RPMs, Splicers, ODDs, USBs…A Dancer’s Half-Century Trip Thru Tech

My heartbreaking choreographic debut

Spring 1968. 8th Grade. Pine Grove Junior High School Talent Show. For my solo, I wore a purple leotard, pink tights and pink pointe shoes, to dance my original choreography to the smash hit “Love is Blue.”

“Original”? Perhaps I stole a few signature moves from my beloved ballet teacher Sally Espino. From a young age, I’d taken her classes at Live Oak Community Center, Berkeley Parks & Recreation, an affordable choice for my parents (who were raising seven kids). When I was eleven, Sally approved me for toe shoes and sent me to a children’s shoe store on Shattuck Avenue, where a clueless, middle-aged man in a suit squeezed my feet into chunky Capezios. At age twelve, I performed with Sally, en pointe, in the Live Oak Theater, to music from the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

For the junior high talent show, I entrusted my 45-rpm vinyl single to the A/V boys, along with a plastic adapter in case the school’s turntable didn’t have a pop-up adapter.

On cue, I stepped out on the curtainless stage to face a sea of whispering, giggling middle-schoolers. My heart pounded through an awkward pause before the needle went down with a crackle. Pulling up to relevé for my first emboîté, I nearly froze. What?! A slow-motion nightmare. The turntable was set to 33 rpm! I slogged and teetered through a drawling parody of the music until, near the end, the pink ribbons of one shoe unraveled to the floor. Pretending my shoe wasn’t loose, I improvised a woeful, dying-swan-like ending and left the stage in sobs.

Dancing, Teaching, and Performing in the early ’70s

In high school, my parents upgraded my training to a professional studio, Dancer’s Theatre in Oakland, an affiliate of the Royal Academy of Dancing. An RAD examiner flew from England to California every two years to judge our progress. While seated, the examiner gave the exercises in French ballet terms and evaluated our technique as we executed the movements to live piano accompaniment.

When I was 18, I switched studios to Carlos Carvajal’s Dance Spectrum in San Francisco. Both studios often had live piano accompaniment. Pianists at Dancer’s Theatre played traditional classics, while the pianist at Dance Spectrum in SF improvised new-age minimalist kinds of melodies, occasionally adding wordless voice—appropriate for the vibe of the hippie years. We ballerinas defied convention, wearing socks for barre exercises instead of full-sole ballet slippers—that is, when we didn’t do the entire class en pointe. Flexible split-sole ballet slippers hadn’t yet been invented.

When live piano wasn’t available, teachers used LPs on turntables. Both the Oakland and SF studios had wood floors that shuddered when we jumped, causing the record to skip occasionally. At Dance Spectrum, Carlos used orchestral music for many of his center combinations—something that was different and exciting.

I performed with both companies, Dancer’s Theatre and Dance Spectrum. Recorded music for performances was played from a turntable or reel-to-reel tape player connected to the sound system. [My father had a reel-to-reel player at home and swore it was the best sound for his jazz favorites—although it required transferring music from his LPs to the tape!]

1973, a memorable performance. We danced Carlos’s choreography to live music at the SF Civic Auditorium, Arthur Fiedler conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (Fiedler’s “Pops” concert). For Saint-Saëns’ Bacchanal, we danced part of the piece in the aisles. What fun! Here are the front and back covers of the program.

When I was 18, I landed my first teaching job at—guess where—Live Oak Community Center. Every Saturday, six classes in a row, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. They paid me $9 per class. I supported myself on this, plus an 8-hour weekly housecleaning job at $2 per hour.

As you can see in this 1973 photo, the clunky turntable was on a long, folding table, a little wobbly. I don’t remember the records skipping when we jumped, but perhaps nothing could shake that shiny linoleum-covered cement floor at the rec center, where we risked shin splints, hairline fractures, and slips-and-falls.

My second traumatic choreographic effort

1973 spring recital. The choreography was all mine and not half bad, as far as I recall, but very short. Students in all six classes performed, a couple of minutes for each class. We weren’t in the Little Theater but in the gymnasium with folding chairs set up for family and friends.

