Wait, wait! Don't wash me.

Sadly today I say goodbye to the ancient Kenmore. Sadly because it handled giant loads and saw me through the heavy tie-dye textile art and sweaty teen son era.  Sad, also $pending money on $omething so grown-up and boring.  Waving goodbye right to left, as the Kenmore lid opened to the left. Body memory must be retrained because the new washer opens front to back.

For way too long sweaters have whispered, "Don't wash me in hot," from deep in the laundry hamper.  The Kenmore refused to fill with cold water no matter the threats or incentives.

W is the letter of the week.  Waiting for washer delivery?  The Home Depot delivery guys were great.  In a 10-2 window they called at 9:40, arrived at 10:02, and were gone by 10:07.  I'd gotten up early to clear a path for them.  The condo is a skinny place with many obstacles.

Wow what filthy floors you have! Red Riding told wolf to trot on over to Albertsons for some Swiffer wets.  There were creepy/fuzzy things under that old washing machine, predating our move into this condo in 2000.



Staying wide awake for Mavs NBA Finals games has been wicked difficult.  Flashbacks to childhood piano lessons were even worse ...  Go down to the levee.  I said to the levee....  Had to sing to myself, "It's simply great, mate, waiting for  the Dirk Nowitzki."
I sang a worse verse about Wiley and the turkey meat treats. Welcome, my new grandpuppy!  Isn't Wiley just the smartest widdle wuzzum?

Wait, wait!  A month ago I walked without a pedestrian green toward the old NPR headquarters.  Did the ATM dispense Morning Edition mugs?

Wonder of wonders, my opera buddy found discount tickets to the Bruce Wood Dance Project performance tomorrow evening.  I'm whirling in anticipation!

Agitating.

Rinsing.

Spinning.

Way cool!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Flying flea circus

The scissortail flycatchers have returned, and the corner of Custer and Plano Parkway is a three-ring aerial acrobatic spectacle. In this weird, wonderful week of birds, the scissortails are the performing artists. I wonder if my favorite choreographer, Bruce Wood, was inspired by these migrating dancers in their dramatic grey and rose feathered costumes.

Scissortail flycatchers led my list of reasons to love living in Oklahoma. With my youngest in his baby carseat, I drove the minivan around the scruffy Edmond area. The baby Woolly Mammoth got as excited spotting scissortails as I did, or maybe more, since he wasn't preoccupied with driving safely. This was the first indication that he was going to be the Nature Boy of the three. The youngest child can have it rough staking out his territory of expertise in a landscape dominated by big brothers. Steven showed pretty early that he would appreciate beauty in nature and do a few artistic aerial dances of his own.

So appropriate that scissortails are the Oklahoma state bird. The state's history and that of aviation are closely entwined. The state of Wiley Post, Will Rogers, barnstormers and wing-walkers, sings out for aerial ballet!

Soon after the birds arrive in the state, the males begin their famous "sky dance," a popular site along roadsides during spring and early summer. After climbing about 100 feet in the air, the male makes a series of V-shaped flights, then plunges down in an erratic zigzag course often somersaulting while uttering a rolling, cackling call. The performance has been described as "an aerial ballet of incomparable grace."

The Woolly Mammoth and I belong to the land, and we like to watch a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. I'm hoping my next trip to Nebraska allows for seeing some bright golden haze on the meadows.

Have a lovely Earth Day tomorrow. All the sounds of the earth are like music!


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

On Nasher & Dancer & Prancer

Finally made it to the annual Dallas Dance Festival. The festival, sponsored by Dance Council, showcases six area dance troupes, giving them a chance to promote their upcoming seasons. This year it was held at the Nasher Sculpture Center in conjunction with NSC's Saturday Night in the City series.

