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On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to interview 26-year old Urmika Devi, a fellow Temple Law classmate about her upcoming dance piece In Dreams, which incorporates elements of Indian classical with contemporary ballet. The full interview will be posted somewhere on the net later, but I walked away from it in awe of Urmika’s dedication to her art. And I straightaway bought two tickets to the show. Here’s why I think this particular show is going to be amazing:
a) It’s the first of it’s kind to be performed in Philadelphia. A contemporary Indian dance composed by a Philadelphian? Heck yeah.
b) Urmika’s dance troupe is comprised of four (including her) ballet dancers who she trained for well over a year in classical Indian dance.
c) And finally, when’s the last time you saw a soon-to-be corporate lawyer choreograph? Here’s your chance.
“For two days, on one stage, MOVING BEYOND FORM brings together three distinctly different choreographers and ensembles — ANNELIZE MACHADO, THE POST NATYAM COLLECTIVE, and Philadelphia’s very own URMIKA DEVI DANCE COLLECTIVE — exploring the boundaries of contemporary culture through works inspired by modern dance, ballet, yoga, martial arts, and the classical Indian dance forms of Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, and Kathak.”
IN DREAMS is a ” touching three-act story of family and migration as a mother and daughter weave between dream and reality, shifting between elaborate costumes and a set evoking the Indian home left behind for New York City.”
Moving Beyond Form
Explorations in Rhythm & Storytelling in Classical & Contemporary Indian Dance
Friday, February 26, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, February 27, 4:30 p.m.
(Doors open 30 minutes in advance) $20 general admission; student + group discounts available
Show starts at 9PM and runs till 1AM. Ali should be playing at 10PM. Tickets are $5. Here’s the electronic version of a romantic song called “I oh you“exclusively for PG readers. It’s my favorite of his works. (There’s also an acoustic version that hopefully I can convince him to share with us later.) Enjoy.
“You’re young. You’re vibrant. You have great-looking skin. Your hair is there, your teeth are there,” Allman says. “The software … morphs it into causing the physiological effects that meth causes — the open scabs, the droopy skin, the hair loss.”
“It strikes at the vanity of teenagers,” he tells NPR’s Guy Raz. Keep reading →
I continue to live vicariously through Craig LaBan, Inquirer restaurant critic. I was reminded of that today when a friend told me I “simply must” read LaBan’s review of Chew Man Chu, which replaced Du Jour at Symphony House on Broad and Pine Streets. It’s always a treat to read one of LaBan’s negative reviews. The pen is mightier than the sword, indeed. After I finished reading this particular review, I was pierced with the overwhelming desire to find a pair of scissors and frame the thing. LaBan doesn’t just skewer. He skewers with style. Read the whole review, word for word. Just for my own learning purposes, I wanted to highlight my favorite lines.
I woke up this morning with a brass band playing in my head. That happens sometimes. For some reason, my subconscious thinks that it makes sense to ring in the new year with some bhangra/jazz fusion. What say you? The song is “Balle Balle” and the band is Red Baraat, a dhol & brass group based in NYC. Luckily for fans of their work, Red Baraat releases their debut CD, Chaal Baby, January 30. I’ve been hearing great things about them since fall and I’m happy to say their CD does not disappoint. Check out the review by The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David R. Stampone:
Ethnomusicological sourcing of rhythm-based world-music fusions has its own edifying appeal – but if the jams are no fun, who cares? Can’t fake the funk. That’s not a problem with Red Baraat, an irresistible “dhol ‘n’ brass” nine-piece from New York City directed by acclaimed drummer Sunny Jain. It’s got the infectious allure of a rolling New Orleans brass band (bottom-ended by some deep sousaphone) crossed with the giddy beats of bhangra, the North Indian feel-good style that has taken root all over the world, particularly in subcontinental immigrant communities (see the dancing wedding-goers in Bend It Like Beckham).
Raised in Rochester by Punjabi parents, Jain has drummed since age five, including jazz gigs, with international Sufi-rock band Junoon, on Broadway in the Bombay Dreams production, and in numerous ensembles of his own. Red Baraat originally formed to play at Jain’s own nuptials a few years ago. The debut album’s lead track is indeed “Punjabi Wedding Song (Balle Balle),” and baraat is a Hindi term for marriage procession. In the last year, RB has captivated crowds beyond the wedding circuit with Jain leading the funked-up action on the two-sided Punjabi dhol drum. He invented “dhol ‘n’ brass” – and this record proves that Red Baraat rules it.
