City Scene: Sunderland Club, Buenos Aires

Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I thought I have seen it all in terms of unorthodox approaches to solving everyday problems. But a recent trip to Buenos Aires disabused me from my imperial arrogance. The two photos above were taken at the legendary Sunderland Club, a neighborhood sports center where serious tango is danced on a seriously challenging floor of a basketball court (how it is possible to play basketball on that floor is another question). On the night that we visited, some 600 people packed into the hall to watch the final of an inter-milonga championship. To display a PowerPoint slide with the names of the finalist couples, the projector was suspended - extension cords, power strip and all - from a basketball net more or less above our heads. When I saw this, my heart hiccuped with nostalgia and I realized that we've been outplayed. Bow to the masters of temporary solutions, children!

Creative Mischief at the National Academy Museum

Tango steps sometimes lead in unexpected directions. Yesterday I spent a pleasant hour at the National Academy Museum and School on 5th Avenue and 89 Street, attending the Creative Mischief exhibition (see their Twitter feed and catalog in PDF). This is the fourth annual exhibition of the works contributed by over 170 students and faculty of the National Academy School. Since 2012, this exhibition has grown from a one-day, one-room show to an event that for nine days occupies the entire museum. And for a good reason: there is plenty of talent and originality on display and enough variety of media and genres to tease the eye and the mind. Kudos to the National Academy for cultivating a vibrant artistic community, to the selection committee for choosing a very entertaining set of bold and intriguing pieces, and to the authors for their fresh-off-the-easel works. Many thanks to Boris Svechinsky, a fellow tango student and one of the Creative Mischief's contributing authors, and Walter Perez, our tango teacher, for the invitation to this unexpectedly enjoyable and stimulating exhibition.

See photos of selected works under the cut.

Tango and Babushkas

Mariana Parma and Leonardo Sardella in 2013 production of Recuerdo Tango.
Photo from Mariela Franganillo Dance Company website. 

Yesterday I spent half a day attending a production of Recuerdo Tango, a show by the Mariela Franganillo Dance Company, this time performed at Kingsborough Community College, in far, far Brooklyn. In my graduate school years, I used to live in Sheepshead Bay and thought nothing of commuting every day to NYU, but now, after a decade spent living in Queens, that part of Brooklyn has become almost a different planet. And it is on that planet of Brighton Beach pensioners (and a few of their grandkids), Mariela & Co. have decided to perform their show, as a residency at On Stage At Kingsborough supported by the CUNY Dance Initiative. This production model has its upsides and downsides: without these residencies, the show would most likely have never been staged, but as a residency, it is performed only once (or very few times) and does not bring the performers any returns except for a chance to be on stage and receive public and media attention.

Last time Recuerdo Tango was performed in 2013 at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, which, besides being a much more accessible location, has long traditions, such as Inside the Actors Studio, a deliciously addictive and insightful series of interviews with well-known actors. You can watch Recuerdo Tango taped at Pace online: Act 1 and Act 2.

Yesterday’s production was performed by (almost) the same cast as in 2013: Leah Barsky, Hernan Brizuela, Carlos Cañedo, Ana Padron, Mariana Parma, Walter Perez, Leonardo Sardella, and Yaisuri Salamanca, with LA-based Marcos Questas stepping in as a guest artist to replace Diego Blanco. Four women and five men – and there lies the hook of the story, which features a series of vignettes about a love triangle unfolding over several decades against the backdrop of the New York City life. From office cubicles to a glitzy ballroom to a subway brawl, a bar fight or a domestic quarrel, to a shabby old café, a dark city street, or Central Park, the story flows with knowledge and humor through familiar city scenes. These scenes unfold both onstage and in video segments in the background, accentuated by the powerful performances of singer Sofia Tosello and accompanied by live music of piano, bandoneon, violin, and bass, which add another layer of complexity to the production.

Until recently I had been convinced that tango does not lend itself to a longer form than a ten-minute tanda or a three-minute exhibition. Too much of a good thing is not great, I thought, especially considering all those tropes and clichés with which stage tango has overgrown like an old ship with barnacles. But after seeing a recent production of “milonga” at the New York City Center, a wonderfully imaginative dance show based on tango choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and then Recuerdo Tango, I converted, noting with surprise that an hour-and-a half tango show can indeed successfully and pleasantly hold my attention.

