Virtual Trick-or-Treating
Oct. 30th, 2016 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleHappy Halloween! Welcome to the eighth annual edition of virtual trick-or-treating.
Knock or ring the bell by leaving me a comment, and I'll reply with a treat of some sort. It might be a fic snippet, a picture, a song, or something else I come up with in the moment. My intention is to post all treats before I go to bed on Halloween. Lurkers and anonymous trick-or-treaters are welcome! (But if you're posting anonymously or with an LJ account that is completely friends-locked and you want a treat specific to your interests, let me know something about why you know me.)
(Not my actual door. Photo by Flickr user Nick Stanley, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.)
Knock or ring the bell by leaving me a comment, and I'll reply with a treat of some sort. It might be a fic snippet, a picture, a song, or something else I come up with in the moment. My intention is to post all treats before I go to bed on Halloween. Lurkers and anonymous trick-or-treaters are welcome! (But if you're posting anonymously or with an LJ account that is completely friends-locked and you want a treat specific to your interests, let me know something about why you know me.)
(Not my actual door. Photo by Flickr user Nick Stanley, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.)
Date: 2016-10-31 03:16 am (UTC)Two decades of Athena Dance (1/2)
Date: 2016-11-01 03:16 am (UTC)Two decades of Athena Dance
Twenty years ago, Avery Miller and Emma Clark started Athena Dance with a revolutionary idea: a ballet company made up of only female dancers.
"You make us sound so cool," Miller says when I mention this to her. "It wasn't like we were trying to start a revolution. I just wanted to be a ballet dancer, and I was never going to be small enough to do that in a traditional ballet company."
Athena Dance's story begins with Miller and Clark when they were dancing with Spotlight Dance, a pre-professional company, as teenagers. Clark was one of the company's rising stars. Miller loved ballet, but her large frame and muscular build kept her in the corps - and often at the back of the stage.
"I told her she could switch to contemporary, or hip hop," Clark says, "but she loved ballet. So then I said, 'Why don't you lift me?'"
Ballet is still in many ways an extremely traditional art form, particularly when it comes to gender roles. Clark's suggestion went against everything they had learned about a woman's place in ballet.
"We didn't tell anyone about it," Miller recalls. "We just started rehearsing together."
They performed the pas de deux from The Nutcracker for a school talent show. It was the first time anyone knew exactly what they were doing.
"I knew they were friends, and that they frequently rehearsed together," says Claire Thompson, their ballet teacher at the time. "They invited me to their talent show, and when I saw their pas de deux, I was blown away."
In pre-professional companies, particularly in smaller cities, finding boys who can play the male parts in ballets can be difficult. After Clark and Miller's talent show debut, Miller began to play those parts.
"It was such a thrill," Miller says. "All I ever wanted was to be a ballet dancer, and now I got to be in the spotlight."
Miller's hometown pre-professional company may have put her in the spotlight, but professional companies weren't so eager to take on an untried woman to play men's parts.
"I couldn't get a job," Miller says flatly. "I couldn't even get a place in a training company."
"I had a few offers," Clark says, "but I wasn't going to go off and be a ballerina and leave Avery behind. We were a team."
Two decades of Athena Dance (2/2)
Date: 2016-11-01 03:16 am (UTC)"It was hard," Clark says. "We didn't really know what we were doing. We lived in a tiny apartment with two other dancers, and we both taught classes for other dance schools."
Slowly but surely, however, Athena Dance grew to be an established element of New York's dance scene. They now employ a full two dozen dancers and an office and development staff of six. The company has a school that attracts dancers from across the country.
"We're a success now," Miller says, "but it still feels precarious sometimes. We're a dance company in New York." She shrugs. "It could go bad."
While they've hired administrators to make sure that doesn't happen, Miller and Clark are still the driving artistic forces behind Athena Dance's success. Miller is the choreographer, and Clark the rehearsal mistress. They both teach company classes, and they work together to train their dancers in partnering.
As they have since those early days, Miller and Clark live together, now in a brownstone they share with Miller's girlfriend Naomi and Clark's two daughters.
"My girls have no interest in ballet," Clark says with a rueful laugh. "They're always out playing basketball or soccer with Naomi. But that's okay. I got to do what I love. I want them to have the same chance."
It was more than chance that led to Athena Dance's success. It took hard work, a repertoire of traditional and creative choreography, and skilled dancers.
Audiences will have a chance to view Athena Dance's repertoire this weekend as they put on a three-night twentieth anniversary show. Most of the pieces in the performance will be performed by Athena Dance's current company. Miller and Clark have added one more piece. They will perform their original pas de deux, the same one they performed for their high school talent show.
"We haven't danced on stage together in years," Clark says. "I'm looking forward to it."
Miller echoes her enthusiasm even as she looks toward the future. "That's how we got started, and that's how we're going to start the next twenty years of Athena Dance."
