Tap

Tap is an otherwise ordinary dance movie from the late 1980s, with just enough plot and characterization to string together the dance numbers. But there’s a gesture about 13 minutes in that’s worth the rental; it tells us a lot about our protagonist Max (Geoffrey Hines), and about what it is to do creative work.

Max is just getting back on his feet; he’s just out of prison. He walks into a tap dance studio, it’s a little grungy, but he knows his way around. He walks three flights up to a private studio. He’s got his shoes in a brown paper bag. He dumps the shoes out of the bag onto the floor, slips off his jacket, strokes the wood of the floor briefly, and then he begins to practice.

It’s not about the best equipment, it’s not about the bright lights, it may not even be about having heat in the building: it’s about the work.

Mr. Brightside

there is always
something to be thankful
for you would not
think that a cockroach
had much ground
for optimism
but as the fishing season
opens up i grow
more and more
cheerful at the thought
that nobody ever got
the notion of using
cockroaches for bait

—Don Marquis, the Archy and Mehitabel poems, 19 April 1922

At the park: 12

Our gang of four nest box monitors got started early again this year, but a Hooded Merganser hen was ahead of us, with 6 eggs already on box #7.

The water had a good crust of ice, but it was easily breakable. A good number of teal and pintail on the ponds of the wetland. Red maples in bud. As we stowed excess wood chips in the shed at the visitors center at the end of the morning, a large flock of grackles blew in, to be snagged by the trees above.

Yay, us! 2

Last spring’s production of Never the Sinner, directed by Michael Kharfen, received three awards for outstanding achievement at yesterday evening’s WATCH awards, including Outstanding Play. The candidate pool was 79 productions by 29 member companies, so, yeah, this is kind of a big deal.

Ordinarily, I don’t get worked up about things like this, but as Ted says, awards programs are bunk until you win one. I was definitely tingly when I came over to congratulate Michael and the rest of the team. I am honored to have been a part of this fine show.

7×7: Love Duets

The WB brings us seven sketches on the theme of love, some of them duets, others with more complex groupings. In the leadoff pair, Elizabeth Gaither reminds us that a dancer’s hands are an important expressive part of her instrument in Stephen Mills’s “Desire.” Adam Houghland’s “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” is a flirtatious punk-inspired piece for two couples, set on music of the same name by Soft Cell. The groupings in Nicolo Fonte’s “Aria 1&2” (music by Handel) are more complex: one woman and three men, arranged into a two-man pair with the other man and woman providing an ostinato behind, followed by a reversal of figure and ground. After the break comes the Philip Glass-scored “2 Long 2 Love,” a lush, dangerous piece by Nejla Y. Yatkin danced in soft slippers on a deck strewn with red paper rose petals: a man, a woman loved, and a woman spurned. After this piece, the company appears with dust mops to Zamboni the dancing surface in preparation for “Falling Away with You,” choreographed by company member Jared Nelson. This is a sharp, fast, go-for-broke piece for two pairs, well-executed by Runqiao Du, Aurora Dickie, Corey Landolt, and Giselle Alvarez.

  • 7×7: Love Duets, Washington Ballet, England Studio Theater, Washington

More conservation tradeoffs

Emma Marris reviews the range of schemes for making choices in conservation biology and even uses the charged word “triage” for Nature‘s 8 November 2007 issue (paywall-protected link).

The EDGE program (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) of the Zoological Society of London gives priority to species that are taxonomically distinct, “far out on their own on the tree of life,” if you will. The reasoning is that a distinct taxon, now endangered, one that branched tens of millions of years ago from the tree, represents a unique chapter of evolutionary history that can’t be rewritten once lost. Priority amphibians include Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus) (up to 1.8 meters long!), Sagalla Caecilian (Boulengerula niedeni), a worm-like burrower with an extremely restricted range in Kenya, and Purple Frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis), only described in 2003; top mammals are Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) (perhaps already extinct), Long-beaked Echidna (Zaglossus bruijni), and Riverine Rabbit (Bunolagus monticularis) of South Africa. The system doesn’t appear to have been applied to other orders. A paper by Isaac et al., “Mammals on the EDGE: Conservation Priorities Based on Threat and Phylogeny” documents the EDGE metrics as applied to mammals.

