Building a music library for Dandelion is empowering in all kinds of ways. I've got Learning to Crawl in there right now and I am all bouncey at the prospect of lots of listening to "Show Me" and "My City Was Gone" without "Thumbelina" in between.
Speaking of the Pretenders, after I got back from Momix last night (another entry), I couldn't sleep so I tried watching television. Nothing in TiVo appealed to me, "Winter Guest" being too depressing and "City of Lost Children" being way too scary. And having already lain down I could not possibly have got up to select a DVD. I found David Letterman and watched the Pretenders--of whose post 1983 work I am completely ignorant--perform from a new album. Eh.
Wow.
A while ago I noticed a cobalt blue convertible new Bug in the parking lot. Less of a while ago walking to the library at lunch I saw it and noted the sharp bob of the driver, and when later that afternoon I saw a New Person at work with such a bob, I asked if she had the Bug. (Someone else has a Mini Cooper. Not that I'm jealous of these sexy little cars, no.)
We chatted, and I noticed Pilobolus on her wall calendar. We spoke of dance and I told her about the most amazing dance performance I have ever seen, which was Momix dancing to Passion at UConn in 1993 or '94. Momix danced the entire soundtrack, dancing the creation of life as strings of protein and amoebas on stage, the rise of flowering plants, the evolution of animals, the invention of fire, the invention of the wheel, until the last dance, which began with three dancers suspended on three velvet ropes. The side two dancers finished being crucified and left, leaving the center one to finish his passionate death. I prefer to think of Passion as music for that dance, in fact, rather than for the wretched "Last Temptation of Christ."
Thursday she mentioned she had heard that maybe Momix was going to be in town soon. A quick web search placed them in Fort Collins Friday night. We got tickets in the last row of a small enough venue that they were perfectly fine seats.
Opus Cactus, lots of desert-oriented dances. They were tumbleweeds and gila monsters and raindancers and delicate blossoms and ostriches and sundances; they used native American and aboriginal Australian and African sounds. Why is it, I wonder, that purely memetic music bores me--I could never sit and just listen to Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" or Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker," and because John Williams borrows so heavily from Aaron Copland I have a hard time hearing Copland as himself and not as a potential soundtrack--but memetic dance I could watch for hours, maybe (although this hasn't been tested) without musical accompaniment? Maybe because I prefer visual to aural arts, I don't know. Maybe because dance involves athletic humans in tight clothing.
While the Passion dance is, because of the music, still the most amazing ever, this show was still spectacular and jaw-dropping and evocative and wonderful. I am so glad I saw it. Plus I had my first ride in a new Bug! Its front seat is roomier than Cassidy's.
The choreographer, Moses Pendleton, is broadly and deeply talented. So very talented that even his creations are talented: "An avid and original photographer, shows of Mr. Pendleton's work have been presented in [several cities]" (quoting the program).