The dance performances were inside the downstairs Nasher Hall in front of the wall of windows. They could be watched from inside the Hall, or from the slope outside the windows. Seated inside for two pas de deux by Texas Ballet Theater, I could barely see the other audience outside in the dark. The windows created a mirror effect. You remember that mirror effect! It's the reason your parents made you sit with your back to the window during supper so you wouldn't make faces at yourself. Texas Ballet Theater also performed "One" from "A Chorus Line", which was cute, but didn't rock my socks.

For the Bruce Wood Dance Company performance I wanted to be outside on the slope. It seems too little to call the space an amphitheater*. Sitting outside in the dark meant that the indoor audience and dancers seemed to be inside a lighted aquarium. The audience was very visible, and the experience felt a bit like spying.

I'm so much more impressed with the Bruce Wood Dance Company. They performed a duet based on Pablo Neruda poems set to Vivaldi music, and then their fabulous "Lovett" ballet to songs by Lyle Lovett, of course. That filled me with great joy--the ecstatic aesthetic experience. Bruce is an incredibly creative choreographer. His ballets powerfully communicate layers of ideas and emotions. I understand his work as capital A art. I understand classical ballets as costumes and pointy toes with lots of flittering, not that those are bad things.

One thing I don't understand about BWDC is why its web site isn't up to date. I guess it's a money issue, but it makes me frustrated. Nowadays an out-dated web site makes searchers think an arts group no longer exists. It fails to attract donations and ticket sales. When Ed McMahon delivers my million dollar check, I'll send some to Bruce Wood to keep the web site current. Until then, this is the 2006-2007 season at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth from the flyer I got at the Dance Festival:

Monday, October 9, 2006 "Harmony"

Monday, January 15, 2007 "Hope", featuring singer/songwriter Hal Ketchum, on the theme of fathers and sons.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 "Happiness"

Thursday, June 21 "Heart"

For tickets, call the company at 817-731-3221. All performances begin at 7:30, and Bruce himself says they're "over so you can be back in Dallas tucked into bed by 11:15, guaranteed."

According to the Dance Council's online performance calendar single tickets are $20-65, and series tickets are $68-221, at 817-212-4280. "Join the Bruce Wood Dance Company enthusiasts who delight in the company's repertoire ranging in expression from ecstasy and spirituality to smart, sexy, and lighthearted." Amen to that!

Try the Nasher at night sometime, and you might be inspired, too:





*amphitheater
1546, from L. amphitheatrum, from Gk. amphitheatron, neut. of amphitheatros "with spectators all around," from amphi- "on both sides" + theatron "theater," from theasthai "watch, look at." Classical theaters were semi-circles, thus two together made an amphitheater.

Looper Doopers

The last two weeks have brought me powerful clues that it is time for some in-depth reexamination of my childhood in the mid-1960's. As psychoanalysis isn't in the budget, blogging will have to do for now.

Planning my trip to Fort Worth to see the world premiere of Bruce Wood's ballet, "Dust, Texas," I realized I could squeeze in a visit to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. The museum has a very open definition of "cowgirl" as a spirit of courage, self-reliance, trail-blazing, connection to the land of the American West, and of what my co-worker calls the attitude of "Git 'er done!" Cowgirls include Dale Evans, Patsy Cline, Georgia O'Keeffe, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sandra Day O'Connor, Annie Oakley, horsewomen, trick riders, stunt riders, singers, photographers, and real branding iron ranchwomen.

I've logged countless hours in the dusty saddle myself--approximately eight, but it seemed like many more, what with the horse flies. I've worn saddle shoes with anklets if that counts. Moreover, I have a deep and abiding love of scruffy plains and canyons, an interest in the history of the American Frontier, and enormous respect for the influence Laura Ingalls Wilder has had on generations of American children, male and female. I've got a little bit of the self-reliant "Git 'er done" attitude when it comes to shower tile repairs and uncooperative Buick headlights. I also had a fringed leather shoulder purse in about 1970. Therefore, I am proclaiming myself a cowgirl.

