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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > January
January 2010
No Grammy for Conspirare, but cheers at the ceremony
No Grammy this year for five-time nominated choir Austin Conspirare.
But we did hear audible cheers and hollers in the audience when Conspirare and artistic director Craig Hella Johnson were named. Johnson is at the awards with a contingent of family, friends and Conspirare supporters.
The Grammy’s pre-telecast show is being Web-cast live at www.grammys.com/live with Aretha Franklin hosting the classical awards.
Conspirare was nominated in the Best Classical Crossover Album for ‘A Company Of Voices: Conspirare In Concert,’ recorded live at the Long Center for the Performing Arts and released on the Harmonia Mundi label. It’s the fifth nomination for the non-profit organization.
The winner of the Best Classical Crossover Album was ‘Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs Of Joy And Peace’ (Sony).
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Review: Headlong Dance Theatre
It’s hard to have a dinner party when some guests insist on pretending to be horses. That’s not definitely the tension at the heart of Headlong Dance Theatre’s “More,” but it could be. The delightful dance, a collaboration between the Philadelphia dance company and choreographer Tere O’Connor at the Long Center Friday, exploits dance’s most interesting quality: the form’s poetic porousness. With the coupling of O’Connor’s high concept approach to choreography and Headlong’s wit, “More” offers the audience a chance to revel in the gaps between knowing.
Who knows what “More” is “about.” It doesn’t matter. Dancers neigh and paw like hyper horses. Furniture suggests a suburban parlor gathering. The pieces don’t necessarily add up, but they do seem to serve a larger structure. I did not know what was going on. But I was not lost.
Headlong and O’Connor approach everyday, mundane aspects of performance with precision. A brilliant blue vinyl couch, an Oriental rug and a microwave are among the items that create the work’s domestic atmosphere. Somehow when they’re moved into a giant junk pile and lit with a soft white light, the ordinary becomes beautiful, yet still haunted by functionality. Earlier when the furniture is still set up like a living room, dancers enter with several large trees. Once the dancers insert the trees into the existing set so that limbs and leaves cover huge swaths of the stage, the effect is beautiful. Then there’s the last Headlong touch: Nicole Canuso sits, her face now obscured by a limb, adding a witty wink to the lovely landscape.
Precision drives the dancers’ performances, too. Their partnering of flat affect with exact, unison series of tiny gestures produces a quirky juxtaposition that never grows tiring. What could be excessive repetition is fascinating. Dancer Devynn Emory has a special gift for pairing muted, but not vacant facial expression with total body engagement.
I’d describe how Emery’s final horse dance ended the show with another moment of beautiful humor, but then I’d rob future viewers of another moment of “More’s” pleasurable confusion.
The show continues tonight at 8 p.m. at the Long Center.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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For a third time, Conspirare heads to the Grammy Awards
For a third time, Austin-based choir Conspirare is headed to the Grammy Awards.
That’s a remarkable feat: Conspirare is the only Austin classical music group to ever be singled out so repeatedly by the industry. And to boot, Conspirare is a non-profit organization that only started year-round programming in 1999 and has a current annual budget in the $1.3 million range. Their artistic achievements are nothing short of outstanding.
Conspirare is nominated in the Best Classical Crossover Album for ‘A Company Of Voices: Conspirare In Concert,’ recorded live at the Long Center for the Performing Arts and released on the Harmonia Mundi label.
Last year, the choir, founded and directed by Craig Hella Johnson, netted two Grammy noms for, “Threshold of Night,” also released on Harmonia Mundia. The nominations were for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Choral Performance. “Threshold of Night” featured a song cycle by award-winning young British composer Tarik O’Regan.
And in 2006, Conspirare received two Grammy nominations for the CD “Requiem,” in the categories of Best Choral Performance and Best Engineered Album, Classical.
The classical music categories aren’t part of Sunday’s prime time telecast. But earlier in the afternoon, can follow the results and see a live stream of the ‘other Grammy’s’ here www.grammy.com.
We’ll also be posting the results in this blog and its accompanying Twitter handle, artsinaustin.
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Weekend Arts Pix
fFRIDAY
‘Imagining Mexico: Expressions in Popular Culture.’
The Mexican flag, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the Mexican Revolution — all regular symbols found in Mexican and popular art. Pulled from public and private collections, a new exhibit assembles an array of art that celebrates Mexico. Reception: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday. Exhibit continues through April 18. Mexic-Arte Museum, 419 Congress Ave. $10. www.mexic-artemuseum.org
Miro Quartet
UT’s string quartet in residence celebrates this year’s Samuel Barber centenary by playing the entire String Quartet, Op. 11 from which Barber’s greatest hit comes — the mesmerizing and oft-played Adagio. Also on the program are Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Octet and Schubert’s String Quartet in G. 7:30 p.m. Bates Hall, Music Building, UT campus. $10-$20. www.music.utexas.edu
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
Headlong Dance Theater’s ‘More.’
Philadelphia-based company brings its 80-minute fiendishly intense dancework that imagines human movement after our bodies have gone away. In a constantly morphing landscape, an all-American house is built, dismantled and built up again while Doris Day songs play. 8 p.m. Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. and Saturday. Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $14-$18. www.danceumbrella.org.
SATURDAY
‘60 Second Southern Video Festival.’
From the Nashville-based artist collective Fugitive Project comes a collection of one-minute art videos by artists from around the globe. 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday with the 90-minute screening starting at 8 p.m. Co-Lab New Media Project Space, 613 Allen St. Free. www.colabspace.org
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Anybody want some prime gallery space?
After nine years of presenting exhibits in the East Austin arts warehouse known as Flatbed, UT’s Creative Research Laboratory will be moving out in June this year as UT’s art department gets ready to open its new Visual Arts Center next fall.
