Archives for 2008

Performers have all kinds of techniques for dealing with pre-performance nerves. Some do yoga, others meditate, a third groupp swigs Jack Daniels. Writers have their own issues to deal with like writer’s block, but it’s only infrequently, generally speaking, that we have to get up and perform in public.

There’s quite a lot of performance going on in this writer’s life right now between various interviews, presentations and facing the prospect of singing my first solo vocal recital in a couple of weeks time.

A dear friend of mine in New York who’s on the voice faculty of the Drama department at Yale had a couple of interesting ideas for dealing with nerves if you have to sing in public. This stuff probably won’t come as news to anyone who’s a performer, but just might be helpful to those among us who write for a living and suddenly find themselves forced to belt out the “Star Spangled Banner” or “O Mi Bambino Caro” before a live audience.

1. Butterflies are natural. Just let them dance about in your stomach. Concentrate on keeping them there. Try not to let them loose into your upper chest or neck.

2. Focus your attention on the narrative or emotional content of the song you are singing. Focusing intently on the “given circumstances” of what you are singing generally overrides nerves.

Both useful pieces of advice. Can’t wait to try them out.

I’m hard-pressed to find a more engrossing and accurate metaphor for the current state of play between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama than the World Wrestling Entertainment spoof wrestling match between the two Senators that’s been making the rounds on YouTube for the last couple of days.

Performers dressed as the two contendors for the Democratic nomination — Obama embellished with a pair of large protruding ears and Clinton with a puffy wig — duke it out in the ring in front of cheering crowds. Bill Clinton is on hand to give his wife support, which seems a little unfair to Obama who has no second and must face his opponent alone.

At the end of the short fight, neither Senator has won. Instead, an archetypal, spandex-short-wearing wrestler — huge, tattooed, and oiled — stomps into the ring and destroys the two politicians.

The champion wrestler isn’t outfitted with John McCain’s weak chin. That would be going too far. But you don’t need the man to look like the Republican Presidential nominee to read between the lines and see what will happen to the Democratic cause if Obama and Clinton continue to spat.

The clip is pure theatre. Wrestling is the most theatrical of all sports and the WWE fight between Clinton and Obama only serves to make its links with politics even more explicit.

My editor at SF Weekly didn’t approve of the second version of a review I wrote about a production of  Ellen McLaughlin’s The Trojan Women at Aurora Theatre. He decided to go with the first version, which appears in the paper today, on the grounds that my re-written essay, with its London-focused introduction and conclusion “lacks relevance to a San Fran audience” and “seemed forced and tacked on.”

For the published version, follow this link. (Scroll way down the page to find the “stage” section.)

I think I like the new version better though, so I thought I’d post it here:

Recently, the London authorities announced the names of six artists shortlisted for the chance to create a new work of art for one of the city’s key landmarks, Trafalgar Square. With its central location, grand fountains and imposing statue of Admiral
Nelson atop a 151-foot column flanked by four stately-looking bronze lions, the
Square pays tribute to one of the U.K.’s most decisive military victories – the
Battle of Trafalgar of 1805. One of the finalists in the competition, Jeremy
Deller, is causing controversy for his proposal to put a real car wrecked in
the Iraq War on a plinth in the Square. Entitled “The
Spoils of War (Memorial for an Unknown Civilian)” Deller’s piece of public art,
if selected, would doubtless give all of London pause for thought for its
sobering message about the monstrous effects of conflict on civilians.

Playwright Ellen McLaughlin
similarly hopes to force people leading comfortable
lives in the U.S. to pay attention to the plight of citizens caught up in war
with The Trojan Women, her contemporary
adaptation of a famous anti-war play of the same name written by Ancient Greek
playwright Euripides in 415 B.C. Like Euripides play before her,
McLaughlin’s haunting, hour-long drama takes place directly after the fall of
the city of Troy to the Greek army following a decade of fighting prompted by
the Trojan prince Paris’ kidnapping of the beautiful Spartan queen, Helen. With
all of Troy’s male population either dead or vanished, the city’s women gather
infront of their smoldering city at the play’s opening to commiserate the
unhappy fate that awaits them as slaves or concubines to the Greeks.

