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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > April
April 2011
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra with Itzhak Perlman
On a night of pomp and circumstance, the 100th anniversary gala of the Austin Symphony Orchestra was rippling with energy.
A scintillating performance by (still) the world’s most eminent violinist, Itzhak Perlman, capped off one hundred years of music with a moment that will be remembered as one of the symphony’s best.
There was a palpable energy in the room — the buzz that comes from a concert hall packed full to the rafters.
Conductor Peter Bay and the symphony began with two works that appeared on the inaugural program in 1911. A subdued Mozart “Symphony No. 28” began after the national anthem and a preview of the 2012 season (with yet more big names).
Luigini’s “Ballet Egyptien” had a gorgeously deep, full sound. Strong bass beats and a sweet oboe solo painted a plethora of colors.
When Perlman navigated toward his chair at center stage after intermission, it was to fierce applause.
Bay carried Perlman’s violin on stage, while Perlman held the baton. Bay, holding onto the violin to let the applause last, received a playful scowl from Perlman, which got the crowd laughing.
Perlman, though, in a flowing black shirt, came to play. Max Bruch’s “Violin Concerto No. 1” just seems to suit Perlman, flaunting every one of his strengths (there are no weaknesses, if you were wondering).
Perlman defied already high expectations.
Tone. Honey-vibrato. Piercingly beautiful high notes, blazing through prickly runs. All the while, Perlman is expressive and relaxed. He looks like you’d imagine the Greek Poet Homer, sitting to recite “The Iliad.”
In this already beautiful work, Perlman seemed to pull out even more moments of sweetness. His bow (with such a high bow-hold!) slices like a cleaver through warm butter.
His performance drew the most natural standing ovation of the season, deservedly so.
If the Mozart and Luigini found the symphony reluctant to milk the soap-opera dynamics those pieces seem to demand in this hall, Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” took on the Bruch’s spark.
The trumpets sang out, and the piece had a perfect, quick gallop. The dynamics here felt alive, helped by pulsing woodwinds, a stunning clarinet solo, and a pleasantly triumphant finale.
The cupcakes, champagne and lore around this centennial gala gave this celebration a singular vivacity, yet it’s music like this that will last another hundred years.
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Long Center announces 2011-2012 season
The Long Center for the Performing Arts has announced its 2011-2012. On the roster is Broadway’s “Rain, A Tribute to the Beatles,” Complexions Contemporary Ballet, The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo and a solo appearance by comedian Carol Burnett. “Sing-a-Long-a ‘Sound of Music’,” Broadway singer Idina Menzel and the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin are also on the Long Center’s slate.
The Austin created “The Intergalactic Nemesis” also returns with two more installments of the tongue-in-cheek sci-fi adventure and live radio play.
See www.thelongcenter.org for more information.
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Fusebox Festival: Critics’ Picks #4
The Fusebox Festival wraps up this weekend. Here’s the last of our critics’ picks.
‘Get Mad at Sin’<br>
When: 7:30 p.m. April 29-30. Vortex Theatre, 2307 Manor Road. $20
In the early 1970s, evangelist Jimmy Swaggart recorded a sermon at the First Assembly of God in Van Buren, Arkansas, preaching against, among other things, the evils of pop music, premarital sex and mini-skirts. After finding the record album of Swaggart’s sermon, New York-based performance artist Andrew Dinwiddie meticulously recreated the preacher’s performance, which through clever theatrical touches, gives us a compelling portrait of Swaggart as a complex and troubled performer himself.
Reggie Watts
When: 9 p.m. April 30 and May 1. ND @ 501 Studios, 501 N. Interstate 35. $20
Returning for a third Fusebox appearance, Reggie Watts brings on his manic, hysterically funny, totally absurd and slightly uncomfortable one-man performance - part stand-up, part impromptu music.
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Fireworks cancelled for ASO celebration
Due to the dry conditions, the fireworks display originally planned for Thursday night at the Long Center following the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s centennial gala concert have been canceled. The post-concert light show will proceed as planned.
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of its first concert, ASO will be joined by renowned violinst Itzhak Perlman. The sold-out concert will be simulcast live on the Long Center’s City Terrace.
Austin Symphony Orchestra Centennial Celebration Live Simulcast
When: 7:30 p.m. today
Where: City Terrace, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive
Cost: Free
www.austinsymphony.org
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Blanton director resigns
Ned Rifkin, director of the Blanton Museum of Art, announced today that he will resign from his position at the University of Texas museum effective May 31.
Director of the Blanton for just two years, Rifkin also holds a position as professor of art and art history.
Steven Leslie, UT executive vice president and provost, has appointed Simone Wicha, the Blanton Museum’s deputy director for external affairs and operations, as the new director, effective June 1. Wicha has been The Blanton’s deputy director for external affairs and operations since last year. Prior to that she was the museum’s director of development.
From the UT press release:
“I began my professional career in 1977 as an assistant professor of art at The University of Texas at Arlington,” Rifkin said. “Currently, I have been leading a junior seminar in the Plan II Program here at UT Austin and I had forgotten how much I love to work closely with students on developing their learning skills.
“Much as I will miss working with the outstanding staff at The Blanton, I believe my eagerness to teach more and my desire to pursue meaningful research on a variety of topics will better suit me. I wish every possible success to The Blanton as it continues to offer quality programs to transform lives through art.”
