XL WEEKEND REVIEWS

Spank Rock, 'Los Grandes de la Musica Tejano,' Old Settler's Music Festival, 'Dialogues of the Carmelites,' 'Swingin' Then and Now,' 'The Summer People'

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Dance music

SPANK ROCK WHIPS CROWD INTO HIP-HOP FRENZY

Bouncing from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York City, Spank Rock's pedigree reads like a Who's Who of hot club culture. The buzz built following their debut single, "Put That (Expletive) On Me," released on Money Studies, the so-hip-it-barely-exists in-house label of Manhattan record shop and DJ mecca Turntable Lab.

Spank Rock's profile rose further as Diplo -- founder of Hollertronix, the Philly juggernaut responsible for breaking M.I.A. -- began integrating Spank Rock's spastic booty rap into his coveted set list. Finally, a barrage of performances at South by Southwest cemented the group's status as consummate entertainers, gifted in the art of goofy, graphic rhymes and hip-shaking beats, just in time for the release of their debut album, "YoYoYoYo," on London future-hop label Big Dada.

Given the hype, one begins to understand the heroic Sunday night turnout at Emo's, as well as the utter indifference afforded the opener, local DJ and Waterloo employee Prince Klassen. The crowd lingered outside and at the bar, looking ahead, while Klassen manned the decks by his lonesome. Mixing old school rap, obscure remixes of current hits, and a few crowd-pandering oddball choices ("Sweet Child O' Mine" for one), Klassen didn't receive the acclaim he deserved for his fluid set and artful beat-matching.

The crowd poured in as soon as Spank Rock's three-headed production monster invaded the stage. With Armani XXXchange manning the real-time computer drums, DJ Chris Rockswell flipping the vinyl and Ronnie Darko flicking the cuts, the trio dished out a blistering warm-up set of raw beats inspired in equal measure by Baltimore house, Detroit techno, UK grime and dub-step and crunk. But their brief set merely whetted the audience's appetite for MC Naeem, the charismatic face of the group.

As soon as Naeem -- a potent mix of geek and sex appeal stuffed into a lanky body and oversized glasses -- stepped up, the mood shifted. The lights dimmed, the beats grew heavier, the air more humid, and stiff bodies began to sway. Under the influence of Naeem's infectious energy, a tentative dance scene broke out among the usually staid hip kids, growing larger and rowdier as Naeem's spat his rapid-fire rhymes. Every song seemed an instant classic, evoking manic grins and hoarse sing-alongs from the crowd. Eventually the dancers flooded the stage, forcing Naeem into a corner, where he sat, content, having brought a little slice of the Baltimore club to the indie rock set.

--Bryan Berge

Tejano

TEJANO FINDS AUDIENCE AT GRAND CONCERT

Who could have foretold that the most controversial music in Austin circa 2006 would be Tejano?

The beef goes something like this: The absence of a full-time Tejano station in Austin became a sore point for Tejanos — musicians and citizens alike — convinced radio corporations were catering to newly arrived Mexican immigrants at the expense of longtime Mexican Americans. The corporations, on the other hand, claim a full-time Tejano station can't sustain the ratings. Out-going State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, threw himself into the fight, holding press conferences and printing up "Don't Mess With Tejano Music" bumper stickers.

All of this was clearly on the minds of Tejano fans at "Los Grandes de la Musica Tejana" Saturday at Bass Concert Hall. Celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Texas, this concert was the first time (somewhat shockingly, frankly) that Tejano had been heard in the hall.

Dance music is always a little odd at Bass, and this show was no different. While dancehall veterans such as Ruben Ramos, Sunny Ozuna and Little Joe Hernandez on the concert stage are certainly worth celebrating as the legends they are, anything populist at Bass suddenly takes on the air of a museum piece, which might not be the image Tejano radio advocates want to project.

The show was also something of a victory lap for Barrientos, who is not seeking re-election. He was thanked from the stage several times, himself read a proclamation and draped the three legends in Texas flags. (Hernandez, knowing an opportunity to rock a cape when he's given one, immediately howled a James Brownian "Please, please, please!" into the mike.)

Sunny Ozuna, backed up by Ramos' Mexican Revolution, came out in a shiny, neo-zoot suit, perhaps appropriate for a good-natured dude who cracked jokes between tunes and threw in a cover of "Just A Gigolo" before playing his '60s hit, "Talk to Me." ("The year was 1963. Life was simpler.")

