Archive for September, 2009
Lost in the lights
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Yayoi Kusama’s “You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies” is one of the most enduringly popular works in the contemporary collection at Phoenix Art Museum. The mixed-media installation from 2005 uses LED lights to make you feel engulfed by fireflies. (The photo above only barely suggests what it is like.)
Click here to hear PAM docent Clark Olson discuss the artist and the work. (Taken from a spring, 2009, segment of the radio show “Arts on the Town.”)
Serenade
Posted by: | Comments“Serenade” — music by Judith Lang Zaimont; visual art by Gary Zaimont.
Latest in the series, “Valley Artists on YouTube.”
Women in Opera: Same as real life (sort of)
Posted by: | CommentsTeresa Stratas does the Dance of the Seven Veils from Strauss’ Salome.
Arizona Opera docent Cynthia Rhys will lecture Wednesday night at Phoenix Art Museum on the subject of women in opera. I bet she’ll have plenty of fun with at least two of the ladies onstage this season at Arizona Opera: the consumptive Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme, and the title seductress of Strauss’ Salome. Mimi is the quintessential helpless victim, Salome the definition of sexual power. Mimi embraces love, only to see her life slip away. Salome, a little girl in a young woman’s body, lusts for something she cannot have, and instigates disaster. Heart-grabbing, scintillating stuff. The kind of thing that gives opera its reputation for ribaldry and tears.
But whatever will Rhys say about the women of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, which begins the season? Dorabella and Fiordiligi are neither tragic victims like Mimi nor amibitious strippers like Salome. They are the most ordinary women imaginable, just as their suitors Guglielmo and Ferrando are the most everyday of men. Perhaps this is because Cosi, the third and last of Mozart’s collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, addresses that most ordinary of all subjects: relationships. You don’t have to be consumptive or a vamp to find yourself involved with one man but tempted to become involved with another. It’s as common as a cold.
The earlier Mozart/da Ponte operas had focused on the role of pure sexuality in relationship (Don Giovanni) and on the social aspects of committed relationship, i.e., marriage (The Marriage of Figaro). Cosi is at the crux of the matter. Between sexual spark and death-do-us-part is an awful lot of decision-making, second guessing, wondering why, wondering why not, and just plain confusion. It’s all there in this amazing musical drama.
A program note I wrote for last year’s Arizona Opera production of Don Giovanni addresses further the ideas of sex/relationship/marriage in these operas. You can read it at my abandoned-yet-still-online personal blog.
The return of slapstick
Posted by: | CommentsFight choreographer David Barker describes his craft for “Comedy of Errors” cast.
In case you’ve seen Southwest Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and were thinking, “This would make a great musical,” it’s already been done. The story of two pairs of twins torn apart and the confusion that follows was too much to resist for the team of Rodgers and Hart. In 1938, they came up with an adaptation they called, “The Boys From Syracuse” Here’s a YouTube link to an audio-only of the show’s opening number, taken from a 1950s studio recording of the score.
Two more tidbits about Comedy of Errors: it has the fewest lines of any Shakespeare play (1,770) and is the only one that mentions America. Antipholus of Syracuse asks, “Where America, the Indies?
Sinfonia India at Phoenix Symphony
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Composer Carlos Chavez
Hot new conductor Alondra de la Parra will lead the Phoenix Symphony in concert today, Saturday and Sunday. As usual, the program consists of a major symphony in the second half (Dvorak’s Eighth) and a concerto in the first half (Prokofiev’s Second for piano). In the position usually reserved for an overture — the very beginning of the concert — is the Carlos Chavez Sinfonia India, a symphony in one movement. Such is the fate of that work generally, probably because it’s relatively short for a symphony (under 15 minutes) but also because it’s thought best by symphony management types to dispose of the less familiar music at the beginning and keep the audiences waiting eagerly for a big, well-known work after intermission.
I’ve never understood this; it seems backward to me. If I’ve already heard the Dvorak Symphony No. 8 10 or 15 times, and the Sinfonia India not at all, wouldn’t I find myself full of anticipation for the new piece? In any case, the Sinfonia India is one of the treasures of the early 20th century, and one of the two or three best-known symphonic works by a Mexican composer. Chavez (1899-1978) blended standard symphonic gestures with rhythms influenced by Native America to produce this unique score. You can hear a big chunk of it here on YouTube, with the Berlin Symphony conducted by the fantastic young Gustavo Dudamel.
