Bit of a Kick and Prance & A Shout Out for Lawrence Lessig

What to write about?
It's 2 January.
Wikipedia tells that it's "the 9th day of Christmas", when a lover sent
"9 ladies dancing"
to the adored.

Note: re post title: "kick and prance" is London Cockney rhyming slang for "dance".

Dancing....Terpsichore....Terpsichore - one of the nine Greek muses, in this case muse of dancing and choral music. She was daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyn - goddess of memory (from whence comes our word "mnemonic').

I was ignorant of the word Terpsichore for many years. It was in listening to Frank Sinatra's recordings that I first heard it, in the Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn song "Come Dance with Me":

........Hey there cutes, put on your Basie boots and come dance with me
Come dance with me, what an evening for some Terpsichore
Pretty face, I know a swingin' place, come on dance with me
Romance with me on a crowded floor...............

Also, by the by, there's an asteroid bearing the name Terpsichore: See website Dancestrology where an attempt is made to discover Terpsichore the asteroid's astrological meaning.

Back to the 9th day of Christmas, 2 January, and HERE a more spiritual interpretation is put on Nine Ladies Dancing :

...the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit: 1) love, 2) joy, 3) peace, 4) patience, 5) kindness, 6) generosity, 7) faithfulness, 8) gentleness, and 9) self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23).

Back to hard reality....and something well worth a shout-out: see fellow-blogger David Macadam's post at The Oligarch Kings yesterday, 1 January: New Hampshire Rebellion.

Every effort, of whatever type, could help bring about the changes we so badly need. It won't happen quickly, it might not even happen in this decade, but every voice raised, every line of text written supporting the changes needed will drift off into the great public consciousness and build, and build until critical mass is attained.

I'll repeat the video from David's post here, but please do go read his whole piece then do whatever possible to spread the word in your own way. Thank you!

Grace & Fury in Myth and Dance

Last week we attended a performance by the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company at our local theatre. Dancers were cross-cultural: from China, Moscow, New Jersey, Korea, Cuba, Japan, and California , their choreographer and artistic director is Nai-Ni Chen who was a renowned traditional dancer in the Republic of China and served on several ambassadorial culture missions around the world. The show was a blend of traditional and modern dance.

Looking through the photographs my husband managed to capture with his pocket camera during the performance brought to mind an old post of mine featuring the Three Graces and The Three Furies. Dug it out, combined an edited version with our photographs.


One of Raphael's paintings depicts The Three Graces. In mythology these were goddesses, daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, said to rule beauty and charm in nature and humanity. Aglaia represents radiance or splendor. Euphrosyne represents joy. Thalia represents fruitfulness or good cheer.


Which planets might the three sisters personify ? I'd guess Sun for radiance and splendor, Venus and Jupiter for the other two, not sure which is which though.

We all embody a potential for both grace and fury.


Here, with delicate grace the dancers performed Raindrops: Choreographer Nai-Ni chen drew inspiration from her childhood memory of the Taiwanese city in which she was born, Keelong, also known as the "Rain Harbor".



The exquisitely graceful and elegant Peacock Dance. The peacock is considered a sacred bird among the Dai people in the Yunan province. Movements derive from real actions of the peacock - drinking water, walking, running, grooming feathers.
Dancer was Min Zhou.





There was a lovely dance: The Way of Five - Fire which we didn't manage to capture. The photo is from the Dance company's website linked above.

A leaflet provided tells that this was Nai-Ni Chen's first exploration of the ancient Chinese theory that the cycles of creation and destruction correspond to the ever-changing phenomena of nature. the "Five" refers to the five elements: wood, water, fire, metal and earth. Each element as part of the forces of nature, creates another in harmony and destroys another in conflict.

(I wonder why Chinese elements do not include Air, as in astrological elements in western tradition?)




And so to The Furies:

Another trio - The Three Furies, the Greek Erinyes, daughters of Gaia (Earth) sprung from the blood of Uranus could be said to represent the shadow sides of the Three Graces. This painting is by W. Bouguereau Orestes and the Furies. Tisiphone (avenger of blood) Alecto (the implacable) and Megaera (the jealous one). Said to be merciless goddesses of vengance whose punishments continued after death. Which planets might carry the attributes of these three lovelies? Mars, Saturn, and what about "the jealous one"? The Moon, perhaps? I tend to give the Moon a positive interpretation, but in tarot,the Moon card isn't one of the true "goodies". The Moon is changeable, temperamental, could easily be jealous. Yes, I'll choose the Moon to represent "the jealous one".


