The Safety Dance

13Bit may be embarking on yet another documentary - about yet an other forgotten artist. This one is Margie Beales - an improv artist in Manhattan's Tribeca. At first, Paul and I were skeptical about making another documentary like Lumia. But this will not be another lumia - hopefully more fast cheap and out of control. Once we met margie - we were sold. A 73 year old former improv dancer - with no formal improv training - is a true new york personality and a fantastic individual. Her personality is truly compelling. We started watching some of her dance videos from 30 years ago and just fell in love with the idea of a documentary or her, or on ny avant garde dance - or something like that.

I know nothing about dance. In fact, growing up I sort of despised dance as a pansy activity. However, I take Kung Fu, and many of the best Kung Fu students are dancers. So - I am gaining respect for dance. I have especially developed incredible respect for the ability of dancers to remember dance steps - Kung Fu steps are difficult enough to remember.

In order to learn about dance, I am immersing myself in dance literature, dance documentaries, and actual dances. Paul and I will also be speaking to dancers and choreographers. The research phase of a documentary is always a lot of fun. You learn about a new subject area as you grope around for the story.

I just finished The Art of Making Dances by Doris Humphrey and am about to embark on bios on Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis and Anna Halprin. But first - I am going to get a background history by reading Ballet and Modern Dance. Over the weekend I read Twyla Tharp's book on creativity. Normally, I shy away from books on the creative process - because really they all say the same thing. But I was curious about the creative process of a choreographer - and I do like her box method of organizing projects. I may try it - it sort of reminds me of the folders in 'getting things done'.

The sustainability doc is going well - we will start logging the footage probably next week - and are planning a field trip down the colorado river in the spring. We hope to be finished by the beginning of summer. The doc will probably be about water usage and water rights with the damming of the colorado and the subsequent poisoning of down river farms in mexico as a focal point. We will also probably discuss the different ways of looking at sustainability (where the footprint metrics come in)

We are almost done with a first cut of lakshmi - except for the motown act dream sequence - which we have rewritten to be a rap by Tia! our resident muse and robot lover. We plan to start sending Lakshmi out to festivals in January. We think it is a great counterpoint to the super slick wall street II.


Anyway - tonight Lian and I have our first opera of the season - House of the Dead - perhaps there will be some dancing

Chicago (sang musically like sinatra)

I am writing this in Argo Tea shop in downtown chicago - the loop. I do love Chicago. In many ways it is less oppressive than new york. I am not on my A game this morning. Too much wine from wine parings that Lian and I had at Alinea last night. The molecular gastronomy was divine - and was payed for by my amazon puts - thank you amazon for making money this quarter.

This morning I awoke to a rapidsms documentation email. The current documentation is crap and a place holder. Claude, a rapidsms developer, wrote his own documentation. I hope he merges it with the github master so that my script pulls it and publishes it on the website.

Sometimes my anti social nature makes me wonder why I want to work on collaborative software projects - but then when someone like Claude comes along and does something useful, you see why.

Paul and I may embark on yet another doc - this will make 3 in the hopper. This one is partially inspired by Margaret Beals, an improv dancer and New York Character. I think we should do a podcast called New York Characters. Paul also had a brilliant idea - but I cannot reveal it here - it is too brilliant. But it is somewhat analogous to Balzac's Human Comedy. Margaret is a fantastic lady and real character - I have been watching some of her old improv dance dvds. That is fun. I know nothing about dance, I am not very kinetic or physical - but I would love to learn more.