Friday 29 November 2013

She's alive! (And Thanksgiving)

CJ Cregg the spider, from my previous post, is alive and well and has survived the cold snap we had recently. I saw her slender leg peeking out from behind my wing mirror today, and she had spun a beautiful new web.

I then drove at 50mph down the A3 to go and see my brother and destroyed it. I feel rather bad about that.

It's Thanksgiving over in America (I'd say 'today', but it's past midnight here in the UK, and it's still yesterday in America, so... never mind), and I'm not entirely clear what Thanksgiving is about beyond the fact that it's about giving thanks.

Thanks for my glorious, technicolour, surround sound life. Thanks for my Cowboy. Thanks for my friends and family. Thanks for my good health. Thanks for the amazing teachers out in the world. More on teachers later.

Thanks for cramming everything I have to do this month into three days. I appreciate that.

Thursday 21 November 2013

"Shove it up your ass, Toby."

I had this whole clever idea for a post I wanted to do. Bear with me on this one.

In the driver's side wing mirror of my car, there is a spider who has made a web between the door and the mirror for the last couple of months. Sometimes she will be in the web when I set off for a journey, until the vibrations send her scurrying back to her den behind the mirror itself, and sometimes she's securely stowed before I go anywhere.

She is a false widow spider, I discovered, when I caught her reflection in the mirror. They've had a lot of bad press this year, with a great deal of scaremongering and wars waged on them. False widow spiders have been around since I was a kid - I remember picking them up and letting them run around my hands before I developed a healthy, pathological phobia of spiders. I've never been bitten by one, to my knowledge - and I have been bitten by spiders before - and have never needed medical attention for a spider bite. Spiders keep bugs out of my house and don't tend to purposely ruin my life, so I do not advocate spider hate in any way.

To that end, I was planning to do a post on the false widow who lives in my wing mirror. For convenience, I gave her a name so that I could talk to her as I drove around town. I wanted a name that conjured up somebody strong, and superbly skilled, because the webs this spider weaves are truly beautiful. I needed a name that commanded a sense of intelligence and logic, because this spider has a more extensive knowledge of forces, cantilevers, tension and vibration than any structural engineer on the planet. I needed a name that suggested femininity without girlishness. She's a spider, after all (only the ladies spin webs that they live in for a prolonged amount of time, in any spider species), and she's probably not one to worry about what she's wearing.

I wanted so badly to get a picture of her so that I could show her to you, and spark off the post I really wanted to write - the post that said "Hey, don't be mean about spiders, they do a really good job and it's not always easy, some of those bugs are four times the size of the spider" and a post that also said "FYI, this is my most favourite person right now." But this spider, in her wisdom, has hidden from me for a few days. She emerged whilst I was in the countryside at the weekend and spun a brand new web ready for me to tear it to shreds at 70mph on the motorway, and I saw her briefly as she came out to look at the damage and retreat resignedly a moment later. I've not seen her since, and it's been rather cold. She may have died.

So no picture. Here's a picture of a false widow that I found on Google. It'll have to do. Don't hate on the false widows.



I named her CJ, after CJ Cregg from The West Wing. A woman who handles the press with deft poise, who comes back stronger after any hurdle she faces, who has climbed high in a workplace where men (often egotistical and brutish) strut about and throw their weight around while she quietly sets a trap or forms a plan. CJ fights for other women, takes a bite out of the men around her who often seem to underestimate her. The plight of people who are not as privileged as she is moves her to tears, more than once.

You know if I was living in Qumar I wouldn't be allowed to say ‘shove it up your ass Toby.’ But since I'm not, shove it up your ass Toby.
- CJ
The West Wing 3.09 The Women of Qumar
I love how she cares about people she's never met, and how she uses every bit of her freedom to make a difference, even if it's just in a small way. She is sensitive and sharp, gentle and fierce. She is astounding. Very sadly, she is fictional.

Allison Janney, however, is not fictional, and I think she's a superb human being, beautiful and talented. I have quite the girl crush.

Monday 18 November 2013

I just want to say...

... it's the Cowboy's birthday today. He hates birthdays and he has been in a grump all day.

I love him.

Thursday 14 November 2013

Downtime

Our broadband at the house was cut off for a while, due to some disorganisation and miscommunication, and as such I was limited to my 3G allowance on my phone (which rapidly ran out), and to trying to remember what I did before we had the internet.