Prior to his role at The Blanton, Rifkin was undersecretary for art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and directed the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Menil Collection and Foundation in Houston and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
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Review: “I’ve Never Been So Happy”
Half-way through “I’ve Never Been So Happy,” the endlessly charming off-beat musical by the Rude Mechs now getting its debut at the Off Center, the audience spends intermission taking a spin through a Western-themed carnival, its whacky attractions all handmade with found material.
The tongue-in-cheek attractions — there’s a “Redneck Drive-In” and a “Land Grab General Store” — make for a participatory coda of sorts to the imaginative, high-spirited production that’s flutters freely between meta-theater and prankish fun without a hint of irony, mimicking in look and feel the handmade and heartfelt tenor of the outside carnival.
The Rudes have been unfolding “I’ve Never Been So Happy” for three years, bringing it to audiences in several exuberant in-progress productions.
Now in its final form, the hijinks haven’t stopped, thankfully. Nor has the sweetness. Whatever else it’s about (the myth of the American West, gender roles, love), “I’ve Never Been So Happy” finds a way to lasso up all the good things about the theater and how silly and fun and sincere it can be when it’s done wisely.
With a book and lyrics by Kirk Lynn and music and lyrics by Peter Stopschinski, the fetching production is co-directed by Thomas Graves and Lana Lesley. But every inch of the show is celebration of the Rudes’ well-honed collaborative process. (The show was one of only seven across the nation to receive a grant from the NEA’s Distinguished New Play Development Project.)
It’s a totally seamless blend — and crazy mash-up — of Dayna Hanson’s playful non-stop choreography (five company members actually play the role of back-up dancers), Miwa Matreyk’s beguiling video-work (part simple animation, part light show) along with a slew of electric character performances (as a pair of sibling dachsunds, Jenny Larson and Paul Soileau bring pitch-perfect oddness to their roles).
Stopschinski’s score— played by a string and guitar ensemble with the composer at the keyboards and pre-recorded samples — slides gracefully from sweet pure country songs to crazy pop references (disco, heavy metal) to elegiac almost-arias.
Yes, there’s a plot in there, too. The young Annabellee (an animated Meg Sullivan) wants desperately out of her father’s country and western show while nearby in the big American West, Jeremy (a kinetic E. Jason Liebrecht) has just been kicked out of the all-female commune where his mother has raised him. The two are star-crossed lovers before they’ve even met. And the pair must enlist the pair of pet dachsunds as well as a line-up of eccentrics (Kerri Atwood sings impressively as the Sherif as does Cami Alys as Jeremy’s mother) to reach their happily ever after.
Merging a lovely modern lyrical poetry with slapstick colloquialism, Lynn’s lyrics (libretto?) fills in the imaginative underpinnings to the story. When it comes right down it, what is free and wild? What if everything is connected to everything after all?
In its goofy guilelessness, “I’ve Never Been So Happy” is arguably the most mature work the Rudes’ have produced to date. “Let’s find a way to hang out forever,” the entire cast sings at the end. Yes, let’s — let’s hang out and go see the Rudes
“I’ve Never Been So Happy” continues through May 8. www.rudemechs.com
Photos by Bret Brookshire.
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Fusebox Festival: Critics’ Picks #3
With her 2008 play “The Shipment,” Young Jean Lee made a bold move as a playwright.
A Korean American, Lee decided to challenge preconceived notions of race with a subversively funny and whip-smart show made up of short sketches that intelligently explore African American stereotypes and experiences as well as their history as entertainers for often largely white audiences. Declared radical and genius by New York critics, Lee — who was just awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship — goes beyond polemical identity politics and nudges toward a new creative consideration of race.
‘The Shipment’
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday
Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center
$24
www.fuseboxfestival.com
Photo by A.J. Zanyk.
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First Night Austin cancelled, supporting organization dissolved
Citing a lack of donations, leaders of First Night Austin, the family friendly New Year’s Eve celebration, said that the event will not return to downtown Austin this year and that the non-profit organization will be dissolved.
Dewy Brooks, First Night Austin board president, said Thursday that for the second year in a row, fundraising for the event proved too difficult. “It was a hard decision to make, but we didn’t have enough support to do what we wanted to do and make sure it was a quality event,” Brooks said. Brooks said the First Night board had not been able to secure a lead presenting sponsor to jumpstart the $200,000 event.
Last year’s First Night Austin was canceled when the organization failed to raise enough money to produce the arts-centered admission-free affair.
The city gave First Night Austin $50,000 per year as part of a five-year agreement to co-sponsor the event. The money came from the Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services Office and was allocated by the city manager.
Last year, when First Night Austin officials canceled the event, the city stepped in to host its own New Year’s Eve celebration with fireworks at Auditorium Shores.
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Review: ASO’s Young Composer concert
On Wednesday night, the Austin Symphony Orchestra and Peter Bay made space on the podium to test out work from the youngest composers in Texas. This was a first in the state, we’re told, for a symphony to debut works written by Texans 18 and under. Out of 25 submissions, the ASO played 12 short pieces.
Disregarding the skills required to write for an entire orchestra, an accomplishment in itself, just listening as the musical vision of these young men came to life with the power of the full orchestra, was impressive.
All of the works had enough interplay between the sections of the orchestra to keep you intrigued. Sometimes the results were unusual — like using the string principals for extended solos — and sometimes the composers forgot to enroll the orchestra at its full capacity, leaving some dead patches. But a few of the them had an advanced understanding of how to put the whole group of players in service of their vision.
