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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > June
June 2010
Austin Lyric Opera reports lay-offs
Citing a continuing downturn in individual and corporate donations, the Austin Lyric Opera has announced that it has laid off three staff positions.
Kevin Patterson, general director of the opera, said that two full-time and one-half time positions were cut in effort to bring the organization’s budget to $4.3 million as it heads into its new fiscal year, down from $4.5 million this year, a four percent decrease. After the layoffs, the opera will have 22 staff members.
The positions are in development, marketing and in the box office.
“This was an extremely difficult decision to make and we examined every angle to see if there was any way around making any of these cuts, but unfortunately there was not,” Patterson said.
Patterson said the opera board voted to adopt the new $4.3 million budget in May.
“We’ve seen some improvement in contributions from individuals and corporations since (the downturn in 2008), but we haven’t seen a full recovery,” Patterson.
Charitable donations to the arts are down around the nation, a June report by the Giving USA Foundation shows. Philanthropic contributions fell 2.4 percent in 2009. In 2008 giving to the arts dropped 6.4 percent, the report shows.
In Austin, the opera isn’t the only arts institutions that has had to make cuts since the economic tumble of 2008. Last year, the Austin Museum of Art made a ten percent budget cut, eliminating five full-time positions and mandating all staff members to take one-week unpaid furloughs.
Patterson said the eliminated positions will not effect the opera’s artistic or educational programs. “We’re still in a process of tightening the budget, but we don’t want to sacrifice our artistic offerings.”
The opera will continue with its 2010-2011 season as planned, presenting four operas.
Last year, the opera cuts its budget to $4.5 million from $5 million in response to declining donations and ticket sales brought on by the recession. The organization currently carries a $600,000 deficit, Patterson said.
Patterson also noted that tickets sales have not returned to pre-2008 levels.
“It’s very much a buyer’s market right now in Austin in terms of entertainment and there’s just less disposable income in people’s pockets,” he said.
But ticket buyers have responded to the opera’s next production, Michael Nyman’s one-act chamber opera “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat.” Presented in a small-scale production at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church July 9-11, the three-performance run has already sold out.
Tickets, however, were just $25.
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Women Printmakers of Austin host annual exhibit
It’s hot outside.
The Women Printmakers of Austin know this. And so they’ve named their annuals annual membership exhibit and sale ‘WPA Hot Print Show.’ Just about every printmaking technique you can think of will be featured in the exhibit including lithography, woodcut, engraving and photo transfer.
WPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging women to actively pursue artistic expression through printmaking.
Last year, the group moved into the Pump Project Satellite Space in East Austin.
‘WPA Hot Print Show’ ‘Hot Print Show.’
Opening reception: 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday
Pump Project Art Complex, 702 Shady Lane
Gallery hours: noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays
Exhibit continues through July 31
womenprintmakers.com
Image: Margaret Jackson. ‘Icelandic Conflict 2,’ aquatint.
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Met Opera broadcasts return to local theaters this summer
Looking for a cool summer weeknight getaway? A recession-friendly night of opera entertainment?
The Metropolitan Opera will once again present its super-popular ‘The Met: Live in HD’ series in movie theaters this summer.
And the roster features pre-recorded encore performances some of the Met’s greatest hits including popular recent productions of Aida, Romeo et Juliette, Eugene Onegin, La Boheme, Turandot and Carmen.
In the greater Austin area we’ve got five theaters that will screen the Met series: Metropolitan 14, Southpark Meadows, Tinseltown USA Pflugerville, Cinemark Hill Country Galleria and Cinemark Cedar Park. Screenings will be Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. and Thursdays at varying times.
Check here for ticket prices.
On July 7-8 it’s Eugene Onegin with soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Valery Gergiev conducts Tchaikovsky’s most beloved opera.
One July 14-15, it’s the Franco Zeffirelli-designed production of La Boheme with soprano Angela Gheorghiu in her Met debut.
Image: Act II of Franco Zeffirelli’s production La Bohème at the Met. (Photo © Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
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Review: ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’
The musical “The Drowsy Chaperone” begins in the dark. A small, male voice explains the prayer he offers every time the theater lights dim. Among his humorous pleas, he hopes every performance will be “just fun”—a story with a few good songs.
The opening bit is amusing, like much of the musical, which opened at Zach Theatre Saturday and runs through August 29.
But the musical, a Broadway hit with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, pretends that its jokes — often racist ones — have no effect. They do.
This theatrically polished production directed by Nick Demos rehearses decades-old racist and homophobic stereotypes under the guise of critiquing those stereotypes. But the critique is never center stage. Center stage belongs to the largely white cast enacting stereotypes of Asian people, “Latin” men and stupid women. Based on the uproarious laughter from Saturday night’s audience, these stereotypes still register as humorous, not harmful.
The opening voice belongs to a musical fan, named Man in Chair (Martin Burke), sitting in his living room imagining a production of a 1920s musical via a cast album. His fantasy musical, “The Drowsy Chaperone” unfolds amidst Michael Raiford’s gorgeous set as the Man comments on the slim plot — a nearly botched wedding between movie and stage celebrities, Robert Martin (Matt Redden) and Janet Van de Graff (Jill Blackwood). Vaudeville producer Feldzieg (Scotty Roberts) tries to foil the marriage, but Martin and Janet manage that on their own. Instead, Feldzieg’s machinations bring together Janet’s boozy chaperone (Meredith McCall) and Zorro-esque idiot Aldolpho (Jamie Goodwin).
It’s not a compelling story. The Man in the Chair is meant to be the real entertainment.
The made-up musical has its funny moments, particularly when poking fun at musicals. Performed by Wright, Janet’s tour de force, “Show Off,” in which the actress announces she’s done showing off, while engaging in an unending diva turn, is fantastic in its excess. In “As We Stumble Along,” a poke at musicals with a great climatic song that makes no sense in the narrative, McCall’s vodka-drenched chaperone is excellent. Here Man in Chair’s commentary adds depth and honors musical fans’ encyclopedic obsession with the genre. In the rest of the first act, his insistent commentary works like a dinner guest who explains everyone’s jokes rather than letting people enjoy the humor.
The musical’s second act is when the real trouble comes. Man in Chair returns for Act II, puts on the second cast album, and then runs to the restroom. Out fly actors dressed in faux-Chinese costumes. They squint their eyes, suck in their lips and pronounce their “Rs” as “Ws,” while singing with McCall, dressed as a white British teacher. Yes, it’s a parody of “The King and I,” but it’s also yellowface without the face paint.
Man in Chair returns and, in horror, makes a quick quip about those awful racial stereotypes of the past, and then turns to yet another racial stereotype: his Latino maid who doesn’t speak English who always misunderstands his directions. He quickly apologizes for the joke, but the theater has already filled with laughter. The insiders in this musical have clearly been named: those of us liberal enough to know we should apologize for racism, but not progressive enough to stop repeating racist jokes.
Perhaps the saddest outsider role in “The Drowsy Chaperone” belongs to Man in Chair. In the musical’s one earnest turn, the man — whose sexuality is never fully named, but whose queerness is heavily suggested — tells of being a gay man trapped in a straight marriage. For a moment, Burke turns off the gay minstrel clown show, revealing a pained interior. He snaps out of it just in time to see “The Drowsy Chaperone” to its end, imagining a finale filled with four heterosexual marriages. Man in Chair can’t even imagine himself in his own fantasy! Like all the gay clown characters familiar from pop culture (think Jack from “Will and Grace”) Man in Chair is a straight fantasy of gay people: happy, funny and desexualized.
Thankfully Man in Chair does get invited into to a final song. But no jaunty hat and song, nor one-liner critique can undo this musical’s perilous laughter.
‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 29 at Zach Theatre. www.zachtheatre.org.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
A correction has been appended to this post. The role of Janet Van de Graff is played by Jill Blackwood.
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GFA announces winners to 2010 competition
The Guitar Foundation of America wrapped up its annual convention Sunday night at the Long Center for the Performing Arts with its International Concert Artist Competition concert.
The winner was Johannes Moller of Sweden. Second place was Artyom Dervoed, with Eduardo Costa netting third place and Alexander Milovanov, fourth.
Among the other prizes Moller wins is a 50-concert international tour. Austin audiences take note — that tour will include Austin at some point.
GFA Hall of Fame awards were given to Pepe Romero, Richard Long, Bernard Maillot and John Gilbert.
This year’s convention and competition was hosted by Austin Classical Guitar Society and featured some 60 concerts and events presented in cooperation with several other Austin arts groups including Austin Symphony Orchestra, Austin Lyric Opera and Austin Chamber Music Center.