Of course, the Cowgirl museum has a gift shop. Of course I had to scope it out. One never knows where the idea for an art class project is hiding. That's when I was blind-sided by the deluxe metal hand weaving loom and hook set! Holy moly, it's a potholder loom!

Weaving potholders got me through some rough patches in the Sixties. I bought my metal loom at Fisher's House of Toys in McCook, Nebraska for under a dollar on a hot dry weekend. Bruce Wood may have his "Dust, Texas," and James McMurtry, Jr. has "Levelland," but McCook, Nebraska is the dustiest place on my personal Earth.

Looper doopers were the weaving loops for making potholders, or "hot pads" as we called them. Cotton loopers were bulky and dull in color, like tops cut off of socks. Nylon looper doopers were available at the Ben Franklin on Cotner Boulevard in Lincoln, with smoother weaving action and brighter colors for the mod Sixties sensibilities. My maternal grandmother gave me a crochet hook, and taught me how to bind off the loop ends to finish the hot pads I wove. That was the finest moment of our relationship. The crochet hook is broken, but it is still in my embroidery basket.



I produced many hot pads in my most productive golden looper dooper years. To the best of my recollection, I never sold my wares, but gave them as gifts to everyone I knew for Christmas and birthdays. Two other women in the museum gift shop recounted their experiences as potholder artisans/door-to-door salespersons on dusty roads in Texas and Oklahoma. Peddling hot pads for two bits were their entries into the world of entrepreneurship. One recalled telling her mother that she couldn't do her homework because she "had so many orders to fill!" A third woman told sad tales of loom frustration and potholder envy in her Kansas childhood. We were all laughing and experiencing hot pad catharsis at the hot flash phase of our lives.


Levelland - James McMurtry, Jr. - 1995

Flatter than a tabletop
Makes you wonder why they stopped here
Wagon must have lost a wheel or they lacked ambition one
On the great migration west
Separated from the rest
Though they might have tried their best
They never caught the sun
So they sunk some roots down in the dirt
To keep from blowin' off the earth
Built a town around here
And when the dust had all but cleared
They called it Levelland, the pride of man
In Levelland

Granddad grew the dryland wheat
Stood on his own two feet
His mind got incomplete and they put in the home
Daddy's cotton grows so high
Sucks the water table dry
Rolling sprinklers circle round
Bleedin' it to the bone
And I won't be here when it comes a day
It all dries up and blows away
I'd hang around just to see
But they never had much use for me in Levelland
They don't understand me out in Levelland

And I watch those jet trails carving up that big blue sky
Coast to coasters watch 'em go
And I never would blame 'em one damn bit
If they never looked down on this
Not much here they'd wanna know
Just Levelland
Far as you can point your hand
Nothin' but Levelland

Mama used to roll her hair
Back before the central air
We'd sit outside and watch the stars at night
She'd tell me to make a wish
I'd wish we both could fly
Don't think she's seen the sky
Since we got the satellite dish and
I can hear the marching band
Doin' the best they can
They're playing "Smoke on the Water", "Joy to the World"
I've paid off all my debts
Got some change left over yet and I'm
Gettin' on a whisper jet
I'm gonna fly as far as I can get from
Levelland, doin' the best I can
Out in Levelland - imagine that

"Follow Me"

The motto of the United States Army Infantry is also the title of Bruce Wood's ballet about the service, sacrifice, interdependence, and brotherhood of infantry soldiers performed Wednesday evening at Bass Performance Hall by his Bruce Wood Dance Company. In just eighteen minutes of dance, I received a transfusion of understanding about my father's long reluctance to talk about his WWII experiences, the life of friends' sons and son's friends currently serving in the armed forces, and even the army play of my young sons.

Wood is a Fort Worth choreographer of great originality and very professional production standards. The dance's physical power, intense repressed emotion, and symbolism are still with me. I wonder if Mr. Wood created an eighteen minute dance because so many army recruits are just eighteen years old.

Mr. Wood and I are about the same age--Sixties kids too young to have been in Viet Nam but too old not to have been impacted by it. At or about age fifty, we are both grieving over the deceased hope that our generation would bring about peace, justice, and tolerance in the world.

There were many children in the audience, and they were all enthralled and marvelously well-behaved. A nice couple with two fifth-grade boys were seated ahead of me. The boys had an animated discussion after the first piece on the program, the world premiere of Wood's "Dust, Texas," mainly about the small, quirky movements of the barn dance section, the actions that resembled windmills and farm machinery, and the athletic feats of the dancers.

After "Follow Me" I asked what the fifth-graders what they thought about it. They informed me that the ballet was set to music from "Band of Brothers". They told me they really liked WWII history, but they had some trouble finding the word they wanted to describe "Follow Me". The father helped them by suggesting "solemn". The boys reminded me so much of my own sons at that age. We chatted a bit more about how to build a theater like the beautiful Bass Hall out of Legos, then laughed at the idea of little Lego people as ballet dancers.

I really regret not taking my sons to modern dance or ballet performances! We try so hard as parents to expose our children to all the fabulous opportunities. Those efforts are not wasted. Every outing or event opens a window for new ideas and appreciation. We all need the arts. They are carefully planted seeds, crisp spring breezes and cooling summer rains for our brains.

Before the final work on the program the young family had to weigh whether to stay up late just this one evening. So many students seem to not get enough sleep on a regular basis. I really respected the couple's concern that the boys be well-rested for school the next morning, but I did hope they would stay for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." I just knew Bruce Wood's choreography of that favorite would be fabulous. I was wishing that my mother could have been with me, and also my sister and niece. Fritzi would have loved the dancers in their blue satin, and the playful leap-frogging to Gershwin's rhythms. And I would have cried if the fifth-graders had missed the literally glittery finale and final slide through the sparkles.

The story of Wood's "Follow Me" commission and the creative process it involved is intriguing reading. There are also some photos of the dance on the web at http://www.popphoto.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=47834. For additional fun, watch the video clips.

Jam Box Office

It's wonderful to get a clear sign about something I must do. This morning I was finally getting around to reading The Guide from Friday's Dallas Morning News. There are so many fantastic things going on in the metroplex this month that it is hard to decide how to spend my limited entertainment dollars.

DMN dance writer Margaret Putnam quoted choreographer Bruce Wood about his new work, "Dust, Texas":

Either you respond to a sky that's big and land that is flat and it makes you bigger, or else it oppresses you.

When I saw that it was the clencher. I'm the poster child for big, flat land. I was already excited about "Rhapsody in Blue" on the program for Wednesday's Bruce Wood Dance Company performance at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. Putnam writes, "Rhapsody in Blue is a romp – lush, jazzy, fluid and infinitely sophisticated, riding on the wave of Gershwin's spirited score."

Still in my PJs at 8:20, I headed to the computer to buy a ticket. After attending Fort Worth Opera's "Dialogues of the Carmelites", I vowed not to ever again sit in the seating sections requiring rapelling equipment to reach. The Bass is so steeply constructed as to set off my very, very rare acrophobia.

Bass Hall online ticketing seemed pretty simple, except that it asked me to log-in as a returning customer. I typed in my email address, then clicked on "Forgot My Password". The computer again asked for my email address, then told me in big red letters that it could not accept my email address. Okay, maybe I didn't buy my ticket online before. One time I won my tickets from ArtsCard in the same way I win most of my movie passes and get other deals for tickets and outings. Maybe the other time I bought my ticket at the box office the day of the opera.

Time to try registering as a new user with the usual name/address/email/phone info so that I could purchase my ticket before my allowed time for completing the the transaction expired. The little time clock was ticking down the seconds. You would think I was taking the SAT or playing in the state basketball tournament! My new user status may have been accepted by the online box office computer kahuna, but I wasn't able to get back to my ticket request, so I went through the whole process again. This time I got the dreaded message:


Not one to give up easily I tried yet again, but to no avail. Still sure of my divine mandate, and thinking I was being tested in my faith, I picked up the phone and called the box office. Like many artists I know, I use the phone as a last resort. We are a group prone to phonophobia.

