Their Chéri

I've mentioned before that my favorite pieces of theater incorporate choreography in the staging; two examples from Round House Theatre in past seasons were Around the World in 80 Days and (astonishingly) Lord of the Flies.

So the theater-as-dance model was turned on its head in Martha Clarke's brilliant Chéri staged at the Kennedy Center, giving audiences the opportunity to see brilliant artists from dance (Alessandra Ferri and Herman Cornejo) demonstrate their acting abilities. Normally at the ballet, acting extends only a millimeter or two beyond the pantomimes of silent films, with a stock of simple gestures and expressions to convey. But Ferri and Cornejo took their characters' emotional journey through a narrative of real and tactile emotions, spinning out the repeated gestures of passion from playful to bitter, through anguish and shame.

Alessandra Ferri as Lea, Herman Cornejo as Cheri. Unidentified photographer, via Kennedy Center

Rounding out the theatrical side of the production was the exquisite Amy Irving as the mother of young lover Cheri and friend of the aging femme Lea. Irving's star quality has never been so sparkling, yet there was no question of her stealing the stage from Ferri and Cornejo, who brought the dreamlike musical selections (Ravel, Debussy, Mompou, Poulenc, et al.), performed by Sarah Rothenberg on solo piano, to full-fleshed life.

Though she didn't dance, Irving moved eloquently and elegantly through the narrative to create an emotional pas de tois, creating tension between two loves: maternal and carnal. Irving was perfectly cast as the controlled and controlling matron, witty, wise, and tragic.

With such an unusual form of theatrical experience, mixing drama, ballet, and concert, the audience may feel a little uncertain about when to clap and when not to. After a brilliant piece of dancing in, say, Don Quixote, you know you're allowed to offer some thunderous appreciation. But this production was more of a chamber piece, and the presence of Rothenberg on stage served as a reminder to treat the production as one would a concert. The moments between movements were for breath catching, and the spell was unbroken for 65 minutes.

love, hosaa
mesmerized

Clowning Around with Shakespeare

I can't take credit for "discovering" the Synetic Theater - it's been recommended to me, repeatedly, by my Shakespeare Explorer friends. Still, it's a great pleasure to discover a new troupe, a new venue, and a new way of looking at Shakespeare.

The current production of Twelfth Night is virtually wordless, as that is Synetic's approach to making theater: extracting from text the language of gesture. It's dance, it's mime, it's slapstick, and everybody's a clown.

All images lovingly borrowed from Synetic Theater's Web site.

How to stage a storm at sea and subsequent shipwreck.

So this begs the question, What would Shakespeare think? The Bard, it seems, has been abandoned. Where is the poetry? Where is the word play? Where is that lilt of language that sings stories to fill our hearts and expand our minds?

Here's where someone should throw a pie in my face. Artists don't just create art. They inspire it.

Any theater company that values dance will have my heart, and Synetic used every theatrically useful physical trick in the book to tell the story of the brother and sister separated at sea and thrown separately onto an alien shore. The gender-bending farce (girl dressed as boy meets boy in love with another girl and must woo her on his behalf... Ack, I'm confused) cannot be more ridiculous. And the loss and ultimate recovery of the brother and sister cannot be more heart-swelling.

But all in a tale told by clowns! Even the darling heroine Viola (choreographed and performed by Irina Tsikurishvili) transformed herself into the ultimate clown of modern times, Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp. She could not have been more adorable!

Kathy Gordon as Olivia (l), Irina Tsikurishvili as Viola

Philip Fletcher as Orsino, with Irina Tsikurishvili

Twelfth Night poster art, Synetic Theater

So, since my point is that the words don't make the play, I leave off with a strong recommendation for this production and the company's own video trailer.

Love, hosaa
gesturing mad approval

Mark Morris and the Joy of Dance

I'm going to be lazy like a true blogger and just "ditto" WaPo dance writer Sarah Kaufman's heartfelt and eloquent review of the Mark Morris Dance Company's recent run at the Kennedy Center.

link: Under Mark Morris, Handel oratorio becomes a visual feast

She writes:

Agreed: Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

The chorus sings these words at the exultant finish of Mark Morris’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” which transforms the Handel oratorio into a visual feast with the happiest dancing you could hope to see. And as you watch the dancers join hands and circle the Kennedy Center Opera House stage, the whole cast whirling in a spin-cycle of physical joy, living by that sentiment feels entirely possible.

