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June 9, 2008
A Weekend in the Arts
This was Sam's weekend with Saturday given over (the entire day from 9 am to 10 pm) to his dance recital and Sunday to his Royal Academy of Music Piano exam. About the latter, there is little or nothing to relate, so the bulk of this post shall refer to the former.
Sam was in five dances on Saturday--tap, hip-hop, ballet, acro, and jazz. (Doesn't this begin to sound like the set-up for a logic problem?) In each case, as the only boy his age in the troupe, he was noticeable and something of a centerpiece.
The theme of the recital was "A Trip to New York" and this first tap dance was called "Tourists." It was danced to a song that sounded vintage 1920s or 1930s but could have been of more recent day. The entire troupe acquitted themselves very nicely given the rehearsals and the classes we had seen. In fact, more than very nicely, they were all pretty much in synch and the dance went off without a hitch. He has also passed the age at which he spends a lot of his time looking off-stage expecting prompts and help from the teachers.
The second dance was our least favorite dance-class of the year and the one I keep threatening to withdraw him from. Unfortunately, it is also his favorite. The Hip-Hop dance was titled "Double Decker Bus" and was danced to some piece called "Double Dutch Bus." He was the busdriver and I have to admit, as a performance, the piece looked far better than it did in rehearsals and practices and he did a really fine job (I suppose). It's really hard to evaluate whether one is doing a good job in hip-hop because much of it looks like a barely controlled seizure to me. However, the audience appeared engaged, and that, I suppose, is one sign. Even among parents ardently interested in their own children's performance, it is difficult to get much of a reaction to the performances of others' children--and this received a warm welcome.
The third dance was his ballet and it was really spectacular for me to see. Titled "Little Italy," it was danced to a vaguely classical sounding Tarantella. After a balletic version of a folk dance, Sam had a short solo consisting of a run around the half-circle of girls, four "air-splits" (or whatever the move is called, where the dancer jumps straight up with legs outstretched) and two tournes-en-leve--a simple jump and spin. What was really neat about the whole thing was that Sam managed to keep toes pointed and good form throughout the dance. Throughout this year of dance, he had been afflicted with a severe case of spaghetti arms, but there was no sign of it during the recital.
The acro piece was done in rainbow colored Tina-Turner wigs and danced to The Chipmunk's version of "Funky Town." Sam is still coming into his own on acro, but I was astounded by all of the moved I saw, including a set of one handed cartwheel two girls did while holding hands. I can't imagine the coordination that takes.
The final dance was Jazz. Performed to "Jailhouse Rock," I was once again astounded by two things--pointed toes and "jazz hands." Jazz hands, for those who don't know the terminology are hands shown with fingers widely splayed. Sam's spaghetti arms also tended to afflict his Jazz hands, but he managed them quite capably.
Overall, the performance showed to me something that I seem to see time and again. For an audience, Sam can do amazing things. The audience energizes him and really brings out the very best in his performance. While practicing and running through the routines, not so much. But wow, give him an audience and he'll have them eating out of his hands.
As soon as I transfer them, I'll try to have some picture for you all.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 10, 2008
Henry James, Redux
More properly titled
Some Notes toward Coming to Terms with The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a difficult book to characterize; there is little in the way of plot or setting, and much about the interior lives of the characters, even if much of that is viewed from the exterior. Isabel Archer clearly occupies center stage and she presents her own difficulties to the reader. Frankly, it is difficult to like her and even more difficult to sympathize with her plight. The whole arc of the book can be described by the adage, "She has made her bed, now she must lie upon."
Why is Isabel Archer so difficult to like? The answer to this question probably boils down to the definition for a "tragic hero(ine)." A noble, otherwise likeable person, with one major fault. If fault there be in Ms. Archer it is an overweening pride. The bible instructs that "Pride goeth before a fall," (and after, as well, as anyone who has taken a tumble in public can testify). And fall she does, from a great and dizzying height.
And yet one is left with the impression than much of the angst and anguish of that fall is unnecessary--dictated only by the odd and hard pride that drives Ms. Archer. In fact, contemplating what has happened to her in the course of her marriage, she considers for a moment ending the pain by walking away, only to conclude that she cannot do so because then her error will be brought to public notice.
So where are we left with Ms. Archer? It's odd, her pride leads in two directions. In the beginning of the book, she is unwilling to be "tied down," to consider marriage because it would be a compromise of all the possibilities that seem to open up before her. She flouts conventionality and the "normal" way through life. Once she has abandoned her better judgment and entered into marriage, her pride leads her to cling to the conventional way of things so that her error and her shame will not be broadcast into the world. It is interesting the way in which this most primal of sins pulls Ms. Archer in two ways, never offering a moment of piece or tranquility. In her ascendant phase, she rejects the approaches of two men who really love her, breaking down in tears after she sends one of them away--tears of anger and even rage that she should have to tell him to go away. In her decline, she once again breaks down into tears when she realizes that her pride leaves her no way out of her dilemma.