As people arrived and took their seats, I sat with my students on the floor. Every student—but one—arrived on time. Five, ten, fifteen minutes ticked past the appointed hour, people getting antsy. Finally, I gave in, made my opening remarks, lined up the kids, and put the needle on the record. Fifteen minutes later, as we took our final bow, the tardy student and parents rushed in, half an hour late. “It’s over?” screeched the angry mom. Crying child. Embarrassed teacher.

That was the first and last recital I staged at Live Oak. My dance ambitions lay far beyond Berkeley Parks & Recreation.

Soon after, I left for Amsterdam, where I studied at Theaterschool with hopes to audition for companies—a whole story I won’t go into here. After five months, an injury sent me home, where I moped around for a bit, took a temporary job stuffing envelopes at a mass mailing outfit, and decided to go to college, then law school.

Interestingly, I did perform again at Live Oak Theater with the Berkeley Mime Troupe in 1975.

The’80s arrive with high tech! And… My third and fourth choreographic efforts

Gradually, through the ’70s, LPs gave way to cassette tapes. Oh rapture! No skips or warped LPs. Actually, the cassettes did warp if left in the sun. And there were other annoyances. Like, somehow, the tape could get pulled out and tangled.

And you always had trouble cuing up your song. All that rewinding and fast forwarding, no index or track indicator.

Then there was the extra expense, time, and effort to convert your favorite music from LP to tape. Equipment, cables, magic. Turntable with output, tape recorder with input. New possibilities! Compilations: favorite songs from different LPs on a single cassette tape.

’78-’81, while in law school in Boulder Colorado, I subbed a few dance classes, using cassette tapes. Nerves…not about teaching but about the music, fast forwarding and rewinding. Those years, I danced in local performances and with the Boulder Jazz Dance Company. One piece was called “Walkmania,” and these things were part of our costume!

My third and fourth choreographies were in Boulder. 1980: a solo entitled “Amor Lejano” (you can see excerpts here—yes, that young girl with shoulder-length hair).  1981: “Inner City Drama,” a dance for me and three others, performed in Boulder and New York City. I don’t have a video and don’t remember the choreography, but it included this whacky jump.

Each choreographer provided the sound manager with a cassette tape containing only their music. The sound person would cue each tape to the start and switch out the cassettes for each piece during the show. My tape for “Amor Lejano” was easy enough—a single piece “Utviklingssang” by Carla Bley  But the music for “Inner City Drama” combined parts of songs from the “Together Brothers” LP, Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra, something I couldn’t edit. A company member adept at splicing created the tape for me. Can you imagine doing this? Cutting the tape at the exact moment with a razor blade and taping it to the next section. Some of the splicing jobs for various choreographers were none too perfect, with little glitchy sounds at the edited points.

The ’90s and new millennium

Although CDs came on the market sometime in the ’80s, dance teachers were using cassette tapes most of that decade. As I started my law career in Manhattan, I was taking dance class whenever I could fit it in. In 1989, after having my first baby, I dropped out of the dance world for a decade. When I started dancing again, everyone was using CDs. On hiatus from my legal career, I danced like crazy from ’98-’08: taking and teaching classes, performing, choreographing, and running a dancewear store.

CDs: what convenience! But…have you played a CD recently? So annoying, all those extra seconds to open the tray, insert the CD, close the tray, select the track, wait for the player to “read” the disc. These days, it seems so slow.

Again, we had to convert favorite tracks from outdated media to CD. Somewhat easier with computers connected by USB cable to a turntable or tape player. In those days, every computer came with an ODD (optical disc drive).

I soon gave this up for the new thing—music streaming. In the early ’00s, we subscribed to Rhapsody for about $10 a month [avoiding Napster, a “free” service that violated artists’ rights and was later sued for copyright infringement.] I used the RealPlayer program on my Microsoft laptop to save selected tracks from Rhapsody on my computer and “burn” them to a CD. RealPlayer could also “rip” tracks from our store-bought CDs and burn them to a blank CD. I made a lot of compilations for listening and teaching.

But, more work! No metadata, so I manually typed the title and artist onto each track saved on my laptop. This information did not transfer to CD when burning. I typed and printed a list of the songs on each CD. For teaching, my compilations grouped songs with similar rhythms for certain exercises (e.g. for jazz pas de bourrées, kicks, and pirouettes); I labeled each CD and taped the list of songs on the CD cover.