Euripides wrote his drama to express his feelings of revulsion at his country’s aggressive 416 B.C. campaign against the neutral island state of Melos.
McLaughlin originally penned hers in the mid-1990s in response to the plight of
refugees displaced by the Balkan conflict. Aurora Theatre’s modern-dress, Farsi
and Croatian-peppered professional world premiere production (which is based on
McLaughlin’s rewrite of her play for Fordham University in 2003) aims to be
more universal. Directed by Barbara Oliver and set in what looks like a
timeless, placeless wasteland, the play’s message might equally apply to recent
or current conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan or Tibet. The eternality of Aurora’s approach underscores a truism about the nature of wars – how they wreak havoc on civilizations no matter when or where they occur. But specificity rather than universality may be what’s needed to transform The Trojan Women from
being yet another – albeit affecting — anti-war play to an impactful
theatrical event.

McLaughlin’s drama distinguishes itself from other works in the anti-war play cannon through its penetrating exploration of the rage and desperation of the victimized Trojans. The characters’ helpless anger comes across acutely in the scene where they physically attack Helen, the woman whom they view as the perpetrator of their suffering. In a bold departure from Euripides’ text, the chorus throws itself at the Spartan woman, intent on literally ripping the beauty that caused
so much ill from her body and face. But despite being brought to her knees,
Helen remains bold. Bloody and bruised with her arms tied to a yoke around her
neck like a sacrificial beast, the character, played with swaggering pride by
actor Nora el Samahy, ought to look like the image of defeat. But el Samahy
manages to convey dignity even in her sorry-looking state. Though McLaughlin’s
decision to give the chorus a physical outlet for its anger against Helen seems
gratuitous, it deftly reveals the women’s impotent rage.

Profoundly
moving performances from the other actors further forces Euripides’ ancient
tale to resonate across millennia. As portrayed with understated resilience by
Carla Spindt, Troy’s fallen queen, Hecuba, tries to set an example of strength
to her people. Yet she appears exhausted and almost resigned to her fate. As
Hecuba’s mad daughter Cassandra, Sarah Nealis bristles with nervous energy and
lucid-hysterical defiance. “These are the men you fear?” she says, with incredulity. “Pity them!” Hecuba’s daughter-in-law, Andromache, meanwhile, quickly becomes the real focus of our pity. The moment when the Greeks force Cassandra to surrender her son Astyanax so that they might put him to death is the most sickening of the play, owing largely to Emilie Talbot’s feeling yet unsentimental performance as Cassandra.

Despite the eternal relevance of the story, the savage lyricism of McLaughlin’s writing and the power of Aurora’s production, it’s unnervingly easy to disengage oneself from the events on stage soon after the play ends. The idea that the
story could take place at any time and in any place somehow makes them seem
remote to an audience living in cushy Northern California in 2008. John
Iacovelli’s striking set design ought to provide a direct connection between
the plight of the Trojan victims and contemporary Bay Area audiences. What
appears to be a cluster of massive rusty square metal pipes reminiscent of a
sewage plant or a ventilation system in a dilapidated factory, is apparently a
reproduction of the Vaillancourt Fountain – a 1971 water sculpture which
occupies a space near The Ferry Building at the end of Market Street. The
trouble is, short of a strong familiarity with this piece of public art, it’s
pretty difficult to decipher the play’s local setting. I’m not suggesting that
the Aurora Theatre should hang a sign saying “This way to the Ferry Building”
above the stage, but a program note would be useful. (I only found out about
the play’s locale when I read about it in one of the local dailies after seeing
the show.) By being clearer that the events in The Trojan Women are supposed to unfold neither in some ancient mythical city nor on a random sewage farm, but right here in San Francisco right now, the Aurora Theatre could well make the cruelties of war seem all the more immediate to its audiences.

Immediacy can be problematic, though. Back in London, British art pundits are excited about Deller’s Trafalgar Square sculpture plans. Some consider “The Spoils of War” to be the best of the six short-listed works. But the impact of putting an Iraqi civilian’s crushed car up on a plinth in one of the most highly trafficked spots of a country that’s been responsible for the deaths of so many Iraqis over the past few years, may be too much for Britain’s patriotic soul to bare. As a result, Deller’s work is unlikely to be realized.
“A real destroyed car, from a real war, in the middle of London on a public
square that commemorates a famous naval victory?” wrote art journalist Jonathan
Jones in The Guardian recently. “Come on, it’s not likely.”

If Euripides was able to get away with staging The Trojan Women in his home country (and win a major prize at the most renowned Greek drama festival for the play to boot), then Deller’s statue ought to see the light of day. The question is, will London’s gatekeepers prove themselves to be as open-minded as the Ancient Athenians?