The VAC will occupy 22,000-square-feet of space left behind in the Art Building when the Blanton Museum of Art got its new building across campus. A new venture for UT’s art department, the VAC will be home to changing exhibits of student and faculty work as well the work of visiting artists. It will also include some badly-needed graduate art student studios as well asa new home for the Mesoamerica Center.
The VAC is hosting an open house this Friday with tours from 6 to 8 p.m. You’ll need to RSVP to the free event. Click here for more info.
In the meantime, Flatbed is looking for a new tenant for the 4,000-square-feet of gallery space CRL is leaving behind. Any takers? It would be great to see an adventurous contemporary art effort take over.
On E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Flatbed was one of the earlier pioneers to stake out an arts destination in East Austin.
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Review: Austin Chamber Music Center
Concerts by Austin Chamber Music Center never fail to impress. And Saturday night’s program at the First Unitarian Church once again proved that ACMC is one of Austin’s most notable music groups.
Part of what makes ACMC’s programs so appealing is their, well, appealing-ness. There’s none of the classical music exclusivity to the tenor of ACMC’s audience
For starters, pianist ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann eschews written program notes in favor of informal introductions she gives before each piece — wonderful, friendly short talks that reveal not only clever anecdotes into the composers and their lives, but Schumann’s own intelligent musicological insights
Such short chats seem like such a minor detail, but those chats have a way of prepping the audience as a group, getting them ready to listen, together. A little reaching out to the audience goes a long way in the usually stuffy classical music world.
Which is good because Schumann and ACMC are serious about the type of music presented.
Bucking the big B’s of the repertoire — Bach, Beethoven and Brahms — Schumann opted for chamber music by the R’s: Rossini, Ravel and Rachmaninov.
Schumann along with violinist Teresa Ling and cellist Greg Sauer were locked in a tight embrace for Ravel’s Piano Trio in A, full of energy and ardor for the composer’s colorful ride through myriad, diverse influences: Basque dance, Malaysian poetry, Baroque formalities. Whew.
Dedicated to his mentor, Tchaikovsky, Rachmanivov’s Trio Elegiatique No. 2 is utterly poignant and its sprawling length makes it more than reminiscent of the composer’s symphonic music for which he is much better known. Schumann brought her laser-like emotional committment to the virtuosic piano writing together the trio shoulder the weighty mournfulness with considerable inspiration.
Sauer opened the evening’s program with a cello transcription of Variations on One String on a Theme by Rossini, a rollicking virtuosic delight that he played with aplomb.
Yes, chamber music can be fun.
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Tonight: Arthouse Visiting Lecturer Series
Tonight, the Arthouse Visiting Lecturer Series continues with Hou Hanru, director of exhibitions & public programs and chair of the exhibitions & Museum Studies program at the San Francisco Art Institute. Hanru was also curator of the 2009 Biennale de Lyon.
The lecture is free.
7 p.m. tonight
George Washington Carver Museum & Cultural Center, Boyd Vance Theatre, 1165 Angelina St,
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Q-and-A with performance artist Tim Miller
Clare Croft, American-Statesman freelance critic, interviews Tim Miller.
Two weeks ago in San Francisco arguments began in the federal trial regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban of same-sex marriage. This weekend, Austin will hear a slightly less somber challenge to Prop 8: queer performance artist Tim Miller’s one-man show ‘Lay of the Land.’ at the Vortex.
Miller gained national headlines in the early 1990s when he was one four artist performances artists whose NEA grants were yanked by conservative lawmakers intent on curbing their sexually-oriented creative expression. In response to what became known as the culture wars, the NEA — which was nearly abolished in the process — stopped awarding individual grants to artists.
Miller spoke with Statesman about the performance’s timeliness, sexiness and meaning.
American-Statesman: How did the November 2008 vote for Proposition 8 catalyze the creation of ‘Lay of the Land?’
Tim Miller: This piece really began from questioning what it means when your state completely messes with your family—when 52 percent of the voters vote to deny rights to 10 percent of the citizens. It’s a response to this kind of crazy thing: having your neighbors vote to take your rights away.
AAS: You perform ‘Lay of the Land’ with American and California state flags on either side of the stage. Why did you choose those symbols?
TM: They’re clear markers of civic identity. Every high school cafeteria has a state and national flag. Every courthouse. The spaces I tell stories about are almost always public spaces—where individual identity clashes up against national status. I also travel constantly, so if it doesn’t fit in my carry-on bag, it ain’t part of the show.
AAS: Why do you talk about sex so much in your work?
TM: Well, in mainstream representations of gay people on television, it’s pretty much forbidden for sex to even be mentioned. It’s usually just the gay minstrel clown with snappy one-liners. I want to create the images I would say are invisible in mainstream culture: a queer citizen, a queer husband, [and] a queer activist.
AAS: What gives you hope — the drive to keep performing, despite the passage of legislation and referendums with which you disagree?
TM: I was performing at Texas Tech in Lubbock last year and a bunch of ROTC students wanted to talk to me. I thought, ‘Oh, they’re going to mess with me.’ Instead they only wanted my take on how they could be better officers and more effectively dismantle ‘Don’t ask; don’t tell.’ This is a bunch of 21-year-olds in Lubbock wanting to talk to the gay performance artist about dismantling ‘Don’t ask; don’t tell.’ It was so great. My own prejudices were exposed. I had thought the only narrative would be queer bashing, and I was completely wrong. Moments like that are the currency of hope. The story can change. The narrative is not fixed.
‘Lay of the Land’
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday
Where: Vortex, 2307 Manor Road
Cost: $15-$30,
Info: 478-5282, www.vortexrep.org
Photo by Leo Garcia.
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Review: ‘Dying City’ at FronteraFest
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan may provide the framework of Christopher Shinn’s tidy and forceful Pulitzer-nominated drama ‘Dying City,’ now getting its regional premiere courtesy of Capital T Theatre as part of FronteraFest.
But the war is just a shadow to Shinn’s deceptively complex story. The battle here is really about love and truth — and the passive aggressiveness that permeates the lives a young widow and her husband’s twin brother.