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GFA Fest Saturday concert extravaganza
Saturday night at the Long Center, it was a sold-out crowd who enjoyed a stellar concert presented at part of the Guitar Foundation of America’s annual convention this year held in Austin for the first time.
Organized by the Austin Classical Guitar Society, the convention and its attendant concert series capped off Saturday with the A-List: the LA Guitar Quartet and Pepe Romero backed-up by the Austin Symphony Orchestra.
LAGQ treated with ‘Interchange,’ the piece written for them by guitar great Sergio Assad and commissioned by Matthew Dunne of UT-San Antonio and premiered at the Southwest Guitar Festival in 2009. ‘Interchange’ wonderfully reflected the individual personalities of the quartet heading down a musical highway that went through klezmer, samba, flamenco, Brazilain choro, Asian and Middle Eastern grooves.
Romero’s performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez was preceeded by a screening of 10-minute clip from the movie ‘Shadows and Light: Joaquin Rodrigo at 90’ that beautifully explained the backstory on Rodrigo’s most famous piece and one of the most well-loved scores in the classical guitar repertoire.
Romero’s 1992 recording of the Rodrigo Concierto is arguably the masterpiece recording of the masterpiece for guitar and orchestra. And on Saturday, backed by the Austin Symphony Orchestra led by Peter Bay, Romero should us why. Romero’s interpretation is haunting, sensitive, piercing, and it drew the audience to its feet for an unbridled standing ovation.
Romero repaid the complement with an encore of Fantasia Cubana, a delightful piece written by his father, full of vibrant color and playful yet virtuosic flourishes. Romero played the Fantasia for an encore at his solo concert earlier in the GFA festival and audiences begged for a reprise. We got it.
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GFA Fest puts 200 guitarists on Long Center stage, and more
Quick — how many guitarists can fit on the stage of the Long Center’s Dell Hall?
Try 200. And it was a phenomenal and charming sight.
Last night, as part of the Guitar Foundation of America’s annual convention and competition now taking place in Austin, some 200 young guitarists from around the country took the stage for a short concert under the direction of Michael Quant. The sea of strings sounded lush and colorful, particularly during the premiere of ‘Powerman,’ a fun yet thoughtful piece commissioned for the event from Austin composer Graham Reynolds. Let’s hope the young guitarists continue to rock on.
The youth guitar orchestra was the warm-up act of sorts for the evenings featured performers: guitarist Adam Holzman with the Miro Quartet.
But before the music started, GFA president Brian Head announced the 12 semi-finalists of the International Competition. Click here to see the list. The semi-finalists are competing today. On Sunday, four finalists will compete in a public concert beginning at 6:30 p.m. The winners will be announced during a 9 p.m. ceremony.
But last night the stage belonged to Holzman and the Miro. All on the faculty of UT, the fivesome clearly relished in the collaboration of playing together. That particularly came through in Boccherini’s exuberant Quintetto No. 4 a piece that bounced between virtuosic flourishes (particulary from the cello) and spirited leitmotifs full of Spanish flare.
Another treat was seeing Miro first violinist Daniel Ching play the delightful Giuliani’s Sonata Op. 85 in duet with Holzman.
The GFA concerts continue tonight with a flamenco program by Grisha at 8 p.m. See www.austingoesclassical.org for complete information.
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‘Work of Art’ episode 3 re-cap
The challenge this week on Bravo TV’s ‘Work of Art’ art competition reality series? Design a cover for one of six novels published by Penguin Books: title like “Alice in Wonderland,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Frankenstein.”
The prize? The winning design would be used for an actual Penguin book.
Never mind that the show’s artist-mentor Simon de Prury brainlessly called the prize “the ultimate accolade” for the artists (Really? a book cover is what all artists aspire too?). The Twittersphere lit up when the challenge was revealed with plenty of chatter of questioning the validity of a book design as a fine art challenge.
I’d posit that it was a pretty lame challenge, one certainly more commercial and design-oriented in its intent and not something a lot of over-indulged art school grads (i.e., most of the ‘Work of Art’ contestants) are used to.
In fact, most of them didn’t do very well with it instead churning out a bunch of lacklustre stuff. I’m sure the Typography Gods were fuming as most everyone forgot about the importance text plays in book cover design.
Miles — the self-proclaimed OCD sufferer — keeps up his penchant for making his entire appearance performance art by promptly holing up in his light-closet to read his assigned book, “Frankenstein” for inspiration. He emerges four hours later to tell us how great Mary Shelley’s 19th-century thriller is. Thanks Miles, but we think maybe you just skimmed the book.
The crits were edited to be the most sound-bitey nasty we’ve seen so far. The critics and guest judge, “artist/author” Jonathan Santloffer, called some of the finished work “middle school” and “a complete failure” and recommended that Peregrine’s cover be burned. Ow. And tacky. We know mean makes for good television, but those kind of comments don’t ultimately bolster the judges’ cred.
Judith, the oldest artist of the group, is drummed off the show for her “Pride and Prejudice” cover that had the title written backwards on a globby black-and-pink mess of a background. Judith promptly declared that as a “fine artist” she wasn’t used to be told what to do or follow assignments and so she was just going to do what she wanted to do. Fine. But don’t sign-up for the game that is a reality TV show if you’re then going to complain about the game.
John wins for “TIme Machine” cover that looks like, well, “a head from the planet pineapple” as judge Jerry Saltz calls it. Really, John’s 60ish geometric patterning makes for good practical graphic design for a book cover.
In the end, this episode felt a little energy-less. Let’s hope next week’s challenge — guest Andres Serrano challenges the artist to make something controversial — gets a little more interesting.
Judith
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Galen Wixson, former symphony ED, now leading Guitar Foundation of America
Last night at the Long Center, the Guitar Foundation of America’s annual convention and competition kicked off with stunning concert by guitar great, Pepe Romero.
That nearly 1,000 guitarists from around the world have descended on Austin for six days of concerts and competitions is impressive. In bringing the event to town for the first time, Matthew Hinsley, who heads Austin Classical Guitar Society, has crafted a community friendly event, a model of collaboration.
Check out all that’s happening at www.austingoesclassical.org
But perhaps the biggest news last night — for Austin arts audiences, that is — was the introduction of Galen Wixson as the new executive director of the Guitar Foundation of America.
Wixson previously held the post of executive director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. But in Sept. 2009 — after only a few months on the job — he was suddenly disappeared from the job with no explanation from the orchestra’s board. Symphony musicians protested. The orchestra’s letter to the board of trustees said the musicians found it “hard to imagine” any justification “to force him to leave.”
Read the story here.
Wixson joins GFA as that organization’s first full-time executive director and will stay in Austin with the new job. The GFA’s annual convention and competition is the largest gathering of the classical guitar community in the world.
Last night, Wixson was greeted warmly by the GFA crowd at Long Center.
Previously, Wixson has served as executive director for the Arkansas Symphony, the Symphony of Southeast Texas, the Manhattan Center for the Arts and the American String Teachers Association.
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Greyduck Gallery, Austin’s newest
Austin’s got a brand new indie contemporary art gallery — Grayduck Gallery in South Austin, just off S. First St. in 1,000-square-feet of warehouse space.
It’s second exhibition ‘Objectivity’ opens Thursday. The show is an exploration of all things object: object memories, objectification and the deconstruction of objects. The exhibit features mixed media and photography by four emerging artists from around the country: Annie Feldmeier Adams, Jennifer Leigh Jones, Nadine Y. Nakanishi and Scott Wright.
‘Objectivity’
Opening reception: 7 to 10 p.m.Thursday
Regular gallery house: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays
Exhibit continues through July 25
Grayduck Gallery, 608 W. Monroe Street
www.grayduckgallery.com
Image: Annie Feldmeier Adams, from “The Campus Cuties” series, Type-C prints. Courtesy www.builttofail.com.
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Review: ‘Becky’s New Car’
Becky Foster has hit a rut along life’s highway when we meet her — vaccuum cleaner in hand — at the start of Steven Dietz’s comedy “Becky’s New Car,” now getting a deftly staged production at Zach Theatre.
It’s not that life is going so badly for Becky (Lauren Lane). Her good-natured roofer husband. Joe (Chris Gibson), is still loving after 28 years of marriage even if he hasn’t gotten around to fixing their own roof. Chris, Becky’s 26-year-old son (a kinetic Josh Meyer) is a perpetual psychology graduate school still living at home and spouting psychobabble about every family interaction. And Becky’s deadend desk job at a car dealership demands far too much and give far too little.