P.S.I’ll be running around on the East Coast for five days and may not have the opportunity to post. Back at my desk on Tuesday morning…

Today I was approached by a local theatre company asking if I’d help with its upcoming fundraiser. The company is planning on auctioning off an evening at the theatre…with me. The idea is that I will go to see a play with three of the highest bidders and then the four of us will head out for post-show drinks to discuss what just transpired on stage.

I must admit that I’m very flattered to have been asked to do this and it sounds like a fun way to spend an evening. But I’m a little flummoxed by the proposal. For who in their right mind would part with their hard-earned cash for the chance to spend an evening at the theatre with the critic of an alternative weekly in San Francisco? It’s hard enough on occasion to get friends to join me to see shows for free. Still, I’m game, though I doubt I’ll start a bidding war.

A few days ago, after years of trying, I finally got to sample my first ever deep-fried Twinkie (DFT). I won’t go as far as to say that it was a religious experience, but it was otherworldly — a bit like experiencing unusual performance art, which is why the DFT deserves a mention here.

Before I go on, I should probably take a moment to explain what a DFT is. It looks like a battered, deep-fried hot dog on a stick, but it’s really a battered, deep-fried vanilla-cream-centered sponge finger cake on a stick. The regular, un-tampered-with Twinkies can be found at any American convenience store or gas station. They’re tasty, and, need I say it, exceedingly trashy. The Surgeon General should probably insist that each pack be sold with a health warning on it, like cigarettes. But a marvelous transformation takes place when the confection is dipped in fish batter, frozen overnight and immersed in a vat of canola oil.

I heard about the deep-friend Twinkie stand at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk long long before I first visited the quaint Pacific town on the Northern California coast. Vegan and raw food afficionados I know in San Francisco spoke in almost hallowed terms about the stand — how sampling its wares regularly converted people who would normally choose starvation over nibbling a Twinkie (or indeed any Hostess product) into DFT addicts.

When I went to Santa Cruz for the first time in 2003, I made a beeline for the Boardwalk, only to find the stand shut. I had to make do with some kettle corn. It was stale. I was disappointed. The same thing happened the second, third and fourth time I made the pilgrimage to Santa Cruz. Each time I got to the stand, even on a busy weekend in high summer, it was boarded up. One time, the cause was a malfuntioning fryer. Another time, I simply got there too late and business was done for the day. I started to think that the Boardwalk Gods were having a joke at my expense, perhaps because I was too chicken to go on any of the surrounding fairground rides.

Finally, a few days ago, while on a business trip to Santa Cruz, I managed to get to the Boardwalk when the stand was actually open. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. As I approached the stand, I half expected the guy at the counter to tell me that he’d had a rush on DFTs and was all out for the day. But he just took my order. I paid $3 for my DFT and wasted no time to taste what I had been waiting for all these years.

I was not disappointed. Food writer Melissa Clark did a pretty good job nof describing the DFT experience in The New York Times in May 2002:

“Something magical occurs when the pastry hits the hot oil. The creamy white vegetable shortening filling liquefies, impregnating the sponge cake with its luscious vanilla flavor. . . The cake itself softens and warms, nearly melting, contrasting with the crisp, deep-fried crust in a buttery and suave way. The piece de resistance, however, is a ruby-hued berry sauce, adding a tart sophistication to all that airy sugary goodness.”

Wanting to take a purist approach to my first DFT, I didn’t try any sauce with mine. Next time, I may give the chocolate syrup a whirl. But the effect of the confection was almost immediate on my system. I don’t know if I was feeling the effects of a sugar, fat and chemical high, but Santa Cruz seemed even sunnier and more colorful than usual that afternoon.

I’ve been to Mission Dolores in San Francisco several times over the past seven years to play the oboe in orchestral concerts, but never once have I taken the time to look around and think about the building. The Franciscan base, officially known as Misión San Francisco de Asís, was founded June 29, 1776 under the direction of Father Junipero Serra (1713-1784). This makes it the oldest original intact Mission in California and the oldest building in San Francisco. Serra established a chain of 21 missions up and down the California coast from San Diego to Sonoma.

