• When Patricia McBride was a young dancer in the New York City Ballet, taking a pointe class with Felia Doubrovska, she saw ballerina Violette Verdy blowing kisses in her direction. She looked behind herself to see to whom these marks of approval were intended, but no one was behind her, so she realized that Ms. Verde was showing her approval of the way that she — young Patricia — was dancing. Ms. McBride says, “This was a first and lasting impression of Violette: a picture of spontaneity, enthusiasm, and charm.”
• Anna Pavlova was interested in culture, and she wanted members of her dance company — many of them teenaged girls — to also be interested in culture. While the company was touring by train, Ms. Pavlova used to walk up and down the corridors to see what her dancers were reading. However, the dancers knew that she would be checking up on them, and knowing that she approved of the Saturday Evening Post, they would use this large magazine to hide what they were really reading: romance novels.
• Some people can’t see what is in front of them. A young dancer took a class with master choreographer George Balanchine, but she never listened to him. One day, she started to leave class in a great hurry at the end, and Mr. Balanchine asked her why she was in such a hurry to leave. The young dancer explained that she was going to take another class with a Balanchine expert. This shocked and amused Mr. Balanchine. He told the dancer, “Here I am. It’s me. I’m Balanchine. Why go anywhere else?”
• Even an elderly ballerina can remain in control of parts of her art. In 1959, while she was in her 70s, Tamara Karsavina demonstrated some steps of batterie at the barre to Antoinette Sibley, saying, “To get the full benefit from battements frappés, we must train our muscles to give a quick reaction. That means that the dégagé must be sharp and in the nature of a ‘hit out.’” The marveling Ms. Sibley embraced Ms. Karsavina and said, “Oh, Madame, I can never do it like that!”
• Ballet teachers often have a sense of authority. While teaching the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Soulamif Messerer, who had defected from Russia, stressed the importance of the dancers believing they are the characters they are portraying on stage. She once scolded a class, “You don’t believe yourself — you must believe yourself. I danced for 25 years as prima ballerina at the Bolshoi. I know everything.”
• During the 1940s, Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, visited the studio of modern dance choreographer Martha Graham. Eventually, she asked, “What is jumping?” Ms. Graham asked dancer Merce Cunningham to come over, then she placed Ms. Keller’s hands on his waist, and Mr. Cunningham jumped in first position. Ms. Keller responded, “How like thought! How like the mind it is!”
• Choreographer Jerome Robbins could be very rude to people, and when he worked for the New York City Ballet, other people sometimes complained to George Balanchine. For example, John Clifford once told Mr. Balanchine, “Mr. B, I don’t know what to do about Jerry.” Mr. Balanchine replied, “You know, dear, he will teach you how not to treat people.”
• Some dance students are very loyal to their teachers. José Limón once overheard a couple of students at the Bennington College of Dance talking together after witnessing a performance of a dance choreographed by Doris Humphrey. One woman said to the other, “I don’t know how she can compose so well. She never took lessons from my teacher.”
• After discovering the world of dancing in his reading, Kenneth MacMillan decided that he wanted to study dance at the Royal Ballet School. Therefore, he forged a letter from his father and sent it to Ninette de Valois. The forgery succeeded, and he began to study dance. In 1946, he became a founder-member of Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.
Education
• A man — who didn’t dance — visited the dance class of Margaret Craske. At the end of her class, he said goodbye and jokingly executed a port de bras. Quickly, Ms. Craske reached out and corrected the position of the visitor’s hand. As you would expect, in her dance classes, she tells her students over and over, “Get it right!”
• Among the many soon-to-be-famous people who studied with modern dance pioneer Martha Graham — and among the earliest — was then-unknown-but-soon-to-be-a-movie-star Bette Davis. Ms. Graham helped Ms. Davis get her first job in acting by teaching her how to fall down several stairs without killing herself.
• William de Mille, the father of Agnes, did not want her to study dance. However, Agnes’ younger sister, Margaret, developed fallen arches, and her orthopedist recommended that she study dance. William did not want to treat one daughter differently from the other, so he let Agnes also take dance lessons.
• Ballet teacher Nicolas Legat insisted that dancers learn to move correctly. When established dancer Anna Roje came to him for lessons, he would not allow her to dance, but instead insisted that she do only barre work for six months. After her faults had been corrected, she began to dance in his class.
