THREE PROFESSORS DON’T JUST SHINE IN THE CLASSROOM; EACH HAS A TWIN PASSION

LAW PROFESSOR & DANCER POET & BOXING COACH ECONOMIST & MUSICIAN

HERE, THEIR DOUBLE LIVES ARE REVEALED.

BOSTONIA Summer 2012

PHOTOGRAPH!BY!MELODY!KOMYEROV

224-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd4-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 2424 55/30/12/30/12 55:29:29 PMPM In a family of doctors, Khiara Bridges is the The black sheep, having earned a law degree and a doctorate in Balletic . Legal Scholar 4 WORKING FOR A MORE JUST SOCIETY, DANCING FOR THE JOY OF IT

BY SUSAN SELIGSON

!"#$%$ &%#'()* +,-.' be called a law professor who dances or a dancer who teaches law, but both descriptions fail to capture the force of her twin passions. Whether the tall, graceful Bridges is conducting a Fourteenth Amendment seminar or turning en pointe as the Sugar Plum Fairy, she is thoroughly in the moment, both mind and body. Although she doesn’t broad- cast her virtuosity in one disci- pline while immersed in the other, word occasionally gets out, and Bridges is faced with a question that won’t go away: “How do you do it?” “It’s a crazy existence and the only one I know,” says Bridges in her office in the School of Law tower on a typi- cal afternoon—the associate professor of law had been up until 2 a.m. grading student papers, up again at dawn to work out with the Boston Ballet. Engaging and spry, Bridges describes herself as an unconventional ballet dancer. As she does hamstring stretches before a recent rehearsal, her dancer’s taut contours are lost in a wash-worn hoodie and outsized red BU sweatpants. But that’s not the only thing lost: under the voluminous clothes, Bridges’ body is a

Summer 2012 BOSTONIA !"

224-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd4-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 2525 66/6/12/6/12 11:08:08 PPMM canvas of colorful tattoos that crawl theory and practice became around her ankle, up her flank, across all too real during the long her shoulders and back. hours she spent among poor, A Miami native who jokes that mostly immigrant women in a family of doctors, she’s the in that hospital. Now an black sheep, Bridges graduated as associate professor on the valedictorian from Spelman College, College of Arts & Sciences earning a degree in three years. She anthropology faculty as went on to obtain a law degree and well as at LAW, she says she then a doctorate in anthropology from decided not to practice law Columbia University, where she was a because she’d much rather member of the Columbia Law Review research and write. and the recipient of numerous awards. That existence could Folded into these pursuits was Bridges’ not have seemed more training at the Miami City Ballet, the remote during a New York Ballet, and when she got to New rehearsal for an upcoming York, the Dance Theatre of Harlem New Haven performance and the Alvin Ailey American Dance with Classical Contempo- MELODY KOMYEROV MELODY Theater. She has also written a book rary Ballet Theatre, founded and worked as a in 2011 by artistic director model for Capezio Among the tattoos on Bridges’ James Atkinson. Her solo, which she’ll dancewear. dance with a young corps de ballet Bridges chose body is one that reads, from a performing arts high school, is a this hectic and “Also reproduced is the riveting, unpredictable mix of classical hyperactive life possibility—the hope—of ballet moves, melded with modern and and revels in it. a different, more just, society.” jazz. But Bridges dances it en pointe, And she thrives on elongated into brisk relevés and curling simple pleasures, soulfully into moves way downtown like the quiet from the clean, floaty George Balan- hours she spends with her students’ thesis-inspired book, Reproducing chine ballets she and Atkinson revere. papers every weekend on the Amtrak Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as Atkinson, also a classical ballet Acela as it races along Long Island a Site of , the results of dancer, spotted Bridges at a master Sound to and from , her research in the obstetrics clinic of class three years ago and asked her to where she rehearses and performs. a huge, chaotic, but exceptional New perform with his company. The two are In a fiercely competitive calling, she York public hospital, where she spent friends as well as collaborators, and at has shared the stage with some of the 18 months and found herself pulled this rehearsal at a midtown studio it’s finest dancers in and around New into the lives of the indigent women just the two of them, fine-tuning moves York, performing with Ballet Noir, she studied. She took her time, going Atkinson choreographed to the music the Hartford City Ballet, and the from being a fly on the wall to someone of electronic composer Lusine. Brooklyn Ballet. the women grew to trust and respect. As they rehearse, Bridges sheds She takes on occasional classical Now, indelibly inked into her skin are first the hoodie and then the sweats roles—last winter she the words, “Also reproduced is the until her bare legs lunge, leap, and WEB EXTRA was the Sugar Plum Fairy possibility—the hope—of a different, pulse in pink toe shoes. Several hours Watch a video of dancer in a production of The more just, society.” later, she grabs her bags and heads to Khiara Bridges Nutcracker—but she is Bridges’ research at the hospital Penn Station with little time to spare. at a rehearsal rarely another swan in came after graduating from law school “I have a mountain of papers to grade,” at bu.edu/ the corps. in 2002. She stayed on at Columbia to she says, her exhausted body gather- bostonia. “I can feel like a fish pursue a doctorate in anthropology— ing steam. out of water,” Bridges says. she was awarded a PhD in 2008— “I used to dance and know in the For one thing, classical ballerinas because she “wanted to learn about back of my mind that I was good at don’t have tattoos. “None are merely the law as culture.” Laws may look something else, so I didn’t have to be decorative,” says Bridges of her body impressive and thorough on paper, so good at dance, and vice versa, but art, her O-shaped leather earrings but what she finds compelling are at some point it shifted,” Bridges says, swaying like tire swings. The red people’s experiences under those laws. “and I had to reach for excellence in hibiscus blooming on one leg pays Even laws with the best intentions are both.” She pursues both dancing and homage to her home state of Florida. “permeated by isms,” says Bridges, who her academic efforts “doggedly,” she The writing that spills across her focused her research on laws governing says. “One doesn’t take precedence shoulder blade is the last line of her universal health care. The gap between over the other—each is all-consuming.”