One of those was Wyatt Hahn, whose clever “Giovane Ballerina’s Suite,” was a symphony in seven minutes, with three tiny, hugely effective movements. Hahn, amazingly, a freshman at Cedar Park High School added color to a succinct waltz, with chimes. Then wood blocks and snare enforced the theme as it emerged, and faded, with the evening’s best use of dynamics.
Some pieces resembled video game soundtracks, or film scores a la Danny Elfman, and some could back up a PBS documentary, tonight. Quite a starting point for kids who still take P.E.
It was a treat to see so many young faces in the crowd, cheering after each piece. And this could become a “thing.”
Like the University Interscholastic League’s championships, this competition could improve and affect band and string programs in high schools across Texas by giving kids, composing on a computer in their bedrooms, something to aspire to.
As it was, the composers were all male, mostly white and from some of the most elite public schools in the state, something that says more about schools than about the competition itself.
Let’s hope that next year we see the entire face of Texas, including some young women.
Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Fusebox Festival: Critic’s Picks #2, and a FREE show
We live in a voyeuristic age in which everybody wants to see and be seen. And aren’t we all really playing for the camera even when we’re ranting and rioting?
With intense, explosive moves, New York-based choreographer Fay Driscoll assembles nine dancers to explore our voyeuristic urges. And thanks to co-sponsoship with Testperformancetest, an Austin-based intiative, Driscoll’s show is presented free of charge, part of the Fusebox Festival.
Now, just where is that line between entertainment and reality again?
‘There is So Much Mad in Me’
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. April 24
Austin Ventures Studio Theater, Ballet Austin, 501 W. Third St.
Admission is free; reserve a seat here.
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu.
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‘A Voyage of Discovery’ Baby Ikki pays a visit to the Blanton
Critically noted multimedia artists Mike Kelley and Michael Smith have been friends for years. But the two entered into their first-ever collaboration only in 2009, with a sprawling video-based installation at the Sculpture Center in New York. (Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art staged Smith’s extraordinary career retrospective, “Mike’s World,” in 2007. Smith is on the University of Texas faculty.)
At the center of the Kelley-Smith collaboration is the video “A Voyage of Discovery,” which follows the adventures of Smith’s performance character Baby Ikki, a pre-lingual man-child (imagine an adult dressed as a pacifer-sucking baby and you get the picture). The video follows Ikki as he wanders for days around Burning Man, the psychedelic alt-festival of radical self-expression staged every summer in the Nevada desert.
Subsumed by all the wild rave action (drum circles and hippie dancing) and faced with confusing erotic encounters, Ikki emerges after the festival to ponder his strange odyssey.
Kelley and Smith will give an introduction to their video, and the screening will be followed by a Q-and-A.
“Mike Kelley and Michael Smith: A Voyage of Discovery”
6 p.m. today
Blanton, Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Congress Ave.
Freewww.blantonmuseum.org
Image: Video still, “A Voyage of Discovery”
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Fusebox Festival: Critic’s Picks #1
So much Fuseboxin’ to do, so many options.
Here’s the first of our critic’s picks for the Austin
“Cédric Andrieux”
When: 7 p.m. April 21-23. Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center. $24
“Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never.”
When: 8 p.m. April 21-23. Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road
How do theater artists in Croatia and the United States collaborate if they aren’t on the same continent and don’t share language? They find a creative third entity to mutually riff. The films of Swedish master Ingmar Bergman formed the creative mettle for an inventive live theater piece by Croatian artists Selma Banich and Mislav Cavajda and Chicagoans Stephen Fiehn and Matthew Goulish. Co-commissioned by the Fusebox Festival, Performance Space 122 and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
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At the Fusebox Festival, Seaholm like you never have before
Everthing that’s the best of performance-based work is celebrated at the Fusebox Festival, Austin’s indie happening that culls talent from around the globe.
And to kick things off on Wednesday, there will be a FREE music extravaganza at the decommissioned Art Deco Seaholm Power Plant.
Part of Fusebox’s Free Range Music Series, alt mini-symphony/rock band Mother Falcon will be joined by 100 strings instruments for music explosion suited for Seaholm’s vast turbine hall.
Video installations, food, beverages and other surprises to follow.
The happening begins at 7:30 p.m. and the event is FREE.
And throughout the first week of the festival Seaholm will serve as the hot spot for after hours small-scale performances, installations and music — and a chance to hang-out.
“Late Nights @Seaholm”
When: 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesday through April 27
Tix: $5
Thursday: The Blue Cranes
Friday: Mother Falcom
Saturday Graham Reynolds & Golden Arm Trio
www.fuseboxfestival.com
Photo by Larry Kolvoord/American-Statesman
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Texas Biennial: Like a whole other biennial
The 2011 Texas Biennial is bigger, busier and chock full of happenings like it never had been before.
Friday
Biennial art trek
Cruise Austin venues for the 2011 Texas Biennial tonight as each hosts opening receptions and performances. The suggested itinerary moved from downtown to East Austin.
From 5 to 8 p.m., start with the large displays of biennial art on the fifth and fourteenth floors 816 Congress ave., then head to Women & Their Work (1710 Lavaca St.) and UT’s Visual Art Center (UT campus on 23rd St.)
From 7 to 10 p.m. it’s the East Austin venues: Pump Project (702 Shady Lane), Big Medium (5305 Bolm Road) and a vacant house at 1319 Rosewood Ave.
