June 3 2013

Don Juan in Tech Rehearsal February 2013. Photo: Manuel Rotenberg. Dancers: Dancers of the San Diego Ballet. The second movement starts with a motif adagio step that is repeated in canon. The Women from the Past leave and are replaced by Don Juan's vision of the "Ideal", seen entering at the rear.

Daily Stuff:  Went to the San Diego SCPA and did a workshop for In The Heights. Two more to go. We reviewed the opening number and came up with some more base movement for the numbers 96,000 and Carnival de Barrio. Had quite a few absent, so I let them go early.

Then came to the studio to do a bit of office work. That's about it.

So back to the Arts Engagement story from yesterday...

After the trip to the AjA Project, I took a little tour of Vicki Leon's studio.

Vicki was also a Creative Catalyst fellow and her project had to to with creating pieces that refracted light. She has a lovely studio near Azalea Park (and sells jewelry as well, so go buy some earrings and support her). It was nice to talk with her about her process, both in life and art.

She is involved with an interesting initiative pairing artists with scientists. It was very cool.

At one point, she mentioned that certain ideas regarding art were being identified by the scientists and being given female names (Marilyn, Lucy, etc). My inner feminist popped up and bristled a bit. Only because too often I hear about the idea that we all have feminine and masculine sides. Too often anything that is "mysterious" or non quantifiable is designated as feminine. Which in the minds of scientists becomes a bit less "real" or "important." So that if work is being done and all of these female terms are being used, there is going to be a perception (due to prejudice) that the work is of lesser importance in real world application. It is not fair to either artists or women. So I told her that there should at least be one token male identifier (Joe or Ricky perhaps) just to keep people from falling into old habits.

Then she showed me her sandblaster :)

For more info on Vicki and her work, visit http://www.vickileonartist.com