About a year after her literature-loving Harvard-grad husband Craig has been killed in the Iraq war, Kelly (Liz Fisher) is holed up in her Manhattan apartment when Peter, Craig’s identical twin, (Mark Scheibmeir) shows up unexpectedly for a long-forsaken reconciliation.
When Craig materializes in flashbacks to the night before he left for war, Scheibmeir plays him too. That double-casting is a bit gimmicky on the playwright’s part, but it works, and Scheibmeir dexteriously and convincingly handles both roles.
Gay, an actor and a creator of complicated personal situations, Peter is the polar opposite of his controlling brother. Or so it seems. Shinn’s script reveals the truth about the weird, dysfunctional emotional triangle between Kelly and Craig/Peter through a kind of neat, almost formulaic unraveling. But Shinn’s skillful, realistic dialogue nevertheless saves ‘Dying City’ from being utterly formulaic and thoroughly trenchant.
Well-directed by Derek Kolluri, this success of this Capital T Theatre production relies on solid, intense performances from Fisher and Scheibmeir.
If not wholly provocative, ‘Dying City’ bears attention for its accurate snapshot of contemporary emotional life.
‘Dying City’ continues 2 p.m. Jan. 24, 9 p.m. Jan. 28, 7 p.m. Jan. 29 at Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road. www.capitalttheatre.org
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Review: ‘In This House’ at FronteraFest
“You know what’s really scary?” a girl asks her brother as they cower in a dark shed, illuminated only by a flashlight. “When people just disappear.”
And so it is with Salvage Vanguard and Eponymous Garden’s lovely site-specific production “In This House (Everything Is You).” Characters vanish and reappear, as though they were ghosts haunting the gorgeous Victorian guest house where the performance takes place.
This collaboration, part of Frontera Fest’s Bring Your Own Venue, was written by Sharon Bridgforth, Daniel Alexander Jones, Monika Bustamante, and Cyndi Williams and co-directed by Dustin Wills and Jenny Larson. The venue—a sprawling old house hidden on an East Austin street—becomes a central character in this poetic exploration of how we deal with the traces our loved ones leave behind (photos, clothing, memories).
As the show begins, the audience sits on oversized wooden chairs or comfy couches in the living room and watches as a brother (Jude Hickey) and sister (Adriene Mishler) tease each other about “the lady with the eyes of death,” a mysterious woman in a portrait who watches them as they move about the house. From these first intriguing moments, the audience becomes privy to the secrets of a family dealing with love and loss across time. The audience travels from room to
room—and outdoors, for a scene dripping with atmosphere—watching short vignettes. (If you’re unsure where to go next as the show transitions, here’s a tip: follow the little kids in black.)
The performances are uniformly strong, as the actors deftly transition between exuberance and tenderness. A mother and son (Florinda Bryant and Wesley Bryant) have an especially touching scene in the kitchen where she asks him if she’s a good mother.
It’s not always possible to follow the connections or the meandering storyline of “In This House,” but that’s part of the point. As in a dream, don’t worry too much about deciphering the plot. Just let the images and the rich language drift by and cobble together your own meaning.
‘In This House (Everything Is You)’ continues tonight through January
24 at 8 p.m., January 23 & 24 also at 5 p.m. Eponymous Gardens, 1202
Garden Street. Seating limited to 20 people per performance, $15.
www.hydeparktheatre.org.
Claire Canavan is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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Review: ‘American Volunteers’ at FronteraFest
Nothing is easy in ‘American Volunteers,’ the first play by emerging writer Johnny Meyer now getting its premiere at the Blue Theater as part of Fronterafest, Austin’s fringe theater festival.
For starters, the story is not easy — a squad of special operations Army rangers whoe patrol the isolated Afghanistan-Pakistan border and who are charged with executing procedures that are seemingly disconnected from any greater plan.
The violent situations they face and the decisions these military men and women must make are not easy, either: Most importantly, how should they reconcile their individual desire — and their individual lives — against the dominating framework of military hierarchy?
And when a wet-behind-the-ears female private is assigned to the all-male ranger patrol, the fragile social web the platoon has built begins to crumble.
As a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Meyer, a University of Texas undergraduate, brings an authentic voice to ‘American Volunteers.’ And it’s that authenticity which gives this 90-minute drama its force and emotional complexity.
Meyer and director Allison Hammond leave the fast-paced flow of scenes to speed along on their own. No hamfisted staging here. It’s not needed. Meyer’s story is compelling enough to propel the play with almost lightning speed. And the ensemble cast of 12 handles that speed deftly.
At times, Meyer’s penchant for experimenting with metered language gets the best of the script, diluting the play’s energy and adding a layer of self-consciousness.
Still, it’s a noteworthy playwrighting debut. (Meyer won UT’s Roy L. Crane Award in Literary Arts last year for the his novel version of ‘American Volunteers.’) The U.S. has been at war for the better part of a decade. Now, we have a thoughtful theatrical reflection on the essential human experience of that very complex war experience.
‘American Volunteers’
9:45 p.m. Saturday, 12 noon Jan. 30’
Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road’
$8’
www.fronterafest.org
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UT commissions David Ellis video for new Visual Arts Center
The University of Texas has commissioned New York artist David Ellis — known for his stunning motion paintings — to create an original video for the university’s new Visual Arts Center, slated to open in September 2010.
The VAC, which will be run by the Department of Art & Art History, will be in the existing Art Building in the former space once occupied by the Blanton Museum. Designed by Lake Flato Architect, the VAC is slated to offer greatly expanded exhibition space, student studio space and a new home for the Mesoamerican Center.
The Brooklyn-based Ellis merges an almost street art/graffiti sensibility to his sprawling paintings, installations and videos. Terrifically influenced by music, his multi-media work has a vibrancy to it, both literal and figurative. Artifice doesn’t try to hide in Ellis’s work either; He embraces the ersatz.