Yesterday, while researching an article about a series of Mexican Baroque era choral music to be given by the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer up and down the so-called Camino Real in May, the Mission’s curator, Andy Galvan, took me on an interesting tour of the old church building. (I’d never been inside it before; the 19th century basilica next door is much bigger and therefore hosts most concerts and other major public events.) The modest adobe Old Mission building reveals more about the relationship between the Spanish missionaries and the native population than meets the untrained eye. For that reason, it was great to have a guide on my inaugural visit.

Galvan himself has a fascinating past: his great-great-great-great grandfather, a Bay Miwok Indian, was baptized at Mission Dolores. His great-great-great grandparents are buried in the Mission Dolores graveyard, with its life-size statue of Serra pensively looking downwards at the earth.

The inside of the church is European Baroque in style. The ornate, faux-marble revedos is original. It dates back to 1797. Pillars and statuettes of Franciscan friars decorate the walls. A stone font lurks in a shady alcove. There’s a raised wooden balcony at the back.

Only by looking upwards do you get a sense of the legacy of the Indians who built the church and learned and sang about the Catholic faith in it. The ceiling provides the one concession to native Ohlone art with its bright green, red, ocher and white Chevron arrow-shaped design. It’s a stunning contrast to the rest of the church’s interior (see image above.)

Similarly, only when you look more closely at one of the statues in the church do you really get a sense of the essential contradiction at the heart of the missionaries’ enterprise in California. Of all the beatific-looking figureheads that adorn the church walls, a Franciscan friar stands out for wearing a soldier’s armor over his religious robes and carrying a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. The statue is arresting because it so clearly tells you what founding missions in California was all about — spreading the gospel no matter the human cost. Religion and violence are united in this effigy with simple visual immediacy.

As I walked out into the churchyard into the Spring sun, all I could think about was how history repeats itself. But just as hundreds of people walk past the statue everyday without noticing the contradictions it embodies, very few seem to pay attention to the cyclical impulses that drive world events.

Later that day, when I went to Aurora Theatre in Berkeley to see Ellen McLaughlin’s savagely poetic world premiere adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women, the image of the statue in the church came rushing back into my mind. McLaughlin’s anti-war play recycles an ancient and eternal message about the destruction of war. Yet people make the same mistakes over and over again.

When I auditioned for a role in Hildegard von Bingen’s musical drama Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues) I thought I’d be lucky to get a small solo part. Somehow though, I was offered the key role of “The Soul” in the famous German abbess’ 12th century morality play — the oldest of its kind existent in the world today. Exciting news indeed for someone who’s never sung a solo role in a public performance (unless you count playing Peter Pan in a musical at grade school) much less done so in plainchant.

Chant, I’m discovering, has its own set of amorphous yet nonetheless precise rules for performance. No one really knows how Bingen’s music was performed, so the best we can do is make educated guesses about it. I’ve heard many different interpretations of her music. Needless to say, no two sound anything like each other. Some versions are slow and stately while others skip along playfully. Some feature full musical accompaniments, while others only provide a drone or nothing at all. Some require the singers to use vibrato while others go for a purer sound. I even heard one recording with an awful artificial “reverb” effect that distorted the singer’s voice until it sounded like she was a member of the Irish folk-rock group Clannad.

Hildegard’s music is fiendishly hard to learn and even more tricky to memorize, which I have to do prior to rehearsals which begin in June. Lacking real melodies, a regular pulse and even bar lines, getting a feel for the shape of each musical number is challenging. I’m also finding myself struggling with getting my lips around the Germanized Latin, which I’ve never dealt with before (remembering, for example, that the word “quod” is pronounced “qvod”.)

Yet somehow the music so easily slips under one’s skin. I find myself humming phrases to myself at different times during the day and falling asleep to half-remembered snatches at night. The other thing I love about Ordo is how so much of The Soul’s part sits so comfortably in the middle of my range. Hildegard is known for skipping about between far-flung notes and demanding two-octave-plus ranges from singers. But for some reason, The Soul is tailormade for a mezzo soprano. The vocal lines, once you’ve got a grip on the notes and those awkward little trill things whose official name I can’t recall, feel fairly effortless. They don’t require the singer to growl down in the depths or scrape the heights hardly at all. You just float through each phrase.

Not being particularly religious, I don’t care much about Ordo‘s liturgical narrative — a story in which a bunch of allegorical Virtues, dwelling within the City of God, help a penitent Soul (yours truly) to resist temptation and find salvation. Yet even at this early stage of getting to know the work, I find the music utterly intoxicating. And even though at some level, I feel like I could be singing about green eggs and ham, there’s something deeply moving about the sentiment behind some of Hildegard’s lyrics. The opening solo for The Soul is particularly gorgeous:

O sweet Divinity,
and O delightful life,
in which I shall wear the brightest of
garments,
receiving that
which I lost in my first appearance,
to you I sigh,
and invoke all Virtues.

