Inflamed Passions

I've been in relationships like this.

Taraf de Haïdouks, the local band of lăutarii in Clejani, Romania recognizable in the previous video, perform Turcească (A la Turk) below.

Dancing to Singing

In 2005, a sustained and intense obsession for the music of Regina Spektor began for me.  Her appearance on the scene in early March of that year with the major label release of Soviet Kitsch, months after the devastating events of November 2, 2004, reminded me a bit of the Beatles' debut on American television in February 1964 following the events of the prior November 22.  I didn't know you could still make art like that.  She didn't know you couldn't.  

As with the Beatles, Regina Spektor had a rich history that predated her public splash, and already an immense body of unrecorded work that was nevertheless bootlegged from shows and posted on YouTube.  Out of my awareness of this began a daily habit of checking YouTube for the latest videos tagged with her music.  It was through this obsession that I discovered and began "collecting" videos of choreography set to her songs.  

Whatever lack of authority I have on any of the subjects I write about (for some reason I'm drawn to them) goes double for dance, but I know what I like, and here is a sampling of it.

First, one of her earlier, lesser known songs, Buildings, beautifully choreographed (by Talia Robledo-Gil) and danced (by Dartmouth students).  This strikes me as just perfect.  

This dance (with choreography by Teddy Tedholm) captures the humor, the attitude (and horror) of Carbon Monoxide.

The dance to Open, below (choreographed by Erica Sobol), is as poetic, hypnotic, raw and devastating as the song.

(See also this version, which transcends the cheese of its setting)

In the solo category, the magical realism of Bon Idee is brought to life by Liz Lanning (choreography) and Effie Tutko (dance). 

Liv Horinouchi brings an assassin's skills to this performance of Oh Marcello:

Finally (for now):

If you've somehow found your way here without having heard the music of Regina Spektor, her latest album, Remember Us To Life, is as good a place as any to start.  Just released in October and full of brand new songs that rank among the best she's recorded, I'm looking forward to seeing the new art of all forms that they'll inspire.

Anger is an Energy

In the meantime, words of wisdom from Mr. Rotten (featuring Tony Williams on drums and other notables):

Remember: the president is not yet omnipotent (or omniscient).

Also, there's no position quite like opposition.  We're supposed to be opposed.

Yeast

Hot off the presses at YouTube, some unexpected beauty from Nicolae Guță.  The song is Eu sunt regele, tu esti coroana (I am the king, you are the crown).

A "seasoned" gentleman in hip hop threads. A beautiful woman dancing with a bichon.  A camera that now wanders, now lingers lovingly over each of them.  And music that imbues the proceedings with sublimity.

Let this serve as a small reminder to those who need it that it's a big world out there, full of fellow humans, many of them doing wonderful things, not all of them within a 50 mile radius of where your ass is currently sitting.  The ones that look like you and that speak with words you understand by an accident of birth are a shrinking minority because the world is happily diversifying, in spite of every effort to the contrary.  While it's fine if you content yourself with your kind -- that's what humans tend to do -- don't confuse your provinciality with Culture.  Culture cannot be preserved and confined and purified.  Think of it not as a restricted shelf in a very controlled library that no one really visits, but more like what you find in a petri dish as large as the cosmos.  It's bound to spread in unpredictable ways, to mutate, to develop properties that are meant to be discovered.

To the purifiers out there: do your worst to "make < insert name of province here > great again" if that's what you can't help doing.  Every recipe has ingredients that by themselves and in large doses taste foul and are toxic, that fight against the goodness of the finished product.  That ultimately is what I think you'll accomplish.  In spite of your objectives, whatever you're able to achieve will get thrown into the agar; you'll produce reactions and react with the culture in ways that will catalyze into unimaginably novel and profound expressions.  Very few of those expressions will be to your liking.  I take some comfort in that.