Days 9 & 10 at the Pillow: Cepeda and Farrell Arrive

We began our new classes yesterday. Rosa Maria is giving a pretty good class, but the percussion does not compare to Jonathan’s, Ramin’s and Nicolas’ masterful bata drumming from last week. Roberto’s bomba and plena class in the afternoon has been extremely frustrating. He has a warm spirit, but he is a truly awful teacher. For our first class, he taught us one step, and then had us improvise for the rest of the class. Instead of preparing a lesson plan, I think he prepared for class by consuming a six pack. It’s so bad I’m considering ditching the rest of his classes and his portion of this Saturday’s performance, but I’m still on the fence about it. Abandoning the bomba program would be a pretty radical thing to do, but I have to consider it in order to maintain my sanity.

This week’s performing dance companies, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet and Emanuel Gat Dance (from Israel) arrived yesterday. Some of them popped into the Sommers studio to watch our class. Rosa Maria claims Suzanne Farrell came in and watched practically the entire class, but I don’t believe her, because I would have noticed if Ms. Farrell were there. I would have tripped and fallen, because I LOVE Suzanne Farrell. I think Rosa Maria mistook some other older skinny white woman for her. This evening I ushered for the Wednesday night ballet performance at the Ted Shawn Theater. Ms. Farrell put on all Balanchine works. “Tzigane” was wonderful, the rest were OK. She’s got a few exquisite ballerinas in her troupe, but there were definitely a few weak links in some of the pieces.