I Wish . . . Part II

You could say that ballet is in her blood. After all, Joanna S.B. O’Leary ’03 started dancing when she was just four years old. At the time, she wanted to dance forever, and even attended the renowned Harrisburg Dance Studio, a pre-professional school, before coming to Harvard.

Next year she’ll be doing more studying than pliés as a Harvard Extension School pre-med student. But today she’s living her four-year-old dream to dance on the stage of the Wang Center, a Boston landmark that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. O’Leary is enthused about performing on the same stage as the esteemed Boston Ballet company. “I can appreciate how much more magnificent it is to perform in front of a million people,” she says en route to the Wang. “I know the likelihood of getting to do that isn’t great, since I won’t dance professionally.”

O’Leary glides through the Wang’s lobby, a breathtakingly ornate marble and gold concoction with glittering chandeliers dripping from the ceiling. Her toes point out slightly to the sides and her back remains in perfect posture as she follows a Wang representative into the theater.

From the back row of red velvet chairs, the stage looks enormous. If O’Leary was pirouetting with Viktor Plotnikov and Larissa Ponomarenko of the Boston Ballet, she’d be in front of an audience of 3,700 with a 60-piece orchestra playing the strains of the “Nutcracker Suite.” Today, she will tread the boards to take in the entire 4,800 square feet of performance space solo.

O’Leary begins with a stretch, resting her elbows on the sprung dance floor with her legs in a full split. Toes flex and point in well-worn canvas ballet shoes. And with a smooth of her bun, the would-be prima ballerina is ready to dance.

An English concentrator in Quincy House, O’Leary has maintained an active physical schedule outside the classroom. She danced with the Harvard Ballet Company for two years before taking time off to train for the Marathon. Last year she completed the Boston marathon in four hours, twenty-five minutes.

“Dance is hyper-intense short spurts, while running is lower intensity but high endurance,” she says. “But the nice part is that I wasn’t as tired this fall when I started taking classes again.

O’Leary finds herself continually drawn back to ballet, however. She attended Harvard’s Ballet II/III class this year, and plans to continue dance next year. Teaching isn’t out of the question either. “It would be a great way to pick up extra money.”

Onstage at the Wang, O’Leary begins her performance by bending into an arabesque, with the ornate carvings of the theater as backdrop. She pauses for a moment to breathe and look out at the thousands of seats. It’s a truly beautiful space which plays host to over 40 shows every year.

She prefers the faster, showier dance movements, quick turns and grand jetés, criss-crossing the stage. She looks very small to be dancing alone in such a huge place. The work lights glint off her back as she jumps a couple more times.

O’Leary won’t ever get to be a professional ballerina. “But today I got a small glimpse,” she says, pulling a sweatshirt on over her leotard as she steps gracefully offstage.

—Kristi L. Jobson

She's Getting Rhythm

An hour before the Last Chance Dance, it is the Last Chance Guitar Lesson. There is less drunkenness, but perhaps equal amounts of groping as guitar strings are urgently plucked to eke out the chords to such acoustic guitar favorites as “Blackbird,” “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and the oddly appropriate “Jamaica Farewell.”

Kristin R. Hoelting ’03, a longtime piano student and aspiring guitar player asked FM to arrange for a music lesson with Livingston Taylor, artist in residence in Lowell house, faculty member at the Berklee School of music and—as it takes him under 15 minutes to mention—brother of James Taylor. Hoelting says she wanted to meet Taylor “for inspiration” and to talk about how to best incorporate music into her life post-college.

She brought her roommates Victoria L. Shiah ’03 and K. Eliza Harris ’03 along for the lesson and the three of them sat in the Lowell Junior Common Room, guitars in laps, watching Taylor’s hands fly over the frets of a guitar. Hoelting, in search of musical wisdom, instead sat attentive as Taylor delivered well-rehearsed diatribes on the importance of rhythm, the occasional faults of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and what it means to make music for a living.

Taylor is a hands-on teacher. “Give me the guitar, I’ll just tune it for you,” he says after Hoelting admits she’d love to learn how to tune a guitar herself without a tuning tool. Taylor’s tolerance for amateur music-making seems too low to cater to Hoelting’s wishes for general inspiration, but she is endearingly chipper about the whole thing, even after he calls her version of the famous Beatles song a “panicked, struggling, almost, quasi-‘Blackbird.’”

