A New York minute

Remember when people used Myspace and you could pick a song on your profile page, so you could be like, "Hey, this is the mood I want to set and the lyrics that fill in between the lines as you read all about the filtered version of what I want you to know about myself?"  Well, today put me in a "Tick, Tick, Boom" mood, and if this post had a soundtrack, it would be this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRzE7cjqYLM.  So if you feel like pretending it's 2005 and you're reading a Myspace post, click it and listen while you read this:  

I didn't get much sleep this week.  It's been a stressful week of dealing with bills, insurance, and trying to put together a huge pain of an apartment application so I don't have to live in the health nightmare apartment that currently is my New York home and its own major stress generator.  My trip home to my parents' house today for Thanksgiving has been the light at the end of the tunnel where I know that I can just be a kid for a few days with no adult responsibility -- because lately this is how I feel about adulting:

But first I had to get through today... which began bright and early with a 5am wake-up (after five hours of sleep) to work an audition for children to study ballet on scholarship.  I learned very quickly at this job that working with kids in the morning forces you to be bright and perky and bouncy, but on some mornings that perkiness and bounciness can be a little harder to come by naturally than on other days.... However, after an audition like this morning's, it's would be difficult not to leave feeling anything other than bouncy and uplifted by hope for the lives we might have touched....

 

Almost immediately after I approached the first group of children about to audition, one nine-year-old girl at the front excitedly bounded up to me with, "Hi Misty Copeland!"  I laughed and said, "What?" and she asked very earnestly, "You're the one who dances.  Aren't you Misty Copeland?"  Not quite, kid.... Not quite.  Though I have this image of her thinking that there's only one ballet dancer in the whole world and it's Misty Copeland, so therefore if Adult = Dancer then Adult = Misty Copeland, I was also very aware that while I think it's frequently the children from rough neighborhoods who could most benefit from ballet training, it's also those kids to whom ballet is usually a completely foreign concept -- and the fact that this girl and her friends knew the name of a principal ballerina with American Ballet Theatre, and that they were excited to audition because of her, was a delightful surprise.  When I was a year older than she is, my gym teacher made fun of me and his own dancer-mom's ballet students because he thought it was a joke that ballet was athletic and as demanding as any sport, so something very right has happened with ballet in pop culture when inner city kids think it's cool to study ballet because of this woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0cdXr_1MA 

 

The real high point of that morning audition, though, was after the selections had been made when we learned that we had accepted two kids who have rough home lives, one of whom lives in a shelter, both of whom really needed something positive.  And they both got selected without anyone on our audition team knowing how badly they needed this.  That alone makes any 5am wake-up worth it.

So, my morning done but my day not even close to being over, I picked up sides from my fiancé at his office for a Skype meeting with a casting director because my worthless-pile-of-junk printer picked today to stop working entirely; raced home to make said Skype meeting with casting director (after first downloading Skype and testing it with my brother and his very cute cats because I'm that odd person who's never Skyped before), where I was invited to test for the lead in a feature film (yeah, I don't know how that happened either) produced by a two-time Oscar winner; bolted to the airport on the subway and bus to catch my flight home for Thanksgiving; and got home at 11pm before snuggling into my childhood bed for my first full night's sleep in at least a week. 

As Jonathan Larson wrote in the beautiful, yep-that's-totally-me song "Why," "Hey, what a way to spend a day."   (...See, this post is like those annoying choose-your-own-adventure books.  No matter whether you chose to click on the link at the top of the post or not, sooner or later I'm making you listen to that song.) 

 

Oh, and when I told my mom that when I book the film I'm buying a new printer and hiring a car to take me to the airport rather than bussing and subwaying it, her response was, "Well of course you'll need a car service then.  Your fans on the subway will delay you getting to your flight on time.  You'll also need a dress for the red carpets."  My parents rock.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Let it rain

I think if most actors were asked what the perfect state of mind going into an audition is, they would say something along the lines of what results from getting a restful eight hours of sleep the night before, listening to some calming music while enjoying a cup of tea and getting centered, having a stress-free commute, getting to the audition location with enough time to chill and take a moment, and entering the room focused and composed -- basically something that leaves them feeling like this as they enter the room:

img src: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO9Hd-qCgVo7nkQucW1epqhX5am-O80krzoM-Y25CenPHQOwfobl72nUTKAFq97dtQ9Vuo54wUvTscmbyfGz56VRRuDB1wwmEGjjUCv6fxAwvMN3oeVeVcQdvePexbzWV8gUgiJwHomaZC/s1600/Day15.jpg

 

Probably no one in their right mind would describe the setup I had the other day, which left me entering the room feeling more like this: 

img src: https://lknbeautyinstrength.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/stressed1.jpg

But for me, I think it led to one of my most fun auditions ever.