But when the wealthy, lonesome yet bumbling widower Walter Flood (Lucien Douglas, at pitch-perfect deadpan) shows up at the showroom to buy nine new cars for his employers, Becky is just malcontent enough to let him believe that she is available and that she, too, just lost a spouse.
Dietz — who teaches playwriting at the University of Texas — stakes his entire snappy contemporary comedy on this all-too-familiar comedic device of misunderstanding. But if Dietz doesn’t strike out along any adventurous theatrical territory with “Becky’s New Car,” he does take the audience on a smooth, clever ride down a familiar comedic road. (That familiarity explains why Dietz’s considerable roster of plays are some of the most frequently produced by regional theaters.)
Directed by Dietz, the Zach production sparkles thanks in no small part to a cast with whip-smart comedic timing who manage the ever-escalating farcical action with charm and sincerity even if the script doesn’t deeply develop their characters.
As Becky, Lane (former star of the sit-com “The Nanny” and now teaching acting at Texas State University) projects just the right combination middle-aged, middle American ennui and likeable spunk even though that gets Becky’s life in a jumble.
Dietz toys with the nature of the theater’s “fourth wall,” at times, and has Becky engaging directly with the audience, offering them beverages, asking for help with her desk work. But that sometime feels a little hokey. And though Dietz knows how to deliver the punch lines, the plot feels as predictable as finding a pothole on an urban street.
Still, Becky and her midlife crisis grows on us and we want to stick around to see what happens to her even if we can already guess which road she’ll take.
‘Becky’s New Car’ continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through July 11 at Zach Theatre. www.zachtheater.org
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‘The Genuine Article’ — Free theater June 25-27
Who was Fanny Fern?
She was actually Sara Willis Parton, a 19th-century American writer, humorist and proto-feminist who in the mid-1850s became not only the first female writer with her own regular newspaper column, but with a $100 per week fee for her New York Ledger column, she was the highest-paid newspaper writer in the United States.
Now, she is mostly known for her novel ‘Ruth Hall,’ a thinly-veiled autobiography.
‘The Genuine Article’ — written in the mid-1990s by the late Aubrey Wertheim — is a one-woman play about Fern. And Friday through Sunday, director Scott Kanoff brings the 75-minute play to stage for three free performances.
Pamela Christian — the recent Best Actor winner in the 2010 Austin Critics’ Table Awards — stars as Fern.
‘The Genuine Article’
2 p.m. Friday and Saturday 1 p.m. Sunday
City Theatre Austin 3823 Airport Blvd.
FREE
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Review: Califa Arts Collaborative
It’s been the year for Ballet Austin dancers to venture out on their own. The latest example: Califa Arts Collaborative’s premiere performance Friday at Salvage Vanguard’s smaller theatre. BA company members past and present joined with local visual artists and musicians in three new pieces. The sold out show — people had to be turned away from the 6:30 performance — suggests there’s ample support in Austin for the new group.
The tiny space forced intimacy on the audience, offering a close-up view of lovely dancers. The evenings’ two larger pieces, “The Greatest of These” by former BA dancer Reginald Harris and “Hiding Places” by Michelle Thompson, benefited from the dancers’ professionalism. They found a way to move freely and fluidly despite space constraints.
Lisa Del Rosario’s comedic solo “Home with Yellow Fever” was the evening’s loosest, most comfortable work. Del Rosario plopped into the piece, springing up and over a well-worn couch. Through three songs by band “Yellow Fever,” Del Rosario battled her living room furniture hilariously. She rode an ottoman like a horse, turned a love seat into a carnival ride, and made a fall off a sofa arm into a parody of a death-defying cliff leap. The three sections, particularly the central dance that saw Del Rosario emerge from beneath a cozy Snuggie, felt like fits of comedic sleepwalking (sleepdancing?). Often Del Rosario only had to widen her eyes or scrunch her face to evoke laughter, slyly sidestepping slapstick in favor of more nuanced physical comedy.
Harris’ piece, described in program notes as being about “the relationships I have with my husband and my friends, had a warm sense of community built from a variety of couples’ dances. It’s heartening to see a series of couples, some composed of a man and a woman, some composed of two men, and the expansion of choreographic possibilities that happens when choreographers see multiple ways to pair dancers.
In Michelle Thompson’s “Hiding Places,” the only piece on the program to
explicitly highlight visual artists’ and musicians’ contributions, there was a
whole lot of hurtin’ going on. Live musicians accompanied each piece, ranging from
big groups to quiet solos, and the band’s quality was good, even sometimes
evocative. Projections of Caroline Wrights’ videos of paint slowly, unpredictably
webbing its away across a wet paper surface worked as colorful, vertical
counterpoint to the arcing, aching choreography. But with little change in tempo and
few attempts to counter the slow, sad song lyrics, the piece grew visually and
emotionally monotonous.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Review: KDH Dance Company and Guests
Three dance companies on one bill do not constitute a crowd.
Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company’s hosted Austin’s Chaddick Dance Theater and College Station’s Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company Thursday at Ballet Austin’s AustinVentures Theatre. The three companies’ aesthetics overlap significantly. All three tread in the mainstream of American modern dance, shifting between asking dancers to make clear shapes with their bodies and focusing more on energetic qualities in other moments.
But each group (all now somewhat familiar to Austin dance audiences) also have distinctive strengths. Cheryl Chaddick directs a gorgeously diverse company, who excel in their soft phrasing. Armstrong/Bergeron, still a young ensemble, has terrific intensity. And KDH continues to have one of the strongest, most polished ensembles in the area.
Chaddick offered only one piece, “Ask No More,” a lengthy meditation on pre-Raphaelite paintings of communities of women. It was difficult to discern an arc through the entire, multi-sectioned work. Most of the choreography emphasized women coming together, lending a hand or a shoulder. The sense of community was most compelling in the barest movement of the piece. Four women, draped in long toga tunics, shifted almost statuesquely over and on top of a small bench. Chaddick’s eye for less movement being more evocative can be quite keen. In larger sections, Chaddick and Lynn Forney had a stunning softness in their joints, gifting a sense of pleasure and ease to the work. Kristen Studer’s well-phrased solo felt like one of the most complete dances in the entire evening.
KDH contributed two works: Lisa Nick’s fluffy, physical “Intervention: the day by BFF gave me the real scoop” and Hamrick’s “Her Majesty’s Well-Played Adventures.” Nicks has an excellent hand on making over-the-top choices in everything from facial expressions to music selection to make accessible comedic dances. The six dancers in Hamrick’s piece looked fantastic together—on stage and on the video projected behind them. But the two parts of the work, the projected and the live, did not gel.
Armstrong/Bergeron’s three works demonstrated the company’s continued growth. A duet, “And at 36, she hit a crossroads,” featured Sara Kitterman and Andrea Sheridan walking across a long line of more than 40 pairs of shoes. One seemed content to choose from the selection offered, while the other tested the floor on her bare feet. The piece initially composed an intriguing question about conformity versus individualism, but too easily settled into an either/or answer to the question—wear the pre-set shoes or strike out on your own—rather than exploring a variety of identities the presence of so many different shoes seemed to suggest.
Five women pushed through Kathleen Byrne’s “Discard the Broken Cassette” with
precision and clarity. The program also included company co-artistic director Carisa
Armstrong in her solo “Fallen,” a hearkening back to modern dance’s origins in
the solo work of strong women.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts writer.
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Magnum photos now open to researchers
The $100 million Magnum Photos archive originaly purchased by MSD Capital, the $10 billion private investment firm for the family of computer tycoon Michael Dell, is now open to researchers.
Dell and MSD Capital earlier this year loaned the early 200,000 original press photographs of the famed international agency to University of Texas’ Ransom Center. The Center will house the Magnum archive for five years and will pay for the cataloging, preserving the entire photo archive as well make digital scans of every image.
Magnum and its photographers retain the copyright and licensing rights to the images. Dell’s MSD Capital will retain ownership of the photographs.
Read the full story of the agreement.
While they Ransom Center has yet announce plans for an exhibit of the Magnum photos, an inventory is now available online for researchers.
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Mid-century Texas art anyone?
Like mid-century Texas art?
This weekend you have the opportunity to view and purchase early Texas art from dealers and collectors from the Austin and San Antonio area at an exhibit and sale.
Works by mid-century University of Texas art faculty will be available including Constance Forsyth, Michael Frary and Ralph White as well as work by other major Texas artists.
Texas Art Collectors “Show and Sell.”
