Paul Taylor Company visits Vail

I started this story at WJI in May and visited the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s studio in New York City – then it sat for a few months while I wrote up a storm for the rest of the paper. Now the time has come – the dance festival is here, my internship is almost over and the story is in print. Enjoy.

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BEAVER CREEK — After more than a month of world-renowned classical music, live musical performances might seem commonplace to Vail Valley residents, but for dancers performing in Beaver Creek tonight, a live orchestra is quite unusual.

The New York City-based Paul Taylor Dance Company is in town for the first time for the Vail International Dance Festival. Monday night the company will perform a selection of now-classic Taylor pieces and a newly choreographed piece, “Changes,” which premiered on May 31 in Massachusetts. The dancers will perform to live music, something they’ve experienced only rarely over the last decade.

“It’s a treat for dancers to dance to live music,” said Don York, the Company’s longtime musical director. “People don’t know — they go to a dance company and see a dance to CD and it’s not as exciting by any stretch of the imagination as having live music there. That’s why this Vail date is so neat. It’s like a return to the glory days.”

Read the rest here.

Going to the dogs

A $19,000 bill might sound about right for a used car, a three-month vacation in Europe, or a semester at Harvard, but how about for a dog? After buying the puppy, that’s the average cost to raise a golden retriever-sized dog in Eagle County for the dog’s 12-year lifespan, calculated by Humane Society Director Char Quinn. That cost breaks down to include food, vaccinations and licensing, treats, toys and beds, training, boarding and medical expenses.

But the Vail Valley loves its dogs, and based on the number of dogs in the area, residents don’t seem to mind dishing out lots of cash for them. With a dog to human ratio of about one dog to every 10 people — Animal Services Director Natalie Duck estimated around 5,000 dogs in the valley, and according to the 2006 U.S. Census estimate there are almost 50,000 people in Eagle County — it seems the cost of having dogs isn’t deterring valley residents from buying them.

For many people, it appears dogs are a basic part of life around the Vail Valley. And the animals don’t get the short end of the stick, either. Quinn, who has lived in over a dozen states, said Eagle County is a great place to be a dog.

“People do a lot with their dogs (in Eagle County) compared to other places I’ve seen or lived,” Quinn said. “It’s very dog friendly.”

Business goes to the dogs
One thing Quinn has noticed is that more dogs go to work with their owners in Eagle County than other parts of the country. But even the dogs that stay at home can be spoiled in the valley.

For $40 per day, Walkin’ the Dog, a pet daycare business based in Avon, houses dogs whose owners don’t want them home alone. Walkin’ the Dog also runs a mobile service that picks dogs up from home, takes them on an hour-long hike, and drops them off again, for $30 per hike.

“Most of these dogs are spoiled; they’re all very well cared for,” Walkin’ the Dog owner Marisa Lahman said. Lahman started the mobile hiking business with her husband, Merrill, 10 years ago, and opened the daycare in 2002.

Lahman, who has four dogs, two cats and a cockatoo of her own, said she usually has 30 dogs at the daycare each day, and she’s boarded six or more dogs overnight. Overnight doggie guests stay at the Lahmans’ home.

“It’s like babysitting, but they don’t talk back and they just want to have fun,” Lahman said. “They hardly ever throw temper tantrums.”

And when the animals do throw temper tantrums, there are plenty of training classes available in the valley to help solve the problem.

Read the rest here.

Holiday week

In a whirlwind of activity, I wrote a cover story for the weekly, four stories for the daily and worked on the fourth of July last week. To finish off the week I had a 12 mile hike yesterday.

I’m still alive.

Here are my stories:

The Rochester Philharmonic has been a regular at the Vail summer music festival for about 19 years, and is getting the boot for next season, to be replaced with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, because Bravo needs the funding. Story here.

As always, bears are a problem in the mountains (more so, apparently, when people come in from out of state and don’t know how to do things like dispose of trash. Apparently a common story is “well, I didn’t want to leave the house, because I was afraid of the bears – so I left my trash on the porch” when Department of Wildlife officials have to cart bears off property for eating trash). Story here.

Pictures possibly coming later this week.

Escape to America

The U.S. application for political asylum asks for an explanation of why the applicant is afraid to return to his or her home country.

Kalifa Ourany needed four words: “I will be killed.”

Thirty-year-old Ourany, who now lives in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Edwards with six African roommates, is from Cote d’Ivoire, a small country on the west coast of Africa.

Cote d’Ivoire was peaceful through his childhood; people would go there for asylum from uprisings in other countries in Africa.

“And then one day it just blew up,” he said.

In late 1998, changes to the government’s constitution gave the president, Henri Bédié, more power, and policy changes led to racial unrest and a government coup, according to www.infoplease.com. Because Ourany’s father worked for the military, the uprising placed his family in danger. For them, the day everything changed was December 23, 1998.

Family is targeted
Ourany and his family heard shooting all day. When his father came home for lunch, the house was surrounded by soldiers from the opposing army and his father was taken away.

Ourany hasn’t seen his father since.

Two hours later, a friend warned the family that they would be killed if they didn’t get out of the country. So Ourany, his mother and his younger siblings hid their identification papers, grabbed their lunches and left. His older brother, also in the military, lived on the border and fled to Mali, where he still lives.

It took the rest of the family five days to get to Mali, usually a one- or two-day trip.

“We hid our papers and we started running,” he said. “The world was dead.”

 

Read the rest here.

A chef’s life, interrupted

A local chef who poured his life into his kitchen will have to take a forced vacation from cooking to keep that life.

Kyle Cowan, 31, was the chef at Up the Creek restaurant in Vail for the last two years, but moved back to Texas to be with his family three weeks ago after discovering a cancerous lump in his kidney.

Cowan, who spent time experimenting with and changing the menu at Up the Creek, was seldom out of the kitchen when he was in Vail, Up the Creek owner Peter Stadler said.

“He was very intense in his work – his interest was food,” Stadler said. “I told him ‘why don’t you go skiing, why don’t you do this,’ and he said ‘No, I’m here.’ His whole life is food.”

That life of food has paid off, at least in Vail, where local opinion is that Cowan’s arrival changed Up the Creek — an American-style restaurant that has been in the valley for 20 years — for the better. Candice Wilhelmsen, 30, works with her parents at Axel’s Clothing next door to Up the Creek and has been going to the restaurant with her parents most of her life. She said Cowan’s arrival made a difference at the restaurant.

Read the rest here.