It is Thursday morning, and I am back to my familiar haunts at Steelhead Coffee and Fox Coffee House. Trying to re-establish my routines, although after being pretty much restricted to base all summer my schedule is going to be rather fragmented through October. Next Wednesday I will be heading to Las Vegas for Circus Couture stuff and returning on Saturday. Then around the second week of October Kerry will be in town for an event, and the plan then is to drive out to Utah for the Moab 238, a 238 mile ultra marathon that Kerry will be running. I will be along in a support position and will be doing a lot of pickups and drop offs of people and supplies. It will be a gas!
Apparently Lazy Acres is a highlight on Japanese tours
See how things go with this writing stuff! It is now Friday morning, and the first chance I have had to write since I started this yesterday. Got into a talk with a friend, went to LA Fitness for Yoga and another hour of working out, went to the grocery store, went home and did some chores and lunch, took a six mile walk, made dinner, and headed down to Costa Mesa to see what turned out to be a very interesting dance performance.
Joey at work. The performance was HIGHLY improvisational
My connection with this event came through my Pilates home, PilatesX in Los Altos. Joey Navarrete is an instructor there, and he is also a dancer who belongs to a company called The Assembly. This is a collective collaboration between dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, multimedia artists, and just about anyone else who could conceivably add value to the performances.
The venue was extremely interesting. It is called the Westside Museum, and it is a VERY long, large room that you could probably hold track meets in. There is a balcony that runs the length of the room along one side and the other side is bare. There is a stage with a dance floor at one end. There was a very good PA system set up and a sound man working hard. Basically a large multipurpose room that can be configured as desired.
The down side is the location. It is in a heavily industrial section of Costa Mesa that seems to be a tribute to electronics–the Westside Museum is on Farad St, and I wound up parking on Ohm’s Way. It is dark and seemingly deserted, yet every parking space is seemingly occupied. Carpooling is highly advised and having a driver who doesn’t mind walking a half mile from the parking spot is a definite plus.
The performance last night was a wonderful experience! There were seven dancers in the performance, along with a sound man who was an integral part of the show. The piece itself was highly collaborative, with the structure and feel designed by dancers Megan Guise and Jobel Medina. Once the structure was in place each dancer was tasked with choreographing their own movement. I gather that those individual sections were reviewed and refined by the principals. There was a whole lot of choreography crammed into a 45 minute piece, and it really, really worked!
The lineup: Hannah Frankel, Megan Guise, Joey Navarrete, Haihua Chiang, Lara Wilson, Lenin Fernandez, and Jobel Medina
The other dancers were Haihua Chiang, Lenin Fernandez, Hannah Frankel, Joey Navarrete, and Lara Wilson. It appears that all of the dancers are products of the Dance program at CSULB, and that program can certainly take pride in the quality of their graduates. Another highlight of the program was the music, which in itself was worth the price of admission. Zaq Kenefick, another CSULB product, was responsible for that facet of the recital.
The Gearbox, actually more like a differential…
Now back to me. I really didn’t keep up well with my exercise routine while on the road, but that doesn’t seem to have hurt me. The first big test was my session with my body mechanic, Donna Place, on Wednesday morning. She waxed ecstatic at the end of our session and told me that I had made a quantum leap in my development. I have been working for years now on my gait, and I have finally unlocked my gearbox! That is the collection of joints that control the relationship between the various parts of the pelvis, sacrum, and spine. My years of sitting and improper walking technique had left that locus frozen, and it apparently has now finally loosened up. Onward and upward!
The PilatesX crew supporting Joey. I had wandered off…
Captain Univac 