Harrison, TX

(59E59, 18 August 2012)

In provinces, one excels by doing well in the game. In big cities, one excels by changing the game. For some, it is best to accept the game and to master one's strategy, instead of being a perpetual amateur player in an ever-evolving game that no one else wishes to join. With the rules of the game well defined, the game itself becomes a character, in provinces.

In the "Blind Date," individuals crave others' company, not others' individuality. And they know it and accept it.

"The Midnight Caller" advocates individualism. Ultimately, for everyone's good, one ought to act selfishly, and let another exercise his choice, as this exercise cannot be forestalled, but only delayed, at a cost for all.

One needs partners in play; one does not need particular individuals---most of the time. Yet, one is not deterred from electing someone specific to be that partner, and craving this someone specific, thus denying the power of abstraction.

The key to contentment is to pride oneself on having solved a constrained optimisation problem.

Smuin Ballet

(Joyce Theater, 18 August 2012)

The dancers' movements lack inevitability. They convey the ambition to succeed at ballet, instead of conveying ideas that admit no means of expression other than ballet. The movements lack amplification through resonance with music, and through weight and momentum transfers between dancers. Thus emerges not a conversation but a show, deliberately choreographed, competently danced, but neither superhuman, as elite classical ballet can be, nor super human, as a ballet by a smaller company has no choice but to be.

The dancers are more comfortable using the classical ballet vocabulary in the "Medea" (an illustration for a borrowed story) than jogging through the "Oh, Inverted World," which, even though premiered in 2010, comes across as conceived in 1980s, not least because of the puerile costumes. In these two ballets, the intensity of the dancers' sexuality is curtailed by their haphazardly revealing costumes, which obfuscate the intention of the movement, instead of accentuating that intention.

The third, redeeming, romantic, piece "Soon These Two Worlds" suits the company's character, which seeks to gratify and cheer.

Le Dernier Métro (1980)

A film does not merely tell a story. It constructs a world into which one is drawn. It teaches how to construct a world of one's own.

Le Dernier Métro culminates in a compromise. It does not strive towards ideals that could be mixed at will. Instead, it offers a ready-made mixture, a dignified resignation, along with a manual spelt out in prose. It is a child conceived to be as old as its parent, now gone.