Marie Mutsuki Mockett

Last night, I saw something truly special. The South Korean born ballerina Hee Seo and her partner, American born Cory Stearns, debuted at the Met in Romeo and Juliet. It's my last ballet this season, and I'm so pleased it ended on a high note. As you can see (photos taken from ABT's website), Stearns and Seo are beautiful people.





I have to be honest. I bought a subscription series to try to ensure decent seats this year, and was expecting to see Irina Dvorenko, who was originally slated for this evening. I've never seen her dance, and was very curious. And I was irritated when she and her partner were replaced by people I'd never heard of. I'd already decided not to get a subscription again, but to buy single tickets in the future. But this sort of clinched it for me.

And then I saw Seo dance in Desir, partnered by Marcelo Gomes, and I was floored. She and Gillian Murphy both had large parts in Desir, but it was Seo who absolutely radiated that evening. She has a smile that projects all the way up into the Family Circle. She is gorgeous--the lines and the feet and the extension are all there. But she is so alive as a dancer, that I find it impossible to stop to watch just for technique, or just for some pose. With Seo, everything just comes together. She dances with incredible warmth-there is no technical coldness to her. Also, I get the feeling that her style is her own--she hasn't been overly schooled in one kind of technique over another, so she doesn't default to some kind of clinical behavior she was taught to adopt in class. Whatever she does, she is always dancing. And as an audience member, that is what I want to see.



Time and again this season, my eye was drawn to Seo whenever she was on stage (and no, it's not because she's Asian). Some people just have a unique quality that sings out to you--and she has it. Once I realized how special she is, and that she is at this point just in the corps (Kevin, promote her, please!), I couldn't wait to see what she would do with Juliet.

Seo began dancing at 12, a relatively "old" age for a dancer to start. To hear her tell it, she blithely auditioned for the Sun-hwa Arts school in South Korea, after only dancing for 6 months, then went on to win a scholarship, bypassing the other girls at her audition who had been dancing for years. This story of course made me think of 1: my novel (for anyone who has read it) and 2: the Korean soap opera Boys Over Flowers where Jan Di is accepted to prestigious Shin-hwa school on scholarship. But that's just me and my dorky free-association brain going to town.

I still remember the cast for my first Romeo and Juliet, even though it's been over twenty years. I saw Marianna Tcherkassky as Juliet, Johan Renvall as Mercutio (and became fans of theirs for life) and Robert Hill as Romeo. I've seen a lot of pairs since then, but Tcherkassky was still my gold standard until I saw Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca, who were magical together, as everyone will say.



I've been bored by a lot of Juliets and bored by even more Romeos. But now I have to agree with Tonya that Seo is the best Juliet I've seen since Ferri. And while I also agree that I want to see her dance with Bolle, I do love the Stearns/Seo chemistry. Also, if you read Seo's interview, she's fiercely protective of her partnership with Stearns. And I rather like that. It's very Juliet-like.

Everything about Seo's dancing last night was just wonderful. I've never seen such girlishly expressive bourees--I now understand why MacMillan used them at that point in his choreography. The moment in the ball scene where Romeo first lifts up Juliet, and she's clearly delighted and surprised by this new sensation, seemed just right for the character at that point in the plot, and for the music. This complex-but-still-girlish set of emotions absolutely radiated out of Seo's body. Her desperation when Romeo leaves the morning after having killed Tybalt, relayed a real growth in character, from young girl boureeing about, to a woman about to take control her life via a somewhat drastic decision. Juliet's a fabulous character for an intelligent performer after all--both in the play and in the ballet. You can tell that Seo has thought about Juliet's arc, and yet there is nothing calculated in her performance. It was a joy to watch her.



Stearns, as I said, is also gorgeous and has the makings of a wonderful lead. I now realize I've seen and enjoyed him dance in a piece by Millepied at the Joyce last season. But I felt as though he were nervous at the start of the ballet last night--I wanted him to enter the stage and take command and not hold back, which I felt him doing. Romeo's kind of a laddish guy at the start of the play, but leads are leads, and it's still important to make an entrance.



Reading this interview between Stearns and Kourlas (grr), I wonder if people have told him he's arrogant so many times that he hasn't figured out how to channel his naturally playful energy on stage and make what some have criticized as "arrogance" (and which probably isn't) work to his advantage--ie, he just has to be himself. Really, it's terribly romantic for an audience to think that a slightly cocky guy loses his edginess because he's fallen in love with a girl. Stearns can absolutely capture that transformation, and I'm sure he will in time. And his chemistry with Seo was just superb. I actually got chills watching the two of them come together in the ballroom scene. And you felt his anger when Mercutio was killed, and his despair when he found his beloved Juliet "dead" in the tomb.