Was it raining yesterday? Hardly noticed. “L’Allegro” was still turning in my mind.

Here is the official Mark Morris featurette about the production:

My own response to the production last Thursday night was not as learned as Kaufman's; I just knew that I'd wanted to see a Mark Morris production for the longest time and was very happy that one finally came to the Kennedy Center (a bit more accessible to me on a weeknight than the venue at George Mason out in Virginia).

My first exposure to Morris was his gender-bending take on that old chestnut Nutcracker, The Hard Nut. Male snowflakes? Yikes! But what fun.

And "L'Allegro" had equal numbers of boys and girls, and equal opportunity pairings (and trio-ings) that ensured that joy was accessible to all.

As an audience member, I will say that I enjoyed the second half a bit more than the first half, simply because the group in the front row of the balcony with two very fidgety young girls did not return after intermission.

During intermission I also chatted amiably with the two men next to me who, like me, were very anxious to see the Mark Morris work. We all agreed that the Rothko-esque set design was very effective in framing the planes of the scenes of the dance. And personally, I think the world would be a better place if everybody dressed like dancers.

I know that in such a gifted ensemble it may not be fair to single any one dancer out, but my favorite boy was the guy in blue who had one of the bird solos. Just loved him, and my eye then went to him in every group. Going by the pictures in the program, I'll guess this was Dallas McMurray (if I got the casting wrong, please forgive my distance in the second tier and my notoriously unreliable facial recognition capabilities).

The final scene, as Kaufman describes:

Then: Brightness. Order springs from disorder, and it’s wonderfully simple. A chain of hands, dancers wheeling in circles within circles. They lean into the music, and fast as they’re spinning, you can’t miss the delight on their faces. It’s sweet surrender. And victory for all.

... brought the entire house to its feet for one of the longest sustained standing ovations I've experienced at the Kennedy Center, and particularly energetic for a Thursday night. A happy time was had by all!

Dancing as Fast as I Can

This is a bit of a catch-up post. Got to see the So You Think You Can Dance Tour come through Baltimore on October 5, along with a couple of friends. Photos follow. (I did take video, but the spotlight ghosted out the dancers quite a bit; my camera isn't sophisticated enough to resolve complicated lighting issues on the fly - nor am I.)

Full cast as appearing in the last photo (left to right): Courtney Galiano, Ade Obayomi, Ashley Galvan, Kent Boyd, Kathryn McCormick, Adechike Torbert, Lauren Froderman, Russell Ferguson, Robert Roldan, Billy Boyd, Allison Holker, Jose Ruiz. Photos by C. G. Wagner

The show was loud and exciting, short on traditional ballroom, long on hip-hop and contemporary. The crowd favorites were clearly Lauren and Kent, the most recent season's number one and number two "favorite dancers." I kept my eye on adorable Robert and incredibly gifted Allison, whom I've now seen perform live three times. (See "Ooo That Kiss," below.)

My friends had treated me to dinner before the show, and it would have been thoroughly delightful if we hadn't had to go through the ritual of dissatisfaction - we were seated in the bar rather than the upstairs dining area; the garlic-free menu was limited (girlfriend's severe allergy is a handicap in happy dining); the service was slow, though to my mind quite friendly; the portion for the dish gf's hubby ordered was ridiculously small for the price, whereas mine was ridiculously large. In short, my hosts were aggravated, but I was delighted.

Then there was the issue with not knowing how to do the pay-on-your-way-out parking machines. It would help if the driver would (a) remember where he parked and (b) read the instructions.

Those were their problems, I figure. I can usually drown their bickering out. But the bummer for me was, again, listening to gf try to itemize the gay versus the non-gay dancers. What was the bloody point? Even gf's hubby couldn't get her to see why it was so offensive to bring up the dancers' sexuality. GF keeps saying she doesn't have anything against gay people, but she keeps bringing it up!

I finally called her a bigot. Not a nice thing to do in the back seat of someone else's car, but I couldn't help it. We didn't continue the conversation, except in my own mind, which is where I silently lecture the world... (until I blog about it, that is!) The next time this happens, I will just ask her to repeat the exact same conversation, but instead of saying "gay," substitute the word "Jew." She might get it then.

For the next couple of days I stewed a bit, then felt bad that I called her a bigot. It wasn't nice. Anyway, we got together just two days later for another concert at Strathmore, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's tribute to dance, where we were joined by another couple.

