What a Drag
Credit for this headline goes to Sarah Marloff, arts editor of (Washington) City Paper
What I'm Writing...
Trump's Truth Social posts tend to be 90 percent bloviation and 10 percent reality. So when he used "drag shows specifically targeting our youth" as a justification for the taking over the Kennedy Center, the story I most wanted to write was one that would figure out what the hell Trump was talking about.
City Paper gave me a chance to do that story. While I would have loved to land a higher paying, more visible assignment, I'm so glad to get this news out into the world, with editors who took such care with my prose. And I'm grateful to drag queen Tara Hoot and drag king Pretty Rik E for sharing what really happened at that 2024 family-friendly community event at the Kennedy Center that drew Trump's ire.
One more caveat: In consultation with my editors, we agreed to keep some details about the "Dragtastic" party at the Kennedy Center out of the story in order to protect people who have been targeted by right wing misinformation campaigns and fear for their safety. That's a concession I probably could not have made for other media outlets, but seemed appropriate her.
Rebecca Ritzel
What I'm Reading...
Quick quiz: What do Matt Gaetz's wedding officiant, Robert Kraft's trophy wife and Susie Wiles' stepmother all have in common?
They're all newly appointed Kennedy Center trustees!
I wouldn't have known this without reading TheatreMania's player-by-player profiles that frankly should have appeared in the Washington Post. Then again, maybe Bezos-era Post couldn't have been this catty? They left out Laura Ingraham, but otherwise, well worth a read.
Zachary Stewart
What I'm Seeing...
One of my all-time favorite dances turned 50 this year: Paul Taylor's "Esplanade." I first saw it as a student at Syracuse University, Taylor's alma mater, and fell in love with modern dance that night in 2006, with Taylor and his longtime muse Bettie de Jong sitting behind me. In my memory, the flying leaps in the final movement — when women skip across the stage and land in their partner's arms—goes on for minute. In reality, they do the jumps just seven times. But it's still a glorious work, perfectly encapsulating a dreamy late spring day with Bach as the soundtrack.
I thought there was solid chance the company would attempt to withdraw from its Kennedy Center engagement, or that choreographer Hope Boykin might pull her premiere – a Kennedy Center commission — from the program. She did not. The opening movement of "How Love Sounds," was exquisite, with three dancing couples serving as a backdrop while a central couple partnered as if falling into romance. Two loners roamed the stage in longing.
That first movement was set to Dvorak, and while classical and pop can certainly go together, the transition from Czech romanticism to Patsy Cline to Donna Summer didn't cohere, musically or otherwise. The relationship dynamics that drew me in didn't stick around for the rest of the suite and make me care about the dancers as characters. It's been a while since I've seen a suite like this actually work – the last was probably Kyle Abraham's "An Untitled Love," all set to music by D'Angelo. (Here's Siobhan Burke's 2022 feature.)
If I Could See Anything...
Very much missing my old gig his week, covering National Ballet for The Globe and Mail. Artistic director commissioned a new work from Marco Goecke, unaffectionately known as "the dogshit choreographer," who was fired from a series of gigs after he smeared dachshund poop on a critic's face.
Everyone loves a good comeback story, right?
Yeah, not me. Not this critic who adores dogs.
But the programme also included David Dawson's "Four Seasons," and by all accounts all four are glorious. Martha Schabas, who returned to the Globe dance critic role after taking a few years off to focus on fiction and parenthood, elegiacally wrote that Dawson's dancers employ "a port de bras that’s redolent of a gymnast’s starting pose: arched back, chest forward and arms outstretched on a diagonal. The motif is often accented with beautiful upper-body suppleness, which recurs in different guises throughout the work."
Shout/out to friend and What/If Arts subscriber Dr. Cathy Campbell, who writes, "For a few minutes during the final ballet, "Four Seasons," the violin, the music, the dancing were so beautiful, that I got choked up and I forgot about the state of the current world."
That's how important the arts and performance are and can be in our lives, she added. And she's right.
If I Could Write Anything...
The press box was calling me for "Legacy on Ice," Sunday's benefit honoring figure skaters, coaches and their family community lost in the Jan. 29 plane crash. There's almost a hurt in my chest, knowing that not only did I want to write about the event, and try to put the emotion laid out on the ice into words, but that I wanted to be there grieving. I love skating so much, every since I saw American pairs skaters Kitty and Peter Carruthers win silver in the 1984 Olympics, metals still shining even on my parents' black and white TV.
"Legacy on Ice" is scheduled to air on NBC March 30, as well as stream on Peacock.