San Francisco Renaissance Voices will present Ordo Virtutum in August over five performances. It’ll be an challenging and doubtless very satisfying process bringing this gorgeous work to life.

As the home of Incredibly Strange Wrestling and the Faux Drag Queen Pageant, San Francisco is a natural breeding ground for the estoric genre of Grand Guignol theatre. Thrillpeddlers, the city’s very own permanant company devoted to recreating the works of the now long-defunct Parisian Grand Guignol theatre (and its much shorter-lived sister, the London Grand Guignol theatre) as well as staging new, original plays written in the Grand Guignol style, should become a regular stop on the San Francisco trail for locals and visitors looking to sample something of the city’s more lurid side.

Located under a flyover in the concrete jungle of San Francisco’s seedy/arts South of Market district, Thrillpeddlers’ performance space, The Hypnodrome, is a wonder in and of itself. The paint-spattered backdrops look like something vomitted from the intenstines of a wolverine. A custom-built replica of a guillotine (recreated from plans found on the Internet of Swedish origins) lurks in a corner — and usually finds its way onto the stage at one point or another during an evening’s entertainment. An old automatic player piano covers up the sound of traffic driving by outside. The auditorium is snug enough to enable stage blood to hit you if you’re sitting in the front row. The back of the seating area is occupied by a row of eccentrically-decorated private nooks called “Shock Boxes” in which couples can have a little privacy should they desire it. The end of each show is marked by a complete shutting off of all the lights in the house. Audiences hold on to their drinks and shriek with fear and/or delight as florescent skeletons, ghouls and other creatures of the night dance around and mercilessly taunt innocent bystanders. If you’re sitting in a Shock Box, prepare for a shock.

Though the melodramatic plots of the Grand Guignol genre are often condemned for seeming predictable, a night at Thrillpeddlers is usually anything but run of the mill. Even when the work makes you want to dig yourself an early grave (as was the case with the company’s fabulously terrible production of Titus Andronicus a couple of years ago) the schlocktastic antics still manage to hit you with the unexpected. One emerges from a Thrillpeddlers show with the feeling that it isn’t what happens on stage that matters — but rather how the company hurtles towards each blood-splattered climax.

And I should point out that it’s not all about guts and gore. A night of Grand Guignol theatre is based around giving the audience a range of radically contrasting experiences. In a typical program, gory dramas are mixed with side-splitting comedies. The idea is to create an emotional ping-pong effect in the viewer as we move from rolling in the aisles to feeling the hairs stand up on the back of our necks. Thrillpeddlers certainly achieves this effect with its latest production: Flaming Sin: London’s Grand Guignol. A witty, louche one-act written for the London Grand Guignol in 1922 by Noel Coward, “The Better Half” (receiving its American premiere by Thrillpeddlers) is followed by “The Old Women”, an over-the-top horror play set in a lunatic asylum adapted by Christopher Holland from the French Grand Guignol drama “A Crime in the Madhouse” by Andre de Lorde and Alfred Binet. Then, the show moves into a fast-paced revue featuring a variety of underground sideshows, from a play set in a department store and revolving around the aforementioned guillotine to a burlesque song entitled “Oom Pah Pah” raucously sung in a crimson gown and lavishly-curled wig by one of the most beautiful and graceful drag queens I’ve ever seen. The evening ends with a screening of Thrillpeddlers’ 20-minute documentary about the Grand Guignol stage, which you don’t have to go to The Hypnodrome to see: It’s a “special feature” on the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp Sweeney Todd DVD.

By the time I staggered out of The Hypnodrome at around 11.30 the other night, I felt emotionally exhausted and spiritually uplifted. It was one of the stranger evenings I’ve spent at the theatre. I don’t think I’ll forget it in a hurry. As Richard Hand and Michael Wilson, the authors of a recently published book entitled London’s Grand Guignol put it, “Grand Guignol is, in any case, essentially a form that embodies a mass of contradictions. It is comic and horrific, progressive and reactionary, realist and sensationalist, erotic and even pornographic. It is all these things and more besides.”