Little Joe y La Familia followed, and Joe Hernandez projects a slicker, most sophisticated image, a little more supper club and a little more Vegas. He opened with "America the Beautiful" (Is this a song we now have to stand for?) and closed with "My Way." The twangy, almost Santo-and-Johnnyish guitar solos echoed in the hall.

The headliner, of course, was Ramos, perhaps the most compulsively dignified man in Austin. The Revolution, with their tight swing and trademark organ, played a sharp set, while Ramos paid tribute to Tejano pioneers who are no longer with us, such as Isidro Lopez.

It was a night for legends in a hall that hosts them. But can Austin's Tejano listeners convince the radio industry that this is a music for now as well as then?

—Joe Gross

Folk/Americana

LLOYD MAINES AND THE NEW SETTLER'S

A night full of downpours and lightning Thursday announced the start of this year's Old Settler's Music Festival for campers, but by the time the crowds arrived with their lawn chairs for the weekend's performances, big blue skies had been sent by the folk gods.

The pavilion grounds across Onion Creek from Salt Lick filled quickly Friday evening with the happy sounds of youth — beginning with 14-year-old Sarah Jarosz, a veteran of the fest since she was still in elementary school in Wimberley, and Green Mountain Grass, new Austinites who've imported their barefoot (OK) and shirtless (not OK) bluegrass from Illinois and Vermont. Jarosz possesses a stage presence beyond her years and her songwriting dug deep on "Broussard's Lament" with a Katrina victim's refrain: "They told us Friday they would come. . . .They told us Saturday they would come. . . ."

Uncle Earl was in Texas for the second time in a few weeks to discover a whole other place after South by Southwest. "No one is walking the streets swallowing fire," Kristen Andreassen said as she surveyed the grass and oaks. The five women who compose Uncle Earl showed their anti-couples and threesomes wit when singing of "thinking in terms of one" and kicked off the ballad "Willie Taylor" by noting, "It's our time in the set to kill a man."

What makes Old Settler's work is that few acts take themselves too seriously. Sure there are Civil War tunes, gospel numbers and banjo (less than you might think) and mandolin instrumentals, but irreverent, fun songs reign. There's even swing and jazz, evidenced by the Waybacks, Californians making good use of freshman member Warren Hood, an Austinite whose boys'-choir voice is still catching up to his fiddle-playing maturity. Lloyd Maines, whose stamp was all over the festival, produced the Waybacks' newest CD.

While bigger, traditional names such as the Del McCoury Band and Peter Rowan swelled the crowds, no one was as versatile and at the top of their game as Eddie From Ohio. This band from boring ol' Virginia is anything but when Julie Murphy Wells belts out blues, gospel, whatever. Her pipes play well against the softer vocals of Michael Clem and the lows of Robbie Schaefer. From clever scoffing at loving couples to a Western sendup of dudes who like quiche Lorraine, Eddie From Ohio had everyone grinning. And the band even has Maines producing now. He's from Austin, of course, and his pedal steel helped Terri Hendrix liven up the smaller creekside stage at the same time Eddie made the big stage its own Saturday night.

— Ed Crowell

Opera

'DIALOGUES' DOESN'T TRY TO OVERDO

The simplest way to explain the immaculate conception of the University of Texas Butler Opera Center's production of "Dialogues of the Carmelites": It didn't get in the way.

This phrase is used most often to condemn with faint praise. In the case of Francis Poulenc's generally understated treatment of the play by Georges Bernanos, it indicates that the artistic leaders understood the restrained — not repressed — quality of its emotions. Set shortly before and during the French Revolution, the opera portrays, with little fictionalization, how an order of Carmelite nuns came to be executed en masse by guillotine during the Reign of Terror. The central character is Blanche de la Force, from a wealthy family, passionately religious and terrified of death. The powerful culmination comes in the last scene as the nuns meet their fate (just offstage), with Blanche calm and courageous.

This production's artistic center of gravity was conductor Garrett Keast, demonstrating Friday evening how a conductor's strong technique and right artistic sense draws the constituent efforts into focus, making the best use of what is right and minimizing what is not. He got artistically superb, if not flawless, playing from the orchestra.