Daily from David Ellis on Vimeo.
The commission is being administered by UT’s Landmarks public art program officials form which wouldn’t report the exact amount of the commission. But according to the 2005 policy statement for UT’s Art in Public Spaces program, one to two percent of the capital cost of new construction and major renovations of UT building is to go to public art. The new VAC facility has an estimated construction cost of $7 million. We suppose that would make Ellis’s commission $70,000 to $140,000.
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Texas Cultural Trust seeks nominations, names chairs
The Texas Cultural Trust is seeking nomination for the sixth biennial Texas Medal of Arts Awards to be awarded in 2011.
Nomination forms and criteria can be found at www.txculturaltrust.org/tmaa and must be postmarked no later than March 1. The Trust is accepting nominations in the following categories:
- Lifetime Achievement
- Music
- Literary Arts
- Visual Arts
- Theatre
- Media/Multi-Media
- Film
- Arts Education
- Dance
- Craft
- Architecture
- Foundation Arts Patron
- Individual Arts Patron
- Corporate Arts Patron
The Trust also named El Paso gallery owner Adair Margo and Alice Carrington Foultz, president of the art consulting firm Carrington Gallery, Ltd, as chairs of the 2011 Texas Medal of Arts Awards scheduled for Feb. 28-March 1, 2011, in Austin.
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Ballet Austin dance, on demand
Have your ballet whenever you want.
Ballet Austin’s teamed up with Time Warner Cable to offer its award-winning ‘Cult of Color: Call to Color’ a collaboration Ballet Austin Artistic Director/choreographer Stephen Mills, visual artist Trenton Doyle Hancock and composer Graham Reynold.s
TWC’s digital cable customers can tune to On Demand channel 1400 and select Ballet Austin to view the ‘Cult of Coloe’ production in its entirety.
The audacious, innovative, whimsical, entertaining ballet premiered in 2008.
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Weekend Arts Pix
THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY
‘In This House (Everything is You)’
A ghost story about love, loss and the bonds of family co-written by Sharon Bridgeforth, Daniel Alexander Jones, Monika Bustamante and Cyndi Williams. The staged reading — directed by Dustin Wills and Jenny Larson — will be presented in a historic East Austin home as part of Frontera Fest’s ‘Bring Your Own Venue.’ 8 p.m. today-Sunday, 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Eponymous Gardens, 1202 Garden St. $15. Seating is limited to 20 people per performance. www.fronterafest.org
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
‘Things in Life’
Ben Prager reprises the show that wowed Frontera Fest audiences last year with his comic monologues portraying the lives of ordinary Americans with unblinking realism. 8:30 p.m. Saturday, 3:45 p.m. Sunday. Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2807 Manor Road. $12. www.fronterafest.org.
SATURDAY
‘aRrrrrr, Play Us A Song There, Matey!’<br>
Serious fun, but serious music. So much for the three B’s — Bach, Beethoven, Brahms — getting all the love and attention. Austin Chamber Music Center is celebrating the three R’s of classical chamber music: Rachmaninov, Ravel and Rossini. Violinist Teresa Ling and cellist Gregory Sauer join pianist Michelle Schumann for a concert that includes Ravel’s Piano Trio in A Minor, Rachmaninov’s Trio Elegiac and Rossini’s theme from ‘Moses in Egypt.’ 7:30 p.m. Saturday First Unitarian Church, 4700 Grover Ave. $25. www.austinchambermusic.org
‘Ideas of Mountains’
Because everything is bigger in Texas, this exhibit features 11 students and alumni of UT’s art programs, each of whom offer a large, site-specific installation. Opening: 6:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday. Exhibit continues through Feb. 6. Creative Research Lab, 2832 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
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Fusebox Festival 2010: The line-up is announced
Oh, yes, the word ‘cool’ is so over-used. But the Fusebox Festival is the epitome of cool.
Tonight, Fusebox founder and artistic director Ron Berry gathered the crowds at Okay Mountain gallery to announce the line-up for the 11-day mind-blowing indulgence of performance and time-based art.
Once again, Berry is bringing a breathtaking roster of international artists to Austin for the April festival. And now with mores support and sponsorships — in particular ABPorter.org, and, new this year, UT’s Texas Performing Arts — Berry’s been able to expand and deepen the festival.
This year, Fusebox runs April 21 through May 1 at sites all around Austin.
To start things off on April 21, choreographer Allison Orr and composer Graham Reynolds — two inimitable Austin talents — will collaborate to stage a Texas-sized country swing band playing for hundreds of two-steppers who will kick off Fusebox on the steps of the Texas State Capitol.
Here’s the rest of the Fusebox line-up so far (but expect updates and additions!):
- Big Dance Theater, ‘Comme Toujours: Here I Stand,’ a dance theatre re-invention of Agnes Varda’s classic New Wave film about a critical moment in the life of a marginally talented pop singer.
- Theater Replacement, ‘WeeTube,’ part performance, part parlor game by a Vancouver-based performance troupe, ‘WeeTube’ uses the publicly posted comments of popular YouTube Videos as performance text.
- Daniel Barrow, ‘Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry,’ a video-based performance by the Winnipeg-based artist that combines overhead projection with video, music, and live narration to tell the story of a garbage man with a vision to create an independent phone book chronicling the lives of each person in his city.
- Greg Brooker, ‘Texan,’ a site specific poem constructed of text, paper, one million newspapers, a crop duster, a taxi cab, the geographical expanse of the state of Texas and twin brothers.
- John Kelly, ‘Paved Paradise Redux: The Art of Joni Mitchell.’ The brilliant two-time Obie Award winning artist John Kelly once again inhabits the persona of Joni Mitchell in an entirely new evening of songs and stories.
- Luke Savisky, ‘Stepchild,’ a new video installation by the Austin artist.