I still have tons of these homemade CDs!!! They’re all good.

For my students’ performances in the early ’00s, the sound manager asked for a CD with the single track for each dance. Later into the ’00s, this changed to a separate USB flash drive for each piece.

Moving into now

After working another ten years in law, I returned to teaching dance in 2017. A decade had passed, and most teachers were using smartphones (or tablets or laptops) connected to the studio sound system by Bluetooth or cable/dongle attachment.

I was behind for a while, still using CDs, but soon learned how to transfer all the music on my laptop to iPhone with the sync feature. I made playlists for some of it. Every studio has different equipment so, to soothe my nerves, I travel everywhere with my own little speakers and use Bluetooth. I love them, especially when I use two for “party mode.”

For performances, no more cassettes, tape splicing, CDs, or USB sticks. Simply send an MP3 file to the sound manager on a file sharing platform. I’ve also edited and combined tracks on the Audacity program to create a unique piece of music for performance.

I could write pages about the technical conundrums of teaching dance on Zoom during the pandemic, but I’m not in the mood to revisit that! One good thing came out of it. When I went back to the studio, I recorded several dance classes and uploaded them to YouTube for my students who wished to continue dancing at home. Go ahead, take a free class at home! Here’s my YouTube channel.

The latest tool for dance teachers is a smartphone wristwatch playing purchased music or streaming from a service like Spotify. Freed from the sound equipment, the teacher can roam the studio, observing and correcting students while easily starting and stopping music. But, dare I admit…

I’m kind of afraid of them. So small, and my music is all over the place, favorite tracks in albums, others in playlists. Will I be able to find what I want? I’m getting nervous just thinking about it. Perhaps I’ll skip this and all subsequent innovations until we get to the point where it’s possible to simply think of the track we want and music will fill the air. I don’t doubt this will happen one day. It’s all magic.

Thank you for tripping through 55 years of technology with me!

Keep an eye out here for news about my upcoming novel! I’ll be making announcements soon.

 

Travelogue (7)—Latvian Song and Dance Festival

In 2013, I visited Riga for the Latvian Song and Dance Festival and became a big fan of this event. Every five years, Latvians all over the world come together for a weeklong celebration of their beloved folksongs and dances. The festival also embodies a spirit of solidarity among a people who survived a tumultuous and tragic history of foreign occupation.

 

My late father and his sister were Latvian WWII refugees who emigrated to California and Ontario, respectively. I never learned the Latvian language and am left to wonder what it would have been like to attend the festival with them, to benefit from their insights and translation. The Canadian version of the Latvian Song and Dance Festival is closer to home, so I made plans to attend.

My husband and I started our road trip to Toronto on July 4, making stops in Western New York on the way up and back. We had great accommodations, dining experiences, and sightseeing adventures. First stop, Keuka Lake. We stayed the night in this Airbnb cottage, clean and comfortable with beautiful surroundings. Our host was friendly and helpful.

 

Highlights: walks along the wooded lake’s edge, a visit to historic and beautiful Garrett Memorial Chapel, the best ice cream in New York at Seneca Farms in Penn Yan, and a perfect view of Independence Day fireworks all around the lake’s edge.

Garrett Memorial Chapel

 

Midday on the 5th, we left Keuka Lake and stopped in Naples, NY, for lunch at the Old School Café. Had a delicious meal, sitting outside under the trees with good shade from the hot day.

Then we hopped in the car for Toronto. Not much delay at the U.S./Canada border (Peace Bridge). On the Canada side, we zipped along for a while before the traffic on the QEW got horrendous. The last 50 miles to Toronto took forever. Friday rush hour? Or is it always like that? We got to our hotel at about 7 p.m. Hotel X.

A good choice. We explored two rooftop lounges with great views of the city and had a scrumptious dinner at the hotel restaurant, Roses Social. Our large, comfortable room presented only one challenge—how to work those strangely unique light switches? Took us a while to figure them out. The best feature was the high-impact water pressure in the shower.

