Dancing in the Dark, on Concrete

Me in costume after Carnaval de Muertos 2015.

Standing outside Centro de Artes with the Urban-15 Group's performance ensemble after the Dia de los Muertos opening on Oct. 27, I realized how far I was from the tiny studio in southern Indiana where I used to study dance.

The studio in Madison shared space in a strip mall with a flea market, a movie theater and an arcade. It had three dance rooms – a large one for big classes and two smaller spaces for individual study.
I began taking tap, jazz and ballet dance lessons at a young age at downtown locations before transitioning to the new studio on the hilltop in high school. That was when I also began teaching dance to three to 12-year-olds.

Since the director wasn't always in town, she gave me a key so I could open and close the studio after school and at closing time.

Having a key was one of the perks of the job, because I could practice there on weekends when no one else was around. Alone in the main room, I turned off all the lights and did my warm-up stretches, positions at the barre, floor work and routines. Unlike the hardwood surfaces at the former studios, the floor was concrete and hard on the feet, but I didn't care.

I remember practicing in the air-conditioned studio on hot summer nights and hearing people banging on the front door. Kids who'd just gotten out of the movies would cup their hands over the glass and peer inside, trying to see who was dancing in the dark.

In a small, quiet town, a dance studio stood out among the other shops and businesses. I always kept the door locked when I was there alone, though no one ever tried to come inside.

In the winter, the studio provided a respite from the snow and ice. I'll never forget the feeling of wearing wool leg warmers and tights over dry, itchy skin, or the sound of wind blowing sleet against the windows as I stretched my muscles to keep them limber despite the brittle cold.

I worked at the studio for two years before I discovered the secret door in the back room.

The door opened onto a dark hallway behind the theater, and the hall was filled with the smell of popcorn and the ambient sounds of the films playing on the other side of the wall. At the end of the hall, glass double-doors opened onto a huge, empty room that looked like it was once a department store.

Without shelves and clothes racks taking up the floor, the room was as big as a gym. It was the perfect place to spread my wings.

I drove there on the weekends, plugging my little boom box into an outlet on the far wall and warming up to songs by Technotronic. The music sounded metallic against the hard floor and walls, and the room was so big, there was a split-second delay before the beats bounced off the opposite wall.

There were no mirrors or barres, only my reflection staring back at be from the plate glass office windows like a ghost.

Sometimes I stayed until dark, and headlights from the occasional car in the alley behind the mall cast my twenty-foot-tall shadow against the walls.

The place wasn't clean or even safe. Dead bugs and cobwebs lined the corners, and I could tell by the musty smell that animals had been in there. Still, it was my space to practice, and it became a routine and even a ritual over the next several months.

Once I graduated from high school, I was accepted into the dance program at Butler University in Indianapolis, heading to the big city to study ballet. I pursued it during my first year of college before switching to other majors – first English, then psychology and finally journalism.

Being a journalist has been as challenging as being a dancer in a lot of ways, from finding opportunities to receiving funding and community support. It's also unpredictable, with a lot of highs and lows. The old saying used by performers, "Hurry up and wait," applies to journalism, whether it's in waiting an hour for a press conference and a two-minute photo opportunity to meeting strict deadlines.

Still, dancing has followed me everywhere, and I've always had friends who were dancers, from the passionate people at Urban-15 to the street performers who set up along the walls and terraces of downtown San Antonio.

Recently, I ran into a friend who is a dancer while walking downtown. She was waiting for the bus at St. Mary's Street and recognized me. We talked for a while.

"You seem so calm and relaxed," she said. "Tell me your secret."

I don't have one, but if I did, dance would be it. While there have been long periods of time when I've been neither calm nor relaxed, I can't help but wonder if dance hasn't helped me handle stress in other areas of my life. This is one of the main reasons I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can.
The studio in Madison closed its doors about ten years ago, so all I have is memories of the place. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and be a student there again.

When I think about where my journey has led, though, I realize I'm happy right where I am.

Walking Along Broadway: A Visual Journey, Part I

I went out walking today. It was a beautiful day, with flat, peaceful clouds floating across the sky. I wore my flip-flops down to Central Market and north on Broadway to the coffee shop. I saw some interesting things along the way.