Other highlights: I was so pleased to see Danil Simkin, a late minute replacement for Benvolio. Gorgeous dancer. I've never noticed the part of Benvolio much before, but because of Simkin's performance, I did. There was a moment, for example, where both Benvolio and Mercutio make fun of the feuding Capulets and Montagues, by playfully miming swordfighting and stabbing, while in arabesque. Simkin gave his mimed stabbing an extra thrust that echoed in his torso--just a tiny detail that made the moment and the character seem more and alive, engaged and real. He used his turns and jumps to really show off his character--Benvolio, the peacemaker. I hope to see more of Simkin next year, and in larger roles. I wonder, for example, what he would have done with Mercutio, where there is just so much musical material and choreography to mine. Simkin, like Seo, is not just a good dancer, but an intelligent one.

Kristi Boone is fierce. I saw her as the Siren earlier in the season and she was wonderful again tonight as Lady Capulet writhing in agony on the floor after her beloved Tybalt was killed.



Finally, the legendary dancer Frederic Franklin celebrated his 95th year by playing the role of Friar Laurence. There are no people like show people. ABT marked the performance with balloons and extra flowers.

I just wish that since Seo really triumphed last night, she and her partner had had more of a chance to enjoy their own curtain calls. It was their night too. But, I suppose, she'll be back, for many, many more curtain calls in the future. I'm pleased that so many balletomanes agree. And in the pathetic way of a fan who wants to pretend that someone else's success is part of my own--I can say that I was there at the start!

(One final note to the ABT orchestra: please get some new trumpets. I understand when horns have a bad night. But trumpets? And repeatedly?)

I had a conversation the other day with a friend about perfection and how many of the classic high arts--jazz, classical music, ballet--face the criticism that perfection has replaced expression. Pianists beautifully hit notes, but don't dig into the music to relay complex emotions. Jazz musicians are technical fiends, but aren't displaying the artistry of the 50s and 60s and so on. As a result, purists complain, nothing new is being said.

I was musing over this in relation to writing and novels and wondering if I could think of books that are technically showy, but which don't really have much to say. And, yes, I could think of a few and of a few trends--though I don't tend to finish reading books like this anymore, and try to focus instead on writing that is challenging and thrilling. (And, no, I'm not ready to name names. Not yet).

But I guess the easiest way for me to talk about something like the above concept on my blog, is through ballet, which you know I've had fun exploring lately.



Here's the famous Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova, dancing in her signature piece, "The Dying Swan." She revolutionized the use of pointe (toe shoes), which you see her use to great effect here, so she seems almost to be hovering over the floor, defying gravity. It's an old film, possibly taken around the turn of the century when the art form was still quite young.



This is the Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya in the ballet Swan Lake. She is about 50 years old in this video--and still dancing. It's often said that Maya revolutionized ballet because she extended what was technically possibly, while finding even more deeply passionate ways to express emotion through music and movement. Ballet fans know of the back-arch in Kitri's great leap in Don Quixote; it is Plisetskaya who first threw that into the choreography. Now everyone follows her. Plistetskaya found ways to hurl herself into dance, thus changing and furthering what the body could do.

In this scene, Plisetskaya is dancing the role of Odette, a princess who was turned into a swan by an evil magician. At night, she takes corporeal form, and you see her here, just after her transformation. She runs into a prince, who promises he will break the spell that has been placed over her, so she may be free (things don't end too well--the prince gets distracted by another woman and even though he's really, really sorry, everyone dies).

Just comparing the two tapes, you can see how much more complex dance vocabulary has become (though this is also because the pieces are completely different) and how the placement of the body has changed. A modern dance person might look at Anna's shoulders and say they are too stiff, and that her arms flap wildly. Also, both women's bodies don't really match the high standards we have today for ballerinas. And yet, for me, there is something wonderfully wild and dramatic about Plisetskaya in her characterization of the swan.

The other great ballerina of Plisetskaya's era (translation: during the Cold War) would be Galina Ulanova. I can't embed a clip of the same section of Swan Lake on my blog, but you can watch it here. It's unclear how old Ulanova is here, but certainly she is not that young--she began her career in the twenties, and this video must be from the fifties, at least.