Law school can be awful. The workload. The pressure. The stress. It’s not always an easy path. However, the study of law does have some redeeming qualities. For me, the best part is the people I have gotten the chance to interact with through this journey. One of those is Huma Rashid, a wise-cracking, whip-smart law student living and studying in Chicago. Her blog, The Reasonably Prudent Law Student, never fails to amuse. (I highly recommending reading through her archives.) After I mentioned her blog back in September, we started talking through the Interwebz and I became obsessed. Yes, that’s right. I became a fangirl. Every night after class, I would comb through her Twitter and laugh out loud at her astute observations. So I begged her to share some of her wisdom with us poor first-year students. I begged and I pleaded and after she finished her final exam, Huma answered all of my nagging questions. Enjoy.
In Part I, Huma Rashid, a a second-year law student at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, IL tells us why she went to law school and what she wants to do with it. In Part II, Huma shares her tips for 1Ls and tell us how she does it all.
How do you balance blogging/studying? I blog sometimes on the train, if the LawSchoolBFF isn’t taking the train home with me. I usually blog as a study break. It doesn’t take me very long to put together a post; an average BCS post, for example, takes 20 minutes to put together with all the writing, scouting out clothes, image editing, and linking. A more serious post about actual legal topics takes about 10-15 minutes to put together. Basically, I carve out little pockets of time during the day to blog because I’d go crazy if I didn’t. This is just a way to get my inner crazy out so I don’t run around setting things on fire.
Did you blog as a 1L? Yes. I started in the middle of my 1L year, I think.
Are you ever afraid future employers are going to Google your name and read through your posts? Yes and no. I’m not particularly afraid of employers Googling me and finding things like my Facebook or Twitpic because I don’t have a single picture up of anything even remotely questionable. As for my blog, I swear a lot, but I limit that (generally) to posts that are less serious and far more conversational in tone. If anything, I’d hope that my blog posts would constitute a tally mark in the Charming category and not the Call the Cops NOW category. Keep reading →
Here’s what people who grew up in a house with bacon don’t understand: bacon=independence. At least for me. When you’re a kid, or at least someone who lives in their parents’ house, you have a relative amount of freedom. You can order bacon cheeseburgers at restaurants. You can eat bacon at your friends’ houses. You can try (and occasionally fail) to order it from your local food-cart man. But the one thing you can’t do if your parents are like mine is bring bacon into the house. Although it was not for lack of trying. My brothers have frequently attempted to sneak a package of bacon into the house, but it invariably ended with a sternly-worded speech from my mother on the affects of le pig lard on l’arteries. Or something to that affect.
So when I moved into my apartment, the first thing I did was buy a frying pan and head to the Reading Terminal to pick up half a pound of bacon. (By the way, if you’re hankering for some good-eatin bacon, my friend Albert highly recommends the double-smoked from the Fair Food Farmstand.) My bacon exuberance prompted folks to send me a fair number of bacon-centered foods, all of which I feel led to share with you, dear readers. Think of it as your late Christmas present. Or if you’re one of my baby cousins who keeps trying to eat the puppy’s faux bacon, think of it as Christmas Future. (There’s hope, kids. Please put down the dog food.)
I’ve been heartsick ever since the news came out about the death of Charlenni Ferreira. I can’t stop thinking about her life and what her final moments must have been like. There are no pat solutions for the bureaucratic mishaps that failed to change this young girl’s situation, to save her life. But for all those parents out there, if your kid comes home and tells you a story about abuse, I hope you’ll listen. And act.
Let me tell you a story. Ten or so years ago, when my little sister was about seven or eight, she used to play double-dutch with two girls a couple doors from us. The girls, who had just emigrated with their family from Haiti, were relatives. Or so we thought. One summer day, when they knocked on our door to ask for my sister, I saw a burn mark on the leg of one of the girls. It spanned her little leg and was coated with a mixture of blood and pus. Horrified, I asked her what happened. “I was cooking and I dropped a pot on my leg,” she told me. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Nobody had taken her to the hospital.
The girls left with their sidewalk chalk and I stood from the porch and watched them play. In the next few weeks, some more information came out. Turns out her mother, who still lived in Haiti, had sent her to live with this particular family in America. She did their cooking, their cleaning – any work they wanted, which explained why she was so often interrupted in play and so rarely allowed out. Years later, I read this article in Time Magazine on restevak, a Haitian tradition of child slavery and immediately thought of her. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I had somehow managed to report the case to to someone who cared. When I told my parents about the case, they, like so many, shook their heads, tsk-tsked and told me it wasn’t my business. And besides my parents, who else was there for a teenager to tell? Keep reading →
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