#kistler

[bebemoon]

darci kistler as the sugarplum fairy and jessica lynn cohen as marie stahlbaum in “the nutcracker” (1993), dir. emile ardolino .

[ns-sprite-editz]

Oh hey look, another one of 'em Chi Kids.

[balanchine-ballet-master]

At City Ballet, a Once-in-a-Generation Dancer Arrives

Mira Nadon, the rising New York City Ballet principal, is coming off her best season yet. And it’s only the beginning. By Gia Kourlas The New York Times May 29, 2024

Mira Nadon was 5 when she took her first ballet class. It was pre-ballet, which meant running around the studio, maybe getting a shot at fluttering like a butterfly. This was not for her.

When she found out that students began proper training at 6, Nadon laid it on the line: “I told my mom, ‘This isn’t serious,’” she said. “‘I’m just going to wait till I’m 6.’”

Even then Nadon was levelheaded and unflappable. Now, at just 23, she is a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, approaching the close of a momentous season at Lincoln Center, where her versatility, artistry and jaw-dropping abandon have made her seem like a ballerina superhero. This week, she returns to the role of Helena, the rejected young woman determined to win her lover back in George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” An affinity for drama is in her bones, but something else makes Nadon a rarity: humor.

Nadon, the first Asian American female principal dancer at City Ballet, is a special, once-in-a-generation kind of dancer. Nadon can flip among many sides of herself—secretive, seductive, funny, serene. And she lives on the edge, with rapid shifts from romantic elegance to ferocious force. A principal since 2023, Nadon still has raw moments, but so much is starting to click: Her feet are more precise, her partnering more secure.

This photo and the one at the top: Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times

“To watch her grow — and it’s not been very long—has been tremendous,” Wendy Whelan, the company’s associate artistic director, said. “It’s fast and big and just blossoming.”

This spring season, the close of the company’s 75th anniversary year, has been largely dedicated to newer ballets. She has danced in works by living choreographers, including Alexei Ratmansky and Pam Tanowitz, and made debuts in works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. “The range has been astounding,” Whelan said. “She’s been able to hone in on the uniqueness of each of those voices. And she cares about what the intent is of each of those voices, so they’re not all the same. She doesn’t just go out and do great things. She actually carves out the idea.”

The most important debut was in “Errante” (1975), a Balanchine ballet originally called “Tzigane” after its score by Maurice Ravel. Suzanne Farrell, for whom the ballet was made, staged it and coached Nadon. “She’s such an intelligent woman and so dry and funny in the best way in the studio,” Nadon said. “She’s very, very demanding. She’s not just going to say ‘good job’ because you tried and you’re working hard. But I love that.”

The ballet opens with a five-minute solo for Nadon, whose smoldering use of her eyes and face, along with the smooth control of her body, showed a deep command of the stage as she wound her way along its mysterious violin solo. Farrell told her that the solo was a lonely experience. “I think she was excited for me to feel that onstage with the violinist,” Nadon said. Toward the end of the rehearsal process, Farrell told her that she shouldn’t move in a modern way but in a “very stylized older way,” Nadon said. “I think that’s also what makes it such a special world, that it’s unique and different from the way you approach another ballet.”

Above: Nadon in Errante. Photo: Erin Baiano via the NY Times

In Ratmansky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” Nadon was electric, fleshing out shapes while stretching bigger, deeper, longer—her arms are as fluid and expressive as her legs. And Nadon, at 5 foot 8 inches, has legs. Working with Ratmansky, who is City Ballet’s artist in residence, is sharpening her technique, she said, just as Tiler Peck did last season when Nadon danced in her ballet, “Concerto for Two Pianos.”

“He’s so funny," Nadon said of Ratmansky’s polite requests. “He’ll be like, ‘Do you think you could turn out the leg a little more?’ ‘Do you think you could hit fifth there?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I probably could.’”

This season, she performed in two of Tanowitz’s ballets: “Gustave Le Gray No. 1” and “Law of Mosaics,” which ends with Nadon dancing a solo barefoot. “She doesn’t dance at you, she draws the audience in, and that’s her power,” Tanowitz said. “It’s almost like she’s letting us in on this intimate part of herself.”