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday
Flatbed Press, 2830 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Image: Michael Frary, ‘Drilling rig,’ watercolor
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‘Work of Art’ episode 2 re-cap
Admittedly, it was about as much of an insider crowd last night as it gets in what could be called Austin’s art scene. But at a “Work of Art” viewing party, hosted by arts patron Julie Thornton, there was plenty of good chatter to hear about the Bravo reality competition series that pits artists against each other through a series of challenges.
Among the three dozen or so guests were Blanton Museum curator Annette Carlozzi, gallerist Lora Reynolds, nearly all of the members of the artist collective Okay Mountain and Arthouse fundraiser Jennifer Wijangco.
If there was a consensus opinion among the crowd last night it was that silly conceits of reality shows aside — yeah we know the challenges are artificial, sure the artist-competitors are a self-selecting media-friendly type and yes the whole thing is utterly reductive — at least “Work of Art” is clearly making contemporary art into televised entertainment for a moment and hopefully that’ll widen the audience for art.
“Hey, people are at least talking about (the show) and that’s great,” Thornton said before the second episode started. “And if it helps de-mystify art for a wider audience, that’s even better.”
And love the show or hate the show people — yes, even the often elitist art crowd — are watching and talking about it.
“Who cares if the art (on the show) is good or bad,” said Okay Mountain member Josh Rios. “It doesn’t matter if its just made for TV.”
“I hope that ‘Work of Art’ does for art and artists what “Top Chef” did for chefs,” said arts education consultant Brent Hasty, who is an unapologetic fan of other. “(Top Chef) repositioned chefs as likeable characters and made food and cooking something more people were thinking and talking about.”
This week’s challenge at least provided a little more interest than last week’s portrait-making task. The artist were taken to a so-called “appliance graveyard” and invited to select any discarded electronics appliances (mostly old televisions) they wanted. They were also given $100 to buy further supplies at a hardware store.
Appropriately enough, mixed media artist Jon Kessler was the episode’s guest judge and sage. Mentor Simon de Prury wander in and out offering the artists commentary, but mostly de Prury’s feedback is kind of bland (he’s an auctioneer after all, not an kind of instructor).
The artist-contestants used the old televisions in some pretty predictable configurations: eviscerated, atop a human, in self-referential groupings. Much of what was made last night looked pretty undergraduate. And again, whatever discussion there is during the crits is edited down to cliche blandishments.
Trong was eliminated for his trite work — a group of television sets, painted white and staring at each other, the screens sporting inanely-trying-to-be-archly-clever phrases like “I hate reality TV.” (Really? Then why you are on reality TV Trong?)
Miles Mendenhall won this week’s competition. He won last week too. His installation centered around a pseudo-bed with a couple of cast-concrete giant anuses placed nearby. Really, Miles is the ultimate performance artist of the series so far, taking naps at various odd moments (a little derivatively Warholian), and most notably curling up on his bed installation during the gallery show. As performance art it was pretty underwhelming, but it made for great reality TV. And well for that matter, he gets it: “As long as they keep giving me free food, free beer and free art supplies, I’ll stick around here,” he said.
And we’ll keep watching.
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Buildings and food
Shelter and food — a pair of necessities.
And New-York based artist Jason Middlebrook is considering them for a new exhibit when Arthouse, the Congress Avenue contemporary arts center, re-opens in October.
For ‘More Art About Buildings And Food,’ the inaugural exhibition in the new second floor gallery, Middlebrook is busy transforming detritus that’s been kicked up during the renovation of the historic downtown building and using it to make sculpture and functional dining furniture. Middlebrook’s aesthetic hypothesis is to make functional and non-functional objects that will suggest both the history of Arthouse’s Congress Avenue (the building was first a theater, then a department store) as well as its longstanding importance as a gathering place for Austin’s community.
Middlebrook also plans to make a massive drawing that will incorporate family recipes, a reference to community and self-made creativity. Some of the recipes will also be featured in a communal potluck dinner held at Arthouse Nov. 20.
Got a recipe to share? Middlebrook is looking for them. Send your favorite family recipe to Middlebrook.Arthouse@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions is July 31. See www.arthousetexas.org for more information.
Watch the live web cam of Arthouse’s renovation project.
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One evening of dance, four choreographers
Beginning tonight, Austin choreographer Kathy Dunn Hamrick gathers three of her fellow dancemakers for three nights of new work: Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company, Lisa Nicks and Cheryl Chaddick.
‘An Evening of Contemporary Dance’
8 p.m. today through Saturday
AustinVentures StudioTheater, Ballet Austin, 501 W. Third St.
$12-$15
www.kdhdance.com
Hamrick will premiere a new dance in collaboration with videographer Kakii Keenan and composer Tim Kerr. “Plan on being wildly entertained,” Hamrick says. “The company is having a blast creating this new piece, both in the studio and in front of the green screen. Tim incorporates seemingly incongruous samples for an extremely fun and surprising score. And you will want one of Renee Nunez’s costumes.”
Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company will present three works including “Discard the Broken Cassette,” a high energy work choreographed by Kathleen Byrne and Christine Bergeron’s duet, “And then at 36, she hit a cross road.”
When queried about her choreographic plans, Lisa Nicks responded by asking if it would be okay to get ice cream on the floor. Lisa is premiering “Intervention,” a fun, intense and ultimately eloquent duet.
Chaddick Dance Theater will be performing a work created and performed in San Francisco in 2000 called “Ask No More.” “I became inspired and fascinated by the body language of the pre-Raphaelite paintings of Laurence Al Tadema and one of the most beautiful paintings of that era, ‘Reclining June.’” says Cheryl Chaddick. “I appreciated the suppleness, curvature, and the pure beauty of the female body.”
Photo of Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company by Kevin Gliner.
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Review: BAM Fest’s ‘New Dance’
A person’s posture can be very revealing. The dancers of Dallas Black Dance Theatre struck defiant, powerful postures in every moment of their performance Tuesday, part of the Black Arts Movement’s New Dance program at the Carver Center.
DBDT and the other companies on the program, Creative Outlet Dance Theatre of Brooklyn and Austin’s Ballet Afrique Youth Ensemble, displayed many of the best features of dance borne in the African American community. All the evening’s dancers were strong and precise physically and artistically.
DBDT has become a fixture of BAM’s programming, and it’s easy to know why. The company’s repertory includes new stars in modern dance choreography, like Camille A. Brown and Nejla Yatkin, as well as treasures of American dance history.
Brown’s duet “Our Honeymoon is Over,” performed by Nycole Ray and Zach Law Ingram to Aretha Franklin’s deep crooning, offered a refreshing look at familiar choreographic structures. The dancers’ fast, frenzied entrance in perfect unison did not communicate a solidarity between them, as unison movement often does, but instead demonstrated two people in the same space, unable to speak to one another. It was the danced equivalent of a screaming match that has gotten so loud no one can be heard. The duet also rejected the easy end to couple dances: resolution. Brown allows Ray, the woman, to decide she’s had enough, leaving Ingram behind at the fight’s end.
But a man had the final say in Asadata Dafora’s classic 1932 solo “Awassa Astrige/Ostrich.” Christopher McKenzie, Jr., embodied the regal ostrich, carefully replicating the characteristics that connect African and African American dance, particularly in his undulating spine and grounded, mobile pelvis. (Dafora came to New York from his home country of Sierra Leone in 1929.) Historians’ emphasis on movement vocabulary in defining African American dance can overshadow the spirit of the dancing. McKenzie did not just do the steps the right way. He stilled the sold-out audience, commanding our attention and calling forth dancing spirits.
DBDT’s other offerings included an excerpt from Yatkin’s solo “Journey to the One: A Tango,” which is practically duet between Janine Beckles and a long, rippling red skirt; and two dances by company members, Richard A. Freeman, Jr.’s balletic drama “Trial & Error” and an excerpt from Ingram’s “Phoenix.”
Jamel Gaines’ Creative Outlet company was a new, welcome addition to BAM. The company has a strong core of dancers, who can handle Gaines’ mix of African and modern vocabulary, as well as an ample number of virtuosic tricks. Bahiyah Sayyed Gaines stands out. She moves with lovely ease and musicality, clearly making choices about when to punctuate the choreography and when to slide gracefully through a long phrase.
Ballet Afrique’s Youth Ensemble opened the evening, displaying solid training in a variety of styles. There’s reason to hope Austin might one day see one of these young women dancing with the kind of companies that filled the rest of the evening’s program.