- Kristen Kosmas with Physical Plant Theare, ‘This From Cloudland,’ a new love story.
- Action Hero, ‘A Western,’ is a performance for a bar, a celebration of a failure to capture the true size and majesty of the Wild West.
- Phil Soltanoff, ‘LA Party,’ a performance video about a fanatical vegan who slides off the wagon one night, falling head first into a wild L.A. bender.
- Kaiji Moriyama, ‘The Velvet Suite,’ The U.S. premiere by one of Japan’s most acclaimed contemporary dancers.
- ArtGravelGroup, ‘Gravel Works,’ Montreal-based troupe performs a live music and dance showcase of moods, humour, bodies, pop songs, personalities and friendly impertinence.
- Mike Smith, a new video installation by the renowned video/performance artist
- Wura Ogunji, ‘one hundred black women, one hundred actions,’ a performance of critical actions, gestures and movements from 100 black women around the world —performed in East Austin, projected live in West Austin.
- Heloise Gold, dancer
- Okay Mountain, Austin art collective
- Rubber Rep, Austin theater collective
- Rude Mechs, Austin theater collective
Image (top): Big Dance Theater’s ‘Comme Toujours: Here I Stand.’ Photo by Mike Van Sleen.
Image (bottom): John Kelly as Joni Mitchell in ‘Paved Paradise REDUX.’ Photo by Frank H. Jump.
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Americans for the Arts report: Arts industry faces big slump after much growth
A new report compiled by national advocacy group Americans for the Arts finds that the number of U.S. arts organizations grew by thousands over the last decade, but those groups now face greater competition for audiences and charity dollars, according to a national study of the industry’s health.
The report, the National Arts Index, looked at 76 indicators, including music royalties, Broadway ticket sales, museum visits, philanthropy and the number of college art majors.
It’s hard to judge how much real news there is in such a report. After all, reports declining arts audiences and funding have been percolating right along with the rest of the news of the recession.
But one thing is clear: Audiences are voting with their feet and with their ticket dollars and attendance at mainstream arts organizations is in a decline.
The challenge for arts groups? Finding ways to match their programming and offerings to the changing ways people consume culture and participate in it. Arts group who do exactly the same that things that’ve been doing for the past few decades, won’t make it through the next few decades.
Americans for the Arts plans to update the Index every October.
Read the AP story here.
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Money troubles at Latino arts museum in San Antonio
Looks like San Antonio’s Smithsonian affiliated Museo Alameda, aka, the Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture — which opened to great fanfare three years ago — has stumbled financially.
Here’s a story from the Associated Press:
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The nation’s largest museum devoted to Latino culture and arts is having money trouble three years after it opened.
The Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture spent grant money intended for its charter school on the cash-strapped Museo Alameda, the San Antonio Express News reported Wednesday, citing minutes of a Nov. 9 Alameda board meeting. The $1 million Henry Ford Learning Institute grant, announced in August, was earmarked for renovations at the Henry Ford Academy: Alameda School for Art + Design.
The money was used before Margarita Flores took over as head of the nonprofit organization that oversees the museum, the charter school, the Alameda Theater and the Casa de Mexico office building, according to the Express-News.
Maintaining a museum “is a very expensive endeavor,” Flores said. “So was this spent on frivolous or things that are not the right things? No. It was spent on the operating expenses for the museum.”
Some of the grant money was used for the school, she said.
The Museo Alameda, which opened in April 2007, is about $1.5 million in debt. In recent months, the Smithsonian affiliate has struggled to pay staff and stay open.
During the November meeting, the board approved an amendment to the agreement between the Henry Ford Learning Institute and the Alameda that essentially gives the organization until Aug. 31, 2011, to meet terms of the grant.
“We look forward to the future and our continued partnership with the Centro Alameda and other community partners,” the institute said in a statement.
In 2008, Bexar County voters approved $6 million in venue tax funds for restoration of the Alameda Theater.
County Judge Nelson Wolff, who described the Alameda as being “on very dangerous ground right now,” said the county is “closely monitoring” the group.
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‘American Volunteers’ shows war experience, first hand
Johnny Meyer is like many a young playwright getting ready for his first production.
Except that the 27-year-old University of Texas student is also a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and he’s turned his experience into a play, ‘American Volunteers.’
The play opens tonight as part of the FronteraFest festival of new theater.
Read the full story on Meyer’s journey from solider to playwright.
Here’s a video interview with Meyer:
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Ka Bam!! Fusebox Festival announcement Weds night
It’s simply become one of the most anticipated arts events on the calendar. Merging time-based art of all media — performance, visual, musical, theatrical, technology-based — the Fusebox Festival each spring rallies some the edgiest creations from the around the world.
Tomorrow night at Okay Mountain gallery, Fusebox founder and director Ron Berry will announce what’s on the bill for the 2010, which runs April 21 - May 1 at venues across Austin. Expect an international roster of very creative, creative artists.
We’ll announce the line-up in this blog late Wednesday night.
6:30 to 8 p.m. Weds.
Okay Mountain, 1312 E. Cesar Chavez St.
Wednesday’s happening will feature a conversation with visual artist/illustrator/filmmaker Peat Duggins about ‘A Survey of Open Space’ his forthcoming documentary based on his cross-country cycling trip to Alaska.
Duggins epitomizes the kind of artist Fusebox embraces: someone whose creative reach straddles many media.
Photo: Peat Duggins’s ‘Junkyard/Crystal Highway,’ installation view. Courtesy Art Palace Gallery.
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Recent arts coverage
At FronteraFest, a young veteran transforms his war experience into a new play | Essay: The decade in review: In the arts, Austin went on a building boom, but the future may be with the artists themselves | Top nine — and then some — arts happenings of 2009
Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
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Austin Lyric Opera announces 2010-2011 season
Verdi’s ‘La Traviata,’ ‘Rossini’s ‘The Italian Girl in Algiers’ and ‘Flight’, the contemporary comedy by Johnathan Dove mark Austin Lyric Opera’s 2010-2011 season, ALO general director Kevin Patterson will announce today.