At the Rosewood Ave. site at 8 p.m., artist Brad Tucker transforms into ‘Bad Trucker’ to stage ‘Future Proof’ a solo performance with video and TV monitors.
Saturday
“Like a Whole Other Country? The State of Contemporary Art in Texas”
A panel discussion featuring artists Margarita Cabrera and Trenton Doyle Hancock; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston curator Alison de Lima Greene; Los Angeles Times art critic David Pagel; and UT art history professor Richard Schiff.
2 p.m. at the Blanton Museum of Art
“Mexico Abre le Boca”
Artist Margarita Cabrera sets up her taco truck/art product vending stand — her smartly subversive art project that offers a critique of U.S.-Mexico trade imbalance.
5 to 8 p.m. at the southeast corner of Seventh Street and Congress Ave.
Image: “Kitty Pilgrim,” video installation, Sam Sanford. On view at 816 Congress Ave.
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UT Texas Performing Arts announces 2011-2012 season
UT Texas Performing Art announced its 2011-2012 season today, the 30th season for the university multi-venue performance presenter.
Highlights include:
- John Malkovich plays a serial killer in the alt operetta “The Infernal Comedy”
- Ricky Ian Gordon’s new multi-media music theater piece “Rappahannock County,” is a startling, edgy work commemorating the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.
- National Theatre Of Scotland brings “Long Gone Lonesome: A Celebration of the Life of Thomas Fraser” a quirky but sweet musical about the true story of a Scottish fisherman on the remote Shetland Islands who is obsessed with American country music and the blues
- Seminal performance artist Joan Jonas presents her cutting edge multi-media video installation “For The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things.”
- The So Percussion ensemble bring “We Are All Going In Different Directions: A John Cage Celebration.”
- German cabaret crooner Max Raabe and his 12-piece big band ensemble Palast Orchester play music of the 1920s and 1930s Berlin.
- Classical music acts including Interpreti Veneziani, Chanticleer and soprano Dawn Upshaw
- Broadway shows include “Wicked,” “Mary Poppins” and “South Pacific.”
See www.texasperformingarts.org
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Review: Austin Lyric Opera’s ‘Flight’
Charming and thoroughly modern, Jonathan Dove’s opera “Flight” made a grace landing last weekend at the Long Center in its Austin Lyric Opera production.
And it was easy to grasp why Dove’s opera is a veritable hit on the contemporary opera landscape. (It’s been performed nearly 100 times.) With and appealing score, “Flight” tells the strange but engaging story of a group of travelers stuck in an airport for a night, an experience made all the more surreal by the presence of an undocumented refugee trapped in a kind of stateless suspension.
Dove’s atmospheric music — which must convey everything from a plane landing to the birth of a baby — smartly entwines a panoply of styles from a pleasantly pure brand of minimalism to stylish contemporary tonalities. And conductor Richard Buckley deftly handled it.
April de Angelis’s cleverly rhymed libretto is part modern poem, part snappily timed comedy patter.
But the real treat came from the solid singing throughout the chorus-less cast. Indeed some of the best musical moments were the ensemble singing.
As the the refugee, Nicholas Zammit’s sparking countertenot added and otherworldliness to the already ethereal role. And as the stiff and cool Controller who stays above (literally) the fray of the travelers’ farcical goings-on, soprano Nili Riemer elicited gasps of admiration from the audience Saturday when she effortlessly leapt to a high F in her first solo.
A comedic but thoughtful operatic portrait of life’s transitions, this “Flight” soars.
“Flight” contineus 7:30 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. Sunday at the Long Center. www.austinlyricopera.org.
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Review: ‘Carousel’
They say that love is blind, but Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 classic, “Carousel,” shows us that love just might be deaf and dumb as well.
It’s an unconventional musical to say the least: the lovers seem ill-suited, the protagonist is a jerk, and the ending isn’t quite happy but isn’t really sad. Yet St. Edward’s production, running now through April 17th, is a lively and enjoyable rendition of this piece of theatrical history.
Set on the New England coast in the late 1800s, the play follows the lives of Julie Jordan (Elizabeth Newchurch) and the carousel barker, Billy Bigelow (Joshua Denning). From the outset, Bigelow is aggressively sexual and not exactly romantic. His is a love song of hypotheticals (“If I Loved You”), and the question looming in the background is always what Julie sees in him - especially after he hits her.
Despite the play’s ambiguous approach to domestic abuse, the cast is energetic and sincere. Joshua Denning is commanding in his role as the troubled barker, and Elizabeth Newchurch is expressive and sympathetic.
The Bigelows’ problems are particularly stark in contrast to the prim and proper couple, Carrie Pipperidge and Enoch Snow (Merett Hanes and Kel Sanders). Hanes exhibits the sweet exuberance of young love and Sanders is charmingly stodgy as the ambitious fisherman.
Though Michael McKelvey’s direction of the initial love scene between Julie and Billy is strangely static, McKelvey brings out the depth in even the most unsympathetic characters, and the play otherwise moves quickly.
Danny Herman and Rocker Verastique’s choreography enliven the intimate space, with rough and tumble fight sequences and a truly lovely ballet between Louise (Hannah Marie Fonder) and the carnival boy (Kyle Housworth).
Megan Reilly’s lighting nicely sets the tone for most scenes, using a lot of saturated light for the strange New England world of the play.
With mustaches and muttonchops abounding, Tara Cooper’s make-up and hair design are to be commended and thoroughly enjoyed.
The production is visually delightful and lovely to hear, even if the play itself leaves us a bit puzzled.
