I was gone for two weeks and you opened comments? Good thinking. I was happy to see them. Sorry I’ve been away. It wasn’t for cause, more that I had guests enough that I got all my talking in. I didn’t feel a strong need to write. I will write up five pieces of advice; how I love to give advice. But first I want to tell you what I saw last week.

Sherry, I saw the most wonderful dance performance on Thursday. Chris had emailed me, told me not to miss it. I am pretty skeptical about the overlap between Chris’s tastes and mine. When he lived with me over the winter, we spent several evenings listening to music. I’d play stuff and he’d think it was simplistic pop. So I told him to play stuff and he’d play me the most garbled, atonal, difficult pieces. He’d be selecting them with me in mind and it was all I could do to not burst out laughing. Are you kidding? Is this, like, farce about our different tastes? Are you deliberately picking incredibly noisy unpleasant pieces to test me? Are you joking to see if I will fall for it? But he was serious and would have been hurt if I’d said that1. I gently asked if he was doing ironic commentary and he said, no no. He really thought I might like this song. Mmmm, I said. I did like that, um, transition, for six seconds or so. So I worry a lot little about Chris’s recommendations. But he was so right about the dance he sent us to see.

If I could, I would tell you to get on a plane quick-quick to come see it. But the run is sold out, so you’ll have to make do with my inadequate description. It was so very sweet. Scott Wells directed ten(?) male dancers in four pieces; the show was called What Men Want. I am naturally very curious about what men want, and I surely hope it was what I saw this troupe perform. Men apparently want to touch each other, and leap high, catch and throw each other. They toss balls in complicated patterns. I don’t think I’m up to describing the gentler pieces, but the funny dances caught something I’ve seen men do a lot. Men cheer for each other.

In the third piece, while two of the dancers performed, the rest formed a half-circle and cheered for them. “Yah! Nice leap! Oh, way to go, good contact YEAH! High jump, high jump… HIT IT, YEAH!” It was wonderful and touched on something I’ve seen my whole life. Perhaps men don’t do all the cuddling they yearn for inside2, but they do cheer for each other. I can’t be entirely positive, because it possible that my presence changes everything, but I have been the only girl in the room on and off my entire life. I’ve logged hundreds of hours in groups of men; I believe they acclimated to my presence. If so, I have seen their behavior in the wild, observed them in their natural habitat. At least in the sports and the engineering programs I’ve seen, men are nice to each other. There’s shit-giving, rarely actually mean, and a lot of teaching and enthusiasm for accomplishments or trying all out. I see a lot of scaling, so that they cheer for people relative to their usual abilities. There’s a stereotype that men aren’t good at emotional support, but if you know what you are looking at, masculine support permeates pick-up games and gyms. The dance director has obviously seen it too, so maybe it also lives in dance studios.

The last dance piece was a very funny riff on martial arts classes, the warm-up and exercises. They danced through a warm-up, with one guy taking on the Instructor tone of voice. He led them through hip-circles and hip-figure-eights while saying things like “We’re gonna explore the pelvis today, really use it.” Oh man, the canonical warm-up. I’ve done that so very many times. I’ve Explored My Space or Connected to the Ground. I myself have used the officious voice of leading warm-up. I’ve sincerely told people to Use The Breath. For me at least, it was so familiar it only had to be the slightest bit stylized to crack me up; I was laughing hard by the time he said “We’re gonna walk that pelvis around the room” as they all did silly walks with hip figure-eights. I’ll be walking my pelvis around the room for the next week or two.

I’ve only told you the least of it, the funny parts, and I always think that it is very hard to re-tell stories in ways that capture most of what went on. Anyway, hon, that’s what I did one night last week. I was felt very urban, taking BART to a small art-y dance show, wearing boots and a skirt. Better even, it was a wonderful show. Wish we could go to shows together.