It provided some downtime, and gave a kickstart to a few projects. I started packing up my possessions ready to move out of London. I've filled ten archive boxes with junk, and don't appear to have made any headway whatsoever.

I started writing again: I made a small dent in both the trashy romance I started a while ago, and a dent in the rewrite of my trashy fantasy novel which took me ten years to put down a complete draft.

I even picked up a book and read for a while. I often feel guilty about reading, as if I should only do it when I have nothing better to do, and certainly not in the daytime, and really the only acceptable place to read is in bed, and only then if there's nothing else that needs doing.

Reading has become an expensive luxury, not a commodity. I remember when I was younger, I would pull out the futon in my room into its chaise longue shape, sit under my reading light and plough through an entire Robert Jordan novel in a day or two (Aside: I never did finish the Wheel of Time series, I think I gave up caring).

These days, I can barely get through ten pages. I'm not sure why. It might be a lack of a suitable space in which to read, or that I always feel there is something more important that I should be doing. Of course, I am no longer a teenager who doesn't have to feed herself or pay rent, so there are a few more important distractions about than there used to be, but it would be good to re-establish a reading habit. The last book that I chewed through at a voracious pace was Lonesome Dove, which was more addictive than my Xbox at the time. I'm yet to find a book that sucks me in so well.

I have also watched a lot of The West Wing, as I have the DVD box set (stolen from my parents), and as a result I have a slight girl crush on CJ Cregg, who is probably the most inspiring, wonderful, powerful female character I've seen on TV since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the only situation in which Buffy would beat CJ would be in a vampire slaying competition (and even then I'm not sure).

I have upgraded myself to an iPhone 5s - it's white and shiny and has a fancy red leather cover because I don't trust myself not to drop it or try to hold it in my teeth and other foolish things to do with expensive equipment, and I've already put Siri to good use texting people while I'm driving. Siri is not good at understanding me yet, but he's trying. Mostly, I am enjoying the lack of delay between touching the screen and things happening. Good night, sweet iPhone 4, you have served me well, but your day is done.

Bye iPhone 4...

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Upgrades

I'm taking the plunge. I'm leaving my current university and abandoning my physio degree to pursue life with Cowboy. I'm moving out of London. I'm clearing out my possessions.

Let's gloss over the part where I clear out my freezer and promptly buy 30 packs of fish from the door-to-door fish guy. Way to downsize, Bee.

Part of my strategy for this next phase of life is to consider how to best equip myself for the future. I recently purchased a laser printer - an extravagance by usual standards, and I'd never considered how much of an improvement it might be over my juddering inkjet. My inkjet guzzles ink cartridges, and clunks laboriously through the pages. Its saving graces are that it is red, and it has a flatbed scanner built in.

Then my black box of a colour laser printer arrived, and quietly glides through a 20 page print job in next to no time. All it asks is that I reinsert the paper so it can print both sides.

"Do I really need this?" I asked myself when it arrived, still packaged and returnable. I thought about it for a moment. I was still a student, and had pages of notes to print out most days. There were long articles to read and annotate. Then I thought about my business, and how much paperwork gets generated by the day to day admin of keeping the company going.

Then I thought ahead to when Cowboy's business is up and running, and we'll have liability release forms to print, records for the horses, invoices, advertising materials, letters... If I have a second business alongside that, there's more paperwork than you can shake a stick at. I've conveniently skipped over the paperwork involved for our visa application that faces us in the future, because I don't want to think about how stressful that's going to be.

I look at Black Box with a vague sense of respect. If it can keep going and keep up with what we'll be throwing at it in the future, it will be worth every penny.

I now look at my battered iPhone 4, which has tolerated all of the abuse I've put it through over the last three years and only protests by occasionally not letting me press the home screen button. Is it time to upgrade myself? My dad is starting to eye up my iPhone as his next phone (he is still using my cast-off Nokia from 2004). Perhaps it's time to invest in the next phase, for both of us.

When I move over to the US, it's probably time to splash out on a really good kettle. A few really good saucepans. Things that will last. The days of buying the Argos Value range are probably numbered.

It's about time.

Friday 1 November 2013

Show Review: Boy Blue Entertainment: "The Five and the Prophecy of Prana"

On Wednesday, I went to see this show at the Barbican in London. In a nutshell, it was a hip hop dance performance fused with Shaolin kung fu, set to a soundtrack of urban beats fused with taiko drums, with a backdrop drawn by a Japanese manga artist, from the team that brought us a large portion of the epic London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. In a smaller nutshell, it was totally amazing.