The majority opinion among conservation biologists today is that they still understand too little about ecosystem functions to say for sure which species are the ‘load-bearing’ ones whose presence keeps a complex, multi-tiered ecosystem from collapsing into some worst case dull scenario of rats, roaches and invasive grass. “We are so fundamentally ignorant,” says Norman Myers, a fellow of the University of Oxford, UK, and adjunct professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “We cannot afford, by a long, long way, to say which species are dispensable.”

Thus Myers pioneered the concept of habitat hotspots, and a number of overlapping hotspot maps have proliferated. Birders may be familiar with catalogues of Important Bird Areas, Birdlife International’s Endemic Bird Areas, or Conservation International’s biodiversity hotspots. The problem for conservation biology is that each hotspot schema starts with different assumptions, chief among them the metric that is to be optimized. Do we seek to minimize extinctions of species or taxa, maximize land area preserved, maximize taxonomic diversity, or optimize some other measure? Marris writes that the work of Hugh Possingham of the University of Queensland in this area is getting a lot of attention: Possingham seeks to maximize the number of species conserved (vascular plants and vertebrates, in the paper cited below), trading off against the real-world costs of conservation efforts—land acquisition, invasive predator extirpation on islands, fire management, replanting, what have you. A paper by Kerrie A. Wilson et al., “Conserving Biodiversity Efficiently: What to Do, Where, and When,” explains the methodology and applies it as an example to 17 of the world’s 39 Mediterranean ecoregions.

What I find notable about the paper’s approach are the tools of economic analysis that are brought to bear on the problem. An expenditure in conservation activity is modelled as a financial investment. Different activities (“ecoactions”) show different expenditure streams: compare the one-time cost of land acquisition, for example, to the ongoing cost of fire management. The paper uses standard discounting methods and Net Present Value calculations to make investment choices comparable. The model reflects that the impact on species preservation will show diminishing marginal returns as investment is increased. The investment allocation algorithm is dynamic over time: it accounts for positive effects in the ecosystem as investments are made, and adjusts allocations year by year in response.

Wilson et al. acknowledge that the methodology does not yet account for uncertainty, a keystone of modern financial analysis. Also, it would be fruitful—albeit computationally more complicated—to consider the interaction effects of various conservation activities, rather than assuming that each activity acts independently of others.

A worked example chooses between three ecoactions in the Swan Coastal Plain region of Australia: revegetation to counteract habitat fragmentation, invasive predator control, and management of a soil-borne pseudo-fungus, Phytophthora cinnamomi). Even though Phytophthora management is the most expensive per square kilometer ($514K versus $301K for replanting and $7K for predator control), it is nevertheless the most cost-effective: a marginal $2 million spent controlling the pseudo-fungus, in this computation, will protect 49 species, versus 4 for predator management and effectively zero for revegetation.

Are you watching?

In addition to the shows that I see for fun, especially those with my friends in them, I’m an adjudicator for WATCH, also known by the backronym Washington Area Theatre Community Honors. (As I’ve posted elsewhere, generally I don’t comment on the merits of community theater productions that I see, for a number of reasons.) This means that I do a lot of driving around the extended metropolitan area, judging six or eight shows in the course of a calendar year. I see companies with a wide range of physical assets to work with, everything from the two well-appointed theaters in Fairfax County community centers (the Alden and the CenterStage), the modest but scrappy facility at Silver Spring Stage, high school auditoriums where some of the semi-nomadic groups work, and some spaces that are just modest.

And I see a wide range of material, about 40% of it musicals. And this is a good thing, because sometimes I’ll see a really great script (we don’t judge the script, just what you do with it) that I otherwise wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see. Sometimes I’ll notice something really interesting on a schedule and I will ask my adjudication coordinator, “Do you need an alternate to judge that?” I also see things that I am far too familiar with. By the end of this year there will be at least two plays for which I have adjudicated multiple productions. (One of the favorite war stories passed around WATCH is that of the judge who was assigned three productions of A Streetcar Named Desire in one year. We’ve tweaked the scheduling algorithm since then.)