Actually, the new season will begin this summer with Michael Nyman’s chamber opera ‘The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.’ Based on the popular book by poetic neurologist Oliver Sacks, Nyman’s 60-minute opera will be staged at St. Martin Lutheran Church in collaboration with the Austin Chamber Music Center’s summer festival. ‘Hat’ will run July 9-11.
And ‘Hat’ marks an important development for ALO and opera in Austin. Finally, some chamber opera in this town — and some contemporary chamber opera to boot Nyman’s minimalist score riffs on Schumann lieder. The three-character story follows a singer who suffers from visual agnosia, the inability to recognize familiar things and people.
Dove’s ‘Flight’ will also make a mark on the Austin scene. Based the true story of Mehran Nasseri, an Iranian refugee whose stateless status forced him to live for years within Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. Dove’s opera, premiered by Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1998, finds a cast of very modern characters grounded by their own emotional incapacities and stuck together in an airport during a storm. ‘Flight’ plays in April 2011.
In November, ALO will present a Lyric Opera of Chicago production of ‘La Traviata’ wiht Pamela Armstrong singing Violetta and native Texan Chad Shelton singing Alfredo.
And in January 2011 it’s Rossini’s ‘The Italian Girl in Algiers (L’Italiana in Algeri)’ in a smart production from Santa Fe Opera. Sandra Piques Eddy, who wowed Austin in La Cenerentola in 2008, will sing Isabella.
Richard Buckley will conduct all of ALO’s upcoming season.
Image: ‘Flight.” Glyndebourne Opera.
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Saturday night? Exhibit hopping time
‘Kia Neill: Terrain’
Chicken wire, papier-mâché, lumber, plaster, paint, glitter, polyurethane foam, flocking fiber, Spanish moss, CDs, blinking colored lights, tinsel. It’s all fodder for artist Kia Neill to create her enveloping, gallery-filling installations that evoke otherworldly — though unbashedly — fake micro-worlds.
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday.
Exhibit continues through Feb. 27.
Women & Their Work, www.womenandtheirwork.org
‘Christine Gray: Into the Light’
In her second solo exhibition at Okay Mountain Christine Gray continues to explore, as the press release says, ‘the frenetic play between real and unreal created using sculptural arrangements as the basis for her paintings. This new body of work takes its inspiration from American mythological tropes, often revealing surreal landscapes, crude shelters and objects suggestive of rituals with mystical significance.’
Opening reception: 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday
Exhibit continues through Feb. 13.
Okay Mountain, www.okaymountain.com
‘Jim Torok: Clowns and Portraits’
Brooklyn based artist Jim Torok paintings on panel and paper as well as new small-scale portraits in oil on panel.
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday; artist talk begins at 7 p.m.
Exhibit continues until March 6.
Lora Reynolds Gallery, www.lorareynolds.com.
Image: ‘Geode’ by Kia Neill. Courtesy Women & Their Work.
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Review: ‘The Color Purple’
Why sing?
That question drives any musical’s creation. Why should a character burst into song?
“The Color Purple,” which opened Tuesday at UT’s Bass Concert Hall, never settles on an answer to what parts of the story should be told in song versus speaking. But when lead female figures Celie (Kenita Miller), Shug (Phyre Hawkins) and Sofia (Felicia Fields) burst into emotion-driven song the musical opens up, inviting audiences to share in the women’s pain, sensuality, and ever-rising strength. And the three performers in these significant roles are fantastic.
The musical’s confusion over song creates an odd flatness, particularly in Act I, despite the heart-wrenching story. Based on Alice Walker’s 1983 novel of the same name, the book by playwright Marsha Norma and music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray often has characters sing at each other with inflections more like speaking than singing, a not uncommon feature of more operatic musicals.
But the style feels randomly dispersed across Celie’s story: a woeful tale of a poor black woman twice raped by her father, then sold into marriage for the price of a cow.
Celie’s life seems destined only for pain when her husband abuses her and exiles Celie’s beloved sister, Nettie. Then barrel-tongued Sofia marries Celie’s stepson and jazz singer Shug ignites Celie’s heart in a lesbian relationship the musical tiptoes around. (Though the musical addresses the women’s romance more than Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film.)
As Sofia, Fields is a woman who cannot be sidestepped. She introduces Celie to her response to overbearing men with the song “Hell No!” Sofia can only serve as what Celie is not. Shug transform Celie into a woman who can shout back (sing back) at her male oppressors.
Shug’s arrival affects more than just Celie: the musical gets better too. It’s almost as though the show, like the town’s men, saves its best for her. Suddenly songs have a richness they lacked earlier. The women use this richness to overcome the bleak narrative. Of course Celie’s second act stand against her abusive husband Mister (Rufus Bonds, Jr.) comes in a long, loud note of song exploding so intensely from her belly that she must bend her knees and clench her fists.
Now set apart through music Celie separates from the rest of the town — a quality oddly absent earlier. Walker’s book is an existential crisis, told through Celie’s letters to a God whose existence she doubts. But the musical encases Celie in community—particularly the community of the African American church. The always-present church ladies and multiple comic gags shift the story’s tone from dramatic tragedy to a hopeful mix of drama and comedy.
Then again, can a Broadway musical tell a story of existential loneliness?
In moments, John Lee Beatty’s gorgeous set, Brian MacDevitt’s lighting design, and Gary Griffin’s direction suggest an other-worldliness that momentarily isolates Celie, but then becomes her refuge: the place where she openly loves Shug or dreams of her sister Nettie in Africa. Her home flies away as Celie kneels in a pool of light grieving her sister’s banishment, then later the set disappears as Celie and Shug sing before a vivid pink horizon.
