A Sporty Month

     Ever since we returned from up north, I've been pretty busy attending sporting events at Duke.  The seasons all seem to intersect in February and I been able to make it too a number of different contests.
     Of course you all know that the Duke men's basketball team is one of the top teams in the country, but you may not know that the women's team is pretty darn good too.  I managed to get to three of their games in February which featured wins over Maryland, Wake Forest, and Florida State.  They won the regular season championship and this past weekend won the ACC tournament.  The Maryland game was particularly noteworthy in that the Maryland coach got kicked out for arguing with the referee too vehemently and using an objectionable hand gesture at the same time.  In addition to this excitement, Nan was selected as "The Cameron Sweetheart of the Game".  She received a lovely plastic bouquet and was pictured on the scoreboard.  Actually she got a gift certificate for flowers and had to return the plastic ones.

    
     Every now and then a ticket becomes available for one of the men's games.  I was able to get one for the Duke v. Boston College game.  The fellow that has the seat actually lives in Pittsburgh, Pa. and doesn't always get to all the games due to the commute.  Anyway I was able to get the ticket and saw Duke blow BC out.  One of the traditions surrounding men's basketball is the tent city that is erected in front of Cameron Indoor Stadium starting in January.  It stays in place until the game against UNC.  The student tickets are passed out on a first come first serve basis and the tenting determines the priority.  There are all sorts of rules and zones which I do not understand.(You can check the Duke Athletic Dept. website if you're interested)  Suffice it to say,  that for almost 2 months students are required to live in the tents to qualify for the tickets. Below is a snapshot of part of "Kville".

     The Spring sports schedules got underway in February with both baseball and lacrosse starting up. I went to the opening men's lacrosse match against Univ. of Denver.  Although we were ranked fairly high this season, Denver kicked our . . .  14 to 12.  The next day the Univ. of Jacksonville was in town and we did much better winning 21 to 9.
    The day of the lacrosse match against Jacksonville was a big on-campus sports day, so after the lacrosse match was over I stopped in to watch a fencing tournament.  I have no idea what I was watching or how the scoring was handled other that the contestants, maybe combatants is the better word, are wearing suits that are wired so if they are touched by the metal epee or sabre or sword or whatever a circuit is completed and a point is recorded.  I have no idea who won.

      The last stop of the day was at a tennis match between Duke and #2 ranked Florida.  It was a good match with Duke upsetting the Gators 4 - 0.  It looks like most of the tennis matches start with 3 double matches.  In the doubles they compete for one total point - win two of the three matches and you get the doubles point.  They then take a break (at Duke they serve those in attendance a meal - it as BBQ the day I went and it's served to the crowd)  Then they start the singles matches. There are six of them and each is worth one point.  It seems that in some cases when the school gets 4 points, enough to win the meet, they just stop..  The other tennis match I went to was the men's match against Michigan which Duke won 5 -2.
     The weather is turning better and you can feel Spring in the air, but more on that next post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Busy Month - Part I Entertainment

      Since Nan is not teaching this semester we took our time getting back to Durham, waiting to the third week in January to head down.  We did the overnight trip which lessen traffic issues around D.C., but leaves you tired for three days afterwards.  One of treats waiting for us when we got back was a performance by Savion Glover at Duke.  We had seen him before at The Egg in Albany and loved his skill and showmanship.
     The show was entitled SoLe Sanctuary and was a 90 minute ode to tap dancing.  It featured Glover and a companion dancer, Marshall Davis. Jr.  Also on stage was a man who remained in the lotus position meditating for the entire performance. Also hung on stage as a backdrop were the portraits of some famous tap dancers.  I recognized Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Gregory Hines, but it would have been nice for the uninitiated tappers(myself included) to have them identified.
      First let me say that Savion Glover is the greatest tap dancer you can see. He is a tremendous talent and his companion was equally adept..  Having said that, it asks a lot of an audience to listen to 90 minutes of incessant, fully-amplified tapping, most of which was not accompanied by music.  It is the aurical equivalent of hearing the same sentence over and over again with different words and syllables accented.  I was not surprised some of the audience left.  And by the way Savion, we got it.  This was your meditation on tap dancing. We didn't need the guy in the lotus position.  The overall performance did not live up to my expectations.
     Since Nan has been teaching at Duke, we've had only one major winter storm.  The second occurred at the end of January when we made some major icing.  We were scheduled to see the New Century Chamber Orchestra performing a program that included some Mendelssohn and Strauss on the night the storm hit.  The concert was cancelled.  We're still waiting for our refund.
     A week later we had another theater experience.  Again a dance program, but this one went far beyond my expectation.  Diavolo Dance Theater from LA put on a spectacular performance, doing two pieces: Fearful Symmetries and Trajectoire. It's difficult to describe the performance in words, so I suggest you check them out at their website:  www.diavolo.org   If you visit the website the pieces we saw involved the movable rectangular boxes and the rocking platform.  It was great.
     One of the great things about the Durham area is the availability of reasonably priced live theater.  (Unfortunately for me, most of it non-equity).  The quality of the productions for the most part have been pretty good.  We went to see a one-person show entitled "My Princess Bride" written and performed by Joe Brack.  It debuted as part of the Washington DC Fringe Festival  and was on a brief tour.  The show is basically the retelling of the William Goldman classic movie, The Princess Bride put in the context of Mr. Brack's life.  The retelling worked very well, bringing many smiles to our faces.  The personal anecdotes worked into the story were less successful.  However, taken as a whole,  it was an enjoyable night of theater.
     The largest equity theater in the area is Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill.  Associated with UNC it brings a consistently high quality theater experience to the Triangle.  Each year since we've been down here, they have done a mid-winter series of plays in rep.  This year they are doing A Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park. We went to see the latter.  The play won the Tony Award for best play in 2012 and the Pulitzer for Drama in 2011.  It is an interesting take on the changes (?) in race relations in the 50 years between the sales of an inner city property.  Well acted (particularly by our friend Jay O'Berski) with excellent scenic design, the play is an unsettling (sometimes funny) look at race.
      We have had the chance to see several plays on the issue of race since we've been down here.  By far the  most dramatic and emotionally challenging was a production of The Shipment by Young Jean Lee.  The opening 10 minutes of The Shipment was so shocking I wanted to leave.  I didn't get the play until the final few lines, and suddenly it all fell into place.  I didn't have such an epiphany with Clybourne Park. We've heard this message before,  perhaps not packaged as humorously, but it's not a ground-breaking play.  Entertaining - yes.  But I always look for an arc in a play.  How have the characters changed as a result of their interaction?  Sadly, they don't, and maybe that's the point.