• The great black dancer Bill Robinson, aka Mr. Bojangles, taught dance steps to many people. His usual method was to show them a few dance steps they could do, then show them a few dance steps it was impossible for them to do. He liked for his students to know who was the master.
• Ruth St. Denis once taught Martha Graham an important lesson when Ms. Graham was just starting to dance. Ms. St. Denis told Ms. Graham, “Show me your dance.” Ms. Graham replied, “I don’t have one,” and Ms. St. Denis advised, “Well, dear, go out and get one.”
Fans
• Mary Lou Raines was a celebrity as a teenager because she was a dancer on The Buddy Deane Show, a very popular teenage dance party show in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1957 to 1964. When she first started going with her future husband, he did not know about her celebrity, so he was surprised when everywhere they went, people would say, “There’s Mary Lou! There’s Mary Lou!” He says, “I wondered if she had just been released from the penitentiary.”
• Whenever ballerina Margot Fonteyn danced in Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, many of her fans used to skip Act II because “Margot only gets married in it.” Instead, they watched Acts I and III because she had much more of a chance to dance and act.
Food
• While in Japan, ballerina Nora Kaye faced a problem. She didn’t like Japanese food, and she had to attend a party hosted by a Japanese man who was prominent in the dance world. Fortunately, dance impresario Paul Szilard came up with a solution. They pretended that Ms. Kaye was on a strict diet, and whenever she did not want to eat something, she would turn to Mr. Szilard and ask for permission to eat it, but he would reply, “Absolutely not.” This worked well for a while, but then Ms. Kaye put on too much of an act, saying that something looked delicious and she wanted to eat it. Mr. Szilard rebelled when she said, “Oh, isn’t he awful. He won’t let me eat a thing, and I’m starving.” Mr. Szilard whispered to her, “Nora, one more crack like that, and I am going to give you permission to eat the fungi.” Ms. Kaye then put her hand on his knee and told the host, “He really does take good care of me.”
Released in 1980, this song by Kool & the Gang was their first and only single to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. Moving at a tempo of 123 beats per minute, what is the title of this song?
The Matterhorn (Italian: Cervino; French: Cervin) is a mountain of the Alps, straddling the main watershed and border between Switzerland and Italy. It is a large, near-symmetric pyramidal peak in the extended Monte Rosa area of the Pennine Alps, whose summit is 4,478 metres (14,692 ft) high, making it one of the highest summits in the Alps and Europe. The four steep faces, rising above the surrounding glaciers, face the four compass points and are split by the Hörnli, Furggen, Leone/Lion, and Zmutt ridges. The mountain overlooks the Swiss town of Zermatt, in the canton of Valais, to the north-east and the Italian town of Breuil-Cervinia in the Aosta Valley to the south. Just east of the Matterhorn is Theodul Pass, the main passage between the two valleys on its north and south sides, and a trade route since the Roman Era.
The Matterhorn was studied by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure in the late eighteenth century, who was followed by other renowned naturalists and artists, such as John Ruskin, in the 19th century. It remained unclimbed after most of the other great Alpine peaks had been attained and became the subject of an international competition for the summit. The first ascent of the Matterhorn was in 1865 from Zermatt by a party led by Edward Whymper; it ended when four of its seven members fell to their deaths on the descent. This disaster, later portrayed in several films, marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. The north face was not climbed until 1931 and is among the three biggest north faces of the Alps, known as "The Trilogy". The west face, which is the highest of the Matterhorn's four faces, was completely climbed only in 1962. It is estimated that over 500 alpinists have died on the Matterhorn, making it one of the deadliest peaks in the world.
Source
Billy in Cypress was first, and correct, with:
The Matterhorn
Mark. said:
Matterhorn.
Randall wrote:
the Matterhorn
Alan J answered:
The Matterhorn.
Mac Mac replied:
Matterhorn
zorch responded:
The Matterhorn.
Jacqueline said:
The Matterhorn.
Dave wrote:
The Matterhorn. Although nowhere near as tall as Mt. Everest, the Matterhorn is a notoriously difficult and dangerous climb. An estimated 500 climbers have died attempting the summit. As a kid I watched a Disney movie on TV about climbing the Matterhorn. Third Man on the Mountain (1959) starring James MacArthur (a Disney favorite at the time) and Janet Munro (starred in 5 Disney films). I don’t remember if it was any good or not. Young James MacArthur was a bit leaner than in his Hawaii Five O days.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, wrote:
surgery wednesday.....hopefully back friday.........matterhorn
Deborah, the Master Gardener said:
I’m guessing it’s the Matterhorn. Sure would like to see it live one day. It looks impressive.