!" BOSTONIA Summer 2012

224-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd4-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 2266 66/13/12/13/12 110:530:53 AAMM Robert Margo admits that part of the appeal of BU was Mugar Memorial Library’s extensive collection of music.

This is the Margo that most colleagues and students know. But there’s another side to the eminent College of Arts & The Musical Sciences economics professor, one that wakes up early in the morning and stays up late at night to pluck away on his Economist collection of early musical instruments, including at least a dozen classic guitars, Renaissance and baroque lutes, 4 CAS PROF MOONLIGHTS AS CLASSICAL classical mandolins, mandolas, a waldzither, and a Russian LUTE, MANDOLIN PLAYER domra. He’s performed in local orchestras and duets and arranged scores for classical musical instruments of the BY LESLIE FRIDAY works of Steely Dan and the Beatles. “I steal time whenever I can,” Margo says. “I find it’s really important to have balance in life as you get older.” !"#$%& "'"$& ("#) is full in Robert Margo’s Tuesday Although he keeps economics and music largely separate, morning economics class. The department chair, with a he sees both his vocation and his avocation as forms of art. horseshoe of downy white hair and theatrical Margo specializes in the economic history of the eyebrows, paces methodically at the front of the , focusing on the ways that education, WEB EXTRA classroom as he discusses the Solow-Swan growth Watch videos race, and the labor market have intertwined. He model, a standard model of economic growth. of Robert believes there is a beginning, a middle, and an ever- Margo tosses out a question about the con- Margo play- evolving end to this story, not unlike a musical score. stancy of population growth, largely to see ing and dis- On a Tuesday night last fall, Margo drove an hour cussing the how many of his students are still with him. south to a blue-collar section of Providence, R.I., nuances of Silence. It’s around 9:30, and several of the early classical where he hauled instrument cases into a red build- students taking Race and the Development of instruments ing bearing the sign “Church of the Mediator. All the American Economy: A Global Perspective like the lute Are Welcome.” Inside, two dozen musicians were are leaning heavily on caffeinated beverages. and mandolin tuning mandolins, mandolas, a mandocello, classical at bu.edu/ “Someone raise their hand in the usual stu- bostonia. guitars, and a double bass, sending a just-shy-of- dent model so I can call on them,” Margo says. har monious cacophony to the vaulted ceiling.

PHOTOGRAPH!BY!CYDNEY!SCOTT Summer 2012 BOSTONIA !"