The last time I caught a screening of a San Francisco Opera production, I wasn’t very impressed. I was present at the company’s inaugural simulcast screening of Madama Butterfly a couple of years ago. It was a festive, atmospheric affair to be sure: While audiences watched the show from inside the War Memorial Opera House, 8,000 others gathered on a big, grassy plaza across the street to watch a live broadcast of the opera for free. Pretty red lanterns and a festival spirit complete with wine and picnics made for an enjoyable evening.

But the screening itself left much to be desired. Crudely edited and packed with unflattering close-ups of the leading lady’s triple chins, the film made suspending one’s disbelief a real challenge.

I’m happy to report that the company’s forays into screening operas have come a long way since then. This morning, I went to San Francisco’s historic Castro movie theatre to catch a screening of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. A departure from delivering simulcasts in tandem with live performances, the company recently launched a series of screenings of previously-recorded performances. This method of making the experience of going to the opera available to many more people is, in my opinion, much more satisfying than watching a simulcast. Thanks to careful, creative editing, good quality sound, and high definition images, Mozart’s opera sprang to life on screen.

I was particularly impressed with the sensitivity of the performances witnessed at such close range. The Commendatore (Kristinn Sigmundsson) looked like he was in agony when he was dying; Twyla Robinson’s Donna Elvira sassed as much as she seethed; As Don G, Mariusz Kwiecien didn’t overdo the lothario act.

Another thing I loved about SF Opera’s collaboration with film production company, The Bigger Picture, is the way in which the cameras allow us to see into the orchestra pit during the overture. It was such fun to see conductor Donald Runnicles at close range in his purple waistcoat, waving his arms and mane of white hair infront of a wobbling music stand. It was equally thrilling to get such a birds-eye view of all the instrumentalists at work too. Audience members are never privy to these kinds of details while sitting in the opera house.

Finally, it was interesting to see how the cinema audience reacted to the film. Mostly made up of elderly people and a few school groups, the audience behaved somewhat differently to the on-screen audience that could be heard responding to the live show beyond the edges of the camera lens. The sounds of wild applause heard on screen after the big arias were not matched in the cinema today. Yet while clapping seemed to be off-limits, people in the movie theatre still laughed heartily at the opera’s many humorous moments.

Other operas screened so far in the series include Puccini’s La Rondine, and Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah. Next up, funnily enough, is ye olde Madama Butterfly on April 21. I might have to go along just to see if this production fares better in edited mode rather than witnessed via simulcast.

It was a cashier at Trader Joe’s by the name of Cuba who introduced me to the MTV series America’s Next Best Dance Crew while ringing up my groceries. We’d somehow gotten into a conversation about baseball and then sports in general during which I admitted that I didn’t really watch many games. When Cuba asked me what sports I followed, I sheepishly responded that I loved dance, even though many people don’t consider it a sport. Cuba said: “Sure dance is a sport.” “It’s very athletic at any rate,” I shrugged, ready to leave.

But Cuba wasn’t ready to move on to the next customer. He proceeded to tell me about America’s Next Best Dance Crew, a recently-finished series on MTV in which hip-hop dance groups from all over the country compete for glory and a $100,000 grand prize. Viewers call in and vote for their favorite crew each week until all but one of the crews are eliminated and a winner is declared.

For many minutes after he’d finished totting up my grocery bill (apparently oblivious to the line of shoppers forming behind me) Cuba talked in animated terms about the show — the dancers’ passion and cool costumes; the fact that one group danced in masks while another performed their routines in roller-skates; the real-life stories behind the crews’ rise to fame via MTV. His enthusiasm was infectious.

When I told Cuba I was bummed that I missed the series (I don’t own a TV and am usually busy in the evenings going to review live theatre productions or making music) he immediately grabbed the till receipt out of my hands and scrawled an MTV URL and the show’s title on the back of it. “You can watch the entire series online,” he said before waving to the next customer and sending me on my way.

When I got home, I did as I was told. Even on a 12″ laptop screen, America’s Next Best Dance Crew made for engrossing viewing. I’m so glad that the Internet makes seeing these programs possible long after they’ve been recorded — and the bonus of watching the shows on the Web is that all the episodes are blissfully ad-free.