Donald Byrd’s choreography never takes advantage of the rich movement vocabulary offered by the musical’s setting: the jook joint where Shug sings or the long dream sequence of Nettie in Africa. The former only has tiny tastes of the Lindy hop, the swing dance borne in hidden African American nightclubs, and the latter is a bizarre mix of ballet, jazz, and touches of West African movement.
Despite its problems, the musical does its work: it tells a story that eventually needs its song.
‘The Color Purple’
When: 8 p.m. today-Jan. 16; 2 p.m. Jan. 16-17, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17
Where: Bass Concert Hall, UT campus
Cost: $20-$69
Info: www.texasperformingarts.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Review: Voice Dance Company
Austin welcomed a new dance company Friday.
Voice Dance Company, directed by former Ballet Austin dancer Gina Patterson, offered its inaugural concert at the Zach Theatre. The evening seemed to be a taste of things to come.
The show featured two pieces by Patterson, a premiere of “Your Provision” and the latter half of “My Witness,” a piece Patterson created for DanceWorks Chicago last spring.
Patterson has developed quite a choreographic voice, first with Ballet Austin and more recently through a growing list of commissions from around the country.
“My Witness” had tastes of Patterson’s ability to spin choreographic layers, and it was buoyed by a rousing, sometimes soulful live accompaniment by Chicago band Sons of the Never Wrong. Individuals standing still amongst a larger group of wild, brash movement dropped notes of sorrow into a world grasping for joy. Promising partnerships between dancers, particularly Rebecca Niziol and Eric Midgley, demonstrated what it means to support another person. They didn’t have to stare longingly at one another. They had to feel one another.
“Your Provision” lacked the sophistication that has brought Patterson’s work previous attention. The piece seemed possibly an eagle’s eye view into a dance studio, where dancers pass through rehearsing and developing relationships with one another, but little else tied the piece’s ten vignettes together.
Some pieces popped more than others, namely “Balkan Chicks,” a striking trio for Niziol, Masa Kolar and Chris Hannon. Patterson managed the almost unthinkable: she made a chair dance — the cliche of all dance cliches — that was entertaining, even funny. Niziol and Kolar sat side-by-side, almost miming running in place while seated, setting up a funny, romping tone. Among the cast of eight dancers, many of whom came to Austin at Patterson’s invitation, Kolar’s sense of timing and internal focus made her stand out.
But still both pieces sometimes suffered from a sense of monotony. Tempos changed and sometimes individuals’ intentions shifted, but the dancers seemed to cut through the same air in the same way again and again. Beauty is nice; tension is more interesting. And it will be interesting to see where Austin’s latest new company goes next.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Review: Conspirare’s ‘New Year’s Classic’
There’s a reason Richard Strauss’ Deutsche Motette isn’t frequently performed. Though only about 20 minutes in length, it’s a sprawling late romantic symphony for voices, dense in its musical imagery and staggering in its complexity with some 16 vocal parts.
Leave it to Austin choir Conspirare — which just received its fifth Grammy nomination — to make stunning work of Strauss’ stunning Motette, the marquee piece of a concert Saturday night at the acoustically fine St. Martin’s Lutheran Church.
Rich in impressionistic nuance, the Motette awes with its spectacle — particularly its astonishing harmonic shifts. And Conspirare’s genius at singing as one voice while also allowing enough space of each singer’s own voice to shine through made for much clarity and emotional resonance.
If there was a theme to the program selected by Conspirare founder and artistic director Craig Hella Johnson, perhaps it was musical complexity.
Before unleashing the Strauss, Johnson and the choir pulled off Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied with aplomb, deftly maneuvering through Bach’s rich and intriguing wave of counterpoint.
Balancing the mighty weight of the Bach and the Strauss were a selection of Brahms’ romantic Leibeslieder Waltzes, stylishly sung. And as a delightful detour, Johnson threw in ‘My Little Green Cactus,’ a jumpy 1920s tune sung in the a capella style of the Comedian Harmonists, an all-male German close harmony ensemble that was one of the more successful pre-World War II groups. As cute as it was, the song really just re-enforced what the rest of the program made clear: That Conspirare continually demonstrate superb control and dexterity as a choir, no matter the repertoire.
Later this month, Johnson and Conspirare will go up for their fifth Grammy nomination, this time for Best Classical Crossover Album, competing against the likes of Yo Yo Ma. That an Austin non-profit musical organization even has the chops to even compete against a classical music icon —and commercial juggernaut — like Ma is impressive. Then again, Conspirare has the voice that roars, sublimely.
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The O. Henry Museum temporarily closed for cold
The City of Austin just released this notice:
The Austin Parks and Recreation Department has temporarily closed the O. Henry Museum to the public due to a malfunction in the museum’s heating system. The museum was closed due to the frigid temperatures the city is experiencing and lack of heat in the building. The museum is projected to reopen Saturday, Jan. 9, at 12 noon.
The O. Henry Museum is 409 E. Fifth St. www.ci.austin.tx.us/ohenry
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UT’s Blanton Museum raises admission prices
The University of Texas’ Blanton Museum of Art has just announced that it’s raising its admission prices.
The raise is effective immediately. Or really retroactively as the Jan. 7 announcement says the new prices are effective Jan. 1, 2010.
Also, the museum’s monthly B Scene arty party scales back to a bi-monthly schedule.
Update at 3:20 p.m.: A spokesperson for the Blanton adds this: ‘Like most cultural institutions, the Blanton has been affected by the downturn in the economy. While admissions have remained steady, the costs of presenting exceptional exhibitions and public programs has risen. In our effort to continue providing the very best programming for the community, we are raising prices to a range that is more in line with museums across the country.’
The following information is from the Blanton’s press release:
Admission remains free on Thursdays, and is always free for Blanton members, UT students, faculty and staff, and for children under 12.