The Black Arts Movement Festival continues through Saturday. www.bamfestaustin.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Review: Conspirare’s Bach Mass in B Minor
Two years ago, Austin’s Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare stunned when they performed Verdi’s Requiem in the then-brand new Long Center for the Performing Arts. In a way it was a concert that defined a moment in Austin’s cultural history — a spotless, virtuosic performance and the first proof that the Long Center’s Dell Hall is a first-rate listening room for choral music.
Sunday night, Conspirare the choir, led by Craig Hella Johnson, returned to Dell Hall for another monumental masterpiece of the choral repetoire — Bach’s Mass in B Minor.
And while not as breathtaking and daunting a performance as the once-in-a-lifetime Verdi was two years ago, the Bach nevertheless proved Johnson and his vocalists are superb interpreters, able to bring freshness to even an oft-performed piece like the B Minor Mass.
Presented in collaboration with the Victoria Bach Festival — of which Johnson is artistic director — Sunday’s concert featured the Victoria Bach Festival Orchestra, a 31-piece period instrument ensemble that provide an authentic underpinning to the Baroque masterpiece.
Among the soloists soprano Kathlene Ritch and tenor David Farwig, both regular Conspriare soloists, delivered sensitive performances. Soprano Abigail H. Lennox and tenor Matt Tresler deftly handled the duet “Domine Deus.” Alto Wendy Bloom sang the “Agnus Dei” with delicate melancholy.
Conspriare recently announced its 2010-2011 season at www.conspirare.org. Next June the choir will once again return to the Long Center with the Victoria Bach Festival, this time with Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina, a critically acclaimed work by the Puerto Rican-born composer.
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Movement is healing for choreographer Lisa del Rosario
Summer’s always a good time to try something new. That’s the case this weekend with the new arts collaboration, Califa. The group is mainly composed of choreographers familiar to Ballet Austin audiences: former dancer Reginald Harris and current star Michelle Thompson. The third choreographer on the free program, which runs Friday and Saturday at Salvage Vanguard, is Lisa del Rosario. A teacher at Ballet Austin’s school and one of Austin’s most thoughtful, yet quirky performers, del Rosario will perform her new solo, “Home With Yellow Fever.”
Austin American-Statesman: How do you straddle being inside a solo as the dancer and outside of it as the choreographer?
Lisa del Rosario: I do little bits at a time because I need to repeat it over and over just to get it into my body. It takes time for me to process what’s going on from the outside. I also have to make sure I’m pacing myself. This piece is really energetic, so I have to make sure the movement isn’t going to kill me.
How did visual artist Allyson Fox inspire ‘Home With Yellow Fever’?
She draws furniture, and she draws people. I chose to use my living room furniture in the piece because I saw that she was an interior designer, too. I like to change the perspective of the space. I use the living room space in a nontraditional way — very distorted and very physical.
‘Yellow Fever’ has a variety of connotations, including xenophobia toward Asians or the idea of white men who only date Asian women. You took the phrase from band’s name — the band that created the music you use. Do the other connotations matter for you?
I think it’s ironic that that was the band’s name, and that I’m an Asian woman. But I’m not personalizing it or taking offense to it at all. I just find it really funny.
You’re a Feldenkrais practitioner. How has that approach to studying movement, the focus connecting movement and thought, changed how you dance?
My repertory of movement blossomed, and now whenever I’m creating movement it almost seemed endless because I can do so much with my body now. Feldenkrais also helped me recover from injuries. My sophomore year at UT I had a stress fracture and started having lots of pain in all my joints. Feldenkrais helped me get out of that really injured place. Then about 7 years ago I was in the Philippines to dance professionally, and a tree fell and crushed half my body. My left arm was totally paralyzed. Once I began to heal, Feldenkrais meant I had the idea that I can think differently. I can still work with what I have, and I was able to heal at the same time.
‘Home With Yellow Fever’
When: 6:30 and 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Where: Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road
Cost: Free (donations appreciated)
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Photo by Nadine Latief.
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Single tix to 2010-2011 TPA season on discounted sale for one day
Tickets to individual performances for the 2010-2011 Texas Performing Arts season will go on sale this Friday, June 18 from midnight to 11:59 p.m. at 15% off face value.
Tickets will be available at all authorized ticket outlets, which include the Bass Concert Hall Box Office, most H-E-B stores and all Texas Box Office outlets, online at www.texasperformingarts.org or by calling (512) 477-6060 or (800) 982-BEVO.
Texas Performing Arts’ new season features Silk Road Ensemble with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma; author, journalist, and food activist Michael Pollan; the National Theatre of Scotland performing the stirring play, ‘Black Watch’ along with Merce Cunningham Dance Company among many other artists.
See www.texasperformingarts.org for a complete schedule.
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So, lots of people think they want to dance
Is it the “So You Think You Can Dance” effect? Or maybe a result of the super-popular “Dancing With the Stars?”
One things for sure: the hyper-popularity of shows such as aforementioned dance competition series mean that more people are watching dance than likely ever before in recent American pop culture history. And with more people watching dance , it’s arguably leading to more people wanting to dance.
That certainly seems to be the case at Ballet Austin’s Butler Community School.
Today, Ballet Austin officials announced that the Butler has seen a staggering 472% growth since opening three years ago. More than 3,500 students of all ages taking advantage of the facility in the last 12 months alone.
Ballet Austin Academy has seen growth of approximately 25% over the same period.
That makes Ballet Austin’s open class ‘community school’ and ballet academy one of the largest dance training centers in the United States run by a professional ballet company.
And all this growth during one of the worse economic recessions in a generation.
lasses are offered in 12 different dance styles including hula, hip-hop and street jazz. Fitness, Feldenkrais, Hula, Hip-Hop, Zumba, street jazz, conditioning and more.
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Review: Tapestry Dance Company’s ‘Friends in Time’
Tapestry Dance Company’s shows often feel part performance, part family reunion.
Saturday’s “Friends in Time,” the faculty concert for the company’s annual summer tap festival, continued in the same friendly vein. The show featured several of Tapestry’s current dancers, including artistic director Acia Gray, as well as a full slate of out-of-town guests from the best of the national tap scene.
The most spectacular, moving performance of the evening came from a dancer who was both a guest and a hometown hero. Jason Janas was a strong member of Tapestry’s ensemble for years, and now has returned with an even more sophisticated style. Janas evokes a mood with his entire body, letting the rhythms of his lower body travel up through his torso and into his face. Dancing to the live music of the Eddy Hobizal Jazz Trio playing an almost unrecognizable, but evocative version of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” Janas looked liked a genius made of rubber, soul and sound.
The evening’s other guests demonstrated the wide varieties of tap from Terry Brock’s classical tap in “Essence of Ellie,” an ode to Eleanor Powell’s style, to Bril Barrett’s fast, hard-stomping, stand-up comedy bit.
Among the Tapestry regulars, Brenna Kuhn highlighted the syncopation of tap as not just a matter of the feet. Kuhn continues to develop a complex battery of rhythms in her shoulders and arms.
The annual showcase is always the culmination of the festival, and the sense of ongoing learning fostered by ‘Soul to Sole’ filled the theatre. The audience, which seemed to have a large number of students in attendance, could not have been more excited about the show. Every single number got a standing ovation. It’s hard to argue with that.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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BAM Festival hosts a night of dance
The Black Arts Movement Festival hosts a show case of modern dance Tuesday night featuring Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Brooklyn’s Creative Outlet Dance Theater and Austin’s Ballet Afrique.
8 p.m. Tuesday
Boyd Vance Theater, Carver Museum, 1165 Carver Museum
$15. 236-0644, www.bamaustin.org
Creative Outlet Dance Theatre of Brooklyn
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Review: ‘Delta Rhapsody’ at the BAM Festival
Delta Rhapsody has many things to tell us. With a mouth “as wide as the river” the cabaret singer who commands the stage in Nadine Mozon’s one-woman show, pours forth with poetical stories and observations of life. As Delta spins it, the flow of the water in a river becomes a complex metaphor for life.
Clad in a body-hugging, sparkling gold cocktail dress, the lithe and elegant Delta actually never sings us a song in the 110-minute show, though musicians Micheal Sever and Dan Murcis lace her actions with plenty of wonderful jazz and rhythm actions.
Instead, Delta is here to take us on lyrical journey down the river of life.
Mozon — who teaches theater at Texas State Univeristy-San Marcos — staged an early version of her “Delta Rhasody” show in 2008, also as a part of that year’s Black Arts Movement Festival.
Now, Mozon is back with a new version of her show, also presented as part of the Black Arts Movement Festival, presented by ProArts Collective. Directed by Madge Darlington, “Delta Rhasody” played for three nights this weekend at the Off Center.
