I'm sorry! I just don't GET IT.

Art, is a finicky, slippery, fish of a thing.

Some people love it! Crave it! Marinate and savor it!

Other people want to toss it back into the ocean where it undoubtedly belongs.

Still others are somewhere in the between. Taking it as they find it, but not always overtly seeking it out.

Well, jokes on you, Still Others, because art is EVERYWHERE. Your beloved Super Bowl commercials? That was someone's artistic marketing dream! The jingle of your go-to oil changery? That was borne of a musician's heart! The color scheme of your CPA's office? Yeah, someone said to herself, "These commercial business chairs will look alright with this commercial business carpet, and this wall hanging from Staples is fine."

Art is, delightfully, everywhere.

(Here is comes...)

BUT.

The trickiest misconception about art is that you have to, you know get it. Understand it. It has to mean something to you every time. And here's the thing. It might not.

SUPERBOWL XXLMNOP or Boston Dance as a Spectator Sport

I like to think that I studied dance in its classical age. You went to the studio. You took classes. You wore a leotard and tights and maaaaaybe a ballet skirt if your teacher was feeling generous. You had a recital. You FINALLY got on pointe and were thrilled to brag to all your non-dancer friends about your blisters. When people asked what sport you played after school, you smartly answered, "dance."

It was toward the end of my high school career that competition dance was settling into place. As a retired cheerleader, I knew the thrill, I knew the drill. It was novel to take our recital dance from last year and get a trophy for it! We were no longer a class, but a team, and we had prevailed over the adversaries! Still for me, my favorite part of dance was that, well, it wasn't a sport. There were no statistics. There were no teams to beat. Aside from the snarky looks you'd get from the super trinas when you fell out of a double pirouette, dance class was not a competition.

This photo is from 2003. My dear friend Kate is currently minutes away from having her PhD. I'm sure if they saw her performance in "The Gods Love Nubia" Berkeley would have given it to her on arrival.

Here's what you might not know about me. I started dancing when I was thirteen years old. True, I took ballet and tap as a tiny tot but my family moved and we never found a dance studio in time to continue lessons. I stayed busy. I became one hell of a pee-wee soccer goalie, which I no sooner left behind to focus squarely on being captain of my pop warner cheerleading squad. It was only after going to a friend's dance recital in seventh grade that I was like, "oh yeah! that's what I'd like to do!"

So maybe that's where my disinterest in competition stems from. The fact that the formative years of my dance career were spent playing catch up to the "older girls" at my studio, who were all actually around my same age. I was in a constant competition with myself. To do better than I had the day before. To learn all the things in a few weeks that those other girls had learned over the course of a few years. To prove that just because I was untrained didn't mean I was bad. TO DO GODDAMN PICKUPS ACROSS THE FLOOR. And that was enough competition for me. I didn't need rhinestones down my part or matching jackets with our names on the sleeves to feel like I was a part of something. Because at the end of a class, at the end of an afternoon of classes, I knew that I was improving, and that I was doing something cool. It felt good to make progress and to keep up with combinations and across-the-floors. It felt good to dance. 

AND SO FINALLY, we grow up and go to college and we dance around Boston and aside from Dance Moms and SYTYCD and little girls in two piece leotards with 12-pack abs and tilt kicks, THE COMPETITION IS FINALLY OVER.

Or is it?

A Post about Process, Or: Why We Painted our Faces

There are some pieces that you'd like to make. You get a fun idea; a quirky movement pops into your head; you're inspired by a new song. With time and oh, I guess some effort, you end up building a pretty great dance around it.

And then there are some pieces that you HAVE to make. Ideas you need to get out of you. Thoughts, concepts and dare I say, emotions that are so stuck, so stagnant, that you actually, viscerally need to expunge them from your body, before they suffocate you.

And in this case, the word "expunge" is an SAT-level euphemism for DANCE.

That's where "Severely, Sincerely" came from.

:DANCE BREAK:

MAKE STUFF - Pastel Geometric Nails

About a year ago, I was so not into nail art. Amy started long before I did, and I would always look at her masterpieces and think, "well, like most things Amy does, that is artful and interesting, but I just don't know where she finds the time to be spectacular in this way, in addition to being practically perfect in every other way, too."

But then I bought a real pretty robin's egg blue color .... and then a neat, weird yellow ... and then one day, I did a very simple design: half one color, half the other.

AND SUDDENLY I WAS HOOKED.

So, even the phrase 'nail art' makes me feel sooo uuuber ultra girly, which has never been my lot in life (I know, I know -- this website is VERY pink). But dude, why was I passing on an opportunity to have another little bit of art in my life? Why not have a little painting on my fingertips? My pal Steph and I went to a beauty supply shop and got this striping tape. You can get the effect with normal tape as well -- I've used painter's tape in the past -- but then you have to cut it up, which doesn't always end up even. Which could be fun! Get nuts, get wild.

