fire, gorgeous contrasts) and extraordinary acting. After watching it online, I don't even know if I'll bother seeing it live again. Nothing can possibly beat the Old Vic production. I saw the play live once performed by the Lehigh University Department of Theatre and the students were very good, but of course the Old Vic is in a category of its own. The Crucible makes you think about people lie to each other today and identify "witches" to go after in an attempt to hide their real actions, or simply settle a score. The play remains as timely today as it was decades ago. If you're a subscriber to the New Yorker, you can read Arthur Miller's 1996 article on why he wrote The Crucible here. Enjoy.

Signs of spring

In the ten years I spent in Bethlehem, PA, the first sign of spring was always marked by the re-appearance of Harley-Davidsons on the road. Spring in Cambridge, MA has been slow to come this year, but last week the ice finally melted on the Charles River, helped by a few speedboats on Thursday that seemed to be the exact same speedboats supervising college rowers the next morning. (Dedication!) This weekend, a few sailboats tried out the waters too. Today, I saw my first 2015 Duck Tour Boat in the river. Yes, the warmer days are finally upon us, even if we're talking about 45F today. Balmy, after the snow and the wind chills we've had...

"Red Army" movie

You may think the Red Army movie is a movie about hockey (it is, after all, about the national Soviet hockey team), but you would be wrong. It is about resilience under adversity, determination, society, and politics. Hockey was the most popular male sport in the Soviet Union and thus played a key role in the Soviet Communist Party strategy to demonstrate the superiority of their political model, but the players also had to deal with a terrible, mean coach supported by the Party after their good one - a genius at strategy - was removed for a trifle, the temptation to defect to America, the Party's insistence that they should turn over most of their wages to their cash-starved country when they played abroad while the Soviet Union began to collapse and the difficulty for those who made the transition to the West to adapt to new ways of playing (read: brute-force playing instead of strategic and dazzling) and American hostility... capped by a transformative decision by the coach of the Detroit Red Wings, Scotty Bowman, to hire all five of the top Russian/ex-Soviet players so that they could play again exactly as they had in the Soviet Union for which they had won two Olympic Gold medals, and thus bringing the Stanley Cup twice to Detroit.

The movie centers around Slava Fetisov, longtime captain of the Soviet team, whose steadfastness in spite of adversity truly inspired me, and four of his teammates, who made one of the most successful teams in hockey history. It is hard to put in words how much I admire Fetisov for the difficult, courageous stances he took throughout his career. After many years abroad, he returned to Russia at the request of the president and is now a successful politician.

I don't know the first thing about hockey, but left the Kendall Cinema inspired by this remarkable team. Amazing.