Yesterday’s performance was thoroughly enjoyable, although it felt a touch more measured and calculated than the 2013 production, which was performed with delightful abandon. One big difference between the two shows was the audience: in the 2013 video, you can hear the audience at Pace applaud at appropriate moments, but good luck getting the Brighton Beach retirees to clap mid-show! On my way out of the theater I heard a couple of them say to each other, “Very pretty dancing, but I didn’t understand anything!” Oh well. Elderly Russian-speaking Jews are perhaps the most receptive audience for the guts-on-the-floor emotions of tango, but a dance trio on a subway train may be a little outside of their comfort zone. The babushkas were pleased though, judging by the vigorous applause after the show.

For me, this was yet another occasion to remind myself of the great good luck of having access to the concentration of talent and professionalism that the New York City tango performers and teachers have to offer. I wonder why this city cannot take them up on this offer more frequently and enjoy more of such shows and performances. It is also always fascinating to observe a transformation that occurs onstage to people you know: Yaisuri was the person who taught me my very first tango steps, Walter and Leonardo are my current teachers, Ana and Diego host the practica that I used to frequent, Mariela is a long-time host of another old haunt, and a few friends study or studied with Mariana, Hernan and Carlos.

On the bus on the way back, I overheard a creaky voice of an old woman speaking Russian: “We old folks ought to kiss every pebble here. I haven’t done anything for this country, but it gives me so much: SSI, cheap apartment, food stamps, Medicare, everything I need!” Wow, I thought, on Brighton Beach this is decidedly a minority view. I also doubt that anybody from my generation is in any danger of ever receiving the goodies from that bus philosopher's list. And I also reflected on my lean, yet somewhat structured existence as an office worker compared to the complete unpredictability and lack of security of a life as a dance performer. Perhaps it was not by accident that as I left my building on my way to the show, I saw on the ground a book with a missing cover and a title: Among the Brave. To brave folks then – and to the good memories of New York City!

Pre-show sidewalk oracle near my building.

Credits:

Recuerdo Tango, The Mariela Franganillo Company, May 2, 2015

Directors: Mariela Franganillo and Bob McAndrew

Assistant Choreographer: Cecilia Saia

Music Director: Pedro Giraudo

Musicians: Emilio Teubal (piano), Juan Pablo Jofre (bandoneon), Nick Danielson (violin)

Vocalist: Sofia Tosello

Dancers: Leah Barsky, Hernan Brizuela, Carlos Cañedo, Ana Padron, Mariana Parma, Walter Perez, Leonardo Sardella, Yaisuri Salamanca 

Guest Artist: Marcos Questas

Design: Barry Steele
Lighting: Jimmi Lawlor

Production Manager: Calvin Anderson

Leviathan: Hallucinations, Health, and Power

William Blake. Behemoth and Leviathan, 
from Illustrations to the Book of Job (1826).
Image from Encyclopedia Mythica.

Yesterday I made an attempt to see Andrey Zvyagintsev's new film, Leviathan, praised by the critics and already collecting various prizes and accolades. I wanted to form my own opinion about it, but knew enough about the movie to expect that it might be difficult to sit through, so I planted myself in an aisle seat of the penultimate row at the Film Forum.

At 6:30 pm the screening began with five or ten minutes of previews. At 7:25 pm I was at West 4 subway station, waiting for the F train and reading Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations. This means that I lasted only about 30-40 minutes of the film, after which I sprang to my feet and ran out of the movie theater with the lightness and speed of a gazelle. Half hour of looking at the well familiar doom and gloom, drunkenness, self-loathing and self-destruction, hostility, rudeness, corruption, hopelessness, and denial of dignity was all I could endure. After that I decided that for the sake of my mental hygiene I needed to spare myself from seeing the rest of this film. I am sure that if this were a Japanese tale of woe, I would have had no troubles watching it, but Russians are adept at inventing and building their own circles of hell, the sights, sounds, and smells of which have an immediate effect on me and make me very, very light on my feet. 

But Hallucinations provided little respite... Before my F train reached Queens, Leviathan was in front of me again, on the pages of Sacks' book, in a different, though not entirely unrelated context. 

In chapter 5, Sacks compares visual hallucinations in patients with classical Parkinson's disease and patients with Lewy body dementia. As an example of a person whose intellectual capacity and creativity were well preserved despite severe motor impairments brought about by Parkinson's disease, the author mentions Thomas Hobbes (1588-1689), the founding father of political philosophy, whose book Leviathan (1651), an early treatise on the theory of social contract, explored the relationship between an individual and state. Hobbes started showing signs of "shaking palsy" at about the age of sixty, while completing the work on Leviathan, and although his condition worsened over time and eventually led to nearly complete immobility, he remained mentally lucid until his death at the age of 91. 