TIPS

WAIT FOR FOREVER
You gotta be crazy patient, or the tape will peel up the wrong layers. I usually paint the bottom layer one day, and then the top coat the next, and then let that sit for at least a half hour before removing the tape. Luckily, your nails aren't wet during this time, so you can still be a useful and productive human while you wait.

LEAVE SOME SPACE
When you lay down the tape, leave a little bit on each side of your nail. This should poke out after you paint over it, so that you'll be able to grab it and pull it off.

SUPPLIES

• striping tape!
• about three colors for the peek-a-boo design (I recommend three pastels! I did red this time and kinda wish I hadn't ... once I did lavender, yellow, and robin's egg blue, and that was the bizniz)
• one top-coat color (I like white in these bright summah months)

MAKE STUFF - neon rope earrings

Last week I had three days where I was in a funk. I didn't even want to email people or design any posters or list any events on local websites. It was terrible and confusing. I momentarily considered the possibility that I might have had mononucleosis for the third time.

Anyway I DID NOT HAVE MONO thank goodness. (By the way, I didn't even get to kiss anybody either time that I had it.) I suddenly snapped out of my funk, dono why or how, but continued drinking the amount of coffee that I had adopted mid-funk, so now I've got alllll thissss energy! So I did all my emailing and designing and listing, and then asked 'what else, self?? what else can I do?? and don't say prepare for school, which is starting in September, because I really don't wanna do that.' And my self responded, "MAKE STUFF!"

OKAY!

A few months ago, I made these rope-look earrings out of twine. The problem is that they kind of look like they're made out of human hair, which is maybe what you're into, and that's fine, but it isn't quite my look. I bought all this neon cord back when I was choreographing something that involved faux tin can telephones, and I figured I could redo the earrings with some more obviously artificial materials.

Here's what I did! Follow along at home youguys!

Dance Making - Stay Away

A few years ago, I started writing songs. It's fun, and a nice counterpart to making dances. One thing I've done a few times is take a song I've written and worked from the words I wrote to make a dance to go along with the song. I take individual words and turn them into a piece. This is definitely not something unique to me as a mover, but I thought perhaps somebody would find it useful to see my thought process.



Things I enjoy about making dance phrases this way:

• the mood of the movement almost automatically fits the mood of the piece
• not that I'll necessarily use the song. But it's good to be able to translate the vibe of a musical piece into dance. I think I learn a little more about it that way.
• it's easier to remember over long periods of time
• it gets me to create shapes I normally wouldn't get to. Or, if I would maybe create them normally, I probably wouldn't isolate them as special if not for this exercise.

My process:

1. Write a song. I did that part a few months ago.
2. Go through the song and write down the 2 or 3 word phrases that struck me as being more vibrant.
3. Go through the song again and, for each phrase chosen in Step 2, write down another phrase from the song that seemed connected in some way. The connection need not be in the context of the song.
4. For each pair of phrases, draw a little picture. The picture is somehow related to the two phrases. but perhaps in a way that wouldn't automatically make sense to somebody else.
5. Make a movement based on each set of two phrases their matching picture. The movement could be related to the group visually or based on meaning. Or it could be a softer connection that's more difficult to explain. In any case, I usually try not to think about the original meaning of these things in the song during this step.

It may seem a little strange to purposefully ignore the original song from step to step, but in some ways I want to get further away from it in my cognizant brain. I think that the things the song brings up to me are an important part of what the song is actually about. So through this process, I try to get at those things.

Here are the phrases and picture that I came up with: 

Of course it isn't too important, but I like to write things in pleasing ways. It makes the whole process a little meatier.




What I did:
I'm going to show you a few of the movements that I created and explain where they came from. Then I'll show you the phrase.


BODY'S FINE - DRESSED UP - CUTE LITTLE DUDE IN A TOP HAT

This is related to its trio in two ways. First of all, you may notice I'm making a sort of top hat gesture with my arms. Secondly, I wanted to be presentational with my body, using a pose-like posture to represent the idea that the phrases were about body and clothing.




FEARED - PUT AWAY - BASEMENT STAIRCASE

Here I climb down my body with my fore-arms. I suppose the influence of the stairs is obvious. I also thought that doubling up my body nicely represented the ideas of fear and putting something away.






YOU'RE NICE - NICE CLOTHES - PAPER TAG

To show the 'nice-ness,' I wanted to be very open. Then I kept angles, straight lines, and corners to keep the shape of a rectangular clothing tag.









The Phrase:
So, here's the phrase itself! It's certainly still in progress. This was the work of very little time. I did find some movements I think are worthwhile and that I'd like to continue prying into.