Thrombotic Twyla

29 March 2008. A whirl, a swirl, flirtatious teasing tones, and you’re inside NIGHTSPOT… eloquently garish, hibiscus red-bright on a darkened stage. Bawdy bravado; pure genius.

Twyla Tharp’s premiere modern ballet had it debut in Miami this weekend, and the innuendo’s just kept coming —limbs, thighs, torsos enmeshed, arms tangling, going into, coming out of, a red stream of cloth, a cat house bed, or a circus banner, take your pick. Tharp’s evocative chorography is about body alignment, changing directions quickly and the Miami Ballet cast was superb. All through people were attracted to one another, attracted to people they shouldn't be, channeling into the darker side of a clubbing lifestyle. Torrid one-nighters, and then beginning again — with a flamboyant strut.

A sense of Cirque du Soleil along with sleazy jazz, splashes of classical, cocky calypso and boisterous horns, flaunting, taunting. Most of the 32- piece orchestra was on stage, a band in the pit, swaggering, bold punk, daring: conquest. I’d not heard of Elvis Costello before, not in a classical sense, not as a master of all tones and hues and shades scored into music.

Nightspot is Ms. Tharp’s vision of Miami as a thrombotic after hours cruise where Latin, rock and classical meet, and where men and women turn up for (entirely heterosexual) scenes of temperament, flirtation, bouts and reconciliation. At the Ziff Ballet Opera House in the Arsht Center, there were whoops and cheers. All deserved for a stunning performance.

Death, Dreams and the Maiden

Come back, Carole.

On your birthday, January 3, my friend Sharon posted my first blog. I cried most of the day, too distracted to make heads or tails of it … our sisterhood cut short, our manuscript only half of itself without you. I need you here, to complete what we started …what we began but could not finish together.

You still come in dreams with that bright smile of yours. Just days ago I hugged and hugged you, you standing in the living room in front of a grandmother clock that doesn’t work, you in a long beige linen dress and a funky shmatelich hat with flappy cloth plumes of beige and brown, matching your dress. You tall and elegant: zany and stately, blending the two like no other.

I called out to my husband, “Look she is really back, come see Carole … .” But he was in the shower and could not hear me; my own gruff voice, hoarse from screaming, awakened me … and you were gone again, my sister.

First Blog Ever!

Writing is a passport, a journey born from the crevices of brainstuff, a constant bloodletting going into and coming from.

Motion. Solitude. Action. Desperation.

Why then do we subject ourselves to its elements, those cursed, mottled ideas, afloat, motherless, untethered, waiting to be reigned in, corralled into what? Attainment of exactly what as we slouch towards Bethlehem?

We BLOG!