In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that political order is a necessary alternative to chaos, a state of war of all against all, into which humans would be inevitably thrust if they were to follow their nature without restrictions. He dispensed with the idea of the greatest good, but argued that there is the greatest evil, or the fear of meeting a violent end. Hobbes favored absolute monarchy as a safeguard against anarchy, which was perhaps not surprising considering that the book was written during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). Leviathan, which appeared with a frontispiece that resembles a Tarot card and depicts a giant whose body is formed from hundreds of human figures, immediately stirred up a great deal of controversy and won no favors of the clergy for the author. 

The frontispiece Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes;
engraving by Abraham Bosse. Image from Wikipedia.

In matters of health, Hobbes was an exemplary patient: according to John Aubrey's biosketch (full text of Aubrey's Brief Lives), Hobbes was a man of strong stature, regular habits, moderate in his diet, and mentally and physically active. He would rise at seven in the morning and take a long walk, during which he would think and contemplate and jot down his thoughts with a pen and inkwell concealed in his cane. He also played tennis (until the age of 75) and received regular massages. He spent the rest of the morning in contemplation, had dinner at eleven, smoked a pipe, took a nap, and wrote down his thoughts in the afternoon. Apparently, he was methodical and organized in his meditations, which he undertook "always with this rule that he very much and deeply considered one thing at a time." An eccentric and a wit, "[h]e was never idle; his thoughts were always working." He sang before bedtime (behind closed doors and when nobody could hear him), because he thought it to be good for his health, and composed verse shortly before his death. He loved to argue, he courted controversy, he was a friend of Galileo and playwright Benjamin Johnson, and he was often in trouble with the church. In addition to his works on morality, politics, and law, he translated classics into English and wrote on optics, motion, and geometry. 

Going back to the source of the Leviathan synchronicity, I came across Oliver Sacks' writings in a roundabout way, even though I first learned about him over a decade ago. Recently, after the death of Robin Williams, I watched the comedian's old stand-up routines, movies, and interviews, in some of which he spoke about his work on Awakenings, a 1990 film based on Sacks' book of the same title, about his experience of treating survivors of encephalitis lethargica, who had been frozen for decades in catatonic state. Sacks, who, according to Williams, is a combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Albert Schweizer, and Santa Claus [and who speaks about hallucinating the color indigo with a fascinating Yiddish-British accent], spent a long time with Williams and Robert De Niro, helping them to prepare for their respective roles of the doctor and patient. Sadly, in the aftermath of Robin Williams' suicide, it became known that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and struggled with depression, anxiety, paranoia, and sleep disorder, and postmortem showed that he suffered from diffuse Lewy body dementia.

In his tribute published in New Yorker, The Man Who Could Be Anyone, Sacks described Robin Williams as "that adorable genius", a phrase once spoken about psychologist William James, and wrote warmly about their friendship that began when Sacks was helping Williams to become Sacks on the set of Awakenings.

Update March 7, 2015: In mid-February, Oliver Sacks announced that his ocular melanoma that had been successfully treated nine years ago metastasized in his liver and his time in this world is probably measured in months.

Update August 30, 2015: Oliver Sacks died (NYT obituary). Radiolab posted this wonderful program in his memory, based on their last conversations with Sacks, a friend of the program over many years.

Dear Doctor

Dr. Grigory Simkin
9.12.1940 - 11.15.2007

Dear Doctor was an old sinner, 

Fond of the bottle and artery-busting food,

Having been around a few blocks, 

Not all of them in good neighborhoods. 

He was an untidy old bird,

Neither politically nor spiritually correct, 

Hopeless with money or anything practical,  

Bad at following rules, instructions, and beaten tracks,

And instead treading crooked paths 

That no one sane and sober would ever choose.

He hoarded books – on the shelves, on his desk, 

On the chairs, the bed, the floor, and in his memory –

And cited them with gusto. 

He loved playing with knowledge and with his cat 

That smelled of his cologne.

He watched mind-numbing action flicks and wept over Mozart.

He told blue stories and cracked salty jokes 

That would keep you chuckling for days

And that you could carry around with you 

Like medicine against gloom and respectability.

He could be a character in his own off-color anecdotes,

Unable to resist making people laugh even at his own funeral… 

Every now and then he was wrong and confused, 

He did absurd and exasperating things

And bumped against life’s sharp corners  

Too often to be called a wise man. 

