I made a comment at the end of a long discussion on the role of critic to choreographer and audience at Downtown Dancer, a blog in the holler of Manhattan's dance mecca. I add it here as a way to keep track (personally) and to share my thoughts on dance with the NEO dance interested community.

I wrote this review of Joe Goode Performance Group when they visited Cleveland in 2007. It was published in Coolcleveland. Here it is gathered with my other dance musings to add to the file.

More great dance like this in NEO, please.

In today's news we learn of the end of an era - Jim Mazurkeiwicz retires and Potter Mellen closes its doors.

Here's a sample of Jim's work from the still live Potter Mellen website:

Black shiny shoes... laced up FBI shoes - the ones that got Ken Kesey... remember? in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

Black shiny INS shoes are now rounding up immigrants (like all of us Americans who are not native to the US lands) and putting them in jails - rounding them up for deportation. It’s big business and it’s a growth industry in a failing economy.

Take a journey out of the realneo and into the quite unreal Gloucester with

Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester

one of our favorite stories at Christmastime

Listen here at the BBC

Attached are minutes from an October 2007 meeting of City of Cleveland Planning, Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority, URS and US Army Corps of Engineers. Ed had these issues in mind (among numerous others) when he left us. Let's catch up a bit. Can anoyone give an update as to how these questions have been addressed more than a year later?

Highlights include:

 

 

 

Steve Litt writes about transportation issues and Obama's infrastructure funding in NEO in today's PD:

"Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up." - Hannah Arendt

If you're feeling cold, here's a little video from Irven Lewis to start your blood flowing: click here to Ignite

"Currently, Cleveland's airport line attracts only about 300 riders a day, but airport and RTA officials are working on a joint marketing program to promote the rapid, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this month.

these pups are about as cute as they can get... except for my sleepy pup who just lifted her head with a look that says "what did you just type over there?!?"

Saving Buffalo’s Untold Beauty by Nicolai Ourousoff

Wouldn't it be nice to read "Saving Cleveland's Untold Beauty"?

Ed Hauser died suddenly November 14, 2008. Northeast Ohio has lost its most ardent, studied and tenacious citizen activist. Information regarding funeral arrangements will be in the Plain Dealer tomorrow.

While in New Hampshire I visited a dog racetrack in Hinsdale - Southern New Hampshire right on the border of the state that just outlawed greyhound racing. Inside the closed-for-the season track a handful of people gathered around poker and craps tables in dingy surroundings. But my sister and I were not looking for a game, we were looking for Fast Friends.

"At this point, with this economy, it doesn't make sense," she said of more shopping centers.

If any architects are reading this blog, here's a survey for you: Checking the Pulse of the Architecture Industry from Archinect. I'll be interested to read the results in a future Archinect newsletter.

Art by Franklin Pierce University Student Christina Altieri... VOTE.

 

"Ticket booths closed and cobwebs covering the doors, the Pyramid sits ghostly quiet." Photo: Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Got this message from a neighbor/longtime colleague, David Budin:

"Last week I sent a message jokingly suggesting that we all change our middle names to Hussein until November 4. I mean, I thought I was joking. Then a lot of people e-mailed back and said they were actually doing that -- and they were forwarding my message to their friends, etc.

Imagine our new juvenile justice center surrounded by vineyard. In winter these little gnarly crosses in matrix gracing the portage escarpment where the eastern plateau rolls downhill sometimes gently, sometimes precipitously toward the river valley.

photo by Kevin Connors 

This news from NYC: Failed Deals Replace Boom in New York Real Estate

and there's this news: Under Strain, Cities Are Cutting Back Projects

 

Vernon and Irene Castle popularized ballroom dancing in the early 20th Century - those were high times.

From the definitive text on the subject of the Dance Marthons of the 1920 and 30s, Carol Martin

Noémie Lafrance launches a collaboration with Frank Gehry's buildings at Bard College - Annanadale on Hudson.

YESTERDAY Photo by Alastair Muir Dancer: Mafalda Deville see more