"Wild Sweet Love" - Sacramento Ballet

Enjoyable afternoon at the Sacramento Community Theater.

At the pre-game talk, Ron Cunningham talked about his experiences traveling in China in 1980, and told an amusing story of turning to gaze out a bus window, and came face-to-face with a Chinese infant on the other side, being held up by his parents to gaze in wonderment at him. The kid screamed at his foreign visage. Cunningham explained that there was something intrinsically Chinese about Ma Cong's world premiere of "Acceptance", just as there was something intrinsically American about "Wild Sweet Love". Strangely, after watching both pieces, I felt differently, but that was OK. Ballet lives on a plane above mere nations. Still, there was a subtle commonality between Edwaard Liang's "Wunderland" and Ma Cong's "Acceptance" (For my taste, I liked "Wunderland" better - the interesting use of the leg to gain torque and the finish with a body swing, for example.

There was also a backward spring I liked very much. (Was this Lauryn Winterhalder and Stefan Calka in "Acceptance"? I really like Winterhalder! Also enjoyed seeing Karina Hagemeyer.)

At an intermission, Sally and I spied Ron's dancing daughter, Alexandra Cunningham (who is now nursing a torn ACL). Since Sally had similar surgery a little over a year ago, she was eager to compare notes. (I was a little embarrassed, and worried they would soon be comparing scars, so I scuttled off to the lobby.)

Oddly enough, I remember seeing "Wild Sweet Love" before, with Ilana Goldman instead of Ava Chatterson as the Jogging Girl. That was 2007. Strange that I remember it so clearly. I manage to forget everything else.

Worried about the small size of the audience.

The Teel's announced a $250,000 dollar grant to the Sacramento Ballet. Yippee! It's important to remember, though, that that just pays a poverty wage to 25 dancers for a year. More is needed. Much, much more to run a ballet company even half as good as Sacramento Ballet.

One must be half mad to run a ballet company. (Like being half mad to run a musical theater company.)

Tonight, I'm rattled by TCM's presentation on TV this evening of Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire". Half-mad Blanche Du Bois rattling around inside a florid Southern mansion of the mind, depending on the "kindness of strangers."

Like the arts.