After a stressful morning of dealing with a massive condo application that requires every piece of information about my life I can gather, followed by an on-camera audition where I was delighted that someone let me be funny, I had 45 minutes to make it from the Upper West to my 2nd audition, a dramatic theatre audition -- in Brooklyn, which I don't know at all -- so I ran out of the building into the windy rainy dark, ran to the subway while looking up how to get there, hopped on the crowded rush-hour train, got off in Brooklyn, where it was now windier and darker and pouring sideways, got briefly lost trying to find the address (and was ever-so-grateful that I'd just gotten a waterproof iPhone case); my umbrella broke; I was soaking wet; I felt like Joey in this scene:  

my rain-ruined mascara was probably making me look like this lady:

img src:http://genius.com/4754419

I walked in right as they were going to end and the monitor told me I made it just in time; I handed the monitor my headshot, ripped off my rain coat, took one sip of water, skipped into the room with a big smile (dumping my raincoat and backpack and pink umbrella by the door), answered their questions about the weather with a grin, and did my scene with absolutely nothing to lose and full of movement and life. The only thing that would have made that experience more fun is if it had actually been raining in the audition room.  Least stressful audition ever.  I would pick that experience over a waiting room full of overprepared, nervous, primping actors any day.  But maybe without the runny mascara.

Defying the perfect circle

From the archives.... the college application archives.  Because those things should be good for something other than getting you into a university you didn't go to, right?  I've grown and changed in a lot of ways since I was seventeen.... But in many ways, I haven't changed at all.  When I came across this college application essay, though I only vaguely remember it, as soon as I read the question I knew exactly what my answer would be.  And sure enough, from beginning to end this is exactly how I would answer this question if asked it today:

Essay Question: When asked by Pope Boniface VIII to prove his skill as an artist, Giotto (1268-1337) drew a perfect circle freehand.  What seemingly simple action would demonstrate your ability or skill, and how would it represent you?

My answer:

If Pope Boniface VIII, using his magical time-travel ability, were to interrupt an otherwise tedious evening of homework to challenge me to provide one single, simple action that would represent my skill or ability, I would be enchanted by his visit, but a little curious and perhaps even argumentative about his request.

It is an impossible request, I might tell him, because humans are too complex, and it cannot be possible to reflect all the nuance and subtle perspectives of who we are in one simple action.  Countering, he would likely show me Giotto’s perfect freehand circle and insist that the artist managed to convey much in one action.  Yet, from the first time I heard about that perfect circle in a sixth grade art class, I’ve been unsettled and unsatisfied with Giotto’s response.  A circle, after all, however remarkable it may be, defines a circumscribed, limited area, a physical and metaphorical suggestion of an entirely closed and ultimately repetitious world, bounded, defined, unyielding both to those on the inside and those on the outside.  It does not, I think, ultimately reflect the unlimited power and potential of artistic talent.

Further, I would argue with the Pope that absolute perfection, in Giotto’s circle or in life, might be a commendable goal, but it is not, ultimately, a good path for growing.  It is, I would tell him, when we take risks, experience life, and even when we make mistakes and then acknowledge and learn from those mistakes, that we can mature into contributing and caring human beings.  For that, we must break away from that simple circle.  Look at Michelangelo’s imperfectly proportioned David, Escher’s confusing staircases, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” or a challenging Chopin Nocturne.  All are endlessly stimulating and thought provoking, reflecting genius and creativity... and all are a complex reflection of multiple facets of humanity that might defy the simplicity of the circle.

By now, the Pope would no doubt be losing patience.  Stop stalling and prattling, he might admonish, insisting that he came not for a philosophical discussion of life, art, or circles, but for one single, encompassing expression of my talent.

So I’d think for a moment.  Having studied ballet for a dozen years, I turn to the fluid grace of dance to search for a single skill that speaks for who I am; it must, I think, be far less limited than a circle, and make some room for joy and celebration.  I finally decide.  Moving back, I take a long, open leap into air, twirling, suspended for a moment.  It is that moment in the balletic leap, in unfettered flight, that reflects for me the endless possibilities for joyful movement, passion, and the unbounded potential of life.  That is, I think, my own “perfect circle."

Barbie is no apple

I was brought up with Barbies (lots and lots and lots of them) and My Little Ponies and Polly Pocket and doll houses and every sort of dress-up costume you can imagine (most of them with pink and purple and sparkles).  I helped my mom pick out her perfume and heels when she went out on dates with my dad (The red heels and sparkly gold ones were my favorites, no matter what dress she wore -- both now have a happy home in my closet).  Most home movies have me dressed up in some sort of girly princess outfit.  My room was all pink, with cat and Disney Princess posters.  I had Barbie roller skates and a Barbie video game.  I got all the Barbie happy meals at McDonalds....