Windy as all ge-out Monday and today. Really tired of it already.
Rosemary in Columbus responded:
Matterhorn
Joe S (We resisted, we voted, we won. Get over it) answered:
Matterhorn. As a history major I didn't know that. I googled it. Ah well, it's always something.
(I'm excited about the 20th, hope all goes well)
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame replied:
The answer is The Matterhorn. After numerous times riding the man-made one at Disneyland (one of the benefits of growing up in Southern California), I actually got to see the real thing in 1972 from the city of Zermatt, Switzerland.
Glad your website is back up!
(Hey - think that's about the time I saw my first Alp, too. Wasn't that where the 'Kathy & The Shower Curtain Caper' took place? ~ m.)
Cal in Vermont wrote:
The Matterhorn.
mj took the day off.
Kevin K. (not quite) in Washington DC took the day off.
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Stephen F took the day off.
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DJ Useo took the day off.
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Roy, still Antifa, still in Tyler, TX took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Bob from Mechanicsburg, Pa took the day off.
-pgw took the day off.
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Micki took the day off.
Angelo D took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Roy the (now retired) hoghead (aka 'hoghed') ( Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. ~Frank Zappa ) took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
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Paul of Seattle took the day off.
Brian S. took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
"Scam Goddess" covers Josh Hall, the 21-year-old food-delivery
driver who posed as Trump family members on Twitter to scam people out
of thousands of dollars, and even fooled Donald Trump himself
What's poppin, con-gregation? This week Tahir Moore is on the pod to
break down the patriot who puts the fake in fake news. Stay schemin!
Here's how Predator ought to realize that he has jumped the shark and has a stink on him that no one wants to be close to:
1--your people put out invites begging attendees to bring FIVE guests to fluff up your pathetic "crowd"
2--Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy will join Pence in skipping Trump’s farewell.
Medieval daggers!
Ha ha hah! Of course it's Wonkette's Evan:
And now CNN is confirming what we already assumed about our classless dickhead first lady, Melon, namely that she can't even be bothered to greet Dr. Jill Biden and do the traditional thing where the outgoing first lady shows the incoming first lady around the residence. We guess in Melania's case, the tour probably would have involved some sort of obstacle course where medieval daggers fall out of the ceiling if you step on a crack, considering what her Christmas decorations look like, but whatever.
So fuck it. The Trumps don't need to be there for any of that shit. The Bidens can restart all the traditions when they hand the presidency to Kamala Harris, and Kamala Harris can continue them when she hands it to Stacey Abrams.
CBS opens the night with the FRESH'Celebrating America', followed by a RERUN'SWAT'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Jon Lovett, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, Peter CottonTale, Chance the Rapper, Cynthia Erivo, the Chicago Children's Choir, Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Kofi Lost.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Dakota Johnson and AJR.
NBC begins the night with the FRESH'Celebrating America', followed by a RERUN'Chicago PD'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Martin Scorsese, Fran Lebowitz, Hunter Schafer, and Playboi Carti.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Chris Hayes and Sarah Thawer.
Scheduled on a FRESHLilly Singh is Karamo Brown.
ABC starts the night with the FRESH'The Inauguration Of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. - An ABD News Special', followed by a FRESH'The Conners', then a FRESH'Call Your Mother'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are John Oliver, Charles P. Pierce, and Ashley McBryde.
The CW offers a FRESH'Riverdale', followed by a FRESH'Nancy Drew'.
Faux has a FRESH'The Masked Dancer' (runs 2 minutes long), follwoed by a FRESH'Name That Tune'.
MY recycles an old 'Dateline', followed by another old 'Dateline'.
A&E has 3 hours of old 'Storage Wars', followed by a FRESH'Nature Gone Wild', then another FRESH'Nature Gone Wild'.
AMC offers the movie 'Forrest Gump', followed by the movie 'Twister', then the movie 'The Intern'.