And he could certainly use a few of his own therapy sessions.

Dear Doctor was a righteous man.

He spent himself with suicidal generosity 

Helping, healing, and giving comfort and peace. 

He was real and knew what was truly important 

And could see through the veil. 

He could make a sacred feast out of bread and vodka

And any day a holy day. 

He knew how to become a deity that rejoices in imagination, 

A playful god who exhales, creating the worlds.

He knew how to travel through the unknown,

Grasping at the filigree web of hypotheses 

And weaving your own myth.

Wounded and bruised, his heart in tatters 

From his many sorrows, but never bitter, 

He chose to love what was difficult to love

And see the good in both the good and the rotten. 

He wielded an exquisite arsenal of soul-healing tools,

With an occasional sidelong glance at Papa Freud on the wall, 

And did magic with his energy.

He helped people to become unafraid 

Of their formidable true Self 

And of their mothers-in-law. 

My unwavering advocate, he would say, 

“You are goodness and light,” – 

Until the many pieces of me 

Didn't want to fly apart anymore.

He let me take my own breath away 

Every time I discovered a new reality,

Filling twelve notebooks with extraordinary dreams 

And the thirteenth one with my thesis.

He walked me through my many battles, 

My clunky weaponry and my love of destruction,

And helped me make peace with the mirror.

He would guide me in flights 

Into the realms from which I come, 

To meet my kin and foe and gather their teaching stories

To make living in this world more tolerable 

Until one o’clock next Wednesday...

As a young man, he once saw Nevsky Prospect 

Set ablaze by the new sun

And decided that forever reaching toward a distant light 

Was how he wanted to live.

Wherever a band of other holy satyrs 

Is now roaring with laughter at his impious tales

Of interstellar mischief,

Here, his wish has come true.

NYC Scene: Cross and Crescent

The cross on St. Mary's Church
2nd Ave & 15 Street, New York
Photo: LB

Three-bar cross without a dome,

Eastern church aligned with Rome -

In this strange East Village scene

Story arc is byzantine.

A couple of weeks ago, walking up Second Avenue I noticed an eight-pointed cross projected against the evening sky. An Orthodox church, I thought, – not an unusual sight in East Village. The sign in front of the church, however, announced that it was St. Mary’s Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite. This sounded like an oxymoron: how can something be Catholic and Byzantine at once? A page of dense text on St. Mary’s website explains that this church has been brought to the US by Carpatho-Ruthenians, or Rusyns; it follows the Eastern (Byzantine) ritual, yet bears allegiance to Rome and is therefore Catholic.

Sign in front of St. Mary's

Perhaps embarrassingly, I first learned about Rusyns from the movie The Deer Hunter, which, despite stellar cast, was so incoherent and made my BS-o-meter go out of scale so often that I dismissed it as a source of information altogether. The characters in this movie were said to be Russians, but were certainly not behaving like Russians: they were neat and cheerful, had strong work ethic and lived in a tight-knit community. At first I chalked it up to this film's high level of background nonsense, in the same category as the Cascades playing the role of the Appalachians, but later I found out that these people were in fact Rusyns, or Carpatho-Ruthenians, a Central European Slavic ethnicity. After running into St. Mary’s, I thought it was time to find out more about them.

Lunacy at the Old Theater

Curtain of the Mariinsky Theater. Photo from Wikipedia.

A more accurate title would be “Lunacy at the Bolshoi Theater”, but this would hint too strongly at the recent events at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater, which certainly qualify as lunacy, but are not what this post is about.

This spring, my home town, St. Petersburg, has finally inaugurated a new building of the opera and ballet theater, Mariinsky II. The new theater opened with a lavish gala on May 2, followed by Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta, whose enduring popularity is a mystery to me, and Balanchine’s ballet Jewels performed on May 3. Mostly enthusiastic reviews of the new building have prompted me to refresh my memory of the history of Mariinsky Theater. Among other things, I was curious about the very first performance given on stage of the old opera house.

Чем пахнет Пушкин

Onegin, 6 Ave at Waverly Place, New York

Меня давеча спросили, что для меня означала бы следующая фраза, всплывшая в чьём-то сне: «Ты пахнешь, как Пушкин». Тот, кому эта фраза пришла, по-видимому, рано утратил связь с русской культурой, поэтому меня призвали в качестве эксперта по вынюхиванию классиков.

Чем пахнет Пушкин?

