NYC visiting

Sister Dimension at La Mama, Etc. June 15, 2008

Double click any of my images to see them larger.

Tomkins Sq. Park, NYC: Temperance Fountain

Temperance Fountain in NYC: which works serving up free fresh cool and clean water with no plastic additives. 

Crazy colorfully painted Bus

Bicycle Ricshaw with a flat :-(

I just spent a weekend in NYC's east village at the institution,

known as La MaMa, Etc. Theater complex. 

I was there with my dear friend John Kelly to talk on a panel of former friends of Larry Ree the creator and founder of the first all male drag ballet. It was called the Original Trockadero Gloxinia Ballet and got it's beginning in 1972 and many years of support at La MaMa where founder Ellen Stewart was a big fan & friend to the company. John Kelly and I were both dancers in this ballet from about 1982 . I dropped out of the practice in the late 1980's after a year long toe nail infection from one of my visits to NYC to dance on point shoes with too little rehearsal. John collected some excerpts from videos of us dancing and Larry in various roles as a drag performer as well as slides and guests to tell about their memories of Larry and Madame. We spent two hours story telling, watching the slides and videos to bring a very important theater and gay history to life. All of it was recorded for the La MaMa, Etc. Archives. I had a good time and got to stay in the 4th floor dormitory for my two nights in exchange for my testimony. Allen Mace: Sister Dimension the former manager and DJ at the Pyramid Club where we did many shows was a panelist and posed for a quick snap shot of his fabulous red hat and boa. Sister Dimension is now famous on You Tube for his role as the pickle in the Pickle Surprise video by Tom Rubnitz. Madame's "world's largest tutu" sat in the corner. This is a six foot wide ballet tutu skirt that stood erect on Madame's waist! Larry spent a couple years making it and beading it and the top skirt. I got a very short video of the tutu by accident when I thought I was making a photograph with my new camera. You can see it below. I also saw a few fun things on my walks around the old neighborhood I used to live in back in the early 1980's not to mention plenty of memories returning. While I was there in my free time I also got to see my best friend from Pratt Institute. He is a fabric designer with one of the world's largest makers of fabrics and has developed a love of flowers because of that work. I walked with him to see what we might find and came across lots of community gardens and city parks gardens where we shared stories about our gardens.  He has a big garden 3 hours north of NYC in western Massachusetts which is in a zone 4 area so that is quite different than mine in Washington DC our zone 7-8 of a warmer subtropical climate. I am posting a few photos of the Temperance Fountain I found in Tomkins Square Park built for the Prohibition era thirsty by some wealthy man. I also traveled up to New York City and back on the new fully wired for laptops and wifi BOLT BUS which was fun, on time and inexpensive. High gas prices make traveling on a bus very green.  

I saw an amazing new work of theater written, directed, composed and produced by Ellen Stewart, called THE RAVEN which was a musical in the style of the Peking Opera. It was a fantastic fairy tale of princes, ogres, spirits, magic and beautiful ladies all in elaborate costumes and head dresses with a live orchestra and special digital screen effects. It was truly a magical evening and it was opening weekend so if you are near and you like fantasy go see The Raven at La MaMa, Etc. it is a brilliantly colored story from the mysterious world of old China. It has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poe's Raven. This one gets shot! 

past returns

Today I am not sure what to write about but I wanted to post something. I am delighted to see the sun back today but the two rainy days really greened the trees and grass up and kept the pollen down both pleasing results of these chilly wet days. This morning the pavers are finishing up the repaving of the street under my windows. Nice new black top all around. 

I have a house wren in the bird house gourd that I hung in our lilac tree a few weeks ago. Today was the first time I saw our wren after hearing his song a day or two back. I had a surprise call on Sunday from John Kelly my old friend in NYC. He was calling to invite me to come up to NYC for a discussion at LaMaMa E.T.C. Theater in the East Village about our days in the Original Trockadero Gloxinia Ballet with the amazing creator and director Madame Ekathrina Sobechanskaya aka Larry Ree. It will be a panel discussion with others from the Pyramid Club where we opened our new Trocadero company for two weeks of shows in 1982. I am excited to be recounting the stories I can remember and realized I better get busy thinking and writing about them so I can remember as much as possible. I have posted the few images I have from our posters and one photo by Donald Callahan that was taken of us in tableaux at the end of our Pas de Quatre when we performed it at the now defunct Cat Club. 

We began with our version of the Trockadero with Madame and 8 dancers. Only Madame and Grace had done this before the rest of us were beginners in the art of ballet en travesti . We spent about 6 weeks training and learning the dances and how to bead costumes in the rehearsal rooms of LaMaMa on East 4th St. I was invited to join by John Kelly who had met Larry Ree in some bar and been invited. We both had ballet training and I don't think either of us had thought of doing it in drag. I recall the day John came to ask me if I wanted to join the company. He came over for a coffee and told me about meeting Larry and what he wanted to do was get about 12 tall men to join his company and put on a show of Anna Pavlova style Russian 19th century ballet. We would all get our own pair of toe/pointe shoes and he had all the costumes and wigs to fit us that we would need. All we had to supply was a willingness to learn the dances, tights to cover our hairy legs and some makeup. Other requirements would be detailed later and we were to learn there were some very strict rules that had to be followed to be part of Madame's company of grand dames. One of the first things we learned as Madame's ballerinas was not to mug or do anything intentionally to get laughs from the audience. Madame's dislike of mugging, it seems came from some dark history with the other ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo whom broke off from Madame's company and began dancing as clowns which he found very repugnant. He said that we didn't need to do anything to make people laugh because the site of a six foot man in a tutu, wing, tights and toe shoes was funny enough. In the end Madame was right, the more serious we were the more the audiences laughed. The posters at the top detail our first run at the Pyramid and then later smaller shows that Madame, John Kelly and myself performed after the bigger group was disbanded. I danced with Madame from 1982 until about 1989 when a return trip to NYC to dance for a week caused me to get infected toe nails and I decided it was time for me to lay down my pointe shoes for good. Then I grew a goatee and soon after joined ACTUP DC and marched on NIH  to protest for access to AIDS drugs.