Entries from April 2007 ↓

Last night my friend and I ate our first out-of-doors meal of the season. Coats were still needed, but we could relish gnocchi and pizza from the charming Carol Gardens Savoia Pizzeria ($12 range, with nice wine by the glass for $6-8). At Fall Cafe Bronwen read from a new manuscript. (She has a new hand-sewn chapbook, go check it out.) After the reading everyone went en masse to Abilene for drinks and fries (or in my case, stealing other people’s fries). To finish the evening, we headed over the Brooklyn Social. I need to go back there. The ginger martini was amazing.

I haven’t posted for quite some time, so this is just going to be jumble of things that I’ve intended to write full posts about, but somehow haven’t found the time.

First, sympathy to everyone affected by the Virginia Tech shootings yesterday. There’s a lot to say about that, but my fingers won’t type the right things, so I’ll leave it at that.

Did the Yale Tango Festival weekend-before-last. It was my very first tango festival (Awww…)! Now I’m afraid that I’m going to become an addict. One of the highlights for me was Robin & Jennifer’s gaucho class. Now I (likely) embarress anyone with the misfortune to wait on a subway platform or elevator bank with me by practicing letting my leg have it’s own weight while swinging. Brigetta and Tomas’ milonga musicality class may just have changed my feeling about that dance forever. After a couple of classes from the school of thought where you have to keep. going. on. every. beat. sometimes. go twice. but. always. fast. I was sure that I’d never really enjoy it. They introduced the revolutionary idea of actually listening to the music, and varying speed of step accordingly (twice in a beat, every beat, every other beat, long pauses…). I lead Carlos and Tova’s turns class, but actually took away an interesting exercise that mostly pertains to follows — put all of your weight on one foot, twist your upper body 90 degrees on one directions, and let your lower body catch up. Repeat. Good obliques workout, different way of thinking about ochos.

In other tango news, I took a follower’s technique over at Dance Manhattan from Valeria. She puts so much musicality and expression into just an ocho, just a step. Tempo/ emphasis can be effective embellishments.

Since I didn’t get around to posting last Friday, the 13th, I’ll mention now that some people suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia.

Last night I went to the  church of craft meeting in the East Village, at the lovely new Rapture Cafe. Lovely people, lovely projects, lovely cafe.

Last Friday night/ Saturday morning Dustin & I went to the last big party at 3rd Ward. As the danger parties tend to be, it was eclectic, bleary, pillowy, flashing, with lots of new friends.

Other things going on in life, decisions being made. How’s that for nice & vague? Almost a flashback to my early LJ days…

Just back from Thurs. - Sunday in Chicago, running weekend retreat for work. I think that I slept about eight hours total while I was there — being everyone’s best friend while juggling running events and connecting w/ outside vendors was exhausting. We had 80 people from 20 offices there, and by the end they were mixing and mingling and bellowing out Karaoke. (Bust a move — yes, I did sing it…) I think that could be called successful. They also seemed alert and engaged during our sessions, which is something considering that they slept almost as little as I did. Now I need to get plans for the next one off the ground, and get moving on implementing some of the ideas they came up with…

I didn’t get a chance to get out and dance over the weekend, and this morning I stepped on a pottery shard my cats managed to find and leave for me next to the bed. I’m going to the doctor about it this afternoon, and hope that it won’t slow me down too much on the dance front…