Next Chapter - Asia

We're back in New York City with fond memories to savor. Sadly, Armenia was curtailed for us due to the state of emergency there. We hope to realize our plans to perform and teach in Yerevan at some more auspicious time and with better conditions for the Armenians!

We'll be setting up a new blog for our upcoming Asia Tour. Check back after April 11to see what we're doing in Busan and Seoul, South Korea, and to follow us as we dance our way across to Laos, Burma, Taiwan, Mongolia and China!

Full House at Musical Comedy Theater

The U.S. Ambassador and Azerbaijan's Minister of Culture were in the audience tonight at the Musical Comedy Theater to attend Battery Dance Company's performance. Equally exciting for us was the fact that at least one hundred dance students from all of the schools and studios where we taught were there to cheer us on. BDC members were a little surprised when the t.v. cameras appeared back stage at intermission asking for interviews. As always, the questioners rolled around to, "What is your impression of Azerbaijani dance? How do you like our country?" I guess that all of those years under the domination of the USSR have left Azeris a little insecure. After our wonderful interactions in the workshops, our dancers had plenty to say about the passion and determination of Azeri dancers -- too much in fact! I had to interrupt with a reminder that we had a second act to perform!

The dancers had made special request that we reverse the program order and finish with Shell Games. They said that it was hard to give Shells all the energy that they would like if they knew they had 2 more pieces to perform afterwards. I agreed, and saw tonight how right they were. Shells was INTENSE and brought the house down.

The miracle of tonight's show was that up until the day before, the stage floor had been totally undanceable. A huge turntable in the middle with a 1/2" gap would have been a beartrap for dancers' toes. With the Embassy's support, masonite was purchased, nailed down, and painted black; and though dancing on it was a bit of an obstacle course. Especially bumpy areas were chalked out so that dancers could avoid them, but when in the middle of a combination of movements, and blinded by the side lights, the dancers weren't looking down to study the map under their feet.

Barry Steele, our production designer, gets our blue ribbon of appreciation for having made the show look professional and polished despite the very rough conditions. A glass of wine and some pilaf at the excellent Mugam Restaurant afterwards helped restore Barry (just in time to crawl into bed before getting up at 5:30 a.m. to load out for the airport on our transit through Istanbul and home to New York. Fond memories are already being teased in our brains from the past weeks of touring Turkey and Azerbaijan!

Busy Battery in Baku

After three workshops (Baku School of Choreography, University of Arts & Culture, and Spider Dance Group) and the press conference yesterday, we all regrouped (and re-groomed) for a reception at the Ambassador Anne Derse's residence. The Ambassador herself was down to Earth and genuine and when she delivered her welcome speech in Azeri as well as English, we were suitably impressed.

This morning, I was asked to lead a workshop with the Neru Dance Group, 7 very talented and hard working dancers who had been mentored by a Russian teacher who closed shop some time ago. They showed me their work in the form of a techno ensemble dance, whipped to smooth finish, which they said was in the style of Brittney Spears. Boy am I glad that I invited them to show before we did the tell... I had misunderstood the culture journalist who raved about this group, and thought they were experimental and avant-garde. Not! But they were wonderfully open to anything I had to offer and jumped in to the experimentation and self-expression that I asked of them. After 90 minutes, they had concocted a very complex and engaging dance essay and we left with warm embraces and promises to meet after the show tonight so that I could introduce them to the BDC dancers.

Dancing Modern at Baku School of Choreography

Bafana, Robin and I headed off to Azerbaijan's premiere dance conservatory -- about which one can find many entries on the www from 1930's onward. We were surprised to find that our session started off with a press conference -- approximately 15 journalists and t.v. crews wanted to know what we thought about Azerbaijani dance, and whether there were any established ballet companies in the U.S.! After mentioning NYC Ballet and American Ballet Theater, and dropping Balanchine's name without any sign of recognition, I realized that we were "big news" and not the more marginal "cultural news" because certainly, these names would have been familiar to the cultural press. Bafana and Robin had prepared some material from Shell Games that involved various moves on the floor -- but they quickly modified their plan when we entered the large sunny studio and saw:
*20 young ballet students in traditional Russian ballet attire (black leotards and white tights for the girls; white t-shirts and black tights for the boys; and pointe shoes or ballet shoes on everybody
*the floor was out of a Degas painting, bleached unfinished boards that were probably perfect for ballet slippers but deadly for either bare feet or the floor moves that had been planned (splinters galore!)
*an audience of approximately 100 students and teachers from the school who burst into applause when we entered the room

Bafana began with a series of isolations with ribs and hips, gyrations that caused the students and audience to giggle uproariously. Phrases from the BDC repertoire were doled out in good measure and the kids did their best to keep up. Great fun was had by all and when I wandered out of the room at the end, I encountered students, partipants and audience alike, gleefully trying out the choreography in the hallways and staircases.

Azerbaijan: First Impressions

Arrival at the Baku Airport in the early morning hours of Monday: We certainly stood out on arrival at the airport from the all-male, black-coated fellow travelers who seemed part of a 1950's b/w movie. The straight-faced customs officials accepted our 8 passports and pre-prepared visa applications (thank you Jessica!), studied them along with the official Diplomatic Note from the U.S. Embassy (thank you Jonathan Henick, Dmitri and Gulara!), and without the slightest hint of a smile, said "no charge" waiving the very substantial visa fees. Wow! What a nice welcome! Seems that performing artists are respected and welcomed in this country. A bevy of reporters gathering in the afternoon on the rooftop of our hotel for a mini-press conference were interested to know if we were aware of Azerbaijan's rich background in folkloric dance and music (only superficially). They hoped that we would have the opportunity of interacting with young dancers and choreographers who had been turned on by the British dance company Random Dance via British Council-funded residencies (2) in 2003, and a Russian modern dance company that had temporarily set up a branch operation here in Baku, only to shut down a short while later. Tomorrow, we'll have that chance, with three workshops at the Baku School of Choreography, the University of Arts & Culture, and the Spider Dance Group. Check back for reports, and photos!

My Dinner with Serdil

The Goksu Restaurant is not a tourist haven; rather, it is the haunt of Serdil Gunay and his friends dating back to his college times through the present (he's not telling how many years that entails!) Serdil was one of the stellar team from the U.S. Embassy Ankara who guided us through our fascinating programs in Konya and Ankara (along with the brilliant Craig Dicker, and Aysegul Taskin who became a surrogate mother for all members of the company.) From the moment Serdil and I arrived at the Goksu, waiters, bus-boys and managers demonstrated their pleasure at seeing him by embracing and kissing him on both cheeks (brotherly love is fully practiced in Turkey). Starters were chosen from an array of delicious plates: celery remoulade; fava beans in a light tomato sauce; broccoli and carrot salad, steamed perfectly; and a huge artichoke heart in olive oil and lemon dressing. A string bean dish with sauteed shallots and garlic, with a touch of vinegar, accompanied the fish kebob that Serdil ordered. Has anyone heard of Goby fish? That's what it was, and the tender white chunks were grilled to perfection. Serdil put away a bottle of Arak softened with water; I stuck to the more mundane white wine. A pu-pu platter of scrumptious filo-nuts-honey pastries of different shapes and sizes, and another of perfectly ripe fresh fruit rounded out the feast, with Turkish coffee and brandy as the grand finale. I've characterized the food, but it was the conversation -- about life, head scarves, secularism, spirituality, art, money, values, dancers, sufis -- that was the main attraction. The brisk up hill walk in the cool night air was the perfect way to cap off an evening I'll never forget.

10th METU International Contemporary Dance Days

Yesterday was a whirlwind day. Our masterful production designer Barry Steele had a challenge to beat all challenges: how to load in, hang and focus lights, prepare a video projector, hang scenery and train a crew in less than 12 hours (it usually takes about 20 before the curtain is ready to part!) When I entered the theater with the dancers in the mid-afternoon, I heard Barry's usual refrain: "I'm not ready; take your time warming up." Bafana, the warm-hearted clown of our company, is also the person who offered to give the company class. When he asked the crew for a boom box, the answer was "no", uttered so automatically and dryly that we thought it was a joke. But not so: no boom box. So Bafana in his charming off-key voice, sang the company through their barre and other warm up exercises. Meanwhile, the university students who run the METU Festival .... OK, I will tell you what the acronym stands for: Middle Eastern Technical University (Turkey's MIT) ... were huddled in the lobby putting the finishing touches on the playbill for that evening's show. After having pitched in to help them, they were off on their labors of translating the whole thing into Turkish.
As is almost always the case, the playbill got done just before the audience arrived; and things on stage got done too; well, sort of. The hall of 800 seats was filled to about 2/3 capacity -- apparently twice as many as who had attended the previous night's show. There was surprisingly little diversity of age in the audience -- primarily college students and a smattering of teachers, Embassy staff and the odd senior dance fan!
Each of the four dances received warm applause, though Shell Games and I'll Take You There were the crowd favorites.
Our student guide Zeynap rushed the dancers into their clothes so that we could get to the nearby kabob house before closing. We downed our dinners in minutes flat and were back to the theater to pack up the costumes (still damp, a testament to the dancers' exertions). Several of the dancers had to wake up early the next morning to take the shuttle bus from our hotel back to the University campus in order to teach master classes. I hope that one of them will post a report soon on those activities: Instead of watching them myself, I spent most of the day in my room on the www figuring out our return flights, due to the cancellation of our program in Armenia caused by the unrest there.