Why I like modern dance

I like modern dance. My friend, Dermot, likes modern dance. Therefore, we go see modern dance. We have no dance background. We can't tell a cambre from a riff. I had to look those up by the way and I still don't understand. We are in many ways a modern dance company's favourite customer : we have no hitherto connections with the genre and yet we pay our money and watch the spectacle.

To my amateur eyes modern dance is where all the rules can be broken. A choreographer has carte blanche to interpret the music or the theme as she sees fit through dance movements. To me when it is done well I am challenged, I am surprised, I am amazed.

I want the movement to make me think. I want to wonder if the music, the set, the costumes, the movement are telling me something. I don't necessarily want a story. I want an interpretation of a sound, of an emotion. I want to live in the moment. I don't want clichés. I don't want literal. I don't want to be patronised. The choreography has to be very very special.

I love it for the sheer admiration I have for the dancers. How can they do it all so effortlessly and with such grace. I like it that the dancers don't seem to be homogenised. They all have athletic bodies but they are all slightly different. It's probably just my perception but they have personalities even when giving themselves over to the dance.

We have been to quite a few productions over the years. Anything goes really. I am open to being challenged in numerous ways but I do have two golden rules which a choreographer would do well to adhere to. The dance would have to be very superlative to win me over if it included the following misdemeanours. The dancers should never speak or sing. They should talk to me through the dance. The choreographer is being lazy if she resorts to speech. I prefer it if there is a no story. I would say it's very difficult for the choreographer to avoid falling into clichés if she is telling a chronological story. There is always a moment when they fall into a literal interpretation of an emotion or action. I don't want to see kisses to show me love. Show and surprise me in other ways.

Gosh I know nothing about dance and yet modern dance moves me to have big opinions - I love that.

Snowdrifts

I can see now why it's called a snowdrop......or perhaps the last of a snowdrift?

The rubber wars

A war has broken out where I live. Each woman for herself. Each out to prove she can be the biggest, most bouncy, the most elasticated. It's the war of the elastic rubber band balls.

As you know I am a compulsive picker-upper of rubber bands. I wind each band found onto my rubber band ball which is getting bigger and bigger but not at the exponential rate that I think it should be. Am I imagining it but are the surrounding streets just a little tidier and bereft of the little elastic twangy things.



Is this a rubber band I see before me?

Ha ha...first of all my friend, J, reveals herself. We are out walking and she stoops down before I have the chance to pick up a band. She takes it for herself. She takes it for her own rubber band ball. Apparently she and her daughter are active rubber band picker-uppers now.

Then I go see my friend, N, last night and she reveals her huge rubber band ball to which she and her friend are adding daily as they do their constitutional.

It's a thing of honour now to clean up the streets and to create the biggest monster of a rubber band ball. Whose will bounce the highest? Whose will get so large the bands will ping off?

Actually it's great that it's caught on, admittedly just between the three of us but we are doing our bit. I urge you to start your own rubber band balls but be careful it can get obsessive.

I think I'll call us the Robyn Hoods - after all we are a merry 'rubber' band of women! Oh I hear you groan - other suggestions welcome.

Mud mud inglorious mud

Mud mud glorious mud
There's nothing quite like it for .....being a real pain when you are out walking!

Here is my friend, J, on one of our walks. I asked her to stay still as I got my camera out to show the evidence of our muddy walks. Of course she slowly kept sinking and I kept fumbling with my camera phone and eventually after taking the shot, I just had to leave her there as she was stuck.....she's probably disappeared by now!

A right pickle

I got into a right pickle yesterday. What another fab phrase. I got all confused about some insurance I was taking out and the more confused I got the more mistakes I made and the deeper I dug my hole. But it wasn't a disastrous mess.

My son can't resist a pickled onion

It was a bit like my painting experiences where I get into a right pickle. It's a phrase that tells someone you have got yourself into a knot of mistakes but it's not the end of the world. You might be a bit hot under the collar but you could easily laugh yourself out of the pickle again.

I went for a walk with a friend the other day and we got into a right pickle in some mud. It has rained so much that the footpaths are just quagmires, get into the middle of the path and linger a moment and you start to sink. We felt a bit pickled.

Libraries no more

Remember back in March last year I lamented the demise of our local library? Well it's official now. Our library will disappear along with most of the other libraries in the borough. Of course, our local MP and local Councillors will say the libraries aren't going but just moving into a room in other pre-existing Council premises. But it's hard not to see 'moving to a room' as the beginning of the end.

It's hard to see how staff can maintain the level of service in a significantly smaller space with less money and presumably fewer of them. It's almost a self-perpetuating decline now. It's hard to see why numbers using the library will not just fall off because the service just won't be the excellent one it is now and then before we know it the Council won't be prepared to justify the time, effort and money to keep libraries going. Alas I don't think libraries have yet reached their nadir.

Call me cynical but it's funny isn't it that the report that sets out the future of libraries in my local borough was released just before Christmas. Funny isn't it that the local press and public haven't reacted much because they had other things to think about in the Christmas rush.

If you remember my local MP didn't seem that bothered about the threat to my library. I won't be writing another letter to my MP or Councillors because I don't trust them any more. Was it only about two years ago we were asked to vote on a number of options for the library service. We voted. And now the goalposts have changed once again. Libraries are the soft and easy target to save money. I just wish politicians would treat me as fairly intelligent and admit that the service will be poorer.

Over the last year or two my friends and I have continually lamented the end of libraries. We have even felt a rumble in the ground. Could it be that those 19th century philanthropists who gave money for the creation of places where people could learn are turning in their graves? Could it be that earlier generations of local councillors are heaving a sigh of relief that the destruction of libraries wasn't undertaken on their watch? Or is that all imagined?

Anyway let's jump forward 30 years - someone conjures up a new concept. A  revolutionary idea. A place where you can go to ask people about how to research local history and get information, borrow books, obtain support with your education, encourage children to read - all under one roof and not necessarily all on computer. What shall we call it?

Never watch children or animals

Went to see 'War Horse', the stage show, at the weekend and it was amazing. The puppetry is breath-taking. But I broke my golden rule: never watch films or plays with  children or animals in as it will only lead to profuse crying. It has a relatively happy ending and still I cried. I had mascara embarrassment in a public place.

Some of my friends may laugh at my reaction as I am not known for my overt fondness for pets or animals. Part of that may stem from the fact I am a farmer's daughter so I see animals in a more practical sense of either delivering milk or producing beef or laying eggs.  I also know the huge commitment that is involved in looking after any animal properly and kindly. But put them in a drama and I am a goner.

However, with a bit of self-psychoanalysis,  I actually think the tears all stem from watching the film, 'The Yearling', as a little child. Have you ever seen it? It stars Gregory Peck, playing a farmer in the old American pioneering days. I haven't seen it in decades but I remember it's about a young child having a young deer as a pet and basically having to shoot it because it eats the family's crops and damages fences. Cheerful, hey! Bambi has nothing on it.

I can remember crying and crying, watching it. Hence that's why I weep when I watch films about children and animals that involve even a teeny-itsy bit of sadness or cruelty plus I'm like my Dad and am a bit of a sentimental thing at heart. I suspect deep down I equate having a pet with ultimate sadness....ooh I'm into the self-analysis big time.

I certainly wouldn't survive the film of 'War Horse' especially as it's directed by Spielberg - I'd be a wreck. But don't let me put you off the stage production - it is awesome.