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Poetry

Elephant Song

On evenings filled with rain the elephants
believe my open door leads to a green stretch
of forest and trundle through.
Each concocts a song or howl of her own—
a moan of bassoon, a pitch of piccolos
and even agonies of strings to tell of elephant
tragedies coated in silt.

Dance

Joining disciplines with a Hyphen: Catherine Cabeen Company at Velocity

One of the difficulties of assembling an accurate history of jazz is dealing with the subject of improvisation. Lacking a real system of notation, improvisation passes from teacher to student through direct practice alone and is difficult to reproduce. Dance also shares this problem. While there are various systems of notation for dance, these often narrow the range of expressive options rather than opening them up. Yet with a bit of humility and a sense of playfulness, one can approach the subject of notation as a playground for inspiration.

Cinema Media

Lenin in October has Seattle Jewish Film Festival audiences rolling in the aisles

What could be more fraught with hilarious peril than a scenario in which a man, with lofty dreams of owning his own restaurant, comes into a large inheritance with a stipulation that goes against, if not his own beliefs and ideals, then certainly those of the community around him. Alright, this may not sound so funny, but add some Bolshevik revolution into the equation, and trust me, it’s a knee slapper.

Cinema Media

Nicky’s Family: The Untold Story of “the British Schindler”

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been dreading the inevitability of a Holocaust film coming up on my docket for this year’s Seattle Jewish Film Festival. Having read the synopsis for Nicky’s Family, I was looking forward to the screening in theory but I could not ignore the nagging fear that it was going to be the same old story, different screenwriter. Prior to this year’s SJFF, I hadn’t heard of Sir Nicholas Winton or his harrowing tale of saving hundreds of Czechoslovakians during the days ramping up to World War II. I was unprepared for the impact the film documenting his life would have on me.