BBC -
[6:00AM - 12:00PM] SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET
[1:00PM - 5:00PM] PLANET EARTH: SOUTH PACIFIC
[6:00PM - 3:00AM] PLANET EARTH: LIFE
[4:00AM] PLANET EARTH: SOUTH PACIFIC
[5:00AM] PLANET EARTH: SOUTH PACIFIC (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of OC', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of OC', then another FRESH'Real Housewives Of OC', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of SLC', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
IFC -
[6:00am] Bad Words
[8:00am] This Is 40
[11:00am - 5:30pm] Parks And Recreation
[6:00pm - 12:30am] Two And A Half Men
[1:00am] This Is 40
[4:00am] Bad Words (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:00am - 10:30am] the andy griffith show
[11:00am - 2:30pm] hogan's heroes
[3:00pm - 2:00am] criminal minds
[3:00am - 5:00am] perry mason (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Law Abiding Citizen', followed by the movie 'Jumanji'.
First lady Melania Trump released a seven-minute farewell video Monday, saying that "as Donald and I conclude our time in the White House," she is thankful fo the military service members, law enforcement officers, and caregivers who have inspired her over the "unforgettable" past four years. She also asked "every American to be an ambassador of Be Best," her anti-cyber-bullying initiative, and "to focus on what unites us. To rise above what divides us. To always choose love over hatred, peace over violence, and others before yourself."
Stephen Colbert did not think the message was particularly well-suited to the messenger, he suggested on Monday's Late Show. "One thing the first lady did not mention in her address today is what she'll be doing after Inauguration Day, because while her husband has been fighting to stay in the White House, there are reports that privately, Melania 'just wants to go home' and 'cannot wait' to get back to New York. So, what are the first lady's future plans? Over the years she's appeared on this show numerous times, and tonight she wanted to come back and make another official announcement."
The announcement ended up being more of a song, but if you are going to have a Broadway star like Laura Benanti be your Melania stand-in, it makes sense for her to play to her strengths, especially in her farewell message.
The Trump Baby Blimp will live on long after its namesake has left the White House.
The Museum of London said Monday that it had added the giant balloon, which depicts Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) as a screaming orange baby, to its collection as an illustration of the protests that greeted the U.S. president when he visited the city in 2018.
“By collecting the baby blimp, we can mark the wave of feeling that washed over the city that day and capture a particular moment of resistance,” Sharon Ament, the museum’s director, said in a statement.
The blimp will become part of the museum’s protest collection, which includes artifacts from the women’s suffrage movement, peace activists who opposed the war in Iraq during the early 2000s, and more recent protests against public spending cuts.
The Trump Baby Blimp was designed by a group of friends who met in a London pub to discuss how they could speak out against Trump’s policies. What they came up with was a giant balloon that caricatured Trump as a screaming, diapered baby clutching a smart phone and topped by a quiff of yellow hair.
Officially, it is classified as “an obstructed printing error with retained obstruction”. In reality, it appears to be a simple slip-up.
A $20 banknote which had a sticker from a bunch of bananas attached to it before it was overprinted with security numbering is now up for auction at a Texas dealer, the rare error elevating its worth to $57,500, almost 3,000 times its face value.
The so-called Del Monte banknote is unusual, and so valuable, because the sticker is still affixed and clearly shows a serial number and US Department of the Treasury seal printed over it, according to Heritage Auctions of Dallas.
“When this note was printed at the Fort Worth western currency facility, it went through the first and second printings normally before the Del Monte sticker found its way on to the surface,” the seller continued, describing the misprint as “one of the greatest paper money errors in history”.
Bidding on the banknote, from the US treasury’s 1996 design series and released into circulation in 2004, will end on 22 January. According to the Heritage Auctions website on Sunday afternoon, the highest bid was $57,500, which would actually cost the bidder more than $69,000, including a buyer’s premium.
Van Morrison is planning to launch a legal challenge against regulations that prohibit live music in indoor venues in Northern Ireland due to Covid-19 safety concerns.
Sarah Symington, an attorney at the firm John J. Rice and Co. Solicitors, which is representing Morrison, confirmed that the singer initiated legal action on January 12th. He filed a “pre-action protocol letter” with the Department of Health “challenging the blanket ban on live music [and] giving them 21 days to respond.”
A pre-action protocol letter isn’t an official filing document, but rather provides both parties an opportunity to plot a course of action and potentially settle. Symington said that should the Department of Health fail to respond within 21 days, “we would issue proceedings immediately to the High Court.”