Here’s what I’ve seen in the past few years, and what I expect to see this year. There’s some really chewy stuff here:

  • The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson
  • All My Sons, by Arthur Miller
  • The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein
  • Hotbed Hotel, by Michael Parker (hotel-room farce)
  • The Memory of Water, by Shelagh Stephenson (family ties)
  • The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson
  • The Boys Next Door, by Tom Griffin (issue-driven comedy)
  • A New Brain, William Finn and James Lapine (urban musical)
  • Intimate Apparel, by Lynn Nottage (family history)
  • Aida, Elton John and Tim Rice
  • The Pajama Game, Adler and Ross
  • Moon over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig
  • The Complete History of America (abridged), Long, Tichenor, and Martin
  • A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
  • Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring
  • The Full Monty, David Yazbek and Terrence McNally (steelworker stripper musical)
  • Stalag 17, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski (WWII drama)
  • Chapter Two, by Neil Simon
  • Floyd Collins, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau (Baby Jessica as folk opera)
  • The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown (reverse-chronology relationship revue)
  • Jesus Christ Superstar, Webber and Rice
  • Catch Me If You Can, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert
  • Rumors, by Neil Simon
  • A Christmas Carol, adapted by John Mortimer
  • Becket, by Jean Anouilh
  • A Grand Night for Singing, Rodgers and Hammerstein
  • Run for Your Wife, by Ray Cooney (cab driver farce)
  • The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler

Oh, yeah, and WATCH is throwing a big party next Sunday night.

Adaptation

… a cult of religious veneration for the wishes of the composer now rules the musical roost. [Richard] Wagner himself played a big part in promoting this by putting out a lot of self-serving propaganda about art being pretty well the sole purpose of life and the wickedness of tampering with the work of an artist, especially a great artist such as himself. To be authentic, to do exactly what the scholars say Scarlatti, Schubert or Monteverdi would want you to do, if necessary going to the length of building a sixteenth-century ophicleide—this today is pretty well the holy grail. Never mind that the piece would sound much better played another way or that modern acoustics are different, that pitch has gone up, musical taste changed, musical marathons don’t fit into our culture—never mind anything at all, just stick a harpsichord into the Albert Hall and not on any account a Steinway. If you can’t hear it at least you know what you’re not hearing is authentic. The real obstacle to producing a sensibly revised version of The Ring is not the chorus of outrage that would go up, but the difficuly of finding a musician of genius to do it.

—Sir Denis Forman, A Night at the Opera: An Irreverent Guide…, p. 555

How much easier we have it in theater! No one would demand seeing Shakespeare only according to 16th-century performance practices, played by men only, en plein air (though it is certainly fun to see a simulacrum of this at the Blackfriars in Staunton), with Elizabethan pronunciation. The moment the first line is read at the first read-through, something of the playwright’s original intention has been betrayed. This betrayal might be an essential quality of theater.

Does this mean that ensemble pieces like The Laramie Project or An Experiment with an Air Pump could be played with no doubling? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: the film version of Laramie worked. Or that Arthur Miller can be reset in outer space? Well…

Erased

Via wood s lot comes the sad news that the French avant garde writer Alain Robbe-Grillet has passed away. Robbe-Grillet, as far as I can remember, was one of the first novelists that I discovered completely by myself. I was browsing in my college bookstore and I saw a copy of his Instantanés (Snapshots), pieces shorter than his nouveaux romans. I picked it up and thought, “well, this looks interesting.”

Sugarloaf circuit

Pleasant weather and I’m off for a hike in Shenandoah National Park. New weather was coming in, so I had clouds and breezy conditions, warmth only when the sun broke through, and even a few sprinkles of rain.

I walked an easy-rated 5-mile loop starting with the Sugarloaf Trail (hike #3, short circuit, in PATC’s Circuit Hikes in Shenandoah National Park). The footing was definitely soft in spots, due to overnight rain. The Sugarloaf Trail descends 700 feet through an impressive tract of mountain laurel (not in bloom at this time of the year, alas).

braided streamThe trail crosses a braided stream (Piney River, which feeds into the Thornton) that seemed determined to follow the trail bed for a stretch. The circuit then ascends gradually on the Keyser Run Fire Road. Crossing Skyline Drive, you pick up the Appalachian Trail for a climb of Little Hogback. After a dip, a series of short, stiff switchbacks climbs 400 feet to the ridgeline of Hogback Mountain.

sun and shadowSome fine prospects along this stretch.

the valleyOff-season so I had the trail completely to myself, with the company of an occasional raven, woodpecker, or flick of juncos (that’s something smaller than a flock). Otherwise, very quiet, with sometimes nothing but the creaking of bare trees in the wind.