Thanksgiving!

This is my favourite holiday. Lots of good food, no gift giving pressure. This year was special since D and Julie brought the kids to Silicon Valley. They spent a total of 10 days with Mei's family and reports are that the kids mostly all got along! I was up only for the major feasting, but it was fun to see D, Julie, Austin and Mari so soon after having just visited them. This year's usual turkey blow-out at Gugu and Al's was supplemented by a surprise party for D's 40th birthday, coordinated by Julie, Baldwin and hosted by the 3's (Yvonne and Ralph). The Da's (Marjorie and Dah Yu) and their family were all their, which was nice because they will all be at Ching and Grace's for Thanksgiving. Food consisted of delicious meaty ribs, ducks (2 of them), Da Bo Mu's (Marjorie) spring rolls (which I usually miss because I don't visit during Chinese New Year, so I ate a lot of these), and of course cake. Julie requested comic strips for D as gifts and many people contributed very creative strips.

The big turkey day started with a ballet class with Gugu. We figured we would need the extra calorie burn. In the afternoon, I went over to Mei's and hung out for a bit, then headed over to Baldwin's with D and hung out some more. There were 26 people at dinner, including an Iranian couple (who have been to previous Thanksgivings) with each spouse's brother, some relatives of Al's, various other graduate and former graduate students who have been attending for years, plus the usual relatives. We had potatoes of all kinds (yams, mashed, scalloped, Stephen's roasted), some token veggies (peas, salads), and stuffing (with pork and without) to go with the juicy turkeys (2 of them). Desserts included the usual apple and pumpkin pie, but my favourite was Edie's cranberry cake and her chocolate mini muffins with secret zucchini inside.

On Friday, I headed over to Mei's again and went on some shopping errands with them. The mall parking was crazy busy and we ended up only spending about an hour inside after all that but I did get some ideas for Xmas gifts. Mei and Stephen made a delicious 'toad in the hole' dinner with more roasted potatoes. Toad in the hole is basically sausage with yorkshire pudding served with onion gravy. Delish!! In the evening, there was another surprise for D. Julie had arranged for all the Cheng cousins to play Bocce at a place in Los Gatos. D is pretty easy going so it wasn't hard to get him to go along with whatever crazy scheme Julie and Mei were dreaming up. Once we got to the courts, the cousins were all there and we had a great time. It was such a blast to hang out with the cousins without any kid responsibilities. I'm not sure when was the last time that happened.

D and Julie and kids were flying home on Saturday so I hung out with them in the morning to see them off. Then I headed to San Francisco where I'd planned lunch with my 'city' friends Annette, Deborah and Tegan. We ate at Bar Tartine and the food was delicious. I had a french toast with berries along with home smoked bacon. I loved catching up with everyone although the time was short. I had to hit the road for the long drive home. A relatively short trip, but relaxing and fun, just perfect!

La Danse

This is a new documentary by Frederick Wiseman. He filmed the Paris Opera Ballet from top to bottom in a fascinating movie that includes a lot of footage of dancers working together and with choreographers, as well as backstage activity such as sewing costumes, dying shoes, keeping bees and arranging fund raising events. The movie doesn't have any descriptive commentary or titling and there is no single person talk-to-the-camera footage either, so you really feel like a fly on the wall watching this amazing organization go through its paces. I was most fascinated by the process that the dancers go through to learn their parts. With the many modern pieces that are shown, the choreographers are there in the studio, tweaking the smallest movements, describing 'motivations', adjusting as they go. In one scene, a couple does something that interests the choreographer who asks them to do it again, however they didn't notice what they were doing so have trouble recreating something that just happened. As I watched this process, I realized that these dancers are taking their exceptional bodies and creating a vocabulary, expressing emotions, ideas, in a way that most of us normal people could never do. We are like toddlers just learning to speak compared with the beauty they can express with the smallest, precise moments.

There is a lot of humour sprinkled throughout this movie. In one sequence, we hear a running commentary as the troupe runs through a rehearsal on stage. When one dancer comes out in her tutu but with leg warmers pulled up over her thighs, someone watching asks why she's wearing thermal underwear.

This movie does more than other ballet movies that I've seen to reveal the collaborative work that dance really is. Sure there are superstars and their individual talents attract audiences, but dance is created by a lot of people, from the stars to the corps members to the people working on costumes and lighting and keeping the facility clean, to the administrators who keep everything humming.

