Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Performing Arts on the Web

In the past year, there was a distinct dearth of performing arts events that I attended. The numerous reasons for this, though the primary reasons are a paucity of disposable funds and location/distance of the events from my location. Consequently, I have been searching the Internet for various alternatives to tide my interest in the meantime. Over the many of the following posts, I’ll be inserting some of the content I find. Please note: None of the embedded content is owned or licensed by me.

Video Clip:
Alessandra Ferri & Sting


Choreography by Heinz Spoerli. Music by Johan Sebastian Bach – ‘Prelude’ from “Cello Suite No. 1 in G major”

One of the first thoughts to run through my head while viewing the video was how surprisingly flexible Sting was. Overall I thought the clip was very interesting. I don’t have a background in dance, but I think the ballet choreography was more towards modern than classical. The short clip itself was well-lit and filmed, and may serve as an introduction to types of ballet that people unfamiliar with dance as a performing art may appreciate.


Beginnings Novel News

As much as I intended to have the novel finished by this date, my progress has been significant but limited. I just finished writing a ‘marathon’-length scene between two of my characters. That scene may be the longest single scene I have ever written that takes place inside one fixed location. I have yet to actually type it into the computer, but I’m guessing it will be around 20-30 pages. Considering that the entire scene utilizes just two characters, I’m curious what my opinion of the scene will be when I reread the novel as an entire whole. The remaining parts of the novel won’t be any easier to write, but should be comparatively quicker to produce.

Admission

I’m using today’s post to do something that probably is not done often in blogs. I admit it: I was wrong. I made the following post in October of 2007:

For the first time, a woman and a black man lead the polls in the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, those polls results do not reflect what I believe to be actual reality. I am more than willing and ready to be proved wrong, but I simply do not think the general American populace will elect either a woman or black man as President of the United States. Would the public settle for a woman or minority if they had no choice, yes. But given an alternative, I do not believe people will choose a female or minority leader.That means I am pessimistic about either Clinton or Obama securing the Democratic nomination for President, much less either actually winning the general election. As I told someone this week, either of them would actually serve to bolster the chances of one of the white male candidates. So here would be my prediction. Assuming Clinton actually fails to secure the nomination, it will probably be Biden or Edwards leading the ticket with either Clinton, Obama, or Richardson balancing out the bottom-half of the ticket.

Clearly, my thoughts from back then did not reflect the reality of the electorate, as measured on election day. As we conclude the first 30 days of America’s first African American president, I ponder what aspects of the Obama package led to his election. Was it his race, his message, the economy, the anti-Bush/Republican movement of the populace, or some other nebulous factor? Apparently, President Obama’s approval rating has decreased to the mid 60’s percentile. The news commentary I heard on ABCnews mentioned that this drop was typical of new presidents within their first month.

Because I’m near the saturation limit on all the discussions/news about the economy, I will not address that in this post, except to say that it is interesting that the government is rushing to fix this problem. One might think they would have learned from the Patriot Act or the bill that authorized former President Bush to go to war with Iraq: rushing bills through Congress, particularly a bill that almost nobody has read the entire way through, tends to lead to greater and more exacerbated problems in the future.