It's that time of year

We love The Nutcracker -- and it's back again this year. Ballet Austin always puts on a great production with lots of happy kids making their debuts as mice and angels. The professional dancers have a good time as well.

Dramatic dance

This was the start of a dance piece in the overall work Illusory Impressions we saw the other night. The lighting was spectacular. The whole thing was staged in a central Austin estate.

Modern dance in an olden setting

Illusory Impressions was the name of this wonderful dance performance that was held at Jennifer's Gardens here in town the other night. Our friend Michelle, who used to dance with Ballet Austin, created this delightful piece.

Blue Lapis Light rehearses

The performers from Blue Lapis Light, a local aerial dance company, were trying out new numbers the other day on the old Seaholm plant stacks.

Flamingo-- not flamenco

This flamingo head is part of the costumery for the Ballet Austin production of Alice in Wonderland.

Golden dancers

The Ballet Austin II dancers did a fine job of performing a work created to express their feelings about discrimination and bullying in schools. It took place inside a golden-hued artwork installation at the Blanton Museum.

Hanging on the Highway

This Blue Lapis Light Dancer performs on a column supporting IH35. This was part of the boardwalk grand opening celebration. You can see the Monarch, 360, AMLI on Second, the W and the Ashton in the background.

Dancing the Stairs

In April we went to an event at the Blanton Museum called SoundSpace. Music and dance acts are brought into the galleries and other spaces. In this case, the piece involved dancers who first descended the grand staircase in the atrium via most unusual moves.

Chair Dancing

My friends Pei San Brown and Michael Smothers were doing some sort of dance last night as the gala multi-event opening of Zach Scott Theatre's Topfer Theatre wound down. Only they were sitting down! This could come in handy as we get older.

Gotta Dance

We stopped by Jo's Hot Coffee on South Congress yesterday on our walk to hear a bit of the Sinner's Brunch. We just stayed and listened but this couple took to the parking lot for dancing. (FFP shot this with his iPhone.)

Reflecting

Another of the great photos Linda took at MusicCircus on Saturday afternoon at The Blanton Museum. These ladies are all Ballet Austin dancers. We talked to Beth, the blond at the top of this photo, after the piece was over and she said that they had no idea what the music that would be playing would sound like. After Michelle Schumann finished with her toy piano piece, a band upstairs started on their performance. It fit well with the dancing, though.

MusiCircus

Yesterday the Blanton Museum of Art on the University of Texas campus had an event called SoundSpace and presented John Cage's MusiCircus in honor of honor his centenary year. It was described as a 'happening of concurrent performances determined by chance distribution.' Performers did Cage music or music in his style or by his contemporaries. The Ballet Austin dancers seen here performed a piece choreographed by the company's Michele Thompson. At this moment Michele Schumann was also performing John Cage's Suite for Toy Piano. We were on the mezzanine above the atria. When the toy piano piece was done, a group called Mongoose began playing on the mezzanine. The dancers continued, having never heard the music of Mongoose which used conventional and very unconventional instruments. We wandered the galleries where a jazz group did Sun Ra music, two flutes played Cage selections, saxophones played haunting music by Cage and others and a piece for oboe, flute, trombone, violin, clarinet and trumpet (along with spoken word) was premiered. At the end the audience played along with a number of players on tiny plastic noise makers. And, finally, the Suite for Toy Piano was repeated. Here is the facebook album with a couple more pictures.

Dance on the Street

Shot this from the street the other day as ballet dancers worked in the Armstrong Connelly studio at Ballet Austin.

W Flash Mob

Today the W Hotel in our neighborhood opens. (It's two blocks away.) Their employees gathered as a flash mob and danced at the front entrance yesterday.

Dancing On Air

We attended the issue release party for L Style/G Style magazine Saturday night at Bass Concert Hall. This performance by the Blue Lapis Light dance company was a highlight of the evening. Their dancers dangled above the crowd and performed remarkable maneuvers while in the air. I took this shot with my iPhone.

Flamenco Inspiration

Sarah Bird wrote a novel inspired by the culture of Flamenco dancing ("The Flamenco Academy") and last night, courtesy of the Badgerdog Publishing annual event, Sarah read some of the novel while the singing, guitar and dance would come alive behind her. Here she pauses to watch Olivia Chacón dance. Great evening of raising money for a great cause. FFP has worked tirelessly with this group to raise money for their work to bring writing to the community and to the country.

Dancin' In The Street

The Paramount closed two blocks of Congress in front of the theater last night and, after a packed house listened to Delbert McClinton and other entertainment, the hundreds of guests flowed into the huge air-conditioned tents for drinking, dancing, dinner and a silent auction. The Austin American-Statesman Out and About columnist is rocking out foreground with my friend Dean Lofton (that's the back of her head) as this great cover band Skyrocket grooved the scene. While dancing you occasionally realized that you were in the middle of Congress with clues like the yellow line and rough pavement.

Not squares, just dancing

I was walking through Butler Park Saturday morning and saw this group of people taking what looked like a square dancing class on top of a man-made hill. I took out my camera and got this photo of them with a couple of buildings on the north shore of Lady Bird Lake in the background.

So Ready to Sew

Last night we stepped across the street from our building to Ballet Austin's Butler Dance Education Center for a reception held 'behind the scenes' in the area behind the company's main studio. We were toasting Martha and Cliff Ernst in the space they endowed with their donation to the capital campaign for the building: the costume shop. Alexey Korygin, Wardrobe Master, welcomed us but no one was tempted to challenge the order of things. This picture of thread at the ready for the sewing of costumes was taken with an iPhone. There is lighting in this area that lit the picture perfectly. The lighting was designed to allow Alexey to see the true colors while fitting and working on costumes. Alexey is a former dancer who immigrated from Russia. When he retired from dance, he used skills learned in a theater family to become the Wardrobe Master for Ballet Austin.

Forrest and I endowed an area backstage, too. However, we never had a reception there because it is the locker room and dressing room for the ballerinas in the main company! Before this fabulous building was built, the principal dancers shared restroom and dressing space with everyone, including small kids in ballet school. We are so proud of Ballet Austin and this building has really let it blossom completely into the great organization it is for professionals and community members in the school.

Dancing for the Kids

We went to a fun benefit last night at the Hilton. Austin has an organization called The Center for Child Protection and they have a building where all interviews and exams and immediate follow-up needs (clothing, new supplies for school, therapy, etc.) are handled for children who have been neglected or physically or sexually abused. Police, prosecutors and social workers come together at the center to make the child's experience less threatening and to avoid repeated interviews for the same incident.

With such a solemn mission they sure throw a wonderfully fun event to raise the money to support it. They get outstanding community leaders to volunteer to participate in a dance contest. Above you see our friend, Larry Connelly, philanthropist, PhD Educator and former elementary school principal, and his professional dance partner cutting a rug to the Pink Panther theme. It was great. All the participants were fun. Including Art Acevedo, Chief of Police. He was such a good sport! As was everyone involved. After the cocktails, auction, dance contest and dinner the audience was ready to rock out, too, and the dance floor filled with people showing their own moves. (A highlight of this was seeing former Ballet Austin dance Jim Stein doing a quick step.)

The event was at the Hilton. And, yes, we walked back and forth and I think people who used the valet were jealous.