SPOLETO BUZZ BLOG

It’s nearly over. Only today’s finale remains yet to be experienced, and I’m feeling exhausted, relieved, and more than a little sad. Over at Dan Conover’s Spoletoblog, he reports that Blair Tindall writes in today’s Post and Courier, in a festival retrospective, that she attended 37 events over the course of Spoleto’s 17 days. That’s particularly impressive in light of the fact that Tindall’s never tackled this job before. Following in Robert Jones footsteps would have been a difficult task for anyone; when I spoke with Tindall in the Spoleto press room at one point mid-festival, she mentioned that the process had been one big learning curve for her, and she was still feeling her way into the best process for managing her time. My hat’s off to her for taking on the challenge at all. My feeling is she did as good a job as anyone could have asked for.

My own count on events attended is somewhere between 59-64; I’ve tried to go back and recall every single performance and festival-related event I made it to, but several of them were spontaneous decisions not on my schedule, and others I only ducked into to get a feel for what was happening before I cut and hightailed it to something else. Still others were events that were of neither Piccolo nor Spoleto: the Domain magazine launch party, for example, and my own performance and work in the A Perfect Ten short play showcase last Thursday night.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to write here about everything I saw or experienced, much as I wanted to. This often happened when I saw four more more events in a single day; finding the time to write (often in the Spoleto press room at the Gaillard or in Port City Java at King and Calhoun, both boasting wireless internet signals) was sometimes too difficult between shows. By the time I’d caught up, it was often a day or two later and I had other things to cover, if this blog was to remain timely. (A perfect example: last Friday night I saw Heather Grayson’s Solo Turn production After the Storm, the last in Spoleto’s three-part series. Had much to say about it, but it was over at 10:30 pm, and I had some drinks with friends afterward. The next day, I wrote about three of the events I’d been to on Friday but didn’t get to writing about that one before it was time to see the Japanese dance troupe Miyagi Ryu Nosho Kai at the Gibbes Museum at 2 pm. From there, it was to the Piccolo Finale, and, later, to Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the Spoleto Soiree. Which brings us to this point.)

In any event, I’ll spend the rest of this afternoon and probably a good deal of Monday morning putting together my own festival retrospective for next Wednesday’s City Paper. Until then, thanks for reading, and see you at the finale.