lthomass

If anyone hasn't seen it yet "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is an excellent movie. My son had a snow day on Friday, so we took advantage of it to go to the matinee movie (cheaper and less crowded). Both my 11 and 19 yr old sons enjoyed it immensely. It follows true to the book and the actress that plays Lucy is very captivating and has beautiful eyes. It was so good that we will all go back again, this time with my husband. If you like LOTR you will like this movie. It is very hard to tell when the computer animation ends and the real stuff starts. The first 10 minutes will have you wanting to cry, even my oldest said it pulls at your heartstrings. The scenery both in England and New Zealand is gorgeous. Just an excellent family movie, suitable for kids of all ages. And I heard this morning on my way home from work that it had done very well at the box office over the weekend. Good news for family friendly films!

Well we don't have to worry about the company moving to LA or anywhere else as they have ceased operations as of today. It was very disheartening to open my e-mails today and see that the doors were closed. It was even harder to have to tell my young son that there would be no dance class tonight and no Nutcracker either. Needless to say he was very upset and there were quite a few tears all around. My thoughts and prayers go out to the dancers and staff of the company who had no idea that this step was even being considered and are now unemployed.

Has anyone read this book by Lisa See? I just finished it, as it is our book club selection for October. It has a fascinating history of women in a remote area of China, the secret language that they invented and their interpersonal relationships. It also discusses in great depth the subject of foot binding. Just reading the descriptions made my feet hurt, and to think of the things those little (6yr old) girls had to go through to get what were considered beautiful feet (golden lilies). For comparison, I believe the author said the perfect foot size was the size of your thumb from the top to bottom. If you look at an adult thumb that is only about 3 inches long. I thought this was an excellent book both from a character standpoint and from the standpoint of learning about another culture. I like reading books where I can learn about other cultures, so was happy our club found this one. My book club just finished reading the Kite Runner and Reading Lolita in Tehran, so I guess you can say we are vicariously travelling the world this year. Before I leave, another old but good book about China is The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I read it before I read Snow Flower, so it was interesting to compare the history and characters that were found in them

As a parent who has a student at the Academy, I am glad to hear that it will be staying in town. The academy gives an excellent dance education and my child really likes the instructors. They are very patient and kind, but run disciplined classes where everyone is given an opportunity to learn. The instructors are very dedicated to their art and are good about passing on their dedication to the children. My child does not want to take dance lessons anywhere else, so I hope that the academy will be around for a very long time.

I guess part of my lengthy (ha, ha) note was unclear. The local ballet company does do outreach performances. I know that they are to the inner city schools, but my question to Welsh Canary was if he/she knew if they went to the schools outside of the city. I'm sorry if that was not clear. Glad (in a sad sort of way) to see that we are not the only city being held for hostage by the team owners. I did forget to say though that our Art Museum and Museum of Indian/Western history just had major upgrades and they are beautiful. We also now have an outdoor arts park with large sculptures, handicapped accessible, etc. From the article in the paper it looked interesting. I'll have to make a trip there someday, the best part is it is FREE!!

Welsh Canary, you raise some interesting points. From some of your previous posts, I believe that we are from the same state. My question to you is how can we as enjoyers of all the arts convince the community that arts are an important part of life? Right now in my city the mayor is more interested in building a new football stadium for a bunch of millionare players and owner who has NO LOYALTY to the community beyond getting his new stadium. Although he didn't come out and specifically said so I think the implication was, build me a stadium or my team will leave. The mayor has also convinced most of the counties surrounding the city to vote in a 1% food and beverage tax to support the stadium (based on his reasoning that it is good for the entire area). It doesn't matter that anyone going to the football games will not spend the night in a hotel 20 miles out of town, or probably even eat there, the commissionars passed the tax and as such are effectively penalizing the local people. One county (not mine) had the guts to stand up to the mayor and didn't vote in the tax. It also appears that in this city that sports rule, never mind that the public school system has major problems, they have major sewage leaks into the river during heavy rains, the public transportation system is literally non-existent, the police department is underfunded, library underfunded, I could go on forever, but we will HAVE A NEW STADIUM!!! I believe it was Lenin who said that religion was the opiate of the masses, but I feel that we could change that in this area to say that sports are the peoples opiate. Just give them a winning team and anything goes. Another point that you raised is the repetoire of dance companies. If the classic ballets were relevant in their early days then how could we make them relevant to people today? How can we educate people today to see that dance is a beautiful art and that the dancers while artists are also performing a very physically demanding job? In my local school system my son's elementary took the 4th graders to the symphony and in the 6th grade they go to the opera, in my oldest son's high school they went to the local theater company to see a play and I know that that company puts on many daytime perfomances of The Christmas Carol for school groups. Nowhere in the curriculum have I seen mention of a trip to the ballet. I know that the local company does outreach perfomances, but I think that they are just to the inner city schools (correct me if I'm wrong) and not to the schools outside the main area of the city. If the symphony, opera and theater company can reach all of these groups then why are ballet companies having a hard time reaching the same groups? Is it something that is just in our area or is it widespread? Is ballet something that people just don't understand, while going to the symphony or a play is easier to understand? You also mention ballets that are relevant to our times. Last year our local company performed Dracula. I don't know if it made money, but my sons sure enjoyed it. I don't know what other modern ballets are out there for companies to perform. I would like to see some Balanchine or Tudor but I don't know if there are copyright issues with those ballets. One of the local modern dance companies just got done with a performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was wonderful, the dancers all looked like they were having a good time on stage, they came out afterwards and mingled with the audience and both of my sons once again enjoyed it. In fact the oldest one went back to see it a second time. Another thing that might be causing some lack of attendance is now most places have you buy your tickets through a ticketing service. The company can advertise $15.00 tickets, but by the time you go through the ticket service they end up costing $5-10 more. If someone is stretching the budget to spend $15, then adding a fee on to the price of the ticket may make them say just forget it. I for one am also fairly new to the ballet, but I have become an avid fan. I love going to the shows, seeing the dancers, trying to pick out my favorites in the corps, etc., but I am also at a point in my life where I can afford some of the luxuries of going to the theater , etc. But many people are just trying to make ends meet and even if the ballet company performs something that is more modern, they just don't have the extra money to go to a performance. However, I do hope that the local company will be around for a long time. I think it would be a great loss to our city, if they were to ever leave.

My votes go to Baryshnikov, Corella and Malakhov. Corella and Malakhov are fantastic in the Born To Be Wild DVD.