It's worth noting that Ulanova danced with the Kirov, and Plisetskaya with the Bolshoi. These are two different companies, with different styles, histories and emphases. The Kirov was greatly influenced by the great ballet teacher Agripinna Vaganova, who "emphasized clarity and strength." Further:

Most importantly, she (Vaganova) insisted that each movement be infused with "meaning." Natalia Makarova, one of Vaganova's most articulate admirers, tells of being taught to "eat up" a movement--internalize it, give it a physical soul and substance.

Makarova, who was trained at the Kirov and defected in 1970, was surprised to find that Western dancers took a "purely rational approach" to steps (skill and lots of it) and then tried to graft "meaning" on top. For those trained in the Vaganova method, by contrast, movements do not exist without a psychological or emotional impulse.

Take a look at Makarova here. Now you see the "body type" that you expect with ballerinas, along with no small amount of acting. She's precise and delicate, but still musical and expressive. The video is from the 1980s.



And here we are with Gillian Murphy, of ABT, who is still dancing today (she enters at 1:40). Murphy is gorgeous. Look at those long slim legs, the slim arms and the arched feet! Her balance is extraordinary. Her articulation of the steps very, very clear. She's musical, and floats on the score. She has incredible control.

But are you moved? Is the characterization grafted on top of the technique? Or is the technique an afterthought to the acting?



And here is another contemporary swan, Svetlana Zakharova, who has truly ethereal arms and wonderful feet. And as far as I can tell, about one facial expression. She's wonderful to watch, but there is just so little urgency in her dancing. For me, we've now come a long way from Plisetskaya to Zakharova, and while something in the art form has been gained, something important has been lost.

Watching all these videos, I've been thinking a great deal about how an art form develops, how tastes change, and how audiences also change what they want. There are no ballet superstars today, the way that there were in Nureyev or Fonteyn's time. Ballet stars don't make the headlines. You could argue that dancers have never been technically better. But are they thrilling us? Are they feeding popular culture, and the popular imagination? Is it better when art is for a small elite, or better when it appeals to more people? What would it have been like to be alive at the time of Plisetskaya, or--expanding the categories of classical arts--Bernstein, Balanchine and Mailer?

I think about these things as they apply to writing and to books, and wonder.

So, here's a confession. I have been indulging myself lately. A lot.

One of the reasons I wanted to live in New York, and always claim to love living here, is because of the incredible cultural opportunities going on every evening. When I was a student in college, I always got discounted theater tickets, and went to standing room at the opera--often by myself. As an adult, though, I found that I developed a slightly different relationship with "high culture" for reasons that are still difficult to explain. For a long time, before I sold my novel, I found myself balking at going to anything other than jazz gigs. I went to the occasional opera or show, but didn't go often.

Part of that probably had to do with being chronically broke, and if you are a writer, you know what I mean. I found it hard to justify spending too much money on expensive tickets. And in a strange way, I found it difficult to completely enjoy too much high art, when I felt I wasn't making much progress with my own attempts. Along the way, something changed, though and in the past six months I've been going to as much stuff as I can. I suppose losing my father affected me too--if he lived here--if he were alive at all--I thought, he'd be going to the opera all the time. And so I decided I had better take advantage of the opportunity I'd given myself while I could.



Lyrical, radiant, effortlessly buoyant and musical Marianna Tcherkassky

Once upon a time, I was an enormous ballet fan. My parents kindly took me up to San Francisco whenever American Ballet Theater came to town, and I fell in love with its dancers. My favorites were Marianna Tcherkassky (who is half-Japanese), Johan Renvall, Martine van Hamel and later, Susan Jaffe. I was at Tcherkassky's 40th anniversary (or maybe it was her birthday) and remember when all her male partners lined up to give her flowers. Renvall did a fancy and dramatic bow and I was pleased to see that they were friends since I loved them both so much-I think they used to dance the Bluebird pas de deux together.



Powerful, sexy and sublime Martine van Hamel

I continued to see them in college. My big splurge at the end of my Freshman year was a ticket in the Orchestra section to watch Renvall dance the Rite of Spring. Agnes de Mille was still alive, and premiering what we did not know would be her last piece--she died not long after. I remember being apalled that the theater was not full. How could anyone miss Renvall and the Rite of Spring? I realize now it was a dancer's program--not something geared to the masses. And yet, what an amazing experience. There was crotchety Jerome Robbins sitting a few rows ahead of me. Agnes De Mille was in her wheelchair, then was whisked away for a curtain call. I passed Marianna Tcherkassy on my way to the bathroom. New York had never felt so glamorous.



