jducoeur

An actual diary entry!

I appear to have failed to talk about Pinewoods last year: let's not make the same mistake. So...

One of the few bright spots of the pandemic for me was that I fell in with a new circle of folks on Discord (a few of whom are here). It's a somewhat younger group than myself, full of energy, and a lot of them are into dance. This was entirely a coincidence, not why I gravitated towards them, but it's always nice to discover some kindred spirits.

In particular, a lot of them are into Scottish Country Dance (SCD), and last June many of them were buzzing with excitement about "Pinewoods", so I eventually started asking questions about what the heck that is.

I was slightly chagrined to realize that this was clearly My Kind of Thing, and I'd never heard of it before. Pinewoods is a camp down in Plymouth, not terribly far from here, focused on dance and music. It's been around for about a century, running various sessions every summer.

There's a lot of interesting stuff on their schedule (including, note, an Early Music Week), but what drew me in was ESCape, an annual week co-produced by the local English Country, Scottish Country, and Contra communities. Classes every day; dances every evening, switching off sets of the three dance styles.

So I went to last year's session, and it was the highlight of my year. The timing was perfect, during the lull when the pandemic seemed to be dying down, just before Delta ruined everyone's day. I deepened the friendships I had made online, had a blast dancing for a week, and just generally it was a literal breath of fresh air.

So this year, returning to ESCape was my highest vacation priority. I'm planning on Pennsic, but I was not going to miss ESCape, which ran July 4th week.

Things were more challenging this year, with Omicron raging in Massachusetts, so the COVID protocols were ferociously strict. (All the moreso because an earlier Pinewoods session had to be cancelled due to an outbreak among the staff.) You not only had to be fully vaccinated: you were also strongly requested to get a PCR test the weekend before, and had to show a fresh antigen test to get in the door; additional antigen tests were required each evening before dinner. Campers were assigned dinner tables for the first couple of days (where possible with your housemates, cabinmates, or travel companions), to reduce possible spread. Masks were required indoors (which fortunately there isn't a lot of at Pinewoods), and strongly encouraged while dancing.

All of that was a bit of a pain in the ass, but seems to have mostly worked: only one or two new cases were reported during ESCape. (I'm not sure whether more cases arose afterwards -- it's tricky to tease this stuff out.)

That put a bit of a damper on things, but the event was still great. I've been attending Scottish Country practices semi-regularly for the past few months, but still availed myself of the opportunity to learn more and do more of the dances. There was lots of fun hanging out, playing games (cross-country bocce is always a hoot), and generally socializing and partying in the evenings. (I finally got to try Malort, and am now starting to puzzle out how to use it in cocktails.)

In the new-and-different category, I got my first lesson in change ringing! Kat (one of my close friends from Discord) has been teaching that informally in recent years; this time, they did sessions each morning. The high concept here is specifically "ringing on bodies" -- using hand bells instead of big church bells, one bell per person. The real innovation is that Kat and their friends are experimenting with the relationship between change ringing and dance. It turns out that the major "figures" in change ringing correspond rather well to heys and do-si-dos, so the ringing patterns can be transliterated as dances. So we learned how to do that, and a bunch of us did a performance at Thursday's Chocolate Party.

The Chocolate Party is an ESCape tradition. Folks bring chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Sooooo much chocolate, pretty much whatever you find interesting. A bunch of us got together, broke the bars down into pieces, put everything on plates, separated it into "with nuts" and "without nuts" tables, and let the hordes descend. It's a delightful social, and this year was circus-themed, with Kat providing a monumentally enormous parachute that we tied to trees as a quasi-big-top, and getting to be the tallest person in the crowd with their stilts.

There are also after-parties each evening, with different themes. Wednesday's Pub Night is my personal favorite: an evening of booze (for those who want to partake) and song, focused on stuff with choruses that everyone can join in on. It's basically a folk-ish bardic circle, with lots of songs I know and some I'm still learning. (High priority next year: print out a fresh copy of my own songbook, and bring it along.)

The only downside was that I seem to have slightly injured my foot on Wednesday, which prevented me from doing any dancing on Thursday, and I'm still limping a bit. Nothing too serious -- I did get an x-ray, and nothing's broken, just some sort of strain. The upshot seems to be that my days of dancing with no padding whatsoever probably need to be over: I need to learn how to use shoes with some cushioning and arch support.

So -- not as fabulous as I might have wished, but still a delightful time, and some much-needed social. I definitely plan on going again next year.

Saying that a show at the ART is a standout is no small thing. Last year's standout was The Great Comet, which is up for a big pile of Tonys this year, now that it's on Broadway. The previous year was Waitress, which likely would have won more Tonys if it weren't for, y'know, Hamilton.

So keep that in mind when I say that this year's standout for me is Arrabal, an innovative, affecting ballet of tango.

I had few expectations going into the show -- while Kate tells me that the article some months ago mentioned that there was little spoken word, I apparently had forgotten that, and certainly hadn't ever realized it was a true ballet. There is only a little bit of speech in it, and what little there is isn't English. (There is some video-over, providing translations of the important bits, and a couple of video clips in English that help provide historical context. But basically, it's a ballet.)

While there is a definite story here, a good deal of it is pretty impressionistic -- this is ballet in the American in Paris sense. It's more narrative than pure classical ballet, but you still need to be prepared to interpret the dance. That said, it proves beyond a doubt that tango is every bit as valid a narrative form as either classical or contemporary ballet -- it isn't hard to understand the story being told.

That story is set on a backdrop of the Argentine dictatorship. The first act is set in 1976, as young Rodolfo leaves his baby daughter with his mother so he can go out for a night of dancing and protest, and is then captured by the forces of the rising police state. Most of the rest takes place in 1994, as his now 18-year-old daughter Arrabal goes to the big city and learns about her father. It's very much a coming-of-age story for her, but also a tale of memory, loss and grief for Rodolfo's mother and friends.

And the dancing -- the dancing is breath-taking. This is ballet for the So You Think You Can Dance age: powerful, vibrant, and enormously creative dance. The performances are delightful, and choreography and direction brilliant.

(I was particularly struck by the way that Arrabal's movement idiom is subtly different from everyone else's: more legato and flowing, almost weightlessly emphasizing the youth of our ingenue protagonist. It was especially striking that, as soon as the show ended and the stage turned into an open dance party, she instantly gained about five years as she started dancing like herself rather than her character. That is great dance direction and performance.)

It is mostly tango, but freely mixes in other forms: Arrabal herself starts off with a little bit of classical ballet (which looks terribly innocent in the tango-centric environment), and there's a lot of contemporary and jazz flavor in here to help the storytelling. And one of the major characters, El Duende, has his own unique style that is a sort of fun, fluid hip-hoppy thing.

I'll caveat here that Kate wasn't as enthralled as I: she thought the music was too loud (it is pretty loud, although not rock-concert loud), and she found the constant tango rhythm repetitive. I didn't especially notice either point -- this may reflect the fact that she is more into musical theater, and I'm more into rock. The music is roughly latin rock: a mix of violin, accordion and electric guitar that comes out sounding like nothing quite so much in my experience as Cirque du Soleil.

Kate is still of the opinion that Fingersmith was this year's best show, and I agree that it was brilliant and fun (and would likely translate better to Broadway, so keep an eye open). But Arrabal is brilliant and well worth seeing, especially if you like dance. It runs through June 18th -- check it out...