"How can I help you this morning?," asked the friendly woman. I explained that I tried to buy a ticket online, but I wasn't sure if the transaction worked. "Well let's just see what the computer tells us," she says with the patience and good humor of the sonogram tech at the OB-GYN. Then a gasp. "Why, there are three of them in there!," she says. Great. I'm having triplet tickets. Actually my name and address are in the computer over and over and over, but no tickets have actually been purchased. Whew! By this time I've apologized profusely for jamming and disabling the Bass Performance Hall ticket website, and the friendly woman and I are both laughing so hard tears are running down our cheeks. We agree that I should probably have a third cup of coffee before I ever shop online again. She's going to hold my ticket at Will Call. She probably wants to take my photo for the Most Wanted Poster. It's been six hours, and the online box office is still disabled.

So my plan for Wednesday is to leave work at 3:00 and go to Fort Worth. Go to the National Cowgirl Museum. Go to the Bass Will Call at 6:30. Go to Jail. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Following a fivesome on the green

The Nasher Sculpture Garden's "Saturday Night in the City" event was great fun. The Nasher is a lovely green art oasis in downtown Dallas' Arts District, between the Dallas Museum of Art, the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center, and the Crow Collection of Asian Art. The Nasher was designed by Renzo Piano to showcase the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection of contemporary sculpture.

The evening was low-keyed with jazz and wine, people sitting on marble benches, posing for photos by the fountains, and walking around the sculptures as the evening darkened. In some parts of the garden the breeze was pleasant, but in others the humidity portended a thunderstorm.

Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth presented a piece created for the garden. Five female dancers began at Jonathan Borofsky's "Walking to the Sky", then danced to different sculptures with the musicians and audience walking all around with them (an effect similar to following a foursome at a golf tournament). They danced around the George Segal figures, the Maillol and Rodin nudes, the "Schist Furniture Group", over to the Borosky "Hammering Man", around and through the Serra Curves, then the headless Polish crowd, the very large steel sculpture by di Suvero, ending back at "Walking to the Sky". The music was by three musicians with electric guitar, keyboard/synthesizer, and ceramic drum, that was only annoying a few times.

After the dance, I went through the David Smith exhibit, which is excellent. Smith's powerful calligraphic brush drawings give an excellent insight to the sculptor's though process. I am puzzled by his mixing ink with egg white, and have had no luck researching that online. Maybe after I go to the grocery store I can try it. Then back outside to see the sculptures in the garden against a darker sky. I am marking my calendar for the Bruce Wood Dance performance on June fourth.

Tints and Shades

Fluffy the Paintbrush is dancing again this week in very springy colors. My little students are drawing ballet bunnies, and trying to grasp that the eyes go on the head, not on the tummy, and the arms are shapes, not lines. It is hard work, and sometimes Fluffy, the bunnies, the preschool students, and the teacher all wish they could have a nap in the rabbit family's burrow.

We are inspired by a cute book called Lettice, the Dancing Rabbit.
My kindergarten-second grade kids are also learning about light and dark, and the difference between watercolor and tempera paints. When using watercolors, you add more water to red to get pinks. With temperas, you add white. It is all splendid for painting dancing rabbits. I get to tell the boys it takes a really strong guy to be a dancer and lift the ballerina bunnies in the air.

Our colors remind me of the Bruce Wood choreographed dance, Rheology, performed by the Texas Ballet Theater. The students' art took me back to the beauty of monochromatic color schemes. We resist monochromatic thinking it is dull, and then it shoots us a Rose Bowl Parade moment. Ooooh. Aaahhh. Can you smell the rose petals?