‘Carousel’ continues through April 17 at Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s Univ.
Cate Blouke is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Update: Prominent artist quits Arthouse board: Artists protest moves
Artists from around the state on Wednesday organized a protest and a prominent artist quit the Arthouse board of directors, after news this week that the contemporary art center on Congress Avenue eliminated its only curator and faced accusations of mishandling artsists’ work.
A group organizing on Facebook as “Artists FOR Arthouse” is asking artists who were invited to participate in Arthouse’s upcoming ‘5 x 7’ fundraising exhibit to pull their work out of the event. The annual exhibit — Arthouse’s biggest fundraiser — invites artists to donate artworks made on five-inch by seven-inch cards, which are then sold for $150. More than 1,000 artworks were donated to Arthouse last year. The group’s Facebook page calls for artists to withhold donating artwork or “submit a blank card or make the image into an expression of your dissent.”
San Antonio-based artist Dario Robleto, whose work is in museum collections around the country, said Wednesday that he had resigned from the Arthouse board. Robleto declined to comment publicly other than to say his resignation was effective immediately.
“We respect Dario immensely, he has been a valued contributor not only as a board member but also as an exhibiting artist,” Arthouse executive director Sue Graze said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened (about the ‘5x7’ protest), and I welcome any artist that has questions or concerns to contact me, my door is open.”
On Monday, Graze told board members that the organization was eliminating its associate director/curator’s position because of budgetary difficulties and that Elizabeth Dunbar, who held the post, was terminated effective immediately.
Graze’s announcement came after Dunbar wrote a letter to the board expressing her concern that Arthouse leadership had mishandled exhibits by Michelle Handelman and Graham Hudson, potentially jeopardizing the institution’s credibility and possibly violating legal contracts.
Without seeking Hudson’s consent, Arthouse allowed Warner Music Group to rent its galleries and to modify Hudson’s exhibit “Rehearsal at the Astoria” for a corporate promotional event during the South by Southwest music festival. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 grants artists the right to prevent modification to their artwork.
“Elizabeth defended the integrity of my work,” the London-based Hudson said in an email.
In Feburary, Handelman’s video exhibit, “Dorian, A Cinematic Perfume,” was shut down abruptly during hours when Arthouse’s teen programs were in session. Handelman was not notified of the action until afterwards. In an email to the American-Statesman for a story at the time, Graze said that “no one actually objected or complained about presenting the video” but that Graze had decided to “do more due diligence about screening times and language we use to inform visitors about adult content of video.”
The decision to limit viewing of Handelman exhibit’s prompted the National Coalition Against Censorship to write a letter of concern to Graze.
Arthouse re-opened its Congress Avenue building in October after a much-celebrated $6.6 million renovation. The architecturally sleek refurbished facility expanded Arthouse’s galleries by nearly three-fold.
The Arthouse actions this week have reverberated through the arts community.
“Having a curator is central to how a contemporary arts institution is organized,” said Andy Campbell, a lecturer in contemporary art at Texas State University. “It’s hard to have an artistic through-line without a curator. And it’s kind of insulting for those of us in the arts community to swallow the idea that a curator is no longer needed at Arthouse.”
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Artists protest Arthouse moves
After news Tuesday that Arthouse had abruptly eliminated its only curator citing financial difficulties, artists from around the state have organized to protest the action made by the Congress Avenue contemporary arts center.
Artists who are participating in Arthouse’s upcoming ‘5 x 7’ fundraising exhibit are being called to pull their work out of the event.
The annual event — Arthouse’s biggest fundraiser — invites artists to donate artworks made on five-inch by seven-inch cards which are then sold for $150. More than 1,000 artworks were donated for the ‘5 x 7’ event last year.
‘We call on all artists participating in 5x7 to voice their concerns,’ the group’s statement reads. ‘If you have submitted your cards already, ask for them back. If you have not, submit a blank card or make the image into an expression of your dissent or write your reasons for this dissent on the back.’
‘While we understand the financial pressures that a growing institution faces, we also believe in the primacy of curatorial and artistic freedom.’
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Now with its higher profile, Arthouse encounters its first problems
After opening its newly renovated building to much fanfare in October, Arthouse, the Congress Avenue contemporary arts center, has started facing its first problems.
An important staff position has been quickly eliminated, another staff person quit in protest and some artists are complaining about the treatment of their work.
Citing the need to cut its annual budget, Arthouse announced Monday that it had eliminated the position of associate director/curator and that Elizabeth Dunbar, who held the post, was no longer an employee.
But that action led another Arthouse employee to quit. Jenn Gardner, who had been with the organization 10 years, resigned Monday. “I strongly disagreed with the concept of Arthouse existing without a full-time curator,” Gardner said.
Dunbar, who joined Arthouse in 2007, declined to comment.
Arthouse executive director Sue Graze said in a statement that in-house curatorial responsibilities would be handled by guest curators.
“Our newly revised, board-approved operating budget incorporated reductions to our staff salary line,” Graze said in the statement. “Our exhibition program will be well-sustained through a series of guest curator initiatives and significant traveling exhibitions.”
The elimination of the associate director/curator’s job comes at a critical time for Arthouse.
The $6.6 million renovation of its Congress Avenue home expanded usable space for exhibitions by three-fold. And since re-opening, Arthouse has significantly escalated its activities, including staging several ambitious exhibitions by internationally recognized artists.
