Aspen Santa Fe Ballet

It's the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at the Joyce tonight, ArtiePasta is located conveniently half way between here and there on Greenwich and serves a decent basic Italian dinner, mussels in a white wine sauce with lemon and garlic, tender fried calamari with a spicy marinara dip, linguini with olive oil and garlic, and a thin slice of pork loin with mashed potatoes, anchovies, garlic, and capers, all washed down with a fruity and juicy bottle of Chianti. We are prepared to brave the cold for the few short blocks to the theater.

At the Joyce it's a pleasure to watch the women glide effortlessly across the stage, the men lack the same finesse. Sweet Fields choreographed by Twyla Tharp is the highlight, set to hymns and traditional Shaker songs, an haunting ethereal theme of life and death coming from Ms Tharp that I hadn't seen before.

It's impossible to forget the first time I saw Twyla Tharp years ago, probably the first time for most people. It was a dark and foggy night in September, Shakespeare in the Park, the open air theater in the middle of Central Park, had a special performance of up and coming dancers and choreographers, endless performances running late into the night at the end of the Summer, a few better than most. There was one more troupe, doing something called 100 Steps. Now I may be confused by the actual sequence but it must have been about 11pm with the fog settling in when Twyla comes out, solo, doing 100 odd movements on stage. Most of the audience has left by this time leaving just a few hundred aficionados and friends of performers, lots of empty seats. Twyla finishes her 100 movements when, as it becomes clear, 25 members of the audience get up and rush the stage: 25 dancers line up and on cue they each do four of the movements Twyla did earlier. 25 more join the crew on stage and do two steps ... you know where this is going. Only a handful of friends and lovers of dance are left in the audience when the last 50 of the troupe join to do just one step each. End of the program. The few remaining watchers head into the night under rustling trees, heading for the nearest exit of Central Park.

Back at the Joyce: We've been members since they opened twenty five years ago, and from the looks of it so has the rest of the mostly subscription crowd who know each other by now. The seats are filled with old fogies, there's only a sprinkle of young 'uns. I hear one man complain to his wife that he has to sit next to that snorer again.

We'll be doing it again in a month or so.

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Shark

I don't really like shark since it tastes like shark, but a dare is a dare. We hit all the usual spots: Trader Joe's, The Whole Foods Market, The Essex Street Market, and of course various sidewalk mongers in Chinatown with their aquariums of live shark. After an afternoon of wielding our lasers I finally had enough nicely-charred meat to make a good stew. Shark is notoriously tough, only lasers will adequately zap the stuff enough to even think of eating it. Several times I thought Chams was going to beat me to the kill but I'm faster and had more incentive: a bottle of Carmenere from Chile I've been saving for just such an occasion (rich, peppery and meaty!) Besides, I've been using fish lasers for over 10 years now.* He was really dragging low when he wandered off and left it. I imagine he headed to the veggie market for dinner to feed his kids tonight. Hah!

After combing the Web for recipe inspiration, I combined celery and onions, threw them in a sauce pan with some olive oil, stirring over medium-high heat until the veggies softened and started sticking to the pan, then added tomatoes with a handful of coarsely chopped cilantro, bringing it all to a full boil over high heat while pushing pieces of shark down into the veggies, finally turning down to a simmer on low heat until the shark turned opaque but still moist in the center. The charred bits flaked off nicely at this point, giving the whole stew that savory "just lasered" flavor.

I served the stew ladled into bowls over plain white rice, more freshly chopped cilantro, table spoon of yogurt for each bowl, juice from lime wedges, salt and lots of freshly ground five-pepper variety. I like pepper. The cilantro, yogurt and lime really did the trick, hardly tasted like shark. .

As usual, Cat turned up her nose at the fishy offering though she gave it one lick; I could see she really wanted some - just didn't want to spoil her record.

The supermarket is out of jello chocolate pudding, dammit; jello chocolate vanilla swirls pudding simply doesn't hack it.

*Into The Deep

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