In dance:
Lu Wen-Long, the Warrior. (A Warrior is nothing if not a symbol of fury!)
This dance is taken from the 500 year old Chinese Kunqu Opera. Legend goes that Lu Wen-Long was abducted from his Han military family by Manchurians, grew up among enemies of his family. After aiding the Manchrians in many victories he defected to become a famous general of his own Han people. The high platform shoes of his costume, and head dress of long bird feathers symbolise a courageous young general. The short white stick symbolises his white horse, and the double spears are his special weapons. Dancer: Yao-Zhong Zhang.





The Lion Dance (not exactly furious though) - Said to have originated in the Tang Dynasty 3,000 years ago. Seen as a prayer of peace because during the dance a child playfully leads a beast. Child and beast playing together symbolises harmony on earth. The Lion Dance is always performed at Chinese New Year. there are many different styles of the Lion Dance, this was the northern style.



The show finished with a colourful dance, Festival, based on the Dragon Boat summer festival. The spinning, floating ribbons symbolise prosperity of the village.

Music Monday ~ Re-makes, Footloose, Dean Pitchford, Kenny Wormald

Hollywood loves re-makes. I often complain. Still, though, there are some old movies in which the directors/cast/whoever didn't quite capture the essence, and a re-make wouldn't be too bad an idea. A couple of examples I've seen recently spring to mind - one a western the other a musical. The western, Cimarron, has already been made twice - adapted from Edna Ferber's 1929 novel. I've seen both versions. It's an interesting story, with factual basis, that I feel hasn't yet caught exactly the right "feel", especially in the casting. It's set in Oklahoma, after the big landrush of 1893.


The musical movie, Footloose, focus of this post, was made in 1984, written by Dean Pitchford (right), starred Kevin Bacon. The stage musical has been performed probably thousands of times by amateur theatrical societies, high school drama students, etc. We saw one such stage version locally, a few weeks ago, and shortly after viewed a tape of the 1984 movie. There's a re-make of Footloose due for release later this year, with young dancer Kenny Wormald in the leading part. Coincidentally, as in Cimarron there's an Oklahoma connection to Footloose too. The plotline is based on a true story.

From an interview with Pitchford (HERE)

I was approached about writing a song about a girl who's going to be a pop artist or a girl who wants to go to Broadway or a guy who wants to go on the road and I thought, 'well, those are really kind of dull.' One way to make it more interesting is to forbid it, to outlaw it. That was in the back of my head and I had read this story in the news in 1979 about a small town in Oklahoma"Elmore City"that banned dancing. The law had been on the books for 90 some odd years and that year, the high school class, which numbered about 11 kids, wanted to have a dance and the town elders decided they had a problem with that. They got very dogmatic about it, though no one could remember why they had instituted that interdiction, and they dug their heels in. A fight ensued and families split. People took sides and neighbors weren't talking to neighbors and the minister there put his foot down [and dancing was banned]. I kept thinking, because my background was Broadway, where no one really calls themselves a songwriter unless you do a score in a show, I always felt like a bit of a pretender; I had a song on this television show, in that movie, on that album, so I wanted to put a bunch of songs in a movie. And the only way I could make that work is if I know what the movie is, so I had better sit down and write a movie.

We've been in Elmore City a few times, eaten at a decent little hometown diner there. It's not hard to imagine how the above story might happen in such a town.

Footloose threw up three memorable songs, all lyrics by Pitchford: Footloose itself, Holding Out For a Hero, Let's Hear It For the Boy. The dancing is front and center though. And that's probably where locally produced stage versions are going to fall down a bit on the original intention.

Brilliant dancers are few and far between, especially in small towns, suburban areas, high schools etc. Good singers are more easily found. Although Kevin Bacon did a good job in Footloose, it was gymnastic rather than true brilliant dancing, and, according to my husband much of it was done by a stand-in anyway. I suspect Kenny Wormald is going to fill those dancing shoes properly, and more nearly in line with the storyteller's intent.

Wormald (right) wasn't first choice for the part. Zac Efron and Chace Crawford both dropped out of the running for one reason or another. Everything happens for a reason, they say.

It's interesting that Dean Pitchford was born on 29 July 1951, in Hawaii and Kenny Wormald, the dancer eventually cast in the lead was born on 27 July 1984, in Boston MA. So Wormald was born the year the original Footloose was released, he has Sun and Mercury within a degree of Sun and Mercury of the movie's writer, Pitchford. He might yet prove to be the definitive Ren McCormack!

Footloose 1984 trailer HERE