This time we just focused on the show, which was a little lighter on the actual dancing than we expected - only six of the 16 numbers were accompanied by dancers, ranging from classical ballet to a couple of performances by the Lombard Twins, Facunda and Martin, amazing tango-tappers dancing to Astor Piazzolla. (A total of three Piazzolla pieces were on the program, compared with two Tchaikovsky pieces; the other composers covered included Dietz and Schwartz, Khachaturian, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Ronan Hardiman).

This afternoon gf and I went together to see "Sabrina Fair" at Ford's Theatre, which has already received a rave review from WaPo, so I won't be redundant. The nontraditional casting (an African American Sabrina) was the twist to this production, and gf questioned whether it would work. I believe she accepted it but felt it ought to have been addressed in the script somehow. Apparently, even the playwright had suggested addressing the race issue if directors chose to cast the show this way, but it didn't happen.

The result of that ignoring the elephant in the room, to me, made the story more focused on the essential issue of class distinction (and incidentally whether money can buy your way into an elevation of class). I think a lot of other things could have been done with nontraditional casting, including making the Larrabees African American and the Fairchilds white. Or make the Larrabee brothers sisters instead, and the chauffeur's daughter a son.

Or you could even go nontraditional in the gender casting too. But it was set in the 1950s, when such a love story was even more unthinkable than cross-racial pairings.

The first comment gf had was that she thought one of the Larrabee characters was miscast. I won't say which one. She just said she thought he was too obviously gay.

Sigh. At least she stifled herself before the second act and didn't bring it up again afterwards.

Social progress still has a long way to go, ya'll.

The show ended with a glorious dance to Nat King Cole singing "LOVE," and you couldn't pry the grin off my face! What joy!

love, hosaa
dancing in my heart

Sunday and the 70s O's

A lovely morning to spend procrastinating with the newspaper. I'll get to taxes this afternoon.

First, there was an excellent article in the Washington Post on the impacts of the recession and other budget cuts on modern dance choreography by their staff dance writer, Sarah Kaufman: "Assessing the Future of Modern Dance" (in connection with which I will simply point out how great it is that the Post still has a resident dance writer).

When society tightens its belt, the arts are often the first "luxury" item removed from from public budgets, the ripple effects can be wide-reaching and long-lasting. But Ms. Kaufman does a better job of outlining these effects. Go read.

There was also a piece by columnist Hank Stuever on the comeback of music videos as media for promoting music: "The Vids Are Right." I will confess, however, that this is an art form that only interests me insofar as the next Clay Aiken CD, "Tried and True," which will be released June 1.

But the story that caught my eye and broke my heart was the obituary for legendary Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mike Cuellar. As I learned from the obit, the southpaw Cuellar, he of the unbelievably torqued windup for his crazy screwball pitches, was the first Latino to win the Cy Young Award, sharing the honor in 1969 with Detroit legend Denny McLain. Cuellar was one of the four titans of Orioles pitching in the '70s, along with Dave McNally, Pat Dobson, and that lanky blue-eyed dreamboat, Jim Palmer.

One of the inconsolably unforgivable things my mother did was toss out my Orioles memorabilia from that era (I'm thinking 1971-1973), among which was a small poster print of the Norman Rockwell painting of Brooks Robinson signing autographs. I might have had that autographed, I'm not sure. I was about 14 at the time and a little unclear on this whole autographing business. I did get the signatures of several O's stars on pages of a simple unlined writing pad that my mom happened to have with her.

Imagine if you will a Sunday afternoon in the bright breezy summer, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The O's were on top (despite their '69 Series loss to the Miracle Mets - I was the only one in my class who was rooting for the heavily favored O's). After my dad had done his duty by explaining baseball to me while we watched the snowy black-and-white images on the TV in his bedroom, my mom carried on the daughterly indulgence by driving us over to Baltimore for our first game. It was to become one of my favorite mother-daughter traditions for a couple of summers.

There is no feeling like that of peering through the tunnel from the concourse of a cool, concrete, parking lot of a stadium and seeing your first glimpse of a bright green field and pure white pillows of base pads glowing in the high overhead beams of sunshine, and of hearing the cracks of bats during the batting practice and the heavy, musty "poofs" of balls caught in tough but softly seasoned leather gloves.

