I go to Rome for a few days. Everything is open, green, with parks and flowers, speeding vespas, cars, people crowding the streets, tourists sticking out a little, but not taking over the whole place as in Venice. There's lots to do. Loads of operas and dance performances, films, museums, naturally.

But it's also noisy, chaotic, trafficky.

When I get back to Venice, it feels like a poor relation. Tourists swarm everywhere. In the quiet neighborhood where I'm staying old people walk slowly down the narrow streets. I feel trapped, enclosed in old brick and peeling walls.

But then a calm feeling overcomes me. The sound of church bells hangs in the air, as nowhere else. Perhaps it's the close proximity of everything. And the sea all around. And when I return to my room, someone is practicing the piano. The lovely, lyric music floats in my window, without competition from horns and sirens. OK. There are the occasional loud voices in the street. And sometimes people blare rock music. But otherwise, all is still. I've slipped back once again.

There are a few things to do and see here. An international festival of contemporary dance is being held in various theatres throughout the city, part of the Biennale. I attend some performances at two theatres at the Arsenale, where the Republic of Venice used to build their ships and galleys. I love entering the long passageway to the Arsenale, knowing that the building has stood there for hundreds of years and thinking of all the men and women who have walked the way I'm walking now. But while they were going to labor all day, I'm going to a modern dance performance. The theatre is little used in the winter. But it's a lovely, huge space, with wonderful arches and seeing the dancers here makes for a feeling of continuity that I love.

My favorite company is American Alonso King's LINES Ballet. He's a classically trained dancer, a former member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Many of his works form par to the repertory of companies all over the world. The dancers are strong, powerful, sinuous. He uses a variety of music, from baroque to Indian tablas. His multicultural, multistylistic choreography is some of the best I've ever seen. The performance is thrilling and everyone stands at the end, applauding like crazy.  For more on Alonzo Kind, go to www.linesballet.org.