An immediately compelling performer, Mozon deftness as a writer and inventive crafter of language harnesses Delta’s multi-thread monologue into a seamless dramatic whole: race relations through the decades, Hurricane Katrina, love, human connectedness, Mozon weaves it all together, cracking jokes as easily as she waxes poetic.
Next to language, her body is Mozon’s most evocative instrument, using gesture and expression to exacting affect. After a quick change, Mozon effortlessly transforms into Tyrone a B-Boy youth, popping as he tells his story. Then its back to the elegant yet wise-cracking Delta.
For all her glorious tale-telling and a metaphorical bon-mots, Delta doesn’t take the nightclub stage to offer us any final answers. Instead, we told to drink plenty of water from the river of life and embrace the unknown.
“We all have to bear witness,” Delta admonishes. “Let’s live the question together.”
The BAM Festival continues through June 19. See www.bamaustin.org.
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Review: Austin Playhouse’s “Jacquel Brel is Alive and Well in Living in Paris”
Mid-century composer/lyricist Jacques Brel wrote expressive cabaret songs that seamlessly fuse romance with cynicism and blend a particular kind of European world-weariness with a gleeful but urgent folly.
Belgian by birth, living most of his adult life in Paris, Brel came of age in a post-WWII Europe still racked by deprivation and darkness. Teasing out the conventions of tradition — social, romantic, political — were all fodder for his remarkable oeuvre that spanned the 1950s and the 1960s. (Arguably his best known song is the often-covered “Ne me quitte pas.”)
Brel’s songs were little known in the U.S. until 1968 when an American musical revue of his songs, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, translated by Mort Shuman and Eric Blau, debuted on Broadway to great acclaim, even if some criticized Shuman and Blau for lightening-up much of Brel’s cynical gist.
And in the current Austin Playhouse production of “Jacquel Brel is Alive and Well in Living in Paris,” unfortunately even less of Brel’s complexity shines through.
A cast of six— Boni Hester, Huck Huckaby, Corely Pillsbury, Rick Roemer, Gretech Weihe and Jacob Trussell (standing last weekend for Nathan Brockett) — seem simply to mark their way through the 23 songs.
There’s little theater or drama underpinning this musical revue, directed by Don Toner. What was missing was enchantment, the urgency of Brel’s voice. And for that matter any sense of nostalgia seemed lacking, strange for songs that are acutely products of a certain time and place.
Of all the cast, Trussell brought the only moments of theater and dynamism to the show, amply adding character, acting and emotion to his two solos, “Bachelor’s Dance” and “Bulls.”
Brel, who frequently performed his own songs, had a wild-eyed frenetic style suffused with an urgency in his tale telling and a rawness of emotion.
The Austin Playhouse production, unfortunately, captures none of that, leaving Brel’s fine work to languish in lacklustreness.
‘Jacquel Brel is Alive and Well in Living in Paris’ continues through June 27 at the Austin Playhouse. www.austinplayhouse.com
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Ballet Austin now on TWC local-on-demand
Need a dance fix? Now, you can watch Ballet Austin anytime on Time Warner Cable local-on-demand channel 1400.
The cable provider has given Ballet Austin its own category on channel 1400 where viewers will find “Truth & Beauty” and “Bounce,” two pieces from the company’s celebrated February performance.
Both choreographed by Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills, “Truth & Beauty” features the live musical accompaniment of Austin Chamber Music ensemble. “Bounce” has an original score by Austin composer Graham Reynolds who performs it live with a big band.
A pilot in 2009 with TWC offering Ballet Austin’s “Cult of Color: Call to Color” iwas so well received that cable company decided to take the project further.
Also now available on local-on-demand (channel 1400 in Austin/San Marcos and channel 200 in Waco/Temple/Killeen) is “Symphony of Clouds” an educational production of Ballet Austin’s ArtsBlitz program performed by the company’s trainees in collaboration with Pollyanna Theater Company and Umlauf Sculpture Garden. “Symphony of Clouds” recounts Mozart’s life from childhood through dance, acting and music.
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Bach’s biggest to hit Long Center on Sunday
Bach’s Mass in B Minor is arguably a pinnacle of the Western classical music — a crowning achievement for a composer whose entire oeuvre is a masterpiece of classical music.
On Sunday, five-time Grammy-nominated Austin choir sing the Mass in B Minor at the Long Center, accompanied by the 31-piece period-instrument Victoria Bach Festival Orchestra. Conspriare director Craig Hella Johnson has made a life-long study of Bach’s choral music and is a sensitive interpreter of the composer’s voice.
In 2008, Conspirare stunned a Long Center audience with a performance of Verdi’s majestical Requiem. Sunday’s performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor promises to an equally moving experience, a not-to-miss concert.
From the Conspirare program notes comes:
Scholars believe that despite its textual source, Bach intended the Mass in B Minor for secular performance rather than liturgical use. Its two-hour duration was impractical for church, although some movements were performed at occasional special services. The B Minor was first performed in its entirety in the mid-19th century, a hundred years after Bach’s death, and received its American premiere in 1900.
For tix and info, see www.conspirare.org.
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Recap: So they think they can make a “Work of Art’
The Twittersphere was ablaze last night as Bravo TV premiered its new reality competition series “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.”
Not unexpectedly, there were a few art world watchers who tweeted that they had never watched a reality TV series while others claimed they, of course, never watch TV at all, but maybe just this one time…
Really? Is the art world still that uptight that it feels the need to apologize for even just watching a medium (television) that has single-handedly transformed culture? I feel sorry for the art elite who never enjoyed a childhood Saturday morning of classic cartoons. So sad.
There’s been lots of critical bashing by art scribes of the show too. But that’s to be expected, too.
After we previewed a screener of the first episode, Austin artist Candace Briceno-Connolly and I watched the show again live in its premiere last night. Candace and I are unapologetic fans of lots of Bravo reality competition series “Project Runway” being the first of course. And we are unapologetically eager to see how “Work of Art” unfolds.
Yeah, we thought the show has its unrealistic conceits — chief among them that it’s a reality competition series pinned on the often erratic, typically private art-making process. And yet here come the artificial made-for-reality-TV challenges and constraints all wrapped in glitzy, polished, slickly-edited series of sound bites and cameos.
The truth though is that art is never made in some precious pure-of-heart commercial-free vacuum. Da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa just because he “felt” like it, after all — some one paid for and ordered that painting. Art is a type of competitive business. Always has been.
And “Work of Art” is a TV show, lest any one forget that. It’s designed to be entertainment, after all.
For the most part it is entertaining, even if the first episode clunked a bit: We need to see more of the judges — critic Jerry Saltz, socialite/gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohaytan and gallerist/dealer Bill Powers — to get a sense of their voices. There was way too much easel painting going on during the first competition (creating a portrait of a fellow contestant). The challenges have to get more challenging. (Every art student has to make a portrait of a fellow art student at some time. What about a site-specific installation challenge?) Also, so much art looks dull and flat when televised. And unlimited access to art supplies? As Candace pointed out “I like the challenge of going to the art store and having only $50 to figure out what to make.’
Still, for a piece of televised entertainment, “Work of Art’ does work so far. And if it makes a wider public ponder contemporary art and contemporary art-making just a little bit more, that’s OK. Let the art elites continue to bash it. At least it means they’re watching. Even Saltz, for whom I have a great deal of regard as critic, suggested a few misgivings in his recap of the first episode.
“I think (this show) gives people an overview of what an artist is actually going through (during the process of making art),” Candace observed last night. “Some people don’t realize that an artist has failures along the way — that making art isn’tan effortless process. I get derailed all the time.”
In 2004, Candace, by the way, was included in the Arthouse annual exhibit “New American Talent” which was curated by Saltz.
“So far I’m not seeing any art on the show that I’d really want to see in a gallery or museum,” said Candace. “And clearly there’s a lot of artists who feel like their person is more important than their art. But I think (this show) could give a lot of people the chance to see at least some of the process that goes into making art and some of the dialogue and critique about it. And that’s a good thing.”
Stay tuned.
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Is the art world ready for its 15 minutes of reality TV fame?
Art world hipsters secretly loved Project Runway — admit it you did, I know who you are!
But will they like it when the cameras turn on them in ‘Work of Art,’ Bravo TV’s latest reality competition series which starts tonight?
“I can imagine people in the art world reacting (to the show) — policing its own borders, frightened to be popular and against the idea of competition,” art critic Saltz told me recently by phone. “But what’s not competitive about the art world?”