RE: Two decades of Athena Dance (2/2)
Date: 2016-11-01 04:11 am (UTC)And thanks for @ing the link, I don't have an email connected to this
Re: Two decades of Athena Dance (2/2)
Date: 2016-11-01 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-31 04:24 am (UTC)I'd love a treat (or a trick - your choice)
Trick or Treat 1
Date: 2016-11-01 03:21 am (UTC)Re: Trick or Treat 1
Date: 2016-11-01 05:49 pm (UTC)Re: Trick or Treat 1
Date: 2016-11-01 07:02 pm (UTC)Trick or Treat 2
Date: 2016-11-01 03:22 am (UTC)Play It Again (63206 words) by metisket
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski & Laura Hale, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Laura Hale, Sheriff Stilinski, Peter Hale, Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, Danny Mahealani, Erica Reyes, Isaac Lahey, Vernon Boyd, Talia Hale, Chris Argent, The Hale Family - Character, The Argent Family - Character, Alan Deaton
Additional Tags: Pre-Slash, Magical Stiles Stilinski, derek's mad planning skillz, magical objects and their insufficient warning labels, laura's in charge, making the most of your afterlife, oh look here's a lower place, Alternate Universe
Series: Part 1 of play it again
Summary:
In which Stiles goes along with one of Derek’s plans and ends up in an alternate universe as a result. He should’ve known better. He did know better, actually, and that means he has no one to blame but himself.
“Laura wants to lure the kid in with food and kindness and make a pet of him, like a feral cat. Derek wants to have him arrested for stalking. They’re at an impasse. (And the rest of the family is staying emphatically out of it in a way that suggests bets have been placed.)”
This is one of my favorite Teen Wolf stories, plus it's Teen-rated and therefore safe to read at work. (Which is part of why I've read it so many times.) There are three things I think make it really great:
1. The multi pov. We know what Stiles knows, which is part of what makes everyone else's perspective so entertaining. This is the story that makes me want to write a multi pov story.
2. It's funny. This is one of the great effects of the multi pov. When you know Stiles's story, the Hales' reactions to him are that much funnier.
3. Stiles cares about the people he cares about, and no one else. As much as I love pack caregiver Stiles stories, this intense focus on protecting his dad and Scott over everyone else feels like the Stiles of the show (or at least the first two seasons, which is all I ever watched).
Re: Trick or Treat 2
Date: 2016-11-01 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: Trick or Treat 2
Date: 2016-11-01 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-31 03:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-01 03:23 am (UTC)I really want a story where a younger Peter travels into the future for reasons and ends up in the here and now. He's not as vicious as now Peter. He's more casually amoral, more like Stiles.
Stiles and younger Peter team up to do research and make a plan. Everyone else is somewhat terrified of them, except older Peter. Older Peter is a little bitter about how happy younger Peter is. Stiles is gleeful to have someone with Peter's knowledge and general outlook minus the murderous tendencies. Younger Peter is enjoying both his time with Stiles and the badly masked sexual frustration coming from both Stiles and older Peter.
Eventually, one of the Peters, probably the younger one, suggests they have sex.
Stiles looks between them. "Uh. You two want to have sex together? Is this one of those it's like masturbating if it's with yourself things?" Then he frowns. "Is it really with yourself? I mean, if your experience is part of your identity, doesn't that make you two very different people?"
Younger Peter sidles up to him. "Why don't you see how different we are."
"In bed?" Stiles eyes him skeptically. "That's your come-on?"
"Stiles," Older Peter says from the other side of him, "do you really need anything more?"
And then they double-team Stiles and Stiles really, really doesn't need anything more.
Three possible endings:
Option 1: They discover that there's no way to send younger Peter back to his time. The Peters spend a lot of time having kinky sex with Stiles in between research sprints. "I hope no one ever needs to test your DNA," Stiles says. "Or your fingerprints." He frowns at them. "If you were human, we could burn them off or cut them or something, but yours just grow back."
"Thank you for that," older Peter says drily. "That was very sensitive of you."
Option 2: They figure out how to send younger Peter back to his time. Older Peter smirks at Stiles a lot until Stiles throws himself at him. They have a lot of really kinky sex. Sometimes Stiles calls Peter "Daddy."
Option 3: They figure out how to send a Peter back to the past, and decide the best thing for the safety of the Hales is to send older Peter back. Younger Peter takes over older Peter's life. Stiles has to explain everything to his dad so his dad won't freak out when Stiles eventually marries Peter Hale.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-01 12:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-01 07:03 pm (UTC)Knock knock
Date: 2016-10-31 03:59 pm (UTC)(This is an awesome idea)
Re: Knock knock
Date: 2016-11-01 03:25 am (UTC)There once was a man who thought he could wheedle
Who when he talked his eyebrows he did beetle.
He met a woman on a train
To whom he spoke in vain
For with her knitting she did his thigh needle.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-31 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-01 03:26 am (UTC)Happy Halloween!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-02 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-05 07:20 pm (UTC)