Как говаривала Баба Яга, «Чую, чую, русским духом пахнет!», а Пушкин ей вторил, правду говоришь, бабка, «Там русский дух... там Русью пахнет!»

Я подумала, что лирика Пушкина если и пахнет, то природой да положенными розами, а вот поэмы источают разнообразные ароматы, особенно Евгений Онегин. Веет от них жизнью, какой её воспринимал человек с острым глазом, ухом, нюхом и зубом, до этой самой жизни зело охочий. Не претендуя на полноту или даже добросовестность, я набросала шутейный и беспорядочный список пушкинских ароматов, которые запали мне в нос, по принципу «сколько ни говори халва», во рту сладко всё же станет, особенно если правильно говорить, в чём Пушкин был мастер.

Так чем же пахнет Пушкин?

Женщинами

Зимой, морозом, снегом, ненастьем, лошадьми, мокрым мехом и овчиной

Природой, погодой, остальными тремя временами года, влажным климатом, деревней, грибами и ягодами

Городом

Хорошей, недиетической едой

Хорошим алкоголем

Старым домом, хозяйством, чаем, дымом, табаком

Одеждой и парфюмерией

Театром

Деньгами, богатством и бедностью, подземельем, смертью, порохом, адом

Отсутствием запаха

Сон: Цитирую Гребенщикова на том свете

Photo: www.russianlook.com

Я нахожусь где-то на том свете, хотя ещё не померла, и вместе с другими обучаюсь всякой премудрости. Нашим обучением руководит Главный Дух, дядька средних лет в голубой рубашке и штанах-хаки, который выглядит как слегка потёртый школьный учитель. Мы, учащиеся, разыгрываем скетчи и сценки, которые должны объяснить нам какие-то мистические концепции на наглядных примерах. Одна из изучаемых тем – это прижизненные преображения души в результате всяких перипетий и испытаний. Главный Дух что-то объясняет по этому поводу, а я его и спрашиваю: “Это что, как у Гребенщикова про йогина, который ночью на кладбище отсекает привязанности, скармливая себя "голодным духам":

Они съедят его тело,

Они выпьют кровь до дна,

И к утру он чист-безгрешен,

Не привязан ни хрена. ”

Главный Дух отвечает, “Ага, именно так”.

* * *

I am somewhere in Otherworld, but not dead yet. Together with others I receive instruction in otherworldly wisdom. The proceedings are supervised by the Chief Spirit, a middle-aged guy in a blue shirt and khaki pants, who looks a bit like a slightly scruffy school teacher. We the students play-act various scenes and sketches that are supposed to expound different mystical concepts using simple examples. One of the studied themes is the transformations that the soul undergoes, while still dwelling in the body, as a result of various trials and tribulations of earthly life. The Chief Spirit explains something about this subject, and I ask him (in Russian), “So, is it similar to what Grebenshchikov wrote about a yogi, who severs attachments at night on charnel ground and feeding himself to the hungry spirits:

They will eat his body,
They will drink his blood to the last drop,
But by morning he’ll be pure and sinless,
Not attached even one bit.”

The Chief Spirit responds, “Yeah, exactly so.”

* * * 

Boris Grebenshchikov is an influential figure in late Soviet and later Russian popular culture, as a rock musician and the frontman of Aquarium, one of the oldest and most prominent Russian bands. Grebenshchikov is a prolific songwriter and frequently includes ideas and images borrowed from Buddhism and other Eastern philosophical traditions into his songs. His songs thus possess certain quasi-profound or mystical charm, which many people find attractive. I have never been a big fan of Grebenshchikov’s art, even though we finished the same high school, so it is all the more curious that I chose to quote his song in a dream.

Сон: Чапаев на пляже

Я стою на пустынном пляже, руки в боки, и, щурясь на солнце, оглядываю окрестности. Со мной ещё двое. Наконец кто-то из нас троих произносит: "И на фига этот идиот Чапаев снова распахивает Куршскую косу на своей тачанке?"




I am standing on a deserted beach, arms akimbo, surveying the seaside. There are two other people with me. Finally one of us says, "Why the heck is this idiot Chapaev plowing the Curonian Spit on his tachanka again?"

* * *
Vasily Chapaev is a historical character turned cult figure of the Soviet era folklore and a hero of numerous off-color (but many of them very funny) anecdotes. The Curonian Spit used to be a border zone, and during the Soviet rule its dunes were indeed regularly plowed by tanks, in order to expose any tracks crossing this strip of land.