And then there were men. Men! Grown-up adult men who were not fathers, uncles, teachers, preachers, or even (blech) big brothers. Baseball players in bright white uniforms, stretching their masculinity out for all God's glory. Ah, to the adolescent female heart it was all so perfect and splendidly tempting.

We got great seats at the box office - about a dozen rows up behind the third-base dugout and the home team of shining knights. We saw that several players were leaning up over the dugout and taking items from the fans to sign. So Mom dug around in her purse and retrieved the writing pad and gave it to me with a ball-point pen. I raced down to the MEN!

And somehow I was surprised that they paid attention to me. Mom later said she wasn't surprised a bit, as she watched pitcher Dobson, in particular, hone in on the willowy blonde youth heading down the aisle toward the dugout. Hee!

I remember collecting the autographs of good-hearted first baseman Boog Powell and the mischievously gleaming-eyed hurler Dobson. The one I remembered most was the wiry, quiet shortstop, Mark Belanger, who, as I reported to my mother, had beautiful long black eyelashes.

Ah, Belanger, my first sports crush. Oh what it did to me to watch him warm up at the plate while the pitcher was deciding how to play him. Slim hips stretch to the left, stretch to the right, square off, swirl the bat, tighten the butt, then swing away. And I must say, the third base side offered a very good view of the right-handed hitters.

The afternoon was a good one for Palmer; he not only threw a great game, but also had a homerun. (This episode obviously predates the designated hitter era.) As much as my mom teased me about loving Belanger's hips and eyelashes, I knew Palmer's piercing blue eyes had an equal effect on her.

So I remember and pay tribute to Cuellar as a man among the Men of baseball, whose outings I recall mainly from the snowy black-and-white screen of my dad's put-together-from-parts TV, but also from the treasured senses of a few warm days in the fields of young girl's dreams.

love, hosaa,
daydreaming of the tight, impossibly torqued spine of a bedeviling left-handed screwballer

That Was It

I know I'm late to this, but I finally went to see "This Is It" last night. Just a few thoughts from a non-fan: I loved it.

The movie's tagline is "Discover the Man You Never Knew," and for someone like me, that was truly the case. I pretty much grew up with MJ music, but from the Jackson Five. I remember their cute cartoon show. By the time MJ went off on his own and reached superstardom with Thriller, I'd moved way far away from pop. (I didn't come back to pop at all until 2003, when a certain redhead said he could've been in the top one or two at least on American Idol). All I knew about MJ, really, came from the tabloids, and for me the "freak" factor (plastic surgeries, dangling babies over balconies) was a big turnoff.

With MJ's death, that "freak factor" evaporated, and the voices of those who truly knew the man and were inspired by his talent dominated the public consciousness. The enthusiasm of at least one friend alone was enough to make me rethink MJ. And the movie did the rest.

Of course with all I'd seen happening to Clay Aiken and the gossip-lies-hatred thrown at him over the last six years, I should already have known not to believe what I read/hear. I try to accept reality as it's presented to me, but I still need to ask questions.

As for This Is It - I am sure I enjoyed this "making of" view more than I would have the actual concert, simply because the big productions leave me too overwhelmed (that's the reason I HATE Phantom of the Opera, for instance). What I got to see was the work behind the art, the meticulous attention to detail, the deeply respectful collaborations, the humility and appreciation for other people's ideas. His vision was so absolute and powerful, he made others see it too.

In the end, MJ was an artist who had become the art.

The film itself, I found just enthralling, simply as a great musical. I would rate it with A Hard Day's Night (which, though scripted, was as close to a documentary of the Beatles' experience with music, fans, and production as you can get). I especially appreciated the full-body-view photography of the dance sequences - something I always look for in musicals. The editing was seamless and fluid. Just a wonderful, wonderfully made work. It's amazing they put it together so quickly.

One episode in the rehearsal process made me smile - when MJ and his backup singer were carrying on after "The Way You Make Me Feel," their playful trilling (musical one-up-manship) reminded me of Clay and his backup singer Quiana Parler during the 2007 summer tour, riffing after "I Want to Know What Love Is."

What a tragedy that, though Michael had complete control of his music and the concert experience, he did not have the same control over his own life. I wish this kind of film had been made years ago - maybe it would have countered a lot of that "freak factor" crap he had to deal with.

Love, hosaa
envisioning the man in his mirror

ETA, I have no idea when MJ started using one particular dance move, but its prevalence in this movie called to my mind the 1980 film Fame and the "Red Light" number by street dancer Gene Anthony Ray: