Maurice Jarre, mort à Los Angeles des suites d’un cancer à l’âge de 84 ans dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche, est l’auteur de nombreuses musiques mythiques de films, parmi lesquels Docteur Jivago, Lawrence d’Arabie et Paris brûle-t-il ?.

metroscape

The hail line slashed through Philly yesterday just before 7pm in a magnificent display of colliding weather fronts. The clouds seemed to be battling for turf and it was all over in a loud few minutes. People were dashing for cover, their umbrellas merely sight gags. I was running late, so I got to watch instead of getting soaked before heading out to Verizon Hall. Walking along Delancey off 18th in the buildings ravine, the low hanging clouds parted on stratospheric whited plumes with slashing shafts of light worthy of Cecil B deMille depicting Calvary. The Mendelssohn Club crowd was not to be deterred from hearing a premiere by composer Jennifer Higdon and Verdi’s Requiem, even though they were ringing themselves out in the lobby. I love fierce weather.

lotday late

“Come on, we talk about budgets like they’re real.” Cookie Roberts putting it all in perspective when she is allowed to get a word in edgewise on This Week with George Stephanopolis.

Abigail Mentzer (PABdancer), Jeffrey Gribler (former principal PABdancer, current ballet master), me, Phil Colucci(former PABdancer & current med student)

Even a block of empty seats couldn’t dampen the spirit on the Forrest Theatre stage or in the audience as the dancers of the Pennsylvania Ballet. Directing for the second year, Jonathan Stiles, kept it fast moving and sleek. The mood seemed to address the recession with a show featuring minimal production design, great lighting and a choreographic thread of down-sized style and mucho communal spirit.

and then there were Brian Sanders comic interludes for some mondo bizarro.

This time Sanders reaching into the bowels of vaudeville for perhaps the crassest and most hilarious moment in SU&D history providing cosmic comic relief- let’s see how to put it, with his own laughing gas- during a classical pas de deux scored to Bach and titled ‘Air on the G String.’ Then to completely outdo himself hoisting the glorious Abigail Mentzer, supported her with a working third leg aparatus bringing a new meaning to the word en pointe. The man is unhinged, and fortunate for Abigail’s arabesque can still work his erector set.

Classical world

Dutoit’s esprit

Charles Dutoit, current chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, such an authoritative and relaxed presence that he brushes past any perception of organizational turmoil. He also catches the mood of the audience yearning for spring with a crowd pleasing program of Ravel, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, that met with a completely rapturous reception. He might not have fab maestro hair, but he has dancey, port de bra and like a great dancer seems like he is moving the musical air.

And the audience was immediately moved at the esprit and clarity of Ravel‘s ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin,’ in this performance, the players going for more than a pristine tableau. The vistas are so beautiful in ‘Tombeau’ that it is already a beatified tone poem. The orchestra builds its looming angularity and propulsion, with a swirling sense of discovery. This work illustrates many of the subtle strengths Dutoit brings to this Orchestra.

bloglog

I’m back. Computer woes. tech poltergeist on my laptop. I was writing a review of the new Fred Astaire bio and wanted to watch a bit of Flying Down to Rio which I had on disc and the screen just went blank. On Fred & Ginger!!! Contemplating the risk of months of journal entries lost and a revision of a play draft if I don’t get it back. I’m lacerating myself with guilt for not doing daily backups. I’m writing ‘I will backup’ 500 times on the side of my building. Have to rewrite the book review and don’t even remember reading the book, so I’m really screwed today. Merde!

d.entr

3.28.79

Driving on Rt. 322 in my Dodge hearing news of the evacuation of the area around Three Mile Island.

Could be a blur of memory but I’m recalling an incredibly sci-fi sunset and thinking that the inevitabile nuclear disaster was happening. For baby boomers, it loomed over us our whole lives after being terrified of ‘the bomb’.

3.28.09

Headed for the 17th annual Shut Up & Dance benefit for MANNA and flashing back to the very first one, a modest event at the old burlesque house, The Troc, literally sliding there with Jack and Liz Jordan in the middle of a January ice storm. I found out later that all the pipes froze in the theater that night, no makeup and no heat, and the dancers were freezing on that delapidated stage where so many legends were born.

lotd & wordswordswords

Sarah Palin, former journalism student, impugning the media at a Republican function for not sticking to the -Who-what-when-where-why- style of journalism she learned.

“And there was that media slant this go round,” she said. “And unless things change, the GOP had really better can stand together, ’cause we got that on the battlefield also. I call it like I see it and like I lived it on the campaign trail. Not complaining, but dealing with reality.”

The woman never disappoints. I guess she missed that class on clause symmetry, scrambled metaphors and run-on sentences.

metroscape

Some of the dancers of the Pennsylvania Ballet getting ready for the 17th Shut Up & Dance benefit for MANNA performed Saturday night at the Forrest Theater for one night only. The benefit features original choreography by the dancers themselves.

Right Before I met Vincent

or the unBeat

~the room was full of drunk poets and I don’t know what. (fr. Jonas Mekas NYdiary1958)

Right before I met Vincent
in 1959
the year Billie Holiday died

whose last performance I attended and
whose lifeand death hangs me out still.
I lean against the outcry mourning
the death of jazz singing
Pissed off and absurd we of
the Mercury lounge reading.
I hate NY readings when it turns into a bloodsport.

but we swigged it out

Jacko was there and
gCorso,

and Allen, of course, Burroughs (who invited

me) They were with me on

that stage back to front 7:30Read read read

by 7:40 (what is that line in AllAboutEve)

about there being a ‘MacBethish air.’7:45, my body, my heart, my flask.

TJean was past soused/Corsosososo,
& Gerald was doing the Malanga all night long, & had the best beats though everyone was too smashed to really drink it except Allen
diagonally always there was Allen

breathing heavy presided over the fallout

was the voice of wetbrain sobriety

& Leroi knew when to exit

a Columbia celebrawl/div>

some even took it as livingdead theater

more like a pissing match

it got ugly loving each other’s work

of loving each others work

we took off our dukes and

found out that we hated each other

after all. I was called a fouffyfaggot

repeatedly, and Allen kept laughing

he lives for stuff like that.

Hardly a put down, he was penciling

in the holes for Howl

Oh, those Beats

They really can be crashing bores

not to mention act like a bunch of pimpless whores

Kerouac yells to me

“You’re ruining American

Poetry O’Hara”

and I yell back

“That’s more than you fuckin’ ever did for it.”

So TiJean love, I’m not going to Frisco

…

I’m staying here

It’s going to be a bubonic plague of a summer

To say that
I hate everybody almost

as much as I hate myself would

be too dramaqueeny.

And
then John said fuck off you poseur

I stumbled over Allen’s busted sandal,

then dropped my shot and attempted an escape Gerald kept frugging as Edie looked on then I met Vincent there swaying on the sweaty threshold

he asked me to dance

Anyway and fell out the door with Gerald’s last verse flying in our ears like a bolt from Mercury