New General Admission Prices:
Adult Admission $9 (was $7)
Seniors (65 +) $7 (was $5)
College Students with Valid ID $5 (was $3)
Youth (ages 13 -21) $5 (was $3)
Children 12 and under FREE
Blanton Members FREE
Current UT students, faculty and staff FREE
B scene (first Friday of every other month) $5 members/ $12 all others
Free Third Thursdays
Beginning in January, the museum’s free Third Thursday evenings (5:30 - 9 p.m.) will enjoy augmented programming. In addition to the popular yoga in the galleries and Blanton book club, artists’ talks and screenings of rare artist videos/films will be added to the mix. Additionally, The Blanton Café will offer a “happy hour” special, with a slice of gourmet pizza and glass of wine for only $5 all evening.
B Scene
B scene, The Blanton’s popular monthly art party will move from a monthly to bi-monthly basis. To be held the first Friday of every other month (beginning with February), the event will last from 6:00 - 10:30 p.m. Local bands and DJs will still be featured, as well as free savory appetizers, a cash bar, and art tours and activities. The Blanton Café will offer themed dinner menus in conjunction with B scene, which will include special tapas and wine pairings.
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Ready for some football? Or art?
Perhaps the gap between sports and art and their attendant fans isn’t is vast as it seems.
After all, couldn’t the spectacle of sports be considered an art form, and isn’t the spectacle of the art world as much of a sport of anything else?
Pablo Vargas Lugo’s video installation ‘Eclipses for Austin’ at UT’s Blanton Museum of Art through Feb. 21 suggest as much. And suggests much more.
Photo by Santiago Forero.
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Next week’s forecast: ‘Purple’
With the Broadway musical version of Alice Walker’s seminal novel landing in Austin for the first time, we take a prismatic look at ‘The Color Purple.’ First a Pulitzer-winning book, then a vaunted (and chided) film and now a successful musical.
Read the full story here.
From left Lynette DuPree, Virginia Ann Woodruff, Kimberly Ann Harris. Photo by Paul Kolnik.
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Photography captures fading world of Eastern European Holocaust survivors
Fort Worth-based photographer Loli Kantor — the daughter of Holocaust survivors — will exhibit her documentary photographs of the small and disappearing population of elderly Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe, once home to millions of Jews before World War II.
The exhibit, ‘There Was a Forest: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today,’ opens this Saturday at Austin’s L. Nowlin Gallery.
Kantor juxtaposes sepia-toned palladium prints with super color-saturated pigment prints.
Born in Paris, France and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel and Buffalo, New York, Kantor’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States, and internationally in Ukraine, Poland, China, and the Czech Republic.
‘There Was a Forest: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today’
Opening reception: 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday
Exhibit continues through Feb. 27
L. Nowlin Gallery, 1210 W. Sixth St.
www.lnowlingallery.com
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Austin arts philanthropists establish Horton Foote Prize
Austin arts philanthropists Greg and Mari Marchbanks through their family foundation have established the Horton Foote Prize, in honor of the noted Texas playwright, news sources reported today.
Foote — author of ‘The Trip to Bountiful’ and ‘The Young Man from Atlanta’ among many other plays and screenplays — died in March 2009. Foote won an Academy Award for his screenplay of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’
The biennial Horton Foote Prize is for $30,000.
For the competition some 65 resident theaters will be invited to submit a play by a writer with at least three full-length plays to his or her credit that have been produced by professional theaters. A selection committee will choose a short list of finalists and a winner will be determined by a group of four theater directors Foote worked with closely.
Mari Marchbanks will serve as the executive director of the prize committee.
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Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet plays Jan. 27
With UT’s Texas Performing Arts (formerly known as the Performing Arts Center) program up and running full-throttle for a year now, Austin’s seeing a greater influx of marquee-caliber international classical ensembles and artists.
This is a very good thing for the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the World. After all, there’s nothing like raising the bar.
A $14.5 million renovation to UT-TPA’s main venue, Bass Concert Hall, and the hiring of Kathy Panoff as the organization’s new director. has led a season with some notable offerings.
Up next, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet plays the intitimate McCullough Theatre on Jan. 27. Tickets are $36 ($10 for students). See www.texasperformingarts.org.
The Quintet’s program for the concert is:
W. A. Mozart: Fantasy f-minor KV 608 for a mechanical organ
Anton Reicha: Quintet in D Major, Op. 91, No. 3
Samuel Barber: Summer music, Op. 31
Carl Nielsen: Quintet Op.43
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‘Faces of Austin’ project needs more faces
The city of Austin’s Cultural Arts Division is seeking short films and videos for its ‘Faces of Austin’ media program.
The program offers the shots on-demand on the widescreen video displays in the atrium of City Hall. Films should, the guidelines say, ’ highlight Austin’s unique sense of place and diverse cultural identity.’
The deadline for film submissions is January 13, 2010 by 5:00 p.m.
For an application and more information about the project and past selections visit the Faces of Austin website www.ci.austin.tx.us/redevelopment/austinfaces.htm
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Recent arts coverage
| Essay: The decade in review: In the arts, Austin went on a building boom, but the future may be with the artists themselves | A few of 2009’s top arts stories | Top nine — and then some — arts happenings of 2009
Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Alert
New dancing into the new year
Former Ballet Austin principal dancers Gina Patterson and Eric Midgley have created Voice Dance Company, which leaps into its debut performance this weekend.
The award-winning Patterson premieres a selection of her new short works and also presents the Austin premiere of her critically acclaimed work ‘My Witness’ first performed in March at DanceWorks Chicago. As in the Chicago premiere, folk trio Sons of the Never Wrong will provide the live music to Patterson’s dance piece.
Patterson’s been active on Austin’s indie choreography scene — such as it is — and beyond. Her dances have not only been performed for Ballet Austin but also regional companies such as Richmond Ballet, Ballet Florida and Nashville Ballet, among others.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Kleberg Stage, Zach Theatre, 1510 Toomey Road
$30-$40
www.voicedancecompany.org
DanceWorks Chicago from Andreas Böttcher on Vimeo.