But a few of those artists say they are unhappy with the way Arthouse has handled their work. London-based artist Graham Hudson re-imagined the Astoria, a famed London rock club, creating a stage and audience area that filled Arthouse’s second-floor gallery. Through the course of the exhibit, called “Rehearsal at the Astoria,” local bands were invited to play within Hudson’s massive installation.
But shortly after the exhibit opened in February, Hudson said he learned that Arthouse officials had agreed to rent the space to Warner Music Group for a three-day promotional event during the South By Southwest music festival and that Arthouse had also agreed to let Warner use Hudson’s installation.
The Warner event, “Six Sounds,” promoted and sold the company’s merchandise.
Hudson said he learned of Arthouse’s rental agreement with Warner only after it was made. “I was never consulted,” Hudson said in an email from London. “I was told (Warner) would be placing their merchandise on my work and (their) posters on the walls and I thought this was grossly wrong.”
Under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, an artist holds the right to prevent modification to any artwork that would prejudice the artist’s reputation regardless of who owns the artwork.
“Like any non profit working in this challenging economy, we have to look at a variety of revenue sources and during SXSW we were presented with the opportunity to earn a sizable income that would greatly help us with our mission,” Graze said in an email. “Unfortunately, we made a decision that may not have been in the best interest of an artist we deeply respect and we regret that. I look forward to working with Graham to make it right by him.”
In late March, Michelle Handelman complained when Arthouse officials shut down viewing of her video exhibit, which has some sexual content, during Arthouse’s teen programs. The action prompted the National Coalition Against Censorship to write a letter of concern to Arthouse.
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Daniel Catan, composer, 1949-2011
Daniel Catán, a leading Mexican composer known for his lyrical, romantic operas, died on Saturday in Austin.
No cause of death has been reported. Catáan, 62, was the composer-in-residence at the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music. He was found in his apartment on Saturday. A UT College of Fine Art spokesperson said no foul play was suspected.
In October, the Butler School of Music announced that it had commissioned the composer to write an opera in honor of Austin philanthropists Sarah and Ernest Butler. The opera, “Meet John Doe,” was to be based on the classic 1941 Frank Capra comic drama.
Born in 1949 in Mexico City, Catán was the first Mexican composer to have an opera produced in the United States when the San Diego Opera staged “Rappaccini’s Daughter” in 1994.
Based on its success, in 1996 the Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and Seattle Opera commissioned “Florencia,” the first Spanish-language opera ever commissioned by major United States opera companies.
UT’s Butler Opera Center staged “Rappaccini’s Daughter” in Feburary.
A full obituary to follow.
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Review: Tapestry Dance Company’s “Are You Listening to Me?’
In the hushed theater, this quotation seemed appropriate: “It takes silence to create rhythm.” So said Tapestry Dance Company’s executive artistic director Acia Gray Friday evening during the opening number of the local tap company’s show, “Are You Listening to Me?” Gray, along with six of her company’s dancers and guest theater artist Zell Miller III, then proceeded to treat audiences to a wonderful array of sounds in the Rollins Theatre at the Long Center. The loud, the quiet, the weird, the routine — nothing was off limits for this seasoned troupe of tappers.
Tapestry Dance Company, now in its 21st season, explored the inter-rhythms between the shuffle-shuffle of the feet and the modulations of the voice. In the first piece, “The Voices in Your Head,” the dancers lined up across the stage and spoke rapidly all at once, until they were silenced by some inexplicable force, though still left to gesture wildly with their arms, their mouths simultaneously moving like a fish’s underwater. One by one, Gray touched them, giving them voice, before relinquishing their power.
The voice often functioned as a source of comedy. In “Find the Quiet,” Brenna Kuhn was the object of jibber jabber as each of her fellow dancers approached her to utter nonsensical sounds. Tanya Rivard laughed herself into hysterical crying; Matt Shields voiced what can best be described as a whiny Italian cadence; and Thomas Wadelton’s jig/jibberish combination induced the audience to laughter.
At other times, words were powerful. “The opposite of courage is not cowardice. The opposite of courage is conformity,” pronounced Miller. The dichotomy between courage and conformity was very much present throughout the evening. It was highlighted in “The Journey,” in which the group of six — perfectly synchronized — moved forwards and backwards in profile. One by one, they broke from the herd to forge their own path in this world of daily routines, before rejoining the group. The music, by Jani Sieber, sounded like it could have come off the “American Beauty” soundtrack (though it didn’t) — whimsical, with a touch of melancholy.
There’s no denying the fact that Tapestry’s dancers are talented. In many ways, the most compelling bits of the evening were when they were all-out dancing, pure and simple. As an audience member, it was almost as though I could feel every fiber of my being getting sucked into the vortex of their energy. In one solo, Wadelton performed quick, tiny movements, at times standing up on his tippy toes like an awkward ballerina. Lost in his own world, we came to understand: Life isn’t about perfection. It’s about being you, about being “free,” as Wadelton himself said.
In another solo, Shields tapped in a mini sandbox at the back of the stage, the friction between his shoes and the sand producing a sound like a needle scratch on a record. Although his nimble movements were limited to a small area, he hardly looked constrained.
Conformity or courage? Tapestry chose the latter.
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Review: ‘August: Osage County
Though dysfunctional families have been fodder for playwrights since the dawn of theater, as Oedipus and Medea demonstrate, it’s the stories of extreme maladjustment that keep us on the edge of our seats.