In reality, it was so much more. Boy Blue have already got one Olivier Award under their belts from their Pied Piper show, which I caught on its second outing back in 2009. Pied Piper was a reworking of the Pied Piper of Hamlin tale, bringing it in to a low-lit and industrial urban setting. In the original fairy tale, the piper's taking of the city's children is unnervingly sinister, as the mountain seals shut behind them. In Boy Blue's show, there was a thrilling sense that each of the talented youths taken away by the piper was destined to become an adult dancer just as formidable and breathtaking as the piper himself. And they did.

I digress. That happens a lot.

Boy Blue's company of dancers is exactly that, though: breathtaking and formidable. Choreographer and Artistic Director, Kenrick "H2O" Sandy, is a taskmaster and his dancers were all fit beyond the demands of the show, effortlessly flexible and full of power.



The five of the title were each assigned their own animal style of martial arts - which translated into their own hip hop dance style. Krumping, tutting, locking, house and breaking were all transformed into fighting styles. What was so wonderful was that the seams between dance and combat were invisible. Hip hop dancers will often "battle" at social events or competitions, so it's not an unusual thing to see two dancers duking it out to see who has the best moves. With the framework of the storyline, the battles had an emotional purpose too. Suddenly those amazing moves meant even more. A competition dance battle can be visually stunning, but sometimes lacking in soul.

This show was all about soul. The projected backdrops were lovingly detailed, rich and cleverly moved around the stage to make a simple but effective set. The music, composed by Mikey J Asante, was the perfect balance of sweeping, cinematic orchestrals, heavy urban beats that shake the heart, and eastern instruments to remind you that this isn't your average hip hop dance show. This is not the latest chart hits cut together. This is not the most recent dance craze to take over Youtube. This was the real deal.

The dancers trained with Shaolin monks, and changed their eating and training habits to be more in line with the monks'. Even their dance posture shows the difference that it made. There was no hip hop laziness that is so often seen, no slouching to be mistaken for "swagger". Every move was precise, placed, as accurately as any classical dance company could muster. Maybe more so. Tommy Franzen, as the five's sensei, Wang Tang, was outstanding for his understated poise and power. My friend even asked at the end of the show if Franzen is a real Shaolin monk.



I think the strength of hip hop dancers is in their versatility. Give a hip hop dancer some contemporary or classical training, and they can quickly absorb the new style and blend it with their own. It is far harder for a ballet dancer to learn to move through the spine and rib cage, to learn how to make power look so soft - trust me on this one, I had to go through the painful transition. It took me months to even make a dent in my balletic tendencies.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was in a position to go to some of Sandy's classes, I was so injured and weakened that I could never really get to grips with what he was teaching, so as a student I mostly listened to his theory of dance. I remember him fervently telling us to move from within, from the centre, that this is where movement comes from. He tried to press upon us the notion that even a movement of the hand and arm is generated from the core. I remember a tai chi teacher telling me exactly the same thing, several years before that.

The show was uplifting and inspiring. It made me want to leap up out of dance retirement and get back to dance class (although I am now more injured and weakened than ever). It made me want to focus my breath and my mind rather than tearing through London life like we all do: hidden behind the Metro on the tube, frustrated with slow walkers, and pretending we're having the best time ever. Moments of stillness on stage were reminders to the audience to take a deep breath.

The show was not without its humour, either. Some reviewers criticised the "bad dubbing", as the voice over does not match up with the mouths of the dancers on stage. Having witnessed Sandy's wry sense of humour in class, I'm sure it was intentionally mismatched. It's also a nod to kung fu and anime films where there is the same problem. It's intentional that the towering sensei of Duwane Taylor, who is an incredibly powerful dancer, has a slightly squeaky, ridiculous voice in the voice over. The final scene, complete with its animated caption flashed up on the screens, is intended to make us roll our eyes and sigh. Of course, it's just a show...

I'm not one for dance on film, I prefer to see the body's miracles of movement in real time and unedited. However, I can see that Five would be a wonderful production on the big screen, or even as a DVD mini series. I sincerely hope that Boy Blue Ent. get the necessary support to make a sequel. At the very least I hope this show tours in the near future. I can see this production inspiring a new generation of dancers.

Five stars.
________________________________________________________________

For more information about Boy Blue, including listings of their classes, workshops and upcoming shows, click here for their website. If you want a banging soundtrack for your running playlist, your kung fu training, or for dancing around your bedroom pretending you're a Shaolin master, click here to download it.

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