Hello from Tokyo, where I landed this morning to give a course on dance accompaniment. Of the many things that I’m already liking about the city, it’s these colourful machines on nearly every street corner that sell an appetizing variety of cold drinks.
I haven’t been on a long haul flight since seat-back inflight entertainment was invented, so it was all very novel. I was delighted to find that The Ballets Russes film was available on it, one which I’ve wanted to see since it came out. It’s an extraordinary, special and magical world that the film evokes (and I was so proud to have worked with Freddie Franklin and Markova, after I’d seen it) so seeing it 36,000 feet up in the air in the dark was the perfect setting. Which indeed it was also for Alien Autopsy which I watched next as we passed over Vladivostok. (So that’s where it is). Having just seen such a heartwarming and vivid recollection of the wonder years of dance by people who were actually there and still relish the fun that it all was, it struck me that, by contrast, ‘alien autopsy’ was a great way to describe some of the life-defying analyses of dance works that pass for ‘dance scholarship’ these days.