Saltz is one of three judges on ‘Work of Art. Now the senior art critic for New York Magazine, he was the long art critic for the Village Voice. A collection of writing for the voice has been published in the book “Seeing Out Lour.” Saltz is popular lecturer — he visited Austin’s Arthouse a few years ago — and one of the more distinctive and colorful voices in art criticism.
Read the rest of my interview with him and others on ‘Work of Art’ here.
I’ll be watching the first episode tonight along with Austin artist Candace M. Briceno- Connolly. Candace has had solo exhibits at Dallas’ MFA Gallery and Women & Their Work. She’s also been included in the Texas Biennial and Austin Museum of Art’s “New Work” triennial. Candace is a graduate of the super-competitive School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
I’ll post our reactions to the show tomorrow.
Image: ‘Mole,’ by Candace M. Briceno- Connolly. Mixed media.
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BAM Festival: Staged reading of “Obamanation”
Among the events during the opening weekend of ProArts Collective’s Black Arts Movement Festival was a staged reading of “Obamanation,” a one-act play by Lou-Lou Igbokwe.
A recent graduate of Darmouth College, Igbokwe won the Gaffney Playwriting Award from UC-San Diego for her play about a young black woman, Cleo, and a young white man, Peter, who meet up while both wait on the National Mall for Barak Obama’s Inaugural Address.
UT theater professor Stephen Gerald directed the reading Sunday afternoon at the Boyd Vance Theatre which featured actors Andrena Galloway, Colby Lee Wallingsford and Barbara Chisholm.
“I set out to critique the idea that we were suddenly in a post-racial America,” Igbokwe said in a recent interview. “I think I can say I accomplished that, but I realize I did so by invoking age-old conversations about interracial dating and employing various stereotypes. It’s always interesting to see what aspects of the script people react to, whether it’s Cleo’s blunt word trauma or Peter’s unbridled, almost naive, idealism. People want to know who is right, whom they should identify with, and whom I identify with. But what Cleo and Peter say to each other isn’t as significant as the moment in which they say it. The fact that we still laugh, scoff, or cringe at some of the dialogue means we haven’t really transcended this thing called race.”
Igbokwe’s tough dialogue dominated the post-performance discussion with Gerald and the performers, which also focused on”Obmanation“‘s indebtedness to Amiri Baraka’s play “The Dutchman.”
Among the things coming up this weekend at the BAM Festival, is Nadine Mozon’s “Delta Rhapsody,” her music-infused one woman show in which she plays the campy cabaret performer Delta, who spins stories, jokes and her own brand of wisdom.
Read what critic Clare Croft wrote about “Delta Rhapsody” when it played in 2008.
“Delta Rhapsody” play 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $15. www.bamaustin.org
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Austin Critics’ Table 2009-2010 winners
The Austin Critics’ Table Awards were given out tonight. The informal group of arts critics from the American-Statesman, the Austin Chronicle and Might Be Good recognized the following winners:
VISUAL ART
Museum Exhibition
“Desire,” Blanton Museum of Art, curator: Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, curator
Group Gallery Exhibition
“Polymict,” Okay Mountain, curator: Nathan Green
Solo Gallery Exhibition
“Beilu Liu: Bound,” D Berman Gallery
Work of Art: Independent or Public Project
‘24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project,’ Liz Glynn, Arthouse
Work of Art: One of A Kind
‘Halliburton Archiving Solutions (II), 1987,’ Adam Schreiber, “One on One on One,” Art Palace
Work of Art: Installation
‘Camp Base Camp: Everest Friends,’ Peter Reichardt, Mary Rothlisberger, and Kristyn Weaver, “Ideas of Mountains,” Creative Research Laboratory
Artist
Okay Mountain
Touring Show, Art
“The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and External Memory in Art,” Austin Museum of Art
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Symphonic Performance
Symphony VI, Golden Hornet Project
Chamber Performance
Ellen Fullman and the Long String Instrument, New Music Co-op
Choral Performance
Ode to Common Things, Conspirare Symphonic Choir with Austin Symphony
Opera
‘A View From the Bridge,’ UT Butler Opera Center
Singer
Cristina Caldas, ‘A View From the Bridge’
Brad Raymond, ‘Albert Herring’
Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, ‘The Star’
Instrumentalist
Douglas Harvey, cello, Don Quixote
Original Composition/Score
“Two Cautionary Tales,” Steve Snowden
THEATER
Production, Drama
‘Dionysus in 69,’ Rude Mechanicals
Production, Comedy
‘Killer Joe,’ Capital T Theatre
Production, Musical
‘john & jen’, Penfold Theatre Company
Direction
Beth Burns, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’
Mark Pickell, ‘Killer Joe’
Acting in a Leading Role
Pamela Christian, ‘Mary Stuart’
Ryan Crowder, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’
Joey Hood, ‘The Atheist’
Gabriel Luna, ‘Black Snow’/’Orestes’/’Endgame’
Acting in a Supporting Role
Michael Amendola, ‘Our Town’ (Zach Theatre)
Smaranda Ciceu, ‘Black Snow’
Sean Martin, ‘Mary Stuart’/’Three Days of Rain’
Jose Villareal, ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’
Ensemble Performance
‘Black Snow,’ Tutto Theatre Company
‘bobrauschenbergamerica,’ Mary Moody Northen Theatre
David Mark Cohen New Play Award
‘House of Several Stories,’ John Boulanger
Music Direction
Lyn Koenning, ‘The Difficulty of Crossing a Field’
Movement
Madge Darlington/Shawn Sides, ‘Dionysus in 69’
Touring Show, Theater
‘Paved Paradise Redux,’ Fusebox Festival
DESIGN
Scenic Design
Lisa Laratta, ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’/’Black Snow’
Costume Design
Alison Heryer, ‘The Trojan Women’/’The Difficulty of Crossing a Field’
Lighting Design
Stephen Pruitt, ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’/’The Trash Project’/’Ears Wide Open’
Sound Design
William Meadows, ‘Impermanence’/’The Trash Project’
DANCE
Dance Concert
‘The Trash Project,’ Forklift Danceworks
Short Work
“Angel of My Nature,” Truth & Beauty/The Bach Project
Choreographer
Deborah Hay, ‘No Time to Fly’
Dancer
Masa Kolar, “Your Provision”
Jaime Lynn Witts, ‘Truth & Beauty: The Bach Project ‘
Ensemble
‘Ears Wide Open,’ Tapestry Dance Company
Touring Show, Dance
Black Grace, Texas Performing Arts
Special Citations - 2010
John Bustin Award for Conspicuous Versatility: Graham Reynolds
W.H. “Deacon” Crain Award for Outstanding Student Work: LaTasha Stephens, UT Theatre & Dance; Jacob Trussell, St. Edward’s University
Graced in the Machine Award: Don Anderson, “The Crane Dance,” The Trash Project
Get Up, Up, and Away Award: Shannon McCormick & Shana Merlin
Time Out of Mind Award: The Hideout’s 40-Hour Improv Marathon
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Francesca Gabbiani’s fun with paper
Francesca Gabbiani’s vividly colored cut-paper collages are steeped in the creepier, weirder side of pop culture and culture in general. Horror movies, the films of Jean Cocteau, hippy jewelry sporting the images of cannabis leaves, Lewis Carroll - it’s all fodder for the Los-Angeles-based Gabbiani who’s getting her third solo show at Lora Reynolds Gallery.
No wonder there’s a familiarity to Gabbiani’s work: It’s a mash-up of cultural references that many of us have stuffed in our minds.
These images of people-less interior scenes or odd arrangements of flora and fauna are cinema-esque, quasi-psychedelic, stuffed with pop culture references and suffused with a kind of adolescent melancholia. An ornate boudoir sits empty. An owl and a fox pose next to a heap of odd treasures.
Gabbiani’s is not intellectually deep stuff, but it’s fun.
Read the full review here.
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Three Austin museums join NEA’s Blue Star Museums Program
Three Austin Museums have joined the National Endowment for the Arts’s Blue Star Museums Program.
The Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, the Austin Museum of Art and the Neill-Cochran House Museum are participating in the NEA’s Blue Star Museums Program which offers active duty military personnel and their families free admission this summer.
More than 750 museums nationwide have joined the NEA initiative which continues through Labor Day. See www.arts.gov/bluestarmuseums for a complete list of museums.
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BAM: Black Arts Movement Fest expands this year
When Lisa Byrd began conceiving of how to present “BAM: Black Arts Movement Festival” this year, she started thinking outside the box.
Or really, she started thinking about presenting African American performing arts outside of traditional theaters.