I was particularly taken with the originality of the choreography and the visceral power of the performances. Many of the steps were intricate, involving complex footwork, the isolation of numerous different body parts and precise coordination between all dancers. Though the style was recognizably hip-hop and incorporated a lot of moves from breakdancing, every now and again, I would catch some moves that surprised me. Some steps, for instance, seemed like they were ripped from the unlikely traditions of Cossack and Morris dancing. At one point, dancers squatted on their haunches and sprang up to their feet repeately like Russian folk dancers; at another, they skipped and flicked their wrists like members of a Morris group from rural England. It was boundary-pushing stuff and the on-screen audience went wild every time one of the groups tried something unusual.

What was also interesting was the way that the presenter constantly used the language of war to talk about the crews. He referred to them “battling” it out and “fighting” their way to the top. Yet at the same time, the dancers themselves and the judges were constantly undermining the “street fighter” spirit of the event by talking about the “brotherhood” and “sisterhood” that existed between the groups. It was also significant that in the final episode, all the crews (including those eliminated early on in the series) returned to perform duets or trios with troupes which they had previously competed against. Upon final analysis, the series appeared to be less about competition and war and more about teamwork and synchronicity.

A staggering 38 million viewers called in to vote in the final week, in which a crew of young Asian men from San Diego who called themselves JabbaWockeeZ and danced in gloves and masks, faced-off against Status Quo, a crew of equally youthful-looking black guys from Boston who danced in loose baseball-style jackets and jeans. JabbaWockeez won and everyone danced and cheered until the final credits rolled. It was a pretty emotional finale.

If America’s Next Best Dance Crew is anything to go by, this country need not fear for the future of dance. The art form is alive and well, and thriving all over the country. I can’t wait until the second series which kicks off in the summer. Who knew that a trip to Trader Joe’s could yield such fruit?

As predicted, I had no luck trying to buy Radiohead tickets via Ticketmaster at 10am this morning. The site had nothing available at all even right at 10am on the nose.

I’m not normally given to venting conspiracy theories, but I can’t help thinking that there’s some kind of underhand business at work in the box office world for these kind of events. I mean, people were auctioning tickets on eBay for the concert at 9.45am and a few other ticket sites were hawking seats right in the back for $500 apiece.

I’m beginning to doubt whether it’s actually possible to buy a ticket at a standard price through the conventional channels at all.

Ah well, I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through the write-ups that the concert gets or think about crashing the event somehow (which will be tantamount in terms of impossiblity to breaking into the White House I suppose.) Nothing, however, will induce me to fork out $500 for a ticket to see the band. I’m a fan, but I’m not that much of a fan. And I don’t have a trust fund.

We thought we were being clever, opting to see the band in concert in the aging, conservative town of Santa Barbara rather than trying to catch them in San Francisco. We believed we would be at an advantage, living in California, in terms of getting our hands on tickets through a British website, given the time difference. Little did we know.

Radiohead’s website announced that tickets for the rock band’s appearance in Santa Barbara on August 28 would be going on sale through the British website waste on April 9. With the U.K. being eight hours ahead of The Bay Area, we all thought we stood a pretty good chance of getting tickets once the clock switched from midnight on April 8 to 00:01 on April 9 in Britain — which meant the middle of the previous afternoon for us.

Of course, hitting the “refresh” button on our Internet browsers all afternoon didn’t yield results. The site remained closed to ticket buyers until around 9am UK time on April 9. But even those of us standing by at our computers at 1am had no luck. Within about 30 seconds, all the tickets available for purchase through waste had been snapped up. Not one person I know in the Bay Area managed to succeed in buying tickets online that night. We all went to bed dissatisfied.

What does a person need to do to get tickets to this concert? Is it even possible? I wonder if rock critics in California are having similar trouble? Seems like you need to be related to one of the band members to get in. Or have the resources to bribe someone. I expect it’s easier trying to get an appointment with the Queen of England. 

More tickets go on sale via Ticketmaster tomorrow morning. The venue, Santa Barbara Bowl, has put out a stern warning prohibiting fans from lining up at the box office at midnight tonight: “No lining up before midnight on the night prior to the “on sale” date,” the website announces. “All “on sale” lines at the Santa Barbara Bowl Box Office are subject to a wristband lottery. There is a 2 ticket limit per person.” Interestingly enough, no other concert listing on the venue’s website features a message like this. I guess Avril Lavigne, The Cure and The Gypsy Kings don’t bring out the same level of obsession in their fans.

Of course, my friends and I will be hitting the refresh key on our Internet browsers all night tonight once again — even though tickets don’t even go on sale until 10am tomorrow. Rock fans do the strangest things.