I'll never understand why Renvall wasn't more famous. He was better than Baryishnykov. I have yet to see anyone who can jump and turn like this man. I first saw him as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet and thought (as I do when I read the play): "Juliet! Choose the short, exciting guy!"

Around 1986, the Bolshoi announced that it would tour Los Angeles. LA is a good 7 hours away from little Carmel, but my parents, always eager to indulge my cultural cravings, agreed to make the road trip just so I could see the Russian stars. We'd a friend when I was growing up--the famous musician's musican Jascha Veissi who had run away from Russia to New York where he'd known Bernstein--and who knew of my love of ballet, and who had always insisted that if I loved dance so much, I had to see the Russians one day. You never know what children will remember. Jascha probably died when I was around 12 years old, but I heard his voice in my head, and asked my parents to take me to LA.

Our friend Michael had convinced my father that we should buy the cheapest seats in the house. He always did this for the opera, and then snuck into the Orchestra section. I wasn't so sure. But my father could sometimes be easily persuaded, and he never met a good deal he didn't like. I had nightmares that our seats would be terrible. They were. That's the thing about dance. I don't mind sitting up high and far away for orchestral music and the opera. But with dance, you must be able to see.



Michael felt terrible. He took me down to the Orchestra section after the first intermission, and we sat in an empty seat. Ann Miller sat in front of us. So did Betsy Bloomingdale. Michael knew who all of them were. It was a complete old Hollywood fantasy land down there. But of course, I thought. The "society" people had come out to see the ballet. Eventually it became clear that we were not sitting in empty seats--this was made all the more clear when Carol Channing kicked Michael as he exited the row. I was mortified. Why, I wondered, could I not know people who did things the "normal" way? Why must everyone around me always be working an angle.



Photo of Mukhamedov and Bessmertnova taken from here.

The lights dimmed. We snuck into a doorway, still at the front of the orchestra section. KGB agents were everywhere, but no one stopped us, and I watched Ludmilla Semenyaka and Irek Mukhamedov up close, which was a treat. I was also--being the kind of person that I am--stressed the entire time. One day I thought it would be nice to pay for a seat, and avoid this kind of high stress situation. Other highlights from that weekend included seeing a young Nina Ananiashvilli, (who just retired from ABT last weekend), and Natalya Besmertnova. But it was Semenyaka and Mukhamedov who blew me away with Spartacus. I'd just never seen this kind of confident, unabashedly dramatic and bold dancing. If I remember, the press made a big deal about how "Bolshoi" means big and indeed, every movement was just so large. Mukhamedov was so fiercely male in a way I hadn't seen since watching Nureyev on television. I was floored. Jascha was correct.

A few years later, the Kirov came to San Francisco and we went to see them perform Giselle, and I learned that dance companies do have different styles. It was hard to explain exactly how ABT, the Kirov and the Bolshoi were different. I loved the dramatic and lyrical quality of the Kirov dancers, and I wish they would return to NYC soon. The sensitivity of their dancers was a gorgeous contrast to the Bolshoi, and yet I would not pick which company I liked more (though my parents liked the Kirov sets).

And this brings me to the present, and my recent ballet obsession. I've been going every week. I bought a subscription thinking that friends would like to go with me, but it turns out that most people aren't really interested. I'm cool with this. I scalped one ticket at the urging of a security guard, and dragged my husband to another performance. I'll figure out to do with the other extras. I've also managed to buy some singles and sit all over the Met opera house looking for my favorite spot (still searching). I'm learning who the new dancers are. I'm making friends through the internet who also love dance--and if you do like the ballet, you must hop over to visit my friend Tonya's wonderful blog. She's a great love for dance, but also a critical appreciation for it.

Some of my favorite dancers are long gone--Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca. But I've found some new dancers to admire. My highlights so far: Diana Vishneva in Giselle (not so much in Sylvia). David Hallberg in everything (and he's from South Dakota!) Angel Corella in everything. Michele Wiles in Swan Lake--what power and what wonderful acting. There was also a collective gasp when she exited the stage, transformed into a swan. Also, young Hee Seo in small parts--I'll see her Juliet next week. As for who I am sorry to have missed: Robert Bolle and Veronica Part, who has been the talk of the Steps Dance Studio women's changing room. I'll have to hold out for an off-season appearance or next summer.