“I started thinking about expanding the notion of how black culture can be presented and what exactly includes black culture,” said Byrd, artistic director of ProArts Collective, the Austin nonprofit cultural organization. “I also thought about taking a broader look at how and where African American and African diaspora culture takes place.”
So, though this year’s BAM Festival features theater and dance performances in a traditional theater as it has in the past, it also offers a host of events in not-so-typical arts venues.
A barbershop and beauty salon will be the site of a late-night live music and spoken poetry event. Food traditions get a starring role in “Culinary One Acts,” a live cooking demonstration featuring three local cooks whipping up their secret fried chicken recipes.
The BAM Festival kicks off Friday with a free party in front of Carver Museum & Cultural Center.
BAM: Black Arts Movement Festival
When: Friday through June 19
Where: Various locations including the Carver Museum, 1165 Angelina St.
Cost: Festival passes $65; Individual events $5-$15. Some events are free.
www.bamaustin.org
This weekend
FRIDAY
— ‘BAM Café.’ The festival opens with a free outside party featuring music by opening with Big Chief Kevin & the Flaming Arrows, Tje Austin, spoken word artists, Afro-Brazilian capoeira dance performance and an exhibit by painter Amir Lyles. 6 to 10 p.m. Carver Museum, 1165 Angelina St.
SATURDAY
— ‘African Safari.’ Using her upbringing in Kenya as inspiration, storyteller Elizabeth Kahura weaves stories, poems, music and dance to illuminate the culture of the African continent. 1 p.m. Saturday. Carver Museum, 1165 Angelina St. $5.
— Comedy Night. A showcase of stand-up comedy featuring Kelvin Girdy, Shondee Lester, In House Freestyle and the Black Prince. 8 p.m. Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $15.
— Late Night Poetry. with Lenelle Moïse. 10:30 p.m. Legendary Cuts and Jae’undre’s Barbershop, 4700 Loyola Lane. $10
SUNDAY
—‘Obamanation.’ Staged reading of the award-winning play by Lou-Lou Igbokwe, 2 p.m. Boyd Vance Theatre, Carver Museum. $10
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Review: ‘Machinal’
It’s not hard to see why in the last few decades ‘Machinal,’ the 1928 Broadway success and expressionist jewel of a play by Sophie Treadwell, is a favorite piece of repertoire for brainiac, experimental theater-makers.
Though it’s frequently studied as a quintessential example of expressionist theater — episodic dramas of the early 20th-century characterized by highly stylized speech and plots that typically illuminate a struggle against bourgeois authority — “Machinal” was over-looked by directors for years. Thanks to some well-received revivals in the 1990s, Treadwell’s trenchant drama is back in circulation.
And thanks to award-winning Austin director Dustin Wills, we have a penetrating, creatively original new production playing at Salvage Vanguard Theater through June 13.
Produced under the aegis of Wills’ new collaborative company Paper Chairs, this “Machinal” preserves the period character of Treadwell’s 1920s milieux. And yet keen, nuanced acting across the cast and a brilliantly conceived set by Lisa Laratta add a very contemporary smartness. This “Machinal” proves a point — Treadwell’s is a timeless play.
And it’s not an easy one, for sure.
A reporter as well as a playwright, Treadwell was assigned to cover the sensational 1927 trial of a stenographer named Ruth Snyder who, along with her lover, murdered her husband. Snyder’s conviction led to the first execution of a woman in an electric chair, a grisly event that was captured by a reporter wearing a hidden camera that became a widely published media sensation.
But what distinguishes “Machinal” from other social-protest cautionary tales of its time, is that Treadwell tells her tale through a female — proto-feminist? — lens.
Only identified as Young Woman, the central character — an evocatively brittle Chase Crossno — is caught in the zeitgeist of pre-Depression America, trapped in a mind-numbing job in a unidentified business, pressed by her money-hungry mother to marry her boss (a brilliantly creepy Tom Truss) whom she detests and pushed forward by the societal pressures to marry because what else is a woman to do. The woman’s story unfolds in nine clearly delineated episodes: workplace, home, honeymoon, speakeasy and so on.
Though the woman finds brief happiness in an affair with a man she meets in a speakeasy (played by a riveting Gabriel Luna), even that eventually dooms her when she commits the ultimate act. And then, well — you’ll see the electric chair when you enter the theater.
As a director, Wills relishes in Treadwell’s flattened yet highly stylized language. Devoid of nuance and emotion, it’s telegraphic, delivered machine-gun fast by the nameless office workers as they madly punch at vintage typewriters and adding machines. Or else the deadpan speech remains adrift between characters, never carrying any meaning, underscoring the chasms between these machine-like people
Wills and Laratta set the drama in the round ringing the stage with rows of mismatched chairs. In the center, Laratta’s made a wooden stage platform pocked by vintage cabinet doors of various sizes which characters open and close to pull out or put away props. Indeed the stage is a platform of trap doors that seems to menace every action.
To great effect, Wills adds to Treadwell’s sparse stylized language with a vocabulary of sparse stylized movements all his own. With rhythmic almost military precision ensemble members move on and off the stage, at times even marching machine-like around the audience seating areas. And Jeff Jones’ sound design blankets the production with an ever-changing cacophony of machine-like noises.
With this ‘Machinal,’ Wills delivers an affecting, commanding version of a potent American play.
“Machinial” plays 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through June 13 at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road. $15-$30, Thursdays pay-what-you-wish. www.paperchairs.com
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Bake sale raises money, awards fellowships to artists
In April, artist Paul Druecke staged a bake sale in Republic Park during Art Week Austin. His project — ‘The Perfect Recipe” — was part of “One swallow doesn’t make a summer,” a series of pop-up galleries and installations curated by Rachel Cook and Claire Ruud.
Druecks’s objective? To raise money to for fellowships for his fellow artists. Hey — the bake sale has worked for so many causes, why not funding the arts too?
On Friday, Druecke’s fellowships were awarded to three artists who have made a significant contribution to Austin.
The winners are founder of the Co-Lab project space Sean Gaullager ($500), DiverseArts founder Harold McMillan ($300), and the artist collective Sodalitas, including Shea Little, Jana Swec and Joseph Phillips ($200). Honorable mentions were awarded to choreographer Ellen Bartel, Fusebox artistic director Ron Berry and printmaker and Mexic-Arte Museum co-founder Sam Coronado.
The fellowship selection panelists included Elizabeth Dunbar, associate director and curator, Arthouse; Robert Faires, arts editor, Austin Chronicle; and Sylvia Orozco, director, Mexic-Arte Museum.
Celebratory cupcakes, anyone?
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Review: ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’
‘Things never change, do they?’ asks an effervescent woman in an oversized hat as she browses through the Cliff Notes to Chaucer?s ?The Canterbury Tales.’
‘It’s always the woman?s fault.’
A new Vortex production of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale,’ (adapted by Lorella Loftus and Shekhar Govind, and directed by Karen Jambon) seeks to address this unfairness by letting one of Chaucer?s most famous characters speak for herself.
And speak she does! The Wife of Bath (Loftus) is a vivacious storyteller who regales the audience with bawdy tales of her multiple marriages. Loftus and Govind have tweaked and expanded the text, so that here the Wife of Bath is fragmented into a series of different women throughout time.
As the show opens, a bumbling contemporary version of the Wife of Bath boards a bus to Canterbury and prattles on about her five marriages to her quiet, prim seatmate (Andy Agne).
Other versions of the character include a woman in England in 1707 who addresses her critics, and a schoolteacher in 1918 who teaches a group of female students some of her rules for marriage (which include ‘please for profit’ and ‘assert yourself’).
The Wife of Bath is a fun character — rebellious, lusty, eccentric — and Loftus imbues her with great heart and salty wit. She is also complicated, revealing how she manipulated and dominated some of her former husbands, other times professing to be truly in love.
To guide us through the tale, original illustrations by Ann Marie Gordon flash by on a projection screen, with the occasional live action interlude featuring the silent but highly expressive Agne.
This is primarily a one-person show, and Loftus proves herself to be a lively performer. The production itself still needs a bit more time to gel. Technical kinks need to be worked out, and pacing problems need to be addressed.
These issues didn’t stop the rowdy opening night crowd from interacting with the show, though. Questions like ‘What would priests know about anything anyway?’ were met with cheers and laughter. And as Loftus lifted her glass in a toast ‘To marriage!’ an audience member replied sarcastically, ‘Whatever.
‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’? continues through June 13, Thursday-Sunday at 8 p.m. The Vortex, 2307 Manor Road. Tickets $10-$30.’ www.vortexrep.org
Claire Canavan is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
