SUMMER 2021
13
“magic” within all of us, “blew the roof off” the place. But it was hard for me to feel that roof come off when sitting in my easy chair. We all have some favorite memory of a live dance, music or theater performance. We go to a performance to see artistry in all of its immediate glory and wonder. We hope to experience, during the best of performances, some personal growth. Perhaps even an epiphany. And for a moment, we feel like we have entered a different world, one that belongs to the artist. Our performance – and let me call it that for a moment – is in the courtroom, with other “players” sitting at counsel table, in the jury box, or on the witness stand. The deputy and
By Hon. Sharon Kalemkiarian Judge Kalemkiarian, a graduate of Princeton and the University of San Diego School of law, is a teacher of the New Judge Orientation for California Judges, and a member of the Family Law Committee and the Compensation and Benefits committee of the California Judges Association. She participates in numerous classroom civics programs throughout the year.
ast weekend I tuned into a “streamed” performance by the award winning tap-dancer Ayodel Casel. The performance was filmed at the Joyce Theater, a large, wellknown, professional dance theater in New York City. As I watched the jaw-dropping artistry of her and her five tap-dancing colleagues, I was struck by what I was missing. Every time her shoe hit the floor, I heard the noise but I couldn’t feel the vibration. As she riffed through an improvisation with Afro-Cuban pianist Arturo O’Farrill, I could not hear her breath quicken or see his fingers flex. There was a great deal of visual coordination between the five tap-dancers, butthrough the screen I couldn’t catch the “aura” of their joy as they collaborated and created together. And the number offered by the jazz vocalist Crystal Monee Hall about the
