Movin' Easy Dancewear

Now look here.  I went to see this show called April Fools.  OK so I was exhausted but I knew I could not miss this show.  When you get to be my age, you don’t go to just any show, but this show it was tap dancing so I had to go see it, you know what I mean.

Well when I got there it was a Vaudeville, like a circus show, a carnival with one of those questionable Master of Ceremonies, you know what I mean.  When you get to be my age, you’ve seen everything.  I remember my grandfather took me to a tiny circus and he spent a very long time in a fortune teller’s tent.  But that is another story.

So you see here.  I was very happy to be there with the Vaudeville because they are kind of cartoon characters up there and of course you have to start with the juggler lady who jiggled real good, made me laugh so hard and she could juggle too.

All the old characters were there, that Maurice guy from France I think it was him, and Mickey from the early days, and Charlie with those inquisitive eyes, and shades of the guy with the big nose, and of course Sammie charmed us and made us stop yelling so loud for a minute or two.

Of course when you get to be my age you see those old singers and tappers sticking their heads around every corner.  The guy sitting next to me is a real good tapper and he would call out those old names, maybe it was Bonnie or Honey or something.

But what a guy my age sees mostly is the angels dropping down in between and on top of some of these characters.  So you see, these angels talk to me, right, and they say, “Don’t miss this life.  Don’t miss a minute of it.”  So well OK, I can’t go to sleep so I don’t miss a split second of this two hour April Fools show.

There was the lady pickpocket character and she was in love with Sammie, you could just tell.  But I’ve got to say there were two characters that were very hard to play.  The pretty girl was perfect but it is very hard to play the pretty girl.  Even in real life it is very hard to play the pretty girl because you got to cover up so much hurt down there somewhere.  You know what I mean, how do you play all the parts that are covered up down there?

The exception to that rule is when you hobble two beauties together and they tap dance together like you have never seen and well its like twins grinning beyond cute.  So then you don’t have to have two dimensions, you just have to have cute and cute.

Well the other part that is hard to play is the Mama.  Everyone knows that the Mother is always wrong, right?  Never can do anything right for having somebody yell at her, that’s the Mama.  Well, how do you play a cartoon character of that?  Enough said on that.

Well I have to say that at my age I have to be grumpy about something so I do have one complaint.  They let me and my wife in even at our age, and they kept us laughing until we cried, greasing every minute with million mile an hour tapping.  And you know about tap dancing with all those quick stops and trick red lights.  It’s hard on the heart.  It’s like when you get ready to go through a door and the green light says go and then the door slams shut.  Light says go, oops gotta stop.  Light says go go go, whoa wait a minute.  Then light really says go now go oh oh uh oh.  Then finally light says yes yes now go oh go oh oh oh ahhhhh.  Well the whole show was like that with more excitement that one heart can take.

And well back to my complaint, after all that, they didn’t provide any free stretcher service to get us out of the place.  Now what do you think of that?

So what do I have to say about this April Fools show?  Well, I have to ask you this. Do you want to shimmy back through every rip roaring Vaudeville act you have never seen?  Do you want to tango through the back streets of Buenos Aires?  Do you want to ride on top of the smoothest, gutsiest, the funniest, the most sentimental rhythms you have ever felt?

Well, if you do, what are you waiting for?   Call them up, these Tapestry people and you tell them I told you to tell them, “I’ll be right over.”  And you know with these Vaudeville types you can’t take no for an answer.  You tell them what I told you.  You tell them, “I’ll be right over.”  Then you ask them in one of those rhetorical tones, “You do this Vaudeville thing every night, right?”  You ask them that. And then you say, “Hold the curtain.”  No don’t say that.  You better say, “Hold me a seat.”  They’ll understand what you mean.

Tapestry’s April Fools, 4/1/12, By Tim Hurst

ONE  Chell Parkins
Open Points to Life
Beginning Pulsating Power

TWO  Ellen Bartel
Center Points to Life
Wishers Intersect

THREE  Alvin Rangel
Fin Points to Life
Yearning Union  Tangential Tango

ONE Chell Parkins Points to Life

One dimensional bodies powered to life.  Wake to it.  Climb to it.

Call out to electrified alternating light for dimensionality, curve into it, live into it.

Call out where stillness presides, shaking habituates, where fingers intimate mysterious capacitors within themselves.

Call out to princess wailing morning stories from towers hidden in foggy bays, surprising all bodies with waves of blue and orange and green and purple and red.

Call out to the power of death and roaring all waters ending the thinness of dimensionality, interweaving every spectrum into the bodies light.

Call in the decisive moment of bubbling movement, limb and life forever.

TWO    Ellen Bartel Points to Life

Metroline.  Escalator line.  One lies; One rise.  Both scream a stationary line.

Trains and rains and birds ripple to washes of guitars and bells.

Personages skooch in doubles and singles.  Personages pile upon personages without condiment.  Wishers decline ladders; gapers pass doorways never waiting even for port’s fog horn.

The brilliance of not wishing pulsates life’s baseline.  Singular man states foot, slaps chest, searches hip.  Singular woman slips into ice until one person digests metroline screams into a personal melody, until one person’s body draws endless escalator lines into one hug, maybe two.  Then one body deserves a spin by another and all personages can now enter a rise and fall of the cavernous breath of life.

TWO AGAIN

The roar stops.  All doors open as an echo.  I step in alongside the many.

Something about the Metro, the Underground, the A, the C, the L, all leaving only one lingering screech that drowns out a lone person’s song.  Yes, there’s something about the sub-way to nothing extraordinary, to nothing connectable, to everyone leave-able.

My sadness resonates to the length of the subterranean cave, something like a long guitar line, neither untractable, nor subtractable, certainly not subtle, and definitely without a leaning toward hilarity.  Yet when the moving platform jolts and I am still standing, life is imminently breathable.