ASU Gammage: Broadway powerhouse
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Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, executive director, ASU Gammage.
Putting together the season for ASU Gammage must be a little like browsing a candy store with nearly unlimited budget: You’d have to work hard to keep yourself from buying everything in the store in order to stick to your mission of selecting a handful of the best that’s available.
Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, ASU Gammage’s executive director, faces that sweet challenge every year, as she lines up the musicals and plays that make their way from Broadway to Apache Boulevard in Tempe. She’s been at it for 17 years, and in that time, ASU Gammage has become one of the flagships of national theater tours. When Billy Crystal brought his one-man show to Gammage, skipping over many other bigger cities, it was Jennings-Roggensack who made it happen. When the Tony award-winning Spring Awakening kicked off its tour there, she was instrumental.
In the past year, the former modern dancer-turned-theater executive saw 48 musicals and plays in New York, and from them she’ll choose fewer than ten to make up the 2010-11 season. Her goal, as always, will be to choose shows that speak to the communities served by ASU Gammage, and to balance the content and styles of those chosen to represent a cross-section of theatrical experience.
The current season, which begins this week with Legally Blonde, includes blockbuster musicals and relatively untried fare. After Legally Blonde comes a musical version of Little House on the Prairie; August: Osage County; Mary Poppins; Avenue Q; The 39 Steps and In the Heights. Encore productions of Phantom of the Opera, Annie and Jesus Christ Superstar are also featured.
How’s the season going so far?
“Legally Blonde is taking off like gangbusters,” Jennings-Roggensack says. “Our goal was $630,000 for the week, and it looks like we’ll exceed $700,000. Two things worked for us, One, people knew the film with Reese Witherspoon. Two, MTV, in partnership with the show, did a reality show called Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods.”
Jennings-Roggensack doesn’t stick to the tried-and-true when looking for possibilities to fill the Gammage stage. On a recent trip to New York, she slipped across the Hudson to New Jersey to check out a new show with the edgy concept of combining the life-story of Josephine Baker with the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.
The most unusual show for the current season, she says, is The 39 Steps, a stage take on the classic Alfred Hitchcock film.
“It’s four performers playing 150 roles,” she says.
Jennings-Roggensack didn’t arrive 17 years ago with the intent of turning Gammage into a Broadway powerhouse:
“I was a modern dancer, a downtown kid. What I did when I came here was to look around and see what fit and what didn’t. Broadway shows worked for our communities. The fortunate thing is, little did we know the country was going to go through an economic upheaval, and now we have the Broadway series to support our other work.”
Winners, all
Posted by: | CommentsFour finalists in acting, singing and dancing from this year’s Arizona Young Artists Competition at the Herberger Theatre. (Another in the series, “Valley Artists on YouTube.”)
Back to School: Late Night Catechism III
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Patti Hannon as Sister in Late Night Catechism III: ‘Til Death Do Us Part”
Sister is back and expecting you. Be prompt and dispose of all chewing gum before entering class.
You’ve been warned.
“Sister” is, of course, Patti Hannon, the actress who has for nearly 10 years parlayed her memories of Catholic school into the portrayal of a nun intent on teaching catechism in an, uh, unique fashion. Hannon’s semi-improvised, audience-interactive performances of playwright Maripat Donovan’s scripts — Late Night Catechism, Late Night Catechism II, and now Late Night Catechism III: ‘Til Death Do us Part – have been regular features at Scottsdale Center for the Arts (SCA) since the year 2000. But when SCA closed down for renovations in June, catechism classes shut down along with the center’s main facility.
Sister returned to her labors this past weekend, in side-by-side productions of the one-woman comedies Late Night Catechism (Friday nights) and Late Night Catechism III (Saturdays) in the intimate Stage 2 at SCA.
The time off was a good thing, Sister says.
“Every so often, Sister does need to take a retreat, and the locks need to be changed. A little bit of both. It was like a sabbatical, but without pay.”