Pride is the central issue of the book. It is the cross on which our heroine is hoisted, and it is such an ugly sin that many will look upon it and say that perhaps she deserves what she has made for herself. As in many of James's works, the heroine is not particularly attractive. We're told that she's beautiful and has a way about her that seems to fascinate men. But the reality is that to the reader she presents a rather formidable, stern, and completely self-interested facade that does nothing to provoke any sympathy. Hence, the book cannot really be viewed as a tragedy. No more can one view it as "realism" or "life as it is," because this life is so warped out of any possibility of viewing it as normal. All around her, she has examples of women who have stepped out of conventionality to live a life that is more compatible with their spirits, but she disdains these role models in favor to the model she has built in her head. And so, she condemns herself to a life of misery or at least a long pause on a possible life of happiness. More wicked and horrible than that, she has it within her power to free another trapped in the same web as she is, and yet she refuses to do it--possibly creating another life in the image of her own. Oh, how our sins come home to roost and how that roosting increases them and their effects.
I'll end this jumble of part I for now, because if I do not do so, nothing will ever see the light of day. But there is much to think about in the case of Ms. Archer, and perhaps these notes have provoked some of you all to look into for the first time or refresh your acquaintance with Ms. Archer if you had perhaps the pleasure of make such a friend earlier on.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 11, 2008
More About James
Yesterday's post was unsatisfyingly vague because I didn't want to disrupt the enjoyment of anyone who had not yet encountered this truly wondeful book. Let that serve as a warning to all who have not yet read it as they proceed into this post.
The Portrait of a Lady:Genesis of the Anti-Hero?
It seems reasonable that if Hamlet can be listed in the rosters of the anti-hero, so too can Isabel Archer. Like Hamlet, Isabel might otherwise be considered a tragic hero, but here "heroic flaw" pierces so deep and so profoundly divides her character that it is really impossible to sympathize with her dilemma. She has so thoroughly compromised herself with her uncompromisability that she is no longer emotionally accessible to the reader.
This last point is interesting. In a discussion with a friend the other day, he suggested that James never intended Isabel Archer to be emotionally approachable or even likeable. If indeed, this is an accurate reflection of James's intention, he succeeds admirably. If, on the other hand, the reader is supposed to be engaged by Miss Archer, James has failed miserably to make her engaging.
Looking through the Jamesian Canon, one finds a plethora of female characters in similar situation. Neither of the leads of The Golden Bowl is particularly attractive. Catherine of Washington Square is anything but likeable, approachable, or even in any real sense knowable. The principles of The Spoils of Poynton are so thoroughly offputting one is put in mind of Anne River Siddons Fox's Earth. The nursemaid of The Turn of the Screw is even more a ghost that the ghost she may not see. And Daisy Miller is made to be unlikeable start to finish--once she meets her end from one or another disease, the reader breathes a sigh of relief and moves on. The catalog is not exhaustive, nor is my acquaintance with James's work, but call this a working hypothesis. What is fascinating about James's work is how he manages to engage the reader without giving the reader a central figure who is particularly sympathetic or engaging.
In The Portrait of a Lady, the engagement comes largely from the characters that fill Isabel's world--Mr. Touchett, Mrs. Touchett, Ralph Touchett, Lord Warburton, Caspar Goodwood, Harriet Stackpole, Mr. Bantling (on the good side), the Countess Gemini (in the ambiguous mode), and Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle (on the bad side.) Pansy, Isabel's stepdaughter, seems to take after her stepmother in the realm of unsympathetic heroines. In a way akin to Catherine of Washington Square, the demur submissiveness of Pansy is an appalling spectacle to behold, and Isabel's inadvertent assist of this least attractive of Pansy's qualities is another point that deflects the reader's sympathies from Isabel.
In this swirl of interesting and mostly likable characters, Isabel stands out as something of a vacuum, a black hole of sympathy. Watch her interactions with others and read her interior monologue and the reader becomes become progressively chilled, as the realization dawns that one is in the presence of a committed egomaniac--a person without any outside anchor in reality to ground her theories and notions, and thus a ship untethered in fair weather or foul and likely to run aground at the first shoal.
And the reader sees this again and again as first she rejects the advances of Lord Warburton, and then of Caspar Goodwood, and even the gentle non-advance of Ralph Touchett, who is wise enough to understand that he is not even in the running. And it is through the kindness and thoughtfulness of Ralph that Isabel achieves the wealth to allow for her destruction. Ralph entreats his dying father to alter his will to leave a living to him and to his mother, but to settle the bulk of the estate on his cousin Isabel Archer. It is this wealth that precipitates the decline that occupies the second half of the novel.
Because she is now a woman of means, she becomes attractive to a pair of schemers (somewhat similar in mode to The Wings of the Dove, who proceed to plan her "demise." Madame Merle, whose name indicates "blackbird" in French, and whose name, the book notes informed me, is supposed to remind me of Madame Mertuil of Les Laiasons Dangereuses, is the primary instigator. It is her chance meeting with Isabel and her acquaintance with Gilbert Osmond that defines the action of the remainder of the book.
I must leave off at this point, and if I can, I will return to the declining action of the book. But, I have a quick trip to NYC and Boston in the interim, so I don't know where I'll be by the time my head settles.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack