Playing catch-up

I noticed that I put up one post in October. It was an incredibly busy month because it contained most of the the second half of the semester when all of my students started submitting their work. I have been marking a few essays every night to try to keep up. Fortunately, there is only one more week of class left. That's one of the great things about teaching. I'm incredibly busy during term time, but there only two terms and each is only 13 weeks long. I have to remind myself that the level of busyness in my job really isn't all that bad.

Leo and I have also been able to have some fun too. A few weeks ago we went to a dance performance by Nederlands Dans Theater. They are one of the preeminent dance companies in the world, especially in modern dance. Their performance was powerful -- both physically, creatively and emotionally. I especially liked how they combined light displays and multimedia into the performance. I often think avant garde lighting and multimedia detract from the overall dance performance because the audience often ends up paying too much attention to them. In the show we saw though, they were very organic and emphasized the dancers' movements rather than the other way around. This link will take you to the Nederlands Dans Theater website where you can see videos of their performances.

This weekend we saw Burn after Reading, the new Coen Brothers movie. The performances by Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Frances McDermond were hilarious. It was especially fun to see Brad Pitt and George Clooney NOT playing their usual type of characters.