 

I was also brought up to believe that girls are just as strong as boys.  My parents purposely picked a female dentist for my brother and me to show us a woman could be a strong doctor and to give us a female professional role model.  I kicked a soccer ball (pink, of course) around with my mom at the local park, had a skateboard, and used our basketball hoop at least as much as my brother.  I've always believed my mom has superpowers and is as strong as any man.  It never occurred to me that just because I loved playing with dolls that apparently had unrealistic measurements that I should grow up to look like them and be some passive waif in the passenger seat of Ken's car (I'm actually not sure I owned any Ken dolls -- just about 100 Barbies and 10 Skippers).  I could be a brilliant all-powerful ballerina/brain surgeon/Hollywood bigwig/writer and have my sparkly heels and closet full of dresses and Malibu Dream Home, too.  So I have always been annoyed by the backlash against Barbies and the notion that playing with them encourages girls to have messed up ideas about what their bodies should look like and decreases their self-confidence.  To me, Barbies (and all my other dolls) were just one way to stimulate my imagination into making stories.  When I have the opportunity at family gatherings to round up some old Barbies and play with some little girls who are extended family members and who aren't allowed to own any Barbies, I find that, because they don't play regularly, it takes awhile for them to figure out how to use their imaginations and do more than just dress them up in outfits.  Once I get them going, however, they start getting creative and using their brains.  I never see it be anything other than a positive experience for them, and I never see them wonder why the proportions on the dolls are weird....  I think the fact that Barbie's head twists backwards and comes off and her elbows don't move and that she's, ya know, made of plastic, might be hints even for those little girls that she's just a plastic doll, not an example of a perfect human.  I can't help but think that if they were allowed to play with dolls more, they'd actually have more outlets to use and develop their imaginations and to see themselves in more ways. 

So I was completely delighted when I saw this new commercial for Barbies a while ago, which corresponds with my experience playing with them as a little girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vnsqbnAkk

I was also not surprised to see a not-allowed-to-own-Barbies girl post this on Facebook:

“Girls are like apples...the best ones are at the top of the trees. The boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think there is something wrong with them, when, in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree...” 

 

While the point of this is probably to make girls who are late bloomers with boys feel good about themselves, I find it incredibly degrading to girls -- both the ones labeled "rotten apples" and the ones who think they have to just wait around at the top until some boy comes along and decides to pick them.  I said as much, saying something about how the apple could just hop down and pick the best boy because the apple is actually a girl who has just as much right to pick her prince as any boy has to pick his princess -- hoping to inspire a little girl power in that girl -- and, since everyone looks for arguments on Facebook, I was met with this reply from someone else:

"But why would the best apple want to hop down from the tree to pick the Best boy? Better to have the finest boy court her and then marry and live happily ever after."

I find this point of view sad and unrealistic and degrading to women.  How do you get a happily ever after when you leave the selecting of your "ever after" to someone else instead of having a hand in choosing and pursuing it yourself?  And what is happily ever after anyway?  There's hopefully a whole lot of "ever after" after that whole "court and marry" part.  Hopefully girls grow up imagining all the ever afters they can have and don't just end their imaginations with the Disney Princess movie ending (and I'm saying this as someone who loves and owns the special editions of every single Disney Princess movie).  I know that my Barbies led active lives, starred in an infinite variety of exciting adventures, conquered amazing challenges, and reached amazing goals; whether as lumber jacks or doctors or plumbers, my Barbies would have been bored silly sitting around in a tree, watching life zip by without them.  They’d jump down and write their own stories.

Walking with jewels

At the small local dance studio where I started ballet lessons when I was five, I remember the owner of the studio telling us to imagine that we were wearing long diamond earrings and we couldn't let them touch our shoulders.  It was her way of getting us to relax our shoulders and not hunch them.  I also remember being told to imagine we had jewels on our chest that we wanted to show off.  I remember when we learned the step "fondue," we had a fondue party with strawberries, marshmallows, and a gigantic pot of hot chocolate fondue -- the reasoning, besides just having fun, being that we would make our dancing as gooey as the chocolate.  I remember holding giant beach balls in front of us to learn the correct curvature of our arms in 1st position.  I remember selling pizza to raise money for the studio; I remember bringing our moms to take class with us; I remember decorating colored folders with glitter and stars and pictures of ballet dancers on the first day of class.  I remember doing some basic tumbling in our first classes.  I remember dancing in our Halloween costumes and the way the studio was decorated for the holidays.  I remember all the inspirational pictures around the studio.  I remember being on a float with my studio in the fall parade in my small town and in the summer going to a pool party organized by the studio's owner.  I left that studio when I was 10 or 11 because I needed more rigorous training at a serious ballet academy, but I've been thinking of it often lately, now that I work myself at a rigorous ballet academy.  Though some of the activities at my local studio at the time might have seemed a little silly, they also left me free to find my love of dance without ever feeling like it was a chore or obligation or yet a few more hours of school.  Instead, my early ballet lessons, and the activities surrounding them, were pure fun and joy.  When I decided to go to a ballet academy where the instructors were much stricter and harder on us and the classes were more time-consuming with obligatory attendance, I knew it was my decision, not teachers' or a school's, and by that time, I had developed a deep love of dance.  And the imagery the teachers at that first studio used to communicate their physical adjustments has stuck with me all these years.  In fact, at an acting audition a few years ago, the casting assistant asked me if I was a dancer.  When I responded yes, she said she knew because "you carry yourself like you have jewels on your chest."

