Man Dancing

Ah, men dancing together! Such controversy!

A girl enters the stage. Another girl enters from the other side. The audience thinks "How nice. Aren't they pretty. Just like that gauzy ballet calendar I had when I was 13."

A man enters the stage. Another man enters from the other side. Unless they start circling each other, like the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story, the audience begins to feel uneasy. "What if they actually start to dance with each other. What if they touch!?!"

Silly isn't it? Well?

Two guys dancing with each other is just that. Nothing more, nothing less.



At this point, in SONNETS the men take centerstage. Each guy has a chance to do a small (a couple of steps) solo. Beginning with Askar. When he is done...



Pali comes in. Followed by the rest of the guys.



As you can see each guy gets to show off in his own special way.



Once all 5 guys are onstage, they do a series of jumps, turns, and slides in unison. There is also some partnering involved. There really isn't any great subtext here. It is slightly competitive, but also very collegial. The music that accompanies this piece is not particularly rhythmic. So the dancers just need to memorize the piece in terms of musical occurances. Big chord... Musical run... Boom... Boom... Boom. So getting a group of 5 to do this just means alot of repetition in rehearsal.



I love this picture because it looks as if I am not in the slightest bit interested. Actually I am looking at their reflection in the mirror. Because of the depth of the rehearsal room, it is often easier to get a view of the big picture by looking at the reflection of the dancers, rather than the dancers themselves. I also sometimes will do this thing called the "choreographic squint."

So back to the day-to-day today at the ballet. Today, we took company class with the extra added caveat that we had people observing. As part of Dance Place's mission, we want to make the process as transparent as possible. So we often have people watch. Today, we had some possible grantors to the building. So we will keep our fingers crossed. Afterwards, we drove an hour out (and an hour back) to do 2 educational outreach shows in Valley Center. Valley Center is in the rural part of San Diego, so I enjoy driving out there to go the fruit stands :)