Do Not Stop, Do Not Miss A Beat! --- Day 14/117

Walk: SF Ballet

Distance: 5 miles

So, today the superb SF Ballet ended its season with its best and most exhilerating and exacting program yet!  And, not improbably, its most challenging one for the dancers who were called upon to perform eight dances by the Dutch Grandmaster Hans Van Manen.  

Van Manen's choreography is nonstop movement to every note of the music (including Beethoven of all the composers Ciwt can't image dancing to).  His stages are bare of scenery, his dance structure is refined and his costumes nearly non-existent. (At one point the men were called upon to removed the wide black pantaloons you see above and dance the rest of the piece in the skimpiest of black bathing suits). All of his fast paced, intricate ballets demand perfect precision, athleticism and are so complex nobody, even the world's most skilled dancers, can do them in the initial rehearsals.  One person described his work "Solo" as a "mad little marathon."

For the audience this is refreshing, exhilerating breathtaking at times. For the dancers, Ciwt images it must be both thrilling to be dancing their art at such a demanding level but also nonstop frightening because the slightest misstep will be glaring and impair the beauty of the piece. This assumption was confirmed after eight of SF Ballet's pricipal dancers completed Beethoven's Grosse Fuge.  Not only had they danced super fast to the complex music, they had worked together as ensemble - a particular challenge for principals who are called on to express their own talents and no longer used to working in groups.  A few minutes after the curtain closed, there was a loud cheer from backstage.  It was the end of the season and they had done the near impossible - together!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzIjy8lrN1o

'Nice' Success --- Days 14/115 & 116

Walk: Hood, Opera Plaza Cinema

Distance: 3.5 , 4.5 miles

So, Ciwt's Don Quixote quest for the pretty, upbeat, positive, etc. met with another success at the movies today.  A Nice Indian Boy.  It's a gay variation on the standard rom-com with some predictable elements and many unexpected (and often charming/heartwarming) ones.  No political agenda and just deep enough to involve and delight.  Very likeable, well acted characters including the always wonderful Jonathan Groff of TV Manhunt and stage Hamilton* fame. A 'Nice' Getaway.

* https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-att_001&hspart=att&p=jonathan+groff+king+george+you%27ll+be+back&type=E210US1274G0#action=view&id=19&vid=12c7aac9f3553d1cc392a84876e4c870

Just Pretty --- Day 14/110-114

Walks: Presidio, Hood

Distance average: 4 miles

Over-Amstel Boerderij, four miles from center of Amsterdam

So, sometimes Ciwt is just all about pretty and uplifting, and she thinks this place fits the bill.

Ciwt just enjoys looking, but here are more particulars if you would like them.

Costumes, Everyone! --- Day 14/103 -109

Walk: SF Ballet

Distance: 5 miles

San Francisco Ballet Broken Wings

Sometimes Ciwt forgets how important costumes can be to a performance.  Not today!  Today the supremely superior dancing of the San Francisco Ballet corps actually took a visual second place to the vividly spectacular costumes they were wearing.  All enhanced by color-saturated lighting and a musical score steeped in Mexican folk idioms.  Broken Wings was an entertaining feast for the eyes and ears from its beginning with the opening of a box a group of by skeletons to its ending with the same box being closed by them but now painted in Frieda Kahlo's iconic colorful butterflies.

This might sound overdone in writing, particularly since Broken Wings follows and life, love and art of the (to Ciwt) overdone in coffee cups and refigerator magnets Mexican artist.  But with its splendiferous costumes and headdresses, lightly melodious score and delicate dancing it was a lovely tribute to Frieda Kahlo and the  ardent, vividly colorful, self-portraits she produced as antidote to her constant pain and restricted mobility and left to the world after her death at age 47.

Blue Uplift --- Day 14/108

Walk: Not yet.  Busy looking at bluebirds

Distance: We'll see

What is more uplifting than a bluebird?!  Ciwt went from yesterday's discouragement to happy just looking at pictures of them this morning.  41 types, each so gorgeous!  A link to all 41 - none endangered! - is below.  Enjoy and have a lovely day.

So Soft looking

Blue-gray Tanager

Scruffy with strong voice (see link below to hear it sing)

Blue Grosbeak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScAFygYqkk

Wow!

Red-legged Honeycreeper

There are many more, all so beautiful!  Here's a link to the whole article to look at any time you want an uplift

Really?? --- Days 14/102-107

Walks: Senior appointments: Dentist, Dermatologist, Walgreens, all walking 

Distances: Average: 4 miles

Dear readers, please feel free to apply these reactions to anything you choose. 

Besides Fun and Joyful --- 14/100, 101 & 102

Walks: Hood 

Distance: average 3.5 miles

So the late Sacramento artist and teacher, Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), is one of Ciwt's favorite artists.  Also one of the most tricky for her to write about.  Because, like most people, she finds his work immensely pleasurable, joyful, even silly.  But unlike many, a part of Ciwt is also moved to tears by it. 

Wayne Thiebaud, Clown Cones, 2000

To Ciwt, at the core of all Thiebaud's art are the tears of a clown, even his more adorable, 'happy' clown  paintings like the one above.  These cones are somehow animate, like pets or dolls, you want to snuggle with them, 'eat them up.'  And, if they haven't melted first, that is what they are calling for someone to do, consume them. And then they will be gone.  From most beguiling to gone.  This, life's trajectory embedded in Thiebaud's painting, is both endearingly desirable and sad. 

And each of these 'dressed up' cones is alone; they aren't relating to each other. So too the people in Thiebaud's portraits.  

Wayne Thiebaud, Five Seated Figures, 1965, o/c

Whether in group or individual portraits, the inner lives of all his subjects are hidden from the people around them and from us.  Even in Thiebaud's portrait of his wife and love of his life, Betty Jean, we see she is gorgeous and has pictures of historically recognizable art in the book before her. But we have no indication what she's thinking or if or how she relates to that art.  She is essentially a stranger to the world - including her most intimate partner.

Wayne Thiebaud, Betty Jean Thiebaud and Book,  1965-69, o/c

In person the glowing lushness of Thiebaud's paint is as thick and gooey looking as frosting.  His brushwork caresses the canvas with the same sensual, loving way a baker might lavish frosting on their cake. His confections are both beckoning and stark. Too perfect. His people are precisely presented but unknowable. His toys, like gumball and pinball machines, have unreliable chanciness. His San Francisco is glowing, gorgeous and extremely precarious.  

Wayne Thiebaud, Morning Freeway, 2012, 0/c

 

There is a complex, deeply personal sensibility underlying Thiebaud's art.  Its shining simplicity isn't all it appears to be.  And to Ciwt there's a lot of tragedy there.  But, like the people in his portraits, Thiebaud's thoughts are private and inaccessible.  Happy, sad, overt, unknowable at once.

What do You Think? --- Days 14/98,99,100

 Walks:  Hood

Distances: 3.5, 5.5, 2.5 miles

So Ciwt was really excited that the new rug she ordered for her living room was arriving early!  When it got here, it was quite lovely but it seemed lighter than she expected.  Just to check, she took out her photos of the rug in the store and slid them under the rug that had been delivered.  If you look above, the one she ordered, Alabaster, is in the middle of the photos.  And the lightest one, Ecru is on the left and right ends respectively.  To her eye, the one that is in her living room is Ecru  the wrong color.

What do you think, dear readers?  Here's a close up: 

Left: rug in living room, Right: bottom Ecru, top Alabaster