Wiseman includes a lot of footage of Paris street scenes, the vaults and tunnels under the Opera Garnier and empty hallways, which sometimes felt like taking time away from the dancers, however the overall feeling from this movie is of the amazing, difficult, beautiful work of creating dance.

Last day in New York

My day today is mostly at our New York offices. It's always a treat to see our folks here and we have a lot of work going on so they showed me around. After work, I met with a friend back in Chelsea at Bar Stuzzichini. Nice little place for a drink and during happy hour (from 4:30p to 6:30 weekdays) they offer one little plate for each drink ordered. The selection includes delicious little meatballs, sheep cheese, rice balls. I was stuffed from lunch so this made for a nice light meal.

Old paintings and new dance

Today started with a visit to the Met where I met up with Lilian. Among other things, they have a Vermeer painting on loan from the Rijksmuseum and are making a show around it. Since there are so few Vermeers out there, I'll take whatever opportunity to see one. The audio tour does a nice job of giving some background. The painting, The Milkmaid, is surrounded by other work by Vermeer (owned by the Met) and other works by contemporaries of Vermeer. It's really interesting to see not just his evolution as a painter but also how he and his fellow painters were working through issues at the same time (and learning from each other). The use of light and depth in the paintings is always amazing to me.

After our taste of 17th century Dutch, we headed to the roof to have a look at the sculpture up there. It's a piece by Roxy Paine, who did a similar sculpture in Madison Square Park a few years ago (which I took a picture of). He creates branching metal forms that appear to grow out of the roof. This piece is low and long and we can walk in and around the branches (unlike the one in the park which was more compact but very tall). The early pack of runners were starting to come into Central Park (for the NYC Marathon) and we could hear the cheering down below. My goodness, those runners were really fast! Amazing after 26 miles.

After our roof foray, we decided to explore the American Wing via a guided tour. They recently renovated this area and the courtyard is exceptional. It's one of my favourite places in the museum. They have also installed a series of period rooms starting with the 17th century and it was quite interesting to see these. A great deal of the art is set up in glass boxes in library like rows. Picture frames, portraits (Washington by Gilbert Stuart! Madame X by Sargent!), furniture, grandfather clocks, and all presented in a much more casual way than you normally see with such treasures.

After lunch, Lilian had to head home and I killed some time checking out items in the wing that had an audio guide symbol. Then it was time to catch a bus for City Center. I didn't have coins and the bus driver was kind enough to let me stay on (who says New Yorkers are rude?). Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company was performing. The review of their Thursday performance was not so good but this was a different program. I love City Center because it's so small and compact. From my seat near the front of the first balcony it felt like I was on the stage with the dancers. The company draws dancers from many different places and I was interested to see that Melissa Barak was with them. She used to dance with NYCB and is now with the LA Ballet. Wendy Whelan is also part of the company and it was a real treat to watch her in such close quarters. She is one of the 'elders' of ballet and it was a joy to see her dancing and more than holding her own with much younger partners. The first piece was to music by Georgi Ligeti which did not appeal to me and I found this makes it hard for me to enjoy the dancing. I loved the second piece and thought the 2 dancers were absolutely beautiful, fluid and instinctive. The third piece was also great, although I'm not sure what the deal was with the cones floating in the air above the dancers. The costumes by Francisco Costa, designer with Calvin Klein, were quite interesting. There was a lot of very unusual and beautiful partnering but maybe my favourite part of this ballet was the sequence for the men only.

Both the Boston program and the City Center program had a piece danced to music by Arvo Part. Somehow this Estonian composer has become the darling of contemporary choreographers. I can see why, the music is haunting, lyrical and beautiful. The Boston piece was choreographed by Helen Pickett and the NY piece by Lightfoot Leon. I believe there was another ballet I saw in the last few months danced to Part's music as well, I'll have to try and remember what that was. 'Spiegel im Spiegel' seems to be the piece that is drawing the dance makers.

Dinner tonight was at a Lebanese place called Ilili. The food is an upscale take on Lebanese and was delicious. They have a kibbeh in yogurt soup which really makes the meat moist and the duck kabob was so rich and flavourful. Dessert was essmalieh, which is shredded filo with creamy filling and an orange blossom syrup and tasted like eating crunchy flowers!