THREE   Alvin Rangel Points to Life

Man to man. Tango to the death.  Flags fall.  Man covers.

Spin a story of punctuated violin and high pitch surprise.

Yearning union, fingers embrace earth, grip scalp, seek infinite spectral caress.

Three Points to Life, UT Dance MFA, 03/09/12, By Tim Hurst

Tapestry Dance Company rearranged my cells.  I said goodbye to my DNA.

Left brain gave way to meticulous aboriginal choruses.  Right brain collapsed into brief slow motion silences.  In those spaces of mimetic time, simple circular arms took my entire body tumbling over waterfalls to one side, then roaring back to the other side.

Sound erupted from my entire body forming one word, “YES.”  I will never be the me that I knew before being immersed in this much clarity. 

Never the Same Again,  Tim Hurst,  092611,  Tapestry Dance Company, “The Souls of Our Feet”  September 24, 2011

Dedication to my partners and teachers who have loved this dance with me.

Kindness in the foot placing itself.

Kindness in the breath receiving itself.

Kindness way behind the eyes and yes deeply seeing behind trillions of intimate cells.

Kindness dancing inside precious joints undulating outwards towards the most open embrace.

Kindness drawing only nourishment from the seas we call our atmosphere.

Kindness insisting that harm is not our friend.

Kindness reaching bringing embracing our partners in this our dance.

Kindness timing our rhythmic spaces to taste tender and tragic trial and error.

Kindness within multiple moments of rest ready for momentum to exude life.

Kindness allowing dance to bubble and travel through our rapids along our placid stretches passage upon passage.

Kindness greeting our enemies offering to offend our visceral fears, our hidden wishes, our clutch on darkness.

Kindness to greet our overwhelming dance of delight overflowing from every corner of our known and unknown vulnerabilities.

Tim Hurst 092311

http://www.balletaustin.org/  Stephen Mills musicaliy brings an extraordinary dimension to Mozart.

Children’s brains eat Mozart like candy.  What are adults waiting for—a ballet to illustrate Mozart for our stalled out brains.

Cartoons won’t do.  Only the deepest level of intricate movement and emotion can explode Mozart’s full delight into our senses.  Only a Mozart ballet feast will integrate the playful melodies we take for granted, send rhythmic delight bouncing through our lethargic cells, and insist that we rearrange our thoughts to take courage once again.

Choreography that slices open the melon, exposing the intricate life of a growing pod.  The juices rise to heal the incision willingly offering seeds and pulp for nourishment and pleasure.

Choreography that splashes the taste of chocolate in explosive man and woman, I not only savor their melding of darkness and sweetness, I bounce with them over and against and through the bitterness of cigar.

Choreography that stuns me with possibility for union, the sweet burst in my mouth, the sound of rich chocolate folding and gushing over my tongue and into every cell with a pleasure of longing for this moment to never end.

And in this moment of longing, choreography points the way inside man and woman where pain envelops exuberance and births new life.

Thank you to:  Voice Dance Company, Gina Patterson choreographer  Dance Institute Austin 051910 

from: Tim Hurst

Last day of Sale at Movin Easy, Sunday 081310 What’s the buzz on a Sale at Movin’ Easy in 2010?  Fabulous is all there is of course.  Fabulous dancers and moms and dads rubbing elbows in a space that should seem as huge as Macy’s.  Nooks and crannies of fabulous treasures capturing all eyes with colors and bodice shapes and stiletto-esk shapely shoes.

That’s not all of the fabulous of course.  Movin Easy has a new fabulous shape, blossoming with a fabulous new dancing floor and two new windows right in front bringing even more fabulousness of splashing light.

And not to forget even for a second the fabulous attention and celebration each dancer receives from the Dancewear Specialists at Movin Easy.  On a busy morning it is much like laughing fairies rushing through the woods guiding the princes and princesses and all their attendants and patrons and their admirers to find the perfect fitting slipper and the most flattering wardrobe.

Whether I join the flurry of the fairies or simply explore the woodland stories dancing through each person there, I am thoroughly in awe of so much flourishing fabulousness.

“It’s presence.  Everyone has the rhythm I have.  I have learned to be present to it.”  Acia Gray    What is that presence?

What is that presence?  Presence to the rhythm, way deep I would say, deeper that the feet learning to take a signal and create a shape where no shape was before.  Is it presence to the rhythm of the feet, or the personality?  Or is it presence to the sound of the steps I take and the sound of the tumble when I stumble?  Or is it presence to the bang and the burst and the whir that carries me through a day?  Or is it presence to the rhythm, the one I hear pounding on my door when I take a breath during the day or wake up wondering about in the middle of a dream?  Or is it presence to the mysterious interplay of my heart and my spleen and all the juices that run around in me making me laugh and cry day to day and night to night?  Or is it presence to the beat of the volley of me to me and me to you and us to us?  Or is it just presence to the soul who captains and crews, who croons and woos, who flays and wails and finally decides to walk on water like he was meant to in the first place.

The rhythm I need I find @Tapestry.  2010 show now.  With Tapestry, I eat rhythm.  Meat and potatos, sweet and sour, jelly roll and dilly bar, hum a little, slide a lot, takes away the casserole and brings on the whole enchilada.  My cells devour  Tapestry rhythm.  My rhythm dishes it out, slurps it in.    My brain catches and matches signal for signal every slap skat splat.  OK my body, well fed, well read, are you trained to take on the slopes when you go out that door?

Deborah Hay No Time to Fly 2010

Contrary to “much ado”

Reverse “about”

Contingent to “nothing”

When our “going out” is the same as our coming in and our “whimper” is a valiant earthquake.