Into The Sawtelle

by

Vincent Rosamond Rice

I cried as I watched Spielberg’s West Side Story – a good deal! When this new version finally got going – there was no escaping – the pain! I knew what was coming. I knew my Shakespeare. This story is – gripping. Maria was perfectly cast. Her large eyes were two lenses into two worlds. Natalie Woods had those big eyes.

I hope we hear all the casting details – someday – and the argument Steven had with the Art Director. There had to be many – heated discussions – because I could not tell the temperature of New York – seconds into this very good movie! In the original, you knew it is summertime from way up in the helicopter. Then – smack – you are thrown on the street. NEVER put signs and words to read at the beginning of a movie. We don’t go to the movies to get a lesson. Our tears – are full of lessons. We go to this movie – to cry!

When my family first moved to West Los Angeles, I did the painting of our street, Midvale. We lived a hundred yards from Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a hundred degrees for several days straight. I deduced Rosemary moved her four children – to hell!

I was the best dancer at Oakland High. About fifty students formed a circle around me as I did my choregraphed version of The Pony. I danced for a half-hour before school, and when I got home. At sixteen, I danced the Bolero for Marilyn on her sixteenth Birthday. I took my shirt off, because I knew I was going to sweat allot. My love had stolen my large painting of Jesus walking across the hot desert. I was a great walker. I seldom had money for the bus. I would put myself in a trance – and create! I wrote poems, and philosophized. I was always in a movie.

Vincent Rosamond Rice

Play both videos at the same time.

Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel’s most famous musical composition.^[1]

Before Boléro, Ravel had composed large-scale ballets (such as Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes 1909–1912), suites for the ballet (e.g. the second orchestral version of Ma mère l’oye, 1912), and one-movement dance pieces (for example La valse, 1906–1920). Apart from these compositions intended for a staged dance performance, Ravel had demonstrated an interest in composing re-styled dances, from his earliest successes—the 1895 Menuet and the 1899 Pavane—to his more mature works such as Le Tombeau de Couperin, which takes the format of a dance suite.

Boléro epitomizes Ravel’s preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. It was also one of the last pieces he composed before illness forced him into retirement. The two piano concertos and the song cycle Don Quichotte à Dulcinée were the only completed compositions that followed Boléro.

Boléro – Wikipedia