In his viciously witty tragedy, “August: Osage County,” playing now through May 22 at Zach Theatre, playwright Tracy Letts tracks the decline of the American family touching on practically every imaginable form of dysfunction: emotional abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction, pedophilia, incest, adultery. The only thing missing is incarceration.
After its premier in Chicago in 2007, the hugely popular play transferred to Broadway and ran for nearly 700 performances. Since then, it’s been making the rounds nationwide, and there are plans for a feature film with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts as the female leads.
It’s been compared to such epic familial meltdowns as Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” and the play proves that there’s still room for three-hour sagas on the 21st-century stage. However, Letts makes the case for his chronicle of the Weston family’s self-destruction with a gripping combination of humor and horror.
Unfortunately, Zach’s marketing choices for their production set up the wrong frame for this deeply tragic portrait of a family’s implosion. Calling the play a “scathingly hilarious tragicomedy” creates a misplaced emphasis on the humor. While there are certainly moments of humor throughout the play, when the audience treats it more like Neil Simon than a tragedy, the results are disappointing. The laughter in “August: Osage County” should be nervous instead of knee-slapping, appalled instead of approving.
The sitcom-style first act sets a precedent that’s difficult to shake off under Dave Steakley’s direction. Though early on the cast anticipates the laughs and plays them up, later on, they can’t seem to convey the shift to seriousness. An incredibly powerful scene at the end was ruined by theatergoers more enthralled by smashing ceramics than the emotional devastation laid bare before them. When we should have left in tears, most people finished the evening with a feeling of good cheer, talking of how funny the play was instead of how sad.
The production is full of inconsistencies and contrasts, and on the whole, the cast struggles with rapid transitions between moments of humor and emotional meltdowns.
As the pill-popping matriarch, Violet, Lana Dieterich doesn’t muster sufficient bile for most of the performance. Her responses verge on hammy at times, but her final breakdown is filled with wrenching despair.
Lauren Lane is stunningly powerful as the “favorite” daughter, Barbara, and the skilled actress effectively tackles the shifts between sarcasm and sorrow.
In this family without filters, it’s the quiet ones you want to watch. Jonathan Shultz’s performance as Little Charles stands out for its simplicity and sweet sincerity. Similarly, as Ivy, the overlooked and underloved sister, Irene White’s final outburst leaves us in stunned silence.
In “August: Osage County,” there are certainly moments of hilarity, but they shouldn’t overshadow the heart and soul of the production — that “dissipation is much worse than cataclysm.”
‘August: Osage County’ continues through 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through May 22. Zach Theatre. Tickets: $32-$49. www.zachtheatre.org
Cate Blouke is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
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Texas Biennial: Now with even more Texas!
We recently reported that 2011 Texas Biennial, in a smartly collaborative move, has designated dozens of arts institutions as participators to artist-run celebration of contemporary art.
Spreading the celebration further, biennial curator Virginia Rutledge has also managed to gain the participation of five internationally-recognized Texas artists — Margarita Cabrera, Mary Ellen Carroll, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Annette Lawrence and James Magee — and their innovative site-specific projects around the states.
From surprising contemporary art in the massive Cowboys Stadium to a smart subversion of US-Mexico trade to a singular vision of one artist in remote West Texas, the five projects are astutely chosen representatives of Texas’ current state of art-making.
Some of the projects, like Cabrera’s which will be in Austin April 16, have special biennial-related events. Others, like Magee’s in West Texas, take special arrangement to visit. Follow the links below.
- Margarita Cabrera
Mexico Abre la Boca. On display 5 to 8 p.m., April 16, in Austin
This installation/performance work uses a taco cart and trained vendors to dispense information about FLOREZCA, a for-profit multinational corporation formed by the artist to produce and sell traditional crafts in a context that addresses issues impacting immigrant and migrant communities.
- Mary Ellen Carroll
prototype 180, Houston. Special tour 11 a.m. April 30.
Prototype 180 is a conceptual work of art and an urban alteration that entails a radical form of renovation through the physical rotation and reoccupation of a single family house in the aging Houston subdivision of Sharpstown.
- Trenton Doyle Hancock
“From a Legend to a Choir,” Cowboys Stadium, Arlington
This expansive 41-foot-by-108-foot mural depicts an epic scene from the artist’s ongoing self-invented mythology, commissioned for Cowboys Stadium.
- Annette Lawrence
“Coin Toss,” Cowboys Stadium, Arlington
This delicate sculpture activates an architectural interior by engaging viewers awareness of the passage of time and the movement of bodies through space.
- James Magee
The Hill, Cornudas
A monumental work on 2,000 acres of desert in West Texas, the work consists of four identical buildings, each 40 feet long, 20 feet wide and 17 feet high, all connected by causeways.
Image: “From a Legend to a Choir,” Trenton Doyle Hancock.
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April is arts crazy: #2, ‘Presence/Absence’
Technology and art have always had an irregular relationship. Sometimes the two co-exist successfully. Sometimes their merger ends up as a tech gimmick.
Home to the world’s highest-resolution tiled display at 307 megapixel resolution, UT’s Texas Center for Advanced Computing offered its advanced resolution system to four artists: Nicholas Dertien, Marcy Freedman, Francesca Samsel and Sally Weber.
Each artists made a new piece for ‘Presence/Absence’ a digital exhibition on the center’s tiled display of 75 widescreen, flat panel monitors.
‘Presence/Absence’
Reception 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Exhibit continues 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday.