Saturday, July 6, was a busy day. In the morning, I took Johanna Bergfelt’s contemporary dance class at the National Ballet of Canada. I’d “known” Johanna virtually for nearly four years, taking her online classes at home, so it was a delight to meet her in person and to dance her wonderful choreography in a huge studio.

Next, hubby and I had brunch at Fox on John. We bypassed the outdoor seating only because a flash rainstorm hit. Inside, we had mimosas, omelets, and fixings while watching a Euro 2024 soccer match between England and Switzerland. A lot of energy in the room!

Then, on to the Latvian Mass Choir Concert at Roy Thomson Hall.  The President of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, gave opening remarks. The stage was filled to capacity with singers, overflowing into the upper audience boxes on either side (this photo doesn’t quite capture all the singers on the sides). About 700 or 800, everyone in national costume. They performed dozens of folksongs in beautiful harmony, each with its own conductor.

 

My videos of the songs didn’t turn out so great, so here are links to a few good ones posted on YouTube by other attendees:  Lec Saulīte (Sun Rises) and Saule Pērkons Daugava (Sun, Thunder, Daugava [River]).

The concert ended with Pūt Vējiņi (Blow Winds), the song that closes every festival, with the audience singing and swaying along. Here is a video of Pūt Vējiņi at the 2023 Riga concert (40,000 singers in a huge amphitheater!)

Sunday morning the 7th we took the ferry to Toronto Islands, getting this view of the city skyline on the way there. A low flying airplane went directly overhead, coming in for a landing at the nearby Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.

 

The several small islands are connected, making a large park with plenty of trees and white sand beaches on Lake Ontario. We started out on the westernmost island and walked for about an hour to the center island, where we caught the ferry back.

About halfway through our walk, a loud din caught our attention across an inlet to a small interior island. Hundreds of birds were circling or perched on denuded trees, squawking like crazy. Think Hitchcock’s The Birds. A man who had docked his boat nearby told us that the cormorant population is out-of-control, damaging the trees and environment. We were lucky the wind was blowing away from us, he said, because the noxious odor of their guano is overpowering.

Back in town, we found a great place for lunch a few blocks from the venue where the next festival event was to be held. We had delicious burgers and cold beer sitting in this outdoor patio at Pogue Mahone Pub & Kitchen.

Then it was on to the Latvian Folk Dance Spectacle at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, home of the Maple Leafs ice hockey team! No ice that day. 800 dancers of all ages filled the entire arena with joy and spirit, making intricate patterns with their dances. I made a short video from a few clips of different dances you can see here (Instagram).

Here’s a fuller recap on YouTube. At :45 seconds in, you will see a song near the end of the concert called Daugav’ Abas Malas (Both Sides of the Daugava River), where we all crossed our arms and held hands and sang along. (I’m in that audience somewhere!) Some of the lyrics translate as: “One language, one soul, one land that is ours.” And here is a video of the dance finale.

My favorite dance was by a group that won first place in the new choreography contest. I got most of it on my iPhone and posted it here, on YouTube. Really beautiful and fun!

The performance ended at about 6:30 p.m. and we headed back to New York. Again, the traffic was bad. The Google maps lady sent us to the Lewiston crossing, claimed to be “the best possible route.” We waited in line almost an hour before a customs agent waved us through. On the U.S. side, the highway is a lot prettier than the highway we took going north, through Buffalo.

We didn’t get to our hotel until about 11 p.m., a really nice place, the Chautauqua Harbor Hotel in Jamestown. It was built five years ago, everything spiffy clean and comfy.

In the morning, we visited with friends who took us on a tour of the Chautauqua Institution, a 750-acre community on Chautauqua Lake that hosts summer residence programs in music, dance, theater, and fine arts, among others, and holds events open to the public year round. You may recall that this is where author Salman Rushdie was attacked in 2022. After that, security was tightened and we needed a grounds access pass. There are many beautiful privately owned homes that can be rented, a historic hotel, studios, theaters, and so much more.

Of most interest to me would be to take the dance classes taught by visiting teachers, or to watch performances by notable dance companies. Alas, that will have to be another visit! We were tuckered out from all the excitement and long drive, so made our way back home.

Thanks for riding along! In other news, pick up my award-winning collection Your Pick: Selected Stories during my summer sale. A mere 99 cents in e-book for another week!