How many dancers can be understated and wild? It has much to do with how utterly at ease Nadon is onstage, which dates to her training at the Inland Pacific Ballet Academy in Montclair, Calif., where she had many opportunities to perform. “I think it was really beneficial growing up,” she said, “to not be scared onstage.” This was already apparent in 2017, when she danced the female lead in Balanchine’s “Scotch Symphony” at the School of American Ballet Workshop Performances, the annual year-end display of student talent. She was a fearless rush of power and delicacy that left audience members in disbelief. Recalling it now, Nadon laughed. “I didn’t think about it too much,” she said, “and just did the show and then everyone liked it, and I was like, Oh, I guess you’ve never seen me perform.”

Photo: Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times

Next month, Nadon will make her debut in “Diamonds,” the final section of “Jewels,” set to Tchaikovsky, at the Kennedy Center. “There’s something about the Tchaikovsky—the swells and the grandeur that you just feel in your soul,” she said. “I’m excited to live in that world and see how it feels.”

The part was made for Farrell, and dancing it speaks to Nadon’s future as an integral part of City Ballet. But getting to this point was far from a sure thing. Her father is a professor of government and her mother was a lawyer; neither knew much about ballet aside from the dramatic, dark side that is often shown in films.

When Nadon was accepted to the School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s training ground, she knew her parents weren’t going to want her to go, which would mean leaving home at a young age. She is grateful to Darci Kistler, a former City Ballet principal, who offered her a scholarship for the summer course and convinced her parents that it would be more than OK to let her go.

“Even getting my parents to agree to let me audition was a struggle,” Nadon said. “I was like, ‘I just want to see if I get in’ and they were like, ‘You’re not going to go, but you can audition just for yourself.’”

To Kistler, she said: “‘Oh—my parents aren’t going to let me, but thank you so much.’ And Darci said, ‘Can you go get your mom?’ I was, like, running through the hallways.”

It wasn’t a yes on the spot, but after some conversations, they agreed. “I’ll always be really grateful to her for putting in that extra effort,” Nadon said. “My parents still are, like, Thank God for Darci.”

Nadon’s path through the City Ballet ranks has been swift. She joined the corps de ballet in November 2018 and was promoted to soloist in 2022. Just a year later, she was named principal. “There was a lot of thought that went into—when you start pushing, giving the opportunities—making sure she was ready,” Whelan said. “We don’t want any dancer to fail. We don’t want to just throw them out there and say, let’s see what happens.”

But Nadon was ready—for all of it. “When I think of myself having the title of principal dancer, it does seem kind of crazy and foreign, but on the day to day, I’m just dancing my ballets and going out onstage,” she said with a cheerful shrug. “I guess I’ve tried not to overthink it too much because I think it could be very heavy and a lot of pressure.”

Nadon is self-aware. Her temperament, she realizes, is a blessing. She gets nervous for shows, but she’s never anxious. And she’s there to dance. “My favorite part of the job is just going out onstage and seeing what happens,” she said. “It’s almost like I’m surprised by what my body does. I’m finding out what’s going to happen at the same time as the audience.”

[ziplequick]

I finally have access to a scanner.

Space Hamsters! A classic prompt from Mark Kistler. I'm not sure when I started drawing it, but it got set aside and forgotten. It's too fun to leave unfinished, so I finished it when I found it.

[dozydawn]

[oldtimesnew]

Danskin 1990

[metalchairz]

Basic outfits of the Chi Kids, the biological offspring of the Alpha Kids who are raised by the Beta Kids. "Chi" as in "chiropractor" (kye, kai) Zero stabilizer on this.

Time/Space glitchy, warping pheneomena cause a timeline to arise where the Alpha Kids genetic material is crossed and mixed up creating the Chi Kids, before the Alpha Kid babies perish in the meteor lab. Another timeline where the ectobiology process continued as normal has the Beta Kids snatched from that timeline* and brought to the meteor lab where the Chi Kids are and the Alpha Kids are dead. The Beta Kids arrive on Earth in succession, so that they each raise the following Kid from infancy (Jade>Dave>Rose>John).