Since I've rambled on and on so much, I'll just leave you with one more small clip to watch. I love what Ferri says about Bocca as her ideal partner--an artistic partner is really a special kind of relationship. It's a kind of love, but it expresses itself through a piece of art. I also love what she says about dance being the only way to "become" a piece of music, which is pretty much how I've always felt, and why even at this point in my life, I can't take a yoga or pilates class for "exercise." There is nothing, nothing, nothing to me like the feeling of dance. And for for me, the very best writing registers as a kind of music too (take your pick what kind of music you want it to be).



(Edited to add--been going to the Joyce as well, where I saw my beloved Philadanco. But I'll save that for another post).

Publication of my novel, Picking Bones from Ash, is still a few months away, but I've already been invited to participate in a few events that have me very excited.

First up is the Brooklyn Book Festival, the big pow-wow for writers and books here in New York City. There are so many writers who participate in this event every year and I'm incredibly excited to be part of it too (even though I live in Queens. Shh). The date is set for September 13th, and I urge you to attend if you live in the area--not so much because of me, but to witness the incredible depth of talent that we have here in New York when it comes to good writing.

From October 8th to 11th, I'll be in Portland, Oregon for Wordstock, the largest gathering of writers and readers in the Pacific Northwest. I'm really excited about this too--I have roots in the Portland area, and lots of family in Seattle, and I know what a book-friendly community this part of our country is. I plan to take an extra bag so I can load up on goodies from Powells.

On October 29th, I'll be reading at the Mercantile Library to help Graywolf celebrate their 35th anniversary. A number of Graywolf's very fine writers and poets will be participating as well, and I look forward to meeting them and being in their company.

And, of course, I'll be at Breadloaf in August.

There will be more dates, which I will post as we managed to build out the website for the book. But until then, I did want to share this exciting news with family and friends.

(Sorry. I know that's a lofty blog post title.)

When my father was in the ICU unit last year, and we were informed that he was now medically classified as "brain dead" with little to no hope of recovery, it wasn't difficult for us to decide to remove his respirator. My father and I had had several conversations about the conditions under which he wanted to live or not (and you might have these convos with your family if you have not already). And so while I didn't exactly enjoy that night in the hospital, I did go through it knowing that I was complying with his wishes.

Note, though, that I said my father was "now medically classified as brain dead." Our doctor, in other words, was not completely convinced that this was the case. He was a skeptic. Skepticism is sometimes good.

A tiny detail from that evening: the excellent ICU doctor (if only the ER doctor from the night before had been half-way as decent, my father might still be alive today), made a point of telling me that he would administer anesthesia to my father before we removed the tube so there would be no chance of pain and suffering. While I remember this comment, its significance mostly passed me by at the time. And then, I read this utterly fascinating article in the New York Times by writer Annie Murphy Paul.

Many noted that if Merker is correct, it could alter our understanding of how normal brains work and could change our treatment of those who are now believed to be insensible to pain because of an absent or damaged cortex. For example, the decision to end the life of a patient in a persistent vegetative state might be carried out with a fast-acting drug, suggested Marshall Devor, a biologist at the Center for Research on Pain at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

A skeptic might say that I was trying to rationalize my grief--and that's fine. I can take that. However, when my father was in the hospital, and even though he never regained consciousness after I arrived, I saw evidence that he knew I was there, and that on some level he acknowledged me and all that I had to say, and that he was then able to pass peacefully. It's personal--I won't go into detail. But I was in awe, and I left the hospital that evening completely awe-stricken and confused by how we exit life. There is a great deal we do not know, and poets and writers sense these great transitions and write about them. One day perhaps science will catch up. But it's unclear that just because the cerebral cortex is damaged, the brain no longer functions and that a person is completely "gone."

In the quote above, Paul is referencing hydranencephaly, a very rare condition in which babies are born mostly with fluid in their cerebral hemispheres. To put it somewhat simply, they don't have a cerebral cortex, the part of the brain with we associate with memory and consciousness. And yet, Paul says, children with this condition (most don't live for long) have been observed laughing and responding to stimuli.

Merker included his observations of these children in an article, published last year in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, proposing that the brain stem is capable of supporting a preliminary kind of awareness on its own. “The tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex as the ‘organ of consciousness,’ ” Merker wrote, may “have been reached prematurely, and may in fact be seriously in error.”