ACES Visualization Lab, University of Texas, 24th Street and Speedway
Free
Image: “Leaving Prints” by Francesca Samsel, displayed at the ACES Visualization Lab of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas at Austin
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The master re-writer? Tennesse Williams
If there’s one thing the Ransom Center’s sprawling exhibit “Becoming Tennessee Williams” makes clear, the famed playwright was an unceasing rewriter, constantly revising his work.
Read more about the exhibit here.
In a clever way of making that rewriting live, actors from Austin Shakespeare, using Ransom Center materials, will perform the multiple endings Williams wrote for his play “Summer and Smoke,” a drama he eventually retitled “The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.”
“Tennessee Transforming: Endings for ‘Summer and Smoke.’ ”
7 p.m. Thursday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Ransom Center, University of Texas campus, 21st and Guadalupe streets
Free
www.hrc.utexas.edu
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Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra with Nexus
Toronto’s Nexus percussion ensemble brought some mysticism to the Austin Symphony’s performance on Friday night. With two sets of chimes hanging from the upper balcony, Nexus seemed to expand the size of the concert hall to perform Toru Takemitsu’s “From Me Flows What You Call Time,” a meditative work that originally celebrated the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Hall.
Those chimes were strung up to multicolored ribbons that draped over the audience, to two posts on the stage. The ribbons alter the setting, but the sheer arsenal of bells, gongs, woodblocks and drums made the stage look like some medieval Asian marketplace.
The five percussionists enveloped the orchestra, with a set of steel drums dead center. The piece takes a cosmic approach to honor a century of music and performance; it could be the soundtrack of the beginning of the world — often silent, with patterns of chimes, creeks and vibrations that engender awe. If a symphony is an epic poem, this is Takemitsu’s 35 minute haiku.
The orchestra, under conductor Peter Bay, was largely in the background, with eerie, delicate colors. The use of steel drums as a strange centerpiece was striking, but the most stunning moments came from the clanging of a gigantic nippled gong, whose long wavelength oscillated in thick waves.
The pulling of the ribbons to activate the balcony chimes recalled a call to worship, a sign of the music’s power as it reached through the audience and the entire hall.
It was a sonic feast.
The second half marked a shift in moods, with Ravel’s “Menuet Antique” and his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
The “Menuet,” a sprightly little work, found Bay and company in a wonderful, brisk tempo. But this was just a little, energetic appetizer.
The main course was Mussorgsky’s symphony standard, as the composer walks us through a literal exhibition — one that moved the composer to give its paintings a soundtrack.
The ASO tackled the work with gusto, with excellent string work, and notably sharp percussion. Saxophone and trumpet solos flowed easily, as did some color from the winds, but the work’s strenuous demands were apparent on a few occasions, as the wind and brass both had trouble articulating some faster, exposed runs, and one solo suffered from tuning challenges.
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April is arts crazy: #1, On Site
Between the 2011 Texas Biennial, the Fusebox Festival of performance art and seemingly a kazillion other happenings, April is crazy-busy with arts events — more than we can possibly highlight in this blog.
The gallleries who organize their PR efforts under the moniker/web site Art Austin — www.artaustin.org — have declared April 1 to April 10 “On Site.” And several are stepping out of their usual zone to present installation-based exhibits and events.
First up, at Wally Workman Gallery, New York-based artist Michelle Mayer’s “Departure/Return.” Mayer will offer a performance April 5 at 6 p.m. in tandem with her drawings, video and beguiling sculpture made of natural and non-natural material.
“Departure/Return”
6 p.m. April 5
Wally Workman Gallery, 1202 W. Sixth St.
Free
www.wallyworkmangallery.com
Image: Michelle Mayer. “Heels for Departure.” Courtesy Wally Workman Gallery.
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2011 Texas Biennial: Miles and miles of Texas art
That’s right — it’s all from Texas.
Some 50 Lone Star artists were chosen by New York independent curator Virginia Rutledge for this iteration of the artist-founded Austin-based 2011 Texas Biennial. And like the sprawling, exuberant self-proud state it represents, this time around the biennial spreads all the way across Texas.
Official Texas Biennial venues are in three cities now: Austin, San Antonio and Houston.
The Austin Biennial venues include UT’s Visual Arts Center, Women & Their Work, Pump Project Art Complex, Big Medium project space, an empty house at 1403 Rosewood Avenue in East Austin and even empty office space on the fifth and fourteenth floors of 816 Congress Avenue.
In San Antonio, Blue Star Contemporary Art Center plays official host. In Houston, it’s Box 13 Artspace.
And in brilliant move to unite an often disparate art community, Rutledge has smartly struck up cooperative relationships with myriad art spaces around the state who are currently hosting their own exhibits of Texas contemporary art that share the forward-looking spirit of the Texas Biennial. From the Grace Museum in Abilene to K Space Contemporary Corpus Christi, from the Longview Museum of Fine Arts to Ballroom Marfa — contemporary art is connecting the dots around Texas this month.
The 2011 Texas Biennial opens April 9.
All Austin venues open April 9 with exhibit hours from noon to 5 p.m. and the regular viewing hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays through May 14.
Pencil it in: On April 15 and April 16, a number of special events and performances are scheduled for Austin.
Admission to all official Texas Biennial exhibits is free. Participating statewide venues may have individual admission.
www.texasbiennial.org
Image: Anthony Garza. “Aard Cardinal Mountain Carrier,” 2010. Watercolor on Arches paper.