The Chi Kids then arrive and are raised in the same order from eldest to youngest (Raye raised by Jade, Gema raised by Dave, Andy raised by Rose, and for a short time John, and Ness raised by John).

The genetic parents are as follows:

Jane+Roxy= Andy, They/them. Half siblings are Gema and Ness, raised by half sibling Rose. Not genetically related to Raye.

Jane+Dirk= Gema, She/her. Half siblings are Andy and Raye, raised by half sibling Dave. Not genetically related to Ness.

Jake+Dirk= Raye, He/him. Half siblings are Gema and Ness, raised by half sibling Jade. Not genetically related to Andy.

Jake+Roxy= Ness, She/her. Half siblings are Andy and Raye, raised by half sibling John. Not genetically related to Gema.

*creating a timeline where there are only Alpha Kids (a doomed timeline)

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Don Kistler | The Church of England, increasingly angry over the Puritan’s unwillingness to conform to their practices (for which they found no Scriptural warrant or felt were throwbacks to Popery), began to persecute the Puritans to drive them out of their pulpits for being non-conformists...

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[realspaceships]

Kistler Fully Reusable Launch Vehicle, a SpaceX Competitor

[ns-sprite-editz]

Chistuck, from the Greek letter Χ (pronounced like chiropractor).

Fankids but genetically descended from the Alpha Kids and raised by the Beta Kids, who in turn have raised themselves. "What the fuck", you ask?

(There's not that much writing below.)

There was a space-time rift of weirdness on the meteor when the young ectobiologist (John) was creating his friends and their parents. Duplicate timelines that merged ended up with the guardian babies all deceased on the meteor, but all the Beta Kids and these weird, never-should-have-existed kids, being sent back in time to yet another different strange Earth.

So, in canon it goes:

Mom+Bro=Dave & Rose, and Nanna+Grandpa=Jade & John.

Here it is all mixed up and genes get crossed, with one kid from each new bond. That means:

Mom+Nanna=Kid, Mom+Grandpa=Kid, Nanna+Bro=Kid, and Bro+Grandpa=Kid.

They are not all related to each other by blood. The Nanna+Mom Kid is not related to the Grandpa+Bro Kid, and the Mom+Grandpa Kid is not related to the Nanna+Bro Kid.

The timing of the meteors has also changed so that the Beta Kids, who act as guardians to these Chi Kids, each raise each other in succession at the tender age of 16, with the exception of Jade who arrives first and is raised by the First Guardian.

I want to, at least for now keep some mystery, so when I refer to "second, third" Chi Kids, I am not referring to their order in the photoset. I am keeping it vague.

First Guardian: Arrives billions of years ago on Earth.

Jade: Arrives in 1943, is raised by the First Guardian.

Dave: Arrives in 1959, is raised by Jade and the First Guardian (sorta).

Rose: Arrives in 1975, is raised by Dave.

John: Arrives in 1991, is raised by Rose.

Oldest Chi Kid: Arrives October 23 2006, is raised by Jade.

Second Chi Kid: Arrives October 24 2006, is raised by Dave.

Third Chi Kid: Arrives March 14 2007, is raised by Rose.

Fourth Chi Kid: Arrives November 2 2007, is raised by John.

Basically long story short is that Andy, the Sylph of Time is going to try and go back to the Chi Kids origins and try to direct and navigate their team members through into the Beta Kids session, follow John onto the battleship and eventually to LOWAS after Game Over and then into the retconned Alpha Kids session to claim their prize so that they can live too, because they have no Space player and the Chi session is doomed no matter what so they have to get out of dodge, so to speak.

[kistlergmbh]

[jiggin-with-jethro]

Playing with the wake snake! Savage gear

[ronnydeschepper]

Marcel Allain (1885-1969)

Als tiener was ik fan van de Fantomas-films. Of laat ik eerlijk zijn: ik was zot van Mylène Demongeot. Onlangs heb ik de films teruggezien en de grootste ontgoocheling was precies Mylène. Ik vond ze helemaal niet sexy. Wat moet ik nog groen geweest zijn in die tijd! Continue reading Untitled

[metalchairz]

Ecto kids from Chistuck.