First, there was a slab of sidewalk with impressions of leaves in the concrete. It was just before sunset, golden light was flooding beneath the leaves of the trees.

As I walked farther, I discovered another interesting landmark: a palm tree pushing itself tenaciously between the sidewalk and this telephone pole.

How do trees do this? I've actually see other palm trees growing like this here. It almost looks like the tree is invading a concrete planet. I really hope this tree survives. Its root structure is buried the under the rock, so maybe it's impervious to diseases that would attack it if it were more exposed. You know what they say: Life finds a way.

Closer to home, I found a message written in in an older section of sidewalk.

There are many stories and legends about the origin of the American expression, "Kilroy was Here." San Antonio is home to the largest military retiree population in the world, according to this entry written by Captain Stephen R. Ellison, a doctor specializing in emergency medicine, at www.kilroywashere.org.

One story that appears more than once on the website tells of a man named Kilroy who might have been either an admiral during World War II or an inspector on a ship. The second story relates how Kilroy would sign this message in lieu of a formal written inspection or if the necessary people weren't around.

There's also apparently a story in Earth is Room Enough by Isaac Asimov that tells his science fiction version of the legend.

As with other sightings of the intriguing message, the drawing of the famous Kilroy character is here, too, although it's very faint. You can see it if you relax your eyes over the first two letters.

Conversations, Part II: Vans

Vans. They're everywhere.

We all have our own stories about vans, whether we rode in one as a kid, camped in one as a teenager, own one as a parent, or live in one that's stocked with a fridge, furniture, a TV, and other amenities.

Chances are we've all ridden in a van at least once. Earlier tonight, two generous men drove a separate van of Urban-15 dancers to our performance gig at San Antonio College. I sat in the middle of three rows with five other ladies, and we had a great time laughing and listening to oldies on the KONO 101.1 radio station.

While my family never owned a van, I have plenty of memories of riding in vans with childhood playmates. I remember peering out the back window of my parents' car as we drove past vans on the highway. As a kid, I was fascinated by the fact that some of the vans had decorative curtains in the rear and side windows. I know now that the curtains were there mainly for privacy, though they still have that same homey appeal.

Jeff Spicoli not only rode in a Volkswagen Van with his high school buddies in the 1982 movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he wore black-and-white checkered Vans while doing so.

Then there are vans that are useful for carrying heavy items. Japanese mini trucks, or Kei trucks, are a popular import in the U.S. Back in 2008, I interviewed a man while I worked as a field editor for Indiana AgriNews who built a family business out of buying and selling them to farmers. The vehicles are built in Japan and meet U.S. requirements for low and medium-speed vehicles.

I've also ridden in cargo vans that had too light a load in the back, resulting in a deafening clatter of metal to the floor of the van every time the driver turned a corner.

Good times.

While they'll never be as flashy or individualistic as the motorcycles Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson rode in Easy Rider, vans are a great way to carpool, a terrific conversation piece, and a kitschy icon of American roadie culture, serving as a sort of ombudsman and reminder to share the road as well as the back seat.

But vans can carry social stigmas, too, depending on the context in which they're driven or ridden. Take, for instance, the resurfacing of the infamous video of Donald Trump riding in a van with Access Hollywood reporter Billy Bush in 2005 and making lewd comments about an attractive young reporter waiting outside the van.

Then we've all heard the horror stories about kidnappers driving around in unmarked vans, or the mysterious white vans rumored to be conducting surveillance.

There's a social dynamic to riding in a van, or any vehicle: The people inside are so insulated from their surroundings, they're liable to say anything. While there are public and private places, the inside of an automobile is both. It's built for comfort and for speed. The space inside may be small compared to the rest of the world, but it's sealed off, like the protective shell we wish we had.

It's a sad fact, though a testament to the strength and durability of cars, that buildings have been torn down, cities have blazed, and earthquakes have rattled the Earth, but that sun-bleached Millennium Hip-Hop party CD cover is still sitting on the backseat of my car, undisturbed since 2006, and that empty granola bar wrapper will remain lodged between the driver's seat and the console until I decide to throw it away.