The newest class in the Late Night Catechism catalogue, ‘Til Death Do Us Part, is already a hit with those who are married, those who wish to get married, and those who have been married.
“What your doing with your life is very important,” Sister intones as she explains the class’ premise. “Many people choose marriage, so Sister has come up with a sure-fire way of finding out a couple’s compatibility. With this class, you can find your man and go to heaven, too.”
A sample question from Sister’s Compatibility Test:
“Do you wish to A) Have pre-marital sex, or B) Go to heaven?”
(And don’t bother with smart answers like, “There’s a difference?” Sister’s fully automatic stinging response weapon is locked and loaded.)
If you haven’t yet attended the original Late Night Catechism, it’s suggested you go there first on a Friday and return for III on a Saturday. Sister calls Friday night “catch-up class”:
“Believe it or not, here are some people in the Phoenix metro area who haven’t yet attended Sister’s class. They’re slow learners, but I’m willing to take them in.”
After nearly a decade of performances at SCA, Hannon is so closely identified with Sister that the two seem to be interchangeable. But there really is a Patti Hannon whose theatrical skills go beyond the portrayal of a nun she bases on the actual nuns who taught her as a child. During the sabbatical, Hannon directed a short play at Space 55, the downtown Phoenix theater venue that specializes in new work. Watch for her future association there.
Not that Hannon minds the crazy success of the Late Night Catechism franchise. After all, it led to her becoming an Arizonan. She came here from Chicago, where she’d played Sister for four years.
“I expected to stay a week. I ended up making a home here.”
The face of photography
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A portrait by Dorthea Lange from 1935.
“We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.”
– Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt
Eisenstaedt’s observation seems especially true of photographic portraiture. The light may shift over a landscape, but the rocks below will remain cooperatively unchanged. A flower holds a pose very well. The human face, however, is never at rest. From nanosecond to nanosecond, a shift of the eye or the flare of a nostril will alter the look of a face immeasurably. While a painter can abstract a look from the thousands that flit by during a sitting, a photographer must choose a single moment in which to click the shutter.
Which makes the premise of the exhibition “Face to Face: 150 Years of Photographic Portraiture” at Phoenix Art Museum particularly compelling. How do different photographers make choices regarding their subjects? And what were the relationships between the sitters and such famous photographers as Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Yosuf Karsh and Richard Avedon? Rebecca Senf, Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography for Phoenix Art Museum, promises that “Face to Face” will provide some answers to these questions.
The exhibition, which opens Sept. 19, features 70 images, many of them from the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. For more information, go here.
Turning into the future
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Melissa Manchester accompanies dancers Kurt Froman and Yuki Ogasawara in the world premiere of RUBY AND THE DANCER, choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, as performed at last year’s gala for Career Transition For Dancers. (Photo by Richard Termine.)
Dancers have notoriously narrow focus. Musicians may dabble in something else – I know one who opened a successful restaurant while holding down a major orchestral position – and visual artists always seem to have time to learn back-up trades. But dancers? They’re in the studio at age 6, in a company by age 17 or 18, and without an idea of what to do when they’re 30 and the minor injuries start coming.
“Dancers retire as early as their mid-20s,” says Joanne DiVito, Los Angeles administrator for the non-profit, Career Transition For Dancers (CTFD). The organization was formed in 1985 to address this issue.
“We provide free counseling services to dancers who need to make a change, or plan for a future. Dancers generally don’t think about what happens after their careers,” DiVito says.
CTFD is funded by various foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and an annual gala that features stars of the dance world. This year’s gala will take place in New York Nov. 2.
The organization’s National Outreach Project meets with dancers nationwide and helps them evaluate their interests and skills in order to prepare for life, post-Terpsichore. The Project comes to Phoenix next month.
All dancers and former dancers are invited to arrive at 11 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, at the studios of Ballet Arizona, 3645 E. Indian School Rd., for a free, three-hour workshop on career transition possibilities. Age is not a factor, says DiVito: CTFD has helped retired dancers as old as 80-plus adapt to changes.
You need to RSVP to 323-549-6660, or to shaney@sag.org. The CTFD website is here, and a list of Valley dance events is here.