224-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd4-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 2727 66/6/12/6/12 11:10:10 PPMM Dressed in black, Margo took a seat in the center of the first row, one of several mandola players in the Providence Mando- lin Orchestra (PMO). The group was practicing an Argentin- The Pugilist ian tango called “Oblivion,” written by Astor Piazzolla and arranged by Margo, for a performance in Baltimore, Md. Poet Music director Mark Davis instructed the group to take it from measure 68. With a flick of his baton, the amorphous 4 A TRANSLATOR OF PERSIAN hum in the room became a sweet, beckoning tune. VERSE FINDS RAPTURE The group moved to other pieces, Neponset Valley Suite, IN THE RING composed by PMO member Owen Hartford, a former School of Education instructor of educational media and photography, BY SUSAN SELIGSON and Sinfonia a pizzico by Victor Kioulaphides. Margo switched instruments, pulling his new waldzither from its case. Around him, musicians leaned in to get a closer look. He later joked !"#$% &'(('$ )'*'+'*',’( many talents, that like many players, he suffers from MAS: mandolin acqui- including those as a poet, a teacher, and a sition syndrome. translator and scholar of medieval Persian The first instrument Margo ever picked up, back in the third literature, is the ability to time three minutes grade, was a guitar. He stuck with it, playing jazz guitar as an in his head accurately within a nanosecond. undergraduate at the University of Michigan and then as a Call it a gift or a curse, this is what happens Harvard grad student. when a man gets hooked on boxing. A decade ago, while teaching at the University of Pennsyl- Since he was in graduate school at BU, vania, he began studying classical guitar. He later moved to Tabatabai (CAS’88, GRS’94,’15, UNI’00), a Nashville, “guitar heaven,” to College of Arts & Sciences department of teach at Vanderbilt University. modern languages and comparative literature Margo jokes There he picked up the mando- lecturer in Persian and a humanities instruc- lin, a natural choice in a city tor in the Core Curriculum, has thrown him- that like where bluegrass reigns. The self into sparring, coaching, and recently, many players, instrument also appealed to the refereeing. Although these days his time in he suffers history buff in him. “In the early from MAS: 20th century,” he says, “it was the most popular instrument mandolin in the United States by far.” acquisition Margo stumbled upon a syndrome. community of mandolin players in Nashville (he once played with Chet Atkins), and found a second community when he arrived at BU in 2005. Part of the University’s appeal for him was Mugar Memorial Library’s extensive music collection, which he says rivals Harvard’s. It doesn’t hurt either that the city hosts the biennial Boston Early Music Festival. Every week Margo treks to Providence to practice with the orchestra, which gives at least four major annual concerts, and he performs regularly with the Boston Classical Guitar Society. He also plays occasional duets around Boston with classical singer Wendy Silverberg, a Cambridge elementary school music teacher, whom he met at a “band camp for grown-ups.” When Margo is not playing music, he’s arranging it. He has Sassan Tabatabai’s poetry has been transformed works from the Beatles, Steely Dan, and Crosby, described as works Stills & Nash into scores for the PMO. When audience mem- of “delicate mourning, bers hear “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in a concert exile, and love.” hall, they look confused. “Then,” he says, “they realize, oh my god, they’re playing this on a mandolin.” Wait until they hear Radiohead, the next group whose music he’d like to arrange for early music instruments. Margo says he has never strummed his mandolin or lute for his students. He has, however, included an extra-credit question about early music on his exams. “Normally,” he says, “no one gets it right.”

!" BOSTONIA Summer 2012 PHOTOGRAPH!BY!MELODY!KOMYEROV

224-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd4-29_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 2828 66/6/12/6/12 11:11:11 PPMM the ring is devoted mainly to coach- “delicate mourning, exile, and love”— out space pulsing with hip-hop music ing, as a fighter he was dubbed “the “sensuous, rueful, and clear.” and the din of men and women panting Professor.” He was pummeled, as he For much of the past year, Tabata- and grunting as they spar, jump puts it, in his first fight, and later found bai, poetry editor of the Republic of rope, or battle a punching bag, taking out why: “I saw my opponent from that Letters, a literary journal cofounded by alternate left and right hooks at spitfire night in a boxing magazine ranked as Saul Bellow (Hon.’04), has been deep speed. His T-shirt growing increasingly a top 10 professional fighter in all of into the painstaking, often emotional damp as he goes through his warm-up New England,” says Tabatabai, who work of translating the memoirs of moves, from footwork to picked himself up and went on to win his grandfather, Assadollah Tayefeh shadowboxing, 45-year- WEB EXTRA his second and third fights. He stopped Mohajer, who served in the Iranian old Tabatabai explains Watch a video of the two sides of competing altogether after the death army until the Islamic Revolution of breathlessly that he’s Sassan Tabatabai, from cancer of his first trainer and 1979. Coaxing a narrative out of 300 or slowing down—age, work, working out at mentor, Mikhael Grigoryan, who had so pages of Persian script handwritten and life intrude. “Now the Ring and been the boxing coach of the Olympic on paper from legal pads to Post-it that I’m older it takes teaching in the classroom, at team in the former Soviet Union. notes, Tabatabai gathered the material longer to loosen up the bu.edu/bostonia. A licensed coach with the U.S. Ama- as the foundation for his editorial legs,” he says. “I used to teur Boxing Federation, Tabatabai was studies thesis at BU’s Editorial work out three days a week, but now drawn to boxing because it offers a Institute for what will be his second I get here whenever I can.” workout that’s never boring. doctorate; he has degrees in political Boxing is many things to Tabatabai, Born in Tehran, Iran, Tabatabai has science, international relations, and but it has never been about venting lived in the United States since 1980. Persian literature and history. Boxing anger. “You learn what kind of person He is the author of Father of Persian and coaching are liberating antidotes you are,” he says. “It’s just physical Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry. Fellow to this exacting pursuit, he says. capability against physical capability.” poet Rosanna Warren, BU’s Emma Tabatabai works out and coaches And although he is generally an Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor at the Ring, a boxing club on Common- upbeat person, boxing has something of the Humanities and a CAS profes- wealth Avenue, next door to the Para- else going for it. It makes him happy. sor of English and romance studies, dise Rock Club. It is a congenial place, “Nothing fixes my mood like time in has described his verse as works of a cheerful expanse of rings and work- the ring.” p

Summer 2012 BOSTONIA !"

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