That got me thinking about how we think of driving in terms of comfort. People choose a certain car or truck over another as much for interior comfort as for price and fuel economy. We want our rides to be as fun as they are functional.

So can cars be fun and functional, or are the two mutually exclusive?

Autos seem to go beyond statement-making design and mobility. In a way, they define who we are. Our roles in life may mature and change, but aside from technological additions, our modes of transportation stay basically the same.

George Carlin wrote about how vans and minivans were an insult to manhood because married men had to trade in their flashy cars once they got married and had children. It's that age-old conflict between individuality and community, which leads me to another philosophical question: Should riding in a car be a solitary activity, or is it better with buddies? What can vans tell us about how we've dealt with this dilemma?

It feels different when it's just me driving with no passengers. There's something about sitting by myself in a car in traffic that embodies that age-old feeling of being "alone together" with other people.

It's hard not to see how we've modeled the faces and physiques of our cars and trucks after the bodies of insects – highly mobile creatures with strong social hierarchies. Volkswagen even named one if its cars "the Volkswagen Beetle." While we as humans value our privacy and individuality, we are social animals with a need to make personal connections with other people. We want things to be personal, until we don't, whereas insects seem to fulfill both needs at once without sacrificing one or the other.

Maybe that explains the van's exotic curb appeal among the other road warriors. When you're riding in a van, it's not just you behind the wheel – you're sharing the space with other people.

Conversations, Part I: The Highway Stranger

The man is brilliant, an expert in almost everything an aspiring writer could ever hope for in a mentor.

He's good-looking, sharply dressed, quick on his feet and honest – sometimes brutally so.

We're standing by a bank of palm trees beneath the U.S. 281 underpass near Broadway Street when he delivers me his news.

"I'm glad we talked, because last week, I wanted to kill myself."

I give him a hard look, not wanting to answer in the wrong way. I want to offer him comfort, solace, counsel. I want to tell him we've all been there before, we've all doubted ourselves and each other and feared that we live in a world without meaning or purpose. I don't ask why, or how he would do it, or how serious he's considered it. Instead, I speak a few words in a strong voice:

"I don't think you should do that."

Hearing the man's despair is confusing given all his success, and I'm faced with the perverse hope that my knowledge of existential dread and how destructive it can be will come off as authentic.

One of my favorite writers is French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. In one of his books, Seduction, he wrote about a need to be loved, but an ability to be seduced. He put this phenomenon into terms as the play of the butterfly collector, the gamer, and the hysteric. In Baudrillard's mind, the seducer is suspicious of seduction and tries to codify it:

"By making the rule into something sacred and obscene, by designating it as an end, that is to say, as a law, he traces an uncompromising defense: for it is the theater of the rule that gains ascendancy, as in hysteria the theater of the body." (pg. 127)

While I tend to be an independent spirit, I do think that life provides us with certain rules. While I believe existence precedes essence, I also think we have a choice in how to abide by these rules. We're given great gifts and the power of choice to stand by them or abandon them.

Baudrillard's theory that certain people turn seduction on its head by turning these rules into laws is intriguing. At what point, I wonder, do people become afraid or suspicious of the terms of their existence that they think about putting an end to it? And why does our confidence and despair seem to ebb and flow with all the frustrations of modern daily life?

Anyway, something about the man made me think of the philosopher's writing, and about how whenever I'm sad about things like this, I think of my mom, buying me new clothes to wear to school, taking me shopping, walking with me along the nature trails near the house where we grew up. So often, I don't want to do anything but hold her close.

I don't say anything else about the man's story – I just take it and hold it to my ear like a seashell, listening to his whole precious existence roaring within, and then it sounds as soft as the sea.

I guess I just want to be his friend.

A Ride through the Deco District

One of Arthur's tile mosaic pieces, entitled Fish Out of
Water. (Image courtesy of Twyla Arthur.)

Ever have one of those moments when you're meeting someone for professional reasons and they tell you they don't have a ride home?

Such was the case with my recent interview with Twyla Arthur, a well-known tile and mixed media artist who has created countless works in San Antonio and Austin.

We met this morning on the steps of the Ursuline Academy at the Southwest School of Art, where her friend had given her a ride after she discovered her car had a dead battery.

