Sunday, Sept. 25, 2005
... Out of the doubt that fills your mind
I tried to post earlier, but before I got a chance, I erased my post. Ah well. I've been meaning to be better about updating here, but I don't always have enough to say to fill
two blogs. I try, though, and I promised myself that I wouldn't neglect this blog this year, so... I'm not going to.
Like the new layout? I don't usually go for the movie-themed layouts (or TV-themed, or music-themed, or actor-themed, or... well, you get the picture), but the quotes on this one were just too perfect to pass up. They somehow represent this year perfectly. Plus, Garden State is one of the best movies ever, so if I'm going to choose something that advertises a specific movie, better that it be one I love, right?
That's one of those movies that I need to get for myself. Becka had it at home, but, of course, I couldn't take it with me. It's on my list. I have a very long list...
...which is rapidly growing to include more clothes and shoes. Leave it to me to move to New York and suddenly become slightly wardrobe-obsessed. Granted, most of them are inexpensive things that I can pick up at Old Navy or Strawberry (a new favorite store) or H&M or someplace like that, but still. There are looks that I see that I like, and I'll just have to work on building them. Or something.
Far too much money to be spent; not nearly enough money to spend. Isn't that always the case? Ah well...
I saw a dance performance tonight... it was actually really good. It was in this church, and apparently was designed to be done in that space--it (particularly the lighting) really utilized the architecture in it, and that was really fantastic. I think I got something out of it that wasn't the intention at all, but isn't that what some of these more subjective arts are all about?
In any case, it was excellent--and a kind of fun way to start my New York Arts Scene experience. I'm definitely planning to see some of the bigger Broadway shows, but I don't have the budget to see those all the time. As it is, I'm planning to make full use of that "rush seating" feature that most theatres offer. If I'm lucky, I can get a ticket for $25 or so, which is even cheaper than TKTS. If that fails, TKTS is always an option, and if that fails... well, then I have to decide whether I want to see it badly enough to pay full box office prices.
There's always something else going on, though, and always a show that I can see for $15. Tons of stuff. So the plan is to see something every couple of weeks, depending on what's playing. I'm aiming for a show every 2 weeks or so, but we'll see how it all goes, what I want to see, etc, etc, etc.
Anyways, about tonight's show. It was pretty cool--the thing was in a church, and a lot of the lighting mostly (not as much of the choreography) was based around the architecture, so it really wouldn't have been as powerful in a different venue. That was cool, and added a different dimension to it, for me. It's hard to explain without having seen it, but the whole storyline of the show took on a different symbolism for me... it kind of covered "issues" from racism (a recurring theme was the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday--which always reminds me of Chelsea) to environmentalism, but for me, it turned into a celebration of community, and how we need each other, and how everything we do affects someone else--everything from racism to destroying the environment to our own personal struggles.
At the end, this one dancer did a solo through everyone else (they were all lying still on the floor), and ended up at the front of the church, where an altar would be (the front was bare, except for the building itself), and what ran through my head was the verse "present your bodies as living sacrifices", and then he came back down, and "revived" the other dancers (they had been the ones who had shown the struggles throughout the rest of the show; he had just been there in the beginning), and danced them up towards the altar.
At that point, the whole thing, to me, became this huge metaphor of how we're called to lay down our lives so that we can go on to bigger and better things, nad so that we can help others in bigger and better ways. And I'm sure that wasn't what they were going for at all--I'm sure it wasn't a Christian dance company--but it was still really cool, and the symbolism of playing out this story of community within a church was definitely not lost on me.
infinite || abyss
posted at 12:02 a.m.
