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Posts published in September 2017

Blood and the Bolero

“I don’t know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel’s Bolero. Too bad – this is how I hear war.”
                      — Dmitri Shostakovich

Ida Rubenstein strode onto the Paris Opera stage on November 22, 1928, and stepped onto a table.  The set resembled a rustic Spanish tavern and several couples danced below a brass lamp hanging from the ceiling.  They encouraged a female dancer to join them.  A snare drum softly tapped out a modest rat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat and Ida Rubenstein began to dance.  “Ida portrayed a voluptuous dancer whose suggestive dance atop a table in a rustic Spanish tavern incites the men to dance with her until they lose further control of their ‘senses,’ and end up in a violent brawl,” wrote J. M. Lacey for Season Ticket in 2010.  The dance “caused a sensation,” he said.  “When the piece ended, Ida’s provocative dance and Ravel’s dynamic music caused a near-riot between the audience and the performers.”  “Ida narrowly escaped injury,” he added.

 


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Bonfires of the Vanity

First, they flipped their lids, then they set them ablaze.  Trump supporters who feel they were burned by their hero’s tête-à-tête with Democrats are setting fire to their Make America Great Again hats by the rackful.  A private dinner with Chuck and Nancy?  Nice words about the Dreamers?  Neither was part of the bargain and loyal Trumpistas are letting the President know how angry they are with a storm of tweets and videos that show MAGA hats in various stages of immolation.  They can’t abide the fact the con man they voted for conned them.

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