What Hoelting and her roommates need, he says, is “bomb-proof rhythm.” This is Taylor’s favorite phrase. Yet to achieve bomb-proof rhythm, as Taylor explains it, actually requires a contradictory mixed metaphor. As he talks, Taylor’s foot smacks the JCR floor loudly in time to the music. “Mine sound like rifle shots,” he says, sizing up the considerably less audible ammunition Hoelting achieves with her green Converse All-Stars.

Hoelting says she went through college not really having formal music training, just learning how to play the guitar, “I want to bring music back into my life,” Hoelting says. “Play a chord,” Taylor barks. “Let’s start making music sound good.” His main prescription is to accept a slow pace of mastery and not to force a sing-along if panic ensues.

Taylor is most pleased with Hoelting’s playing when she earnestly digs into a slow, soulful version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” tapping her foot nearly as loudly as Taylor taps his and keeping a slow, steady nursery-rhyme pace. “Excuse me,” Taylor says to Hoelting when she finishes singing. “You were making beautiful, credible music.”

Taylor engages his pupils in a discussion of the joys of live music—“sustaining another reality” is what he calls live performance—and Hoelting says that one of the most recent concerts she attended was in fact a James Taylor concert. “Oh, you like my brother?” Taylor asks.

In addition to the rhythm lesson he shares some of his new songs, including one about Alaska, where Hoelting is from. Despite the somewhat stern warnings to slow down and practice much more, Hoelting is pleased by her evening with Taylor. “I always wanted to meet him,” she says. “It was really cool to feel how you can get a better groove [paying attention to rhythm.]”

After the lesson the trio snaps up their guitar cases and heads back to Kirkland to get ready for the dance. Hoelting says from now on she’ll stick to playing for an audience “around the campfire” or for Bob, the Kirkland House security guard who is a staunch supporter of her fledgling rhythms. Next year, however, she’s eschewing the guitar for a ukulele that she received as a graduation gift. “It’s more for strumming,” she explains. “It’ll be more folky fun.”

—Rachel E. Dry

Easy Riders

Nearly every Thursday night, Dunster House residents Carla D. Martin ’03 and Matthew M. Pereira ’03 make the trek on foot from Dunster to ManRay’s Campus club night. Having walked the route those many nights, Martin and Pereira wished for a mode of transportation to match their fabulousness.

This past Thursday, these seniors got their wish—a white stretch limousine, provided by Lifestyle Transport, in which Martin, Pereira and their entourage of fellow Dunsterites cruised from Harvard to the door of the club.

“It would have been better if there were a Jacuzzi in here, and a big crowd of screaming fans outside,” said Pereira, whose dreams of rap stardom were a bit beyond what FM was able to fulfill.

Martin wore a black sleeveless top with the word “Harvard” emblazoned in a burst of glittery print. It didn’t look like anything they sell in the Coop.

“Matt got it in Paris,” Martin explains, as their friends sampled the limo’s designer water.

Their favorite song is “Who the hell are you,” Martin tells FM as we travel down Mass. Ave in style. “But after listening to it many times, we realized the true lyrics were ‘Who the fuck are you,’” she said.

Pereira adds that after further consideration, they decided the real lyrics are “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” FM wonders if Pereira is always so classy, or if it is just the effect of the limousine.

Pereira puts his hands on the ceiling of the limo as we ride, and explains to his friends that he is “raising the roof.”

Adding to the glam effect when the limo rolled up to the club were the FM flashbulbs, snapping shots of the Harvard clubbers as the group made a red carpet style exit from the limousine and past the surprised bouncers. Unfortunately, FM made a fashionably early entrance and the few people in line were too eagerly memorizing their home addresses to take notice of the celebrities of the moment.

Once inside the club, Martin and Pereira headed immediately for the main dance floor. It was still early, and they were some of the first ones dancing. As the DJ spun gay anthems—house remixes of diva pop songs—the dance floor filled up, and smoke machines hissed smoke through the room. Energized by the music, Martin and Pereira showed that they were some of the most enthusiastic dancers at the club.

The two Dunsterites have developed a number of signature dance moves that they perform together. They demonstrated their favorite move for FM—Martin stands with legs open and Pereira gets down on his knees with his back to her, looking upward. Martin has an excited smile as she executes her dance moves, while Pereira keeps up a sultry, pouty look.

Rated for the last four years as Best Gay Night by The Boston Phoenix, Campus night at ManRay is well-known in the Boston gay scene and attracts a large crowd. Its proximity to Harvard and MIT and the 19+ age requirement make this club popular among college students.