In my current job as an assistant with young children taking their first ballet classes at a ballet academy in New York City that prepares students very successfully for careers as professional ballet dancers, I've been forced to be very creative in how I give corrections.  Every day I'm in class with them, as I see what adjustments they need, I want to tell them about the earrings and the jewels and the beach ball, but I can't.  I can't even mention chocolate fondue, let alone have the kids see and eat actual fondue.  In fact, I'm not allowed to speak to the children at all (only the teacher is), so I can only adjust them physically.  But without words, a physical adjustment doesn't always have the intended effect, because the children misunderstand how I'm trying to adjust them, and I of course can't force their body parts into the alignment I want.  One day last week, I wanted a girl to tuck her tailbone in and engage her stomach muscles.  Tapping her belly wasn't working the way it works with many girls, because she sucked in all her air, making her shoulders go up and her rib cage expand.  If I were speaking, I'd simply tell her to tuck her tailbone in and imagine she had to make her belly button go back towards her spine without letting her shoulders slump, but I had no words to use.  Flummoxed, I stared in the mirror at myself, mimicking her incorrect alignment, and started pushing and tapping things to figure out how to gently make my body get back into position without knocking something else out of alignment.  Once I figured it out on me, I did it on her, and it worked.  Similarly, I've been struggling for a couple weeks to figure out how to get a girl with lovely lines but slouchy upper body posture to pull up when I can't simply tell her, "Pull up," and last week, to my delight, I finally figured out a combination of physical adjustments that clicked for her and had the desired effect.  However, at her very next class, she was back to slouching.  Though all children process directions differently, I couldn't help but feel that if I could just tell her to imagine that she had to show off the most beautiful necklace ever, it would help her internalize the correction and what it meant, and it might actually stick with her.   As it is, since she never internalized the correction before the first round of cuts (children getting cut from the program), she most likely won't be invited to continue with the program.  And I never once saw a smile from her or anything to indicate she was actually having fun in class, so I doubt she'll ask her parents if she can continue to dance elsewhere.  In fact, one of my proudest moments assisting with these kids was when, in the middle of a class in which a girl's hair had come out of her bun three times, I looked at her with her messy hair and shook my head and laughed and saw that girl (who had always had a perpetual "I don't want to be here" expression on her face) smile and giggle for the very first time.

Though neither method of teaching early ballet is necessarily "better," with some children responding better to rigorous training from the beginning and some responding better to being eased into it (and the academy's output vouches for the fact that they train and mold students into exceptional dancers), I have no doubt that, for me, the best beginning I could have been given to ballet and dance was at that small studio where I was free to learn at my own pace with individual attention while eating pizza and chocolate and imagining I was a princess covered in jewelry.  I'm so glad that my first studio was one that focused at least as much on making dance fun as they did on making me a good dancer.  And I'll always carry those long diamond earrings and jewels with me wherever I go.

When "copy me" isn't enough

From my journal during the three-month shoot of Non-Stop, referring to a direction the 1st Assistant Director gave me my first day on the set:

Favorite randomly specific direction for a quick non-speaking shot ever: "You're so sick of listening to the guy in front of you try to sell vacuum cleaners.  And he smells."

I vividly remember loving that direction, because it was so specific and communicated precisely what he wanted.  I thought of it recently when I was on a set with a director who gave the actors line readings -- multiple times.  For one line, I witnessed him give the actor five readings in a row of the four-word line.  Every time the actor said it back, to my ear (and clearly to the actor's) it sounded identical to the director's delivery, but the director was evidently hearing a difference.  There was no conversation or communication beyond the line reading, and when someone on set smilingly said to the director, "Wow, you really know what you want," he responded, seemingly dead-serious, "Yeah, I'm a good actor."  That might be, but what the person hired as the actor in that scene clearly needed (if the director wasn't happy with the way he was saying his line) was communication and direction that went beyond a "parrot me" directive.  But hey, if the whole directing thing doesn't work out for this director, at least he'd probably be happy just playing every role himself....  Or maybe he could get the performance he wants from the actor by playing a smelly vacuum-cleaner salesman....