Our interview was about Bernard's Bench – the memorial she created in 2009 for art patron Bernard Lifshutz, who died Sept. 18, 2004.

Arthur decorated the bench in colorful tiles, mementos and found objects collected by Paula Owen, president of the Southwest School of Art, who asked her to complete an art proposal and submit it it to SSA in Lifshutz' honor.

The bench is now a mainstay of the River Walk, giving pedestrians a place to sit and rest their legs while admiring the design.

"When I built the bench, I wanted it to be interactive so people could touch the tiles and feel the different textures," Arthur told me, running her hand across the surface of the bench. "I made sure to sand down the edges so it's nice and smooth."

She said the art of creating mosaics is very labor-intensive, requiring the delicate arrangement of countless tiny pieces into a picture. Her voice has a soothing, gravelly quality that seems to embody the relief of a finished piece of work.

"I love working on a project, but I'm always happy when it's done," she says. "I hope that when I create a piece, it holds up visually. I want to create something that looks really good with the landscape."

Twyla Arthur poses on Bernard's Bench, a tile mosaic structure she created for art patron Bernard Lipshutz in 2009.

Mosaics are one of the few forms of art that people are encouraged to touch, making them popular for children and families.

As a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area in her youth, Arthur was inspired to continue her studies in sculpture and painting. She exhibited paintings for Paul Klee at the University Art Museum in Berkeley, eventually completing her Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture at Mills College in Oakland, Calif.

She recently lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where her friend, Colleen Sorenson, is involved in Muros en Blanco, working with children to do tile graffiti pieces.

Arthur has created other tile mosaics throughout San Antonio, including Hope Springs, a sculpture at the Houston Street court fountain in downtown San Antonio, and the new bus stop mosaic project at the entrance to the Blue Star Arts Complex on South Alamo Street, completed in March.

She also completed a mosaic on a red slate retaining wall between Fulton and Flores streets in the city's Deco District near her home.

Arthur explained that she's always liked the project despite complications that hindered its completion, including the wrong choice of plants along the wall that obscure the tile details and aesthetic.

She acknowledged that public art is becoming increasingly competitive in San Antonio since she moved here in 1998.

"Public art has changed since I started doing it – there are a lot of new ways of creating things," she said.

On Sept. 8, 2011, Mayor Julián Castro and the San Antonio City Council passed the city's public art ordinance, updating funding policies that enabled allocation for public art set at 1 percent of the capital improvement program.

Most of the money allocated to Public Art San Antonio (PASA) for the 2012-2017 bond project goes to streets, bridges and sidewalks ($3.34 million) and drainage and flood control ($1.27 million.)

The City of San Antonio's Department of Culture and Creative Development awards public artists for their proposals based on a set of policies and guidelines, according to its website.

Arthur explained her new method of improving the chances of receiving funding for sculptural objects, showing me some of the designs she's done and photographed.

I offered her a ride home at the end of our interview, and she guided me through the sunlit streets across San Pedro Avenue to Fredericksburg Road, where we stopped at a brand-new Starbucks – on order was a large, unsweet iced coffee for me and a double espresso latte for her.

On our way out of the shop, I told her how the baristas sometimes put sugar in my coffee even though I ask for it unsweet.

"You need to emphasize the 'not sweet,'" she suggested.

I took a sip of my coffee. It was sweet.

"Is it sweet?" she asked.

"Yes," I answer. "But it's good anyway. At least it's real sugar."

From there, we turned left onto King's Highway, where she showed me the old house where she used to live. It turns out its now under the care of two other San Antonio arts patrons, Page Graham and Tami Kegley.

Soon we arrived at her duplex, which was blocked off on both sides of the road due to sidewalk construction.

It's maybe that I'm so in love with Alamo Heights that I was unfamiliar with the Deco District. It's a pretty interesting side of town with sort of an Old Hollywood feel to it. This image of a building housing the San Antonio Police Department intrigued me. I'm planning to venture over there again soon – hopefully to attend an art talk or enjoy a meal at Deco Pizzeria.

The art deco style featured on the buildings along historic Fredericksburg Road.