On Thursday, Pereira eagerly informed his entourage that “tons of Harvard people are going to be here tonight.”

“It’s your dream come true,” said Petra R. Rivera ’03, a fellow Dunster House resident that Martin and Pereira brought along for the ride. And it was, sort of, minus a Jacuzzi, an adoring crowd and actual celebrity.

—Stephanie M. Skier

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Nicholas Z. Topjian ’03 has spent about three-quarters of his life trying to get to Fenway Park. Raised by a New Jersey family of diehard New York Mets fans, Topjian is still bitter about his parents’ decision to take his older sister to Fenway for two games of the 1986 Mets-Boston Red Sox series and leave him behind. “I was crying that she went and I didn’t,” he recalls. “I used to be a huge Mets fan. Every Saturday I’d watch the games at 1 p.m., and I always used to run into my parents’ room late at night asking who won the last game.”

Ever since then, Topjian has suffered his own private version of the Red Sox legendary curse. “There were a bunch of times I was planning on going [to Fenway],” he says, “but something always fell through.” Most recently, he tried and failed to score a pair of the first come, first served senior class tickets for the Red Sox-Yankees series in mid-May at Fenway.

But unlike the hapless BoSox, still struggling for their first World Series victory since selling Babe Ruth after their 1918 championship, Topjian found a way to Fenway. Despite overcast skies and a light drizzle, FM escorted Topjian and his language exchange partner, a 39-year-old Japanese professor named Yutaka Suga, to Fenway Park for the May 24 Sox-Cleveland Indians matchup.

Arriving at the top of the third inning, Topjian scores some oversized hot dogs and Legal Sea Food chowder, and settles down in Section 42 of Fenway’s right field bleachers. Soon after the FM entourage arrives, Boston right fielder Trot Nixon makes a backpedaling, leaping catch at the wall to rob the Indians of extra bases. After the rest of the Indians are retired, Sox superstar shortstop Nomar Garciaparra leads off the bottom of the inning with a homer to left-center. “Wow,” Topjian notes. “The first Sox player I see bat hits a home run.”

Professor Suga, clad in a bright yellow Columbia rain jacket to shield himself from the elements, is intent on preserving the afternoon for posterity and doesn’t mind exposing his Sony digital camera to the rain. An associate professor of Asian folklore at the University of Tokyo visiting Harvard as a Yenching Visiting Scholar, Suga spends at least as much time watching the game through his camera lens as he does with his own eyes—snapping not only practically every at-bat of the game but also every section of the park, the mandatory group picture taken by our next-seat neighbors and even the outfield video screen as it displays the words to “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch.

While Topjian hasn’t attended a Mets game in years, it’s only been a year and a half since he last saw a professional baseball game—in Japan’s Tokyodome. “Japanese baseball is so bizarre,” he says. “All the fans for one team are on one side of the stadium, just like high school. You buy your ticket and they ask if you want Red Sox or Yankees. And when your team is up, you cheer the whole inning. It’s like a cheering match.”

Suga adds, as we join the largely inebriated crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” that while the song is a fixture at Japanese games, few fans actually know the English words, and simply sing the melody with repeated use of the word “oh.”

The Sox come back up to the plate with Boston’s best hitter, $20 million-a-year Manny Ramirez. Topjian declares that the time is ripe for Ramirez, who was intentionally walked in the first and stroked two singles through the middle innings, to launch one out of the yard. After taking a few pitches, Ramirez clubs a no-doubt-about-it shot over the Green Monster in left, pausing to admire his handiwork before he starts to run the bases. 10-3, Red Sox.

We’ve seen just about enough when Topjian’s roommate, Christopher Roma-Agvanian ’03, who is working the game as a food vendor, finds us behind the BoSox bullpen. Clad in a yellow apron and matching Boston hat, Roma-Agvanian gives Topjian and FM a pound and looks awkwardly at Suga, who offers a pound but receives a handshake. Roma-Agvanian says he has worked over 300 games at Fenway and boasts of the peanut-tossing arm he has developed. “I’ll hit you 50 rows up,” he says.

The four of us leave the game after the seventh inning, and stop off at a memorabilia store. Topjian picks up a navy blue baseball cap with the red number “9”—Ted Williams’ jersey number—emblazoned on the front. “I was on the fence about being a Red Sox fan before the game,” Topjian says. “Now I’m converted.”

—Dan K. Rosenheck