There are political implications for a conclusion like this; who can forget the long, drawn out debate surrounding Terri Schiavo? And then of course, there is the issue of abortion, and the point at which a fetus becomes conscious and capable of feeling pain. Paul spends most of her time discussing the complexity surrounding this question in her article. Since I read her piece on a day when I was remembering my father's passing, it was humbling to think about the way in which minds leave the earth . . . and the way in which they enter. When are we conscious? When do we become . . . us?

The article opens with a startling story; newborn babies requiring operations were once not given anesthesia. The risks of medicating these infants was seen as greater than the benefits. It was a sensitive doctor, Kanwaljeet Anand, who suggested the mortality rate of these babies might decline if they were given anesthesia, and indeed it did--from 25% to less 10%. Babies feel pain. It is suggested that they might even remember pain.

But, it's hard to prove.

“Pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester,” concluded Rosen, the review’s senior author. The capacity to feel pain, he proposed, emerges around 29 to 30 weeks gestational age, or about two and a half months before a full-term baby is born. Before that time, he asserted, the fetus’s higher pain pathways are not yet fully developed and functional.

Concomitant with when a baby or fetus does or does not feel pain, is the question of when it becomes conscious. The two may well be entwined. Paul writes:

IN FACT, “THERE may not be a single moment when consciousness, or the potential to experience pain, is turned on,” Nicholas Fisk wrote with Vivette Glover, a colleague at Imperial College, in a volume on early pain edited by Anand. “It may come on gradually, like a dimmer switch.” It appears that this slow dawning begins in the womb and continues even after birth. So where do we draw the line? When does a release of stress hormones turn into a grimace of genuine pain?

I am looking forward to the publication of Paul's book when it is ready. If the article is anything to go by, she will examine all these questions with great care. I read her article not at all as a political statement, but as the product of a genuinely curious mind, trying to understand the most profound questions. And I think that anyone contemplating--as I wrote earlier--how we leave the world and how we come into it, will find the article fascinating, if a little disturbing. But complicated things that are about the human soul aren't necessarily meant to be easy, and I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don't really wrestle with the implications of our increasingly awesome scientific and technological powers.

A year ago today, I was on a plane (for which I paid an astronomical sum of money), trying desperately to get to the hospital in time to say goodbye to my father, one of my best friends for a great many years. It goes without saying that I miss him, and think of him every day. It's a terrible thing, but one day, we do say goodbye to everyone.

I wrote in March that I'd been invited to attend the Young Lion's Award Ceremony at the New York Public Library, and that among the guests was the fashion designer/Project Runway winner Austin Scarlett. He'd stood out to me then because he was so elegant-so elegant that he was out of place, really, in a room full of writers and editors. And I was also sort of fascinated at the time because he was really paying attention to the readings and to the presentation. He seemed to actually care.



I forgot all about Austin Scarlett for a while, until my friend Jeffrey and I began our Wagner odyssey. We attended the final performance of Gottedamerung, which was also the Met's last opera of the season, and had a grand time chowing down on sushi after act one. After act two, we strolled out on the balcony and swore that next year we would eat at the fancy restaurant on the Grand Tier. I also swore I would show up with my own Wagner horn-hat.



And who should we pass on our way out to the balcony but . . . Austin Scarlett. I was so surprised--but pleased too. And then I got to thinking. Here is this extremely elegant person who is completely at home on television and designing gorgeous dresses. He attends a literary award ceremony--by himself, as far as I could see--and then very carefully concentrates on the readings and the presentation. He goes to 5 hours of Wagner not for show, but because he is actually interested in the music. I say this because I ran into Austin during the second intermission. People do not last this long at a Wagner opera unless they care. I also say this because the music accompanying his slideshow comes from Der Rosenkavalier (I have tickets to two performances, Austin. Just so you know).

And all of this made me very happy that he seems to really love art so much--from different disciplines--and to take the time to actually consider each experience. Not everyone does this. Some writers stick mostly to books, musicians to music, etc. I had never watched Project Runway, had never even heard of Austin Scarlett, in fact, until I saw him at the Young Lion's Award Ceremony. But I developed this extremely high opinion of him, and decided that should I ever run into him again, well, obviously it had to mean something.

And there he was last night, on the balcony at Avery Fisher Hall, while I, returning from scalping my unused ballet ticket, was on my way to see ABT. Couldn't believe it. I'll refrain from saying any weird stalkerish things like, obviously we are meant to be friends (oops). But seriously, I'm amused and charmed and all the more intrigued. And quite happy that someone would care so much for the classic arts.