The staging — gliding, modular, slatted sets by Christopher McCollum, stabbing lights by Kathryn Eader and discreet direction by Robert DeSimone — hit its target in the scenes in the convent: a look of bare wood and colorless light with few gestures or motions.

The best matches of role and singer were Keely Rhodes as Mother Marie, stern yet kind, and high soprano Lu Tang as the chronically happy Sister Constance. Faculty member Rose Taylor brought her touch of class to the old, stricken prioress; the new prioress of Holly Schwartz sounded too jolly. Benjamin Bear's three characters were undifferentiated, though well sung. Bear and Lu Tang deserve special praise for their communicative English diction.

("Dialogues of the Carmelites" continues 8 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m. Sunday. McCullough Theatre, Performing Arts Center, University of Texas, 24th Street and Robert Dedman Drive. $10-$17. 477-6060, www.utpac.org.)

— David Mead

Dance

TAPESTRY PLAYS WITH GENRES

The remount of Tapestry Dance's successful 1997 concert, "Swingin' Then and Now," returned Friday and Saturday to the Paramount Theatres. It deserves yet another staging. At least.

It's modern dance for the rest of us. I enjoy dance in plays and musicals, am constantly amazed at the physical precision and control involved in both ballet and breaking, and I'm a permanent sucker for tap and swing. But I'm still not a dance person per se.

I shared this only because "Swingin' " seems designed for viewers like me. It's choreographed like a well-written essay, or a perfectly designed museum exhibit, easing the viewer in with recognizable, fun tropes before building to something new and exciting.

The first half begins with basic swing, depicting a progressively drunk night on the town. The dancers maintain a fine balance, constantly leaning one step away from a prat fall before pulling it into a graceful slide. Matt Shields, in particular, brought an accessible humor to the first act, slipping, tapping and chair-stomping through Jimmy Liggins' "I Ain't Drunk."

However, the real genius is in the second act, riffing on the possibilities of swing, fusing it with ballet, hip-hop and modern dance in the process. This is what people think of when they think modern dance — leotards and all. But the first act sets up a visual vocabulary to comfortably understand the second.

In between the more expressive, fluid modern sections, Acia Gray, choreographer and co-founder of Tapestry, still danced like a freewheeling tap goddess, the only loose movement in front of a backdrop of dancers who looked like nothing more than machines from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times."

The visual is a combination of old and new, relaxed fun and emotional interpretation — a condensation of the production into a fantastic three minutes. Why stick with one world when you can have the best of both?

— Joey Seiler

Drama

'SUMMER PEOPLE' STILL TRANSLATES

Between 1901 and 1902, Maxim Gorky wrote what's perhaps his most famous naturalistic work, "The Lower Depths," an exploration of life at the gritty bottom of Russian society. A few years later, Gorky resharpened his pen on the Russian intelligentsia, a class of educated people only one generation removed from the peasants depicted in "Depths." The resulting play, "The Summer People," currently can be seen in a clean, competent revival at the University of Texas.

Gorky's "People" are gainfully employed men who, along with their wives and children, escape harsh urban summers by traveling to seasonal homes known as dachas. The play unfolds around Varvara Nikhailovna, a physician's bright and headstrong wife, whose outrage toward her disengaged, philosophizing peers builds to an eventual explosion.

"People," more than 100 years after it was written, makes disquietingly relevant statements about class clashes in modern America. Questions of ownership and entitlement continue to permeate popular art forms. On last Sunday's "Sopranos," for example, Christopher Moltisanti punched Lauren Bacall in the face when he stole her $30,000 awards show gift bag — a veritable double-slap at overprivileged celebrities who live pampered lives, sequestered from reality.

For her production, director Johanna McKeon channeled a similar tone. The stark, woodsy set contrasted the intelligentsia's antiseptic costumes, which revealed an array of beiges. The student performers did a uniformly fine job, even if their styles came from different eras. As Varvara, Robbie Ann Darby (who has presence with a capital P) nestled into her character's dual anger — first at herself, then at her social group. From that group, actors Dorcas Sowunmi (the gossipy Olga), Anastasia Coon (the sympathetic Marya) and Blake DeLong (the moral Vlas) seemed to be the most comfortable embodying period characters in a decidedly modern translation.

("The Summer People" continues 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday through April 30. The University of Texas B. Iden Payne Theatre, 471-5793, www.utexas.edu/cofa/theatre.)

— Tommy O'Malley