Modern Dance Primer

[detlef]

OK, so here's the deal. Every summer there's a rather prestigious Modern Dance festival that happens in Durham. Because I have a downtown restaurant, it makes perfect sense that I advertise with it and, as a result, get a nice pop during what would otherwise be a somewhat slow time of year.

 

Part of the deal is that I get free tickets to the shows and my wife and I make a few each year.

 

So, I don't know whether or not you make some effort to indulge your wife by going to this sort of thing every now and then. If not, feel free to ignore this. If so, think of this as a bit of a survival guide.

 

The first tier, shows you should actually seek out and earn points with your lady for taking the initiative:

 

Pilobolus- Effing amazing. The human form at it's finest, doing things that you've barely imagined people should be able to do. Sort of like Cirque de Soleil without the props. Funny, irreverent, but most of all, very impressive. This is a great opportunity to come off like some cultured dude by taking your wife to go see modern dance and really get to basically watch the circus.

 

Second tier; Fear not, it's actually pretty cool if you let it be. Not a slam dunk for anyone like the above, but...

 

Doug Varone- Pretty impressive from a "I certainly can't do that" stand point. Lyrical and, perhaps a bit "artsy", but at least it's attractive people bounding about doing cool stuff. Again, this is not for everyone, but it's pretty damned cool if you let it be. I dug it and so did my wife.

 

No freaking way; Tell her, "This dude in the Huddle who's sort of a metrosexual poof said this is lame, so there's no freaking way I'm going. Sell the tickets or find a friend and go without me. And don't tell me I didn't warn you."

Rosas and Shen Wei Dancers- These are two entirely different troops who we saw on separate occasions and both my wife and I want that time back. Absolutely and completely lame. This is dance apparently created by people who've been in dance so long, they're tired of dance. So, instead, they sit around flipping their hair back and forth to caustic music and call it dance because, apparently, everything else has already been done. Someone should stab these people. Somewhere, someone is donating large sums of money to support this and they should really find a starving kid somewhere and feed them instead.