Morrison has been banging the drum against Covid-19 lockdown measures for several months now. Last September, he released a trio of anti-lockdown songs, then added a fourth in December with Eric Clapton, “Stand and Deliver.”
Upon the release of those first three songs, Northern Ireland’s Health Minister, Robin Swann, penned an op-ed for Rolling Stone criticizing Morrison, saying the tracks were not only disappointing, but dangerous. “It’s actually a smear on all those involved in the public health response to a virus that has taken lives on a massive scale. His words will give great comfort to the conspiracy theorists — the tin foil hat brigade who crusade against masks and vaccines and think this is all a huge global plot to remove freedoms… There are also so many things in the world to sing protest songs about, like poverty, starvation, injustice, racism, violence, austerity — there’s a long list. Instead, he’s chosen to attack attempts to protect the old and vulnerable in our society.”
An auction house trying to raise money for a youth charity by soliciting bids to blow up a former casino once owned by President Donald Trump called off the effort Monday after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from conservative billionaire Carl Icahn.
Icahn told The Associated Press his philanthropic arm will donate $175,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of Atlantic City to replace money that would have been raised by a charity auction of the right to press the button to demolish the former Trump Plaza casino.
He owns the former casino, which has been in the process of demolition for months.
Icahn's decision came shortly after Bodnar's Auction canceled its solicitation of bids, citing a letter from Icahn's company instructing it not to proceed with the auction because it considered the public “spectacle” to be a safety risk, with the possibility of flying debris injuring the person pressing the demolition button, or others gathered nearby.
A valuable 16th century copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Saviour of the World has been recovered by Italian police in a cupboard in a flat in Naples.
The museum from which it was stolen had no idea it was missing.
The copy of Salvator Mundi, which depicts Christ with one hand raised in a blessing and the other holding a crystal orb, is believed to have been painted by a pupil of Leonardo.
The oil painting, which dates to the early 1500s, is believed to be by artist Giacomo Alibrandi, a member of the artistic school of Leonardo.
The first dinosaur butthole ever discovered is shedding light where the sun don't shine. The discovery reveals how dinosaurs used this multipurpose opening — scientifically known as a cloacal vent — for pooping, peeing, breeding and egg laying.
The dinosaur's derrière is so well preserved, researchers could see the remnants of two small bulges by its "back door," which might have housed musky scent glands that the reptile possibly used during courtship — an anatomical quirk also seen in living crocodilians, said scientists who studied the specimen.
Although this dinosaur's caboose shares some characteristics with the backsides of some living creatures, it's also a one-of-a-kind opening, the researchers found. "The anatomy is unique," study lead researcher Jakob Vinther, a paleobiologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, told Live Science. It doesn't quite look like the opening on birds, which are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs. It does look a bit like the back opening on a crocodile, he said, but it's different in some ways. "It's its own cloaca, shaped in its perfect, unique way," Vinther said.
The well-preserved booty belongs to the dinosaur Psittacosaurus, a bristly tailed, Labrador-size, horn-faced dinosaur, meaning it was a relative of Triceratops. Like its famous tri-horned cousin, Psittacosaurus lived during the Cretaceous period, which lasted from about 145 million to 65 million years ago. Previously, Vinther and his colleagues had studied this Psittacosaurus specimen, found in China, to determine its skin color, and at the time, he noted that its nether regions were preserved.
None of the reproductive soft tissues (like a penis) were preserved. So the researchers can't say whether the dinosaur was male or female. Even so, this dinosaur likely had copulatory sex, unlike some birds that bump butts when they do a "cloacal kiss" during reproduction, Vinther said.
The number of western monarch butterflies wintering along the California coast has plummeted precipitously to a record low, putting the orange-and-black insects closer to extinction, researchers announced Tuesday.
An annual winter count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 2,000 butterflies, a massive decline from the tens of thousands tallied in recent years and the millions that clustered in trees from Northern California's Marin County to San Diego County in the south in the 1980s.
Western monarch butterflies head south from the Pacific Northwest to California each winter, returning to the same places and even the same trees, where they cluster to keep warm. The monarchs generally arrive in California at the beginning of November and spread across the country once warmer weather arrives in March.
The count this year is dismal. At iconic monarch wintering sites in the city of Pacific Grove, volunteers didn’t see a single butterfly this winter. Other well-known locations, such as Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove and Natural Bridges State Park, only hosted a few hundred butterflies, researchers said.
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