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CultureZohn: Forsythe, Millepied And Robbins Burnish American Dance

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Bulletin! The city of Los Angeles, home to long aborning/failed dance initiatives has risen, phoenix-like -- or Firebird-like if you prefer -- from the ashes.



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William Forsythe and USC Kaufman dancers and staff

Last week in the space of days, I was able to see choreographer William Forsythe present a riveting lecture-demonstration about his process with his wildly talented multi disciplinary sophomore class at the new Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at USC and Benjamin Millepied instruct the ballet conservatory class at the Colburn School.

What?!!!

Forsythe and Millepied, recently of Paris Opera Ballet collaborations, have chosen to make their permanent dance homes in Los Angeles. (Millepied is back with his LA Dance Project). Two of the most talented, sought after choreographers and company directors in the world! I am pinching myself.

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Benjamin Millepied and Colburn School Dancers


The Colburn School Dance program, headed by Jenifer Ringer Fayette and her husband James, ex NY City Ballet dancers mounts a performance every spring to show off its dancers. But throughout the year the Fayettes are nabbing their former colleagues to teach their students. Millepied is followed in coming weeks by Teresa Reichlen and Tyler Angle (NYCB) Peter Boal (Pacific Northwest Ballet Director) and Helgi Tomasson (SF Ballet director).

The dance students at these creative academies are of course the true beneficiaries of this munificence. But we the public have some ancillary benefits.

Next weekend, along with Houston Ballet, these professional companies will present an all Forsythe program at the Music Center. This weekend, you can catch Forsythe choreography at LACMA for a site-specific work.


The only thing that compared were this week's performances of Jerome Robbins ballet Dances at the Gathering at NYC Ballet itself. This ballet, which I first saw in its original production, has not aged. To see Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Ashley Bouder (fresh off baby), Megan Fairchild, Amar Ramasar and Jared Angle so brilliantly inhabit this seminal work set to Chopin piano music is as Tiler Peck puts it " a gift to dance" and for us, to watch. The notoriously demanding Robbins would be smiling to see the 1969 work so carefully burnished. (the link includes interviews with the dancers and new video footage)

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Tiler Peck and Joaquin de Luz, Dances at a Gathering, Paul Kolnik, 2016, courtesy NYC Ballet


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Patricia McBride (who originated the Tiler Peck role) and Edward Villella in Dances at a Gathering, 1980 , Martha Swope, courtesy NYPL

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Patricia McBride rehearsing with Jerome Robbins as he choreographed, Martha Swope, 1969, courtesy NYPL

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Jerome Robbins rehearsing with original Dances at a Gathering cast, Martha Swope, 1969courtesy NYPL


The art world is bursting with art fairs, museum shows and gallery openings. All well and good. But these dance moments are truly evidence of a dance renaissance in America and I, for one, am very grateful.

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First Nighter: The Actors Company Theatre "She Stoops to Conquer" Revival Remains on its Haunches

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Normally, a reviewer wouldn't do what's about to be done here. But I can't think of another way of saying what needs to be said about The Actors Company Theatre She Stoops to Conquer revival, the one currently not catching sufficient fire at the Clurman.

What requires mentioning, in my estimation, is that Nicholas Martin helmed an uproarious version of Oliver Goldsmith's classic 1773 comedy at Princeton's McCarter Theatre in 2009. Although Martin wasn't able to enliven some of the moments that don't appear to have appeal for contemporary audiences, those patches were small in number. The much larger portion of the production rollicked as the play must have rollicked for its first delighted audiences--the rampant rollicking also due to a terrific cast of zanies and a sumptuous set and costume design.

I only bring this up now to say if Martin's relatively recent Goldsmith outing wasn't still tickling my memory, I might have sat through adapter-director Scott Alan Evans's take while becoming increasingly convinced that whatever teased funny bones in the late-ish 18th century has sadly lost the power to provide the same service for 2016 theatergoers.

Not for lack of Davis's trying, however. He's come up with all sorts of ideas to spark the occasion. He has cast members stroll through the audience before the play proper kicks in. He has them huddle stage center and then speak in unison about various house amenities, such as the purchase of TACT mugs. He offers a character-introing promenade and arms the ensemble with fun instruments. He includes a brief audience singalong and eventually incorporates a spectator in the action as a letter carrier. He goes for heightened team spirit by having the actors work with each other moving furniture from scene to scene.

Brett Banakis designed the spare set, which features a raised playing area covering, say, two-thirds of the stage. On the right and left sides, Davis has placed chairs the cast members occupy when not involved in scenes, a directorial notion hardly new these last however many years. It could be said that actors watching their colleagues emote has its attractions. They constantly and thoroughly make a show of enjoying what they're seeing when patrons don't look to be having the same jolly good time. The drawback is that the second each actor steps--or hastens--from the paying area to plop down, he or she ceases being the character he or she has taken on and assumes the role of appreciative onlooker. Somehow this mitigates against comic tension.

(Has anyone ever done a survey of actors' attitudes towards this practice of their having to observe the entire enterprise night after night, matinee after matinee? Does Actors Equity demand added pay?)

About She Stoops to Conquer and just to fill in readers unaware of the plot: Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle (John Rothman, Cynthia Darlow) live in a commodious mansion with daughter Kate (Mairin Lee), ward Constance Neville (Justine Salata) and Mrs. Hardcastle's son-by-first-husband Tony Lumpkin (Richard Thieriot). At a local pub, Tony, an incorrigible cut-up, leads Kate's new suitor, Charles Marlow (Jeremy Beck), and Constance's suitor, George Hastings (Tony Roach), to believe that when they arrive at the Hardcastle manse, they are really reaching a country inn.

This leads to mistaken-identity-plus complications compounded by Kate's taking an instant shine to Charles, but Charles's timidity cramping his swaining style. As a result, Kate stoops to conquer as a lowly maid, a perky below-stairs figure. Charles is confident enough around this staff member to woo her heartily. Goldsmith's folderol goes on until it doesn't, and everything ends happily.

Yes, She Stoop to Conquer deals in romantic silliness that Goldsmith gives the sort of oomph that requires inspired directing and playing to realize its full potential. That's exactly what fails to occur here. Though the actors strive mightily, that may be the problem: too much effortful thesping. But it's not their fault. Their unrewarding toil is a consequence of Evans's direction--nor do Tracy Christensen's uninspired costumes add much.

There is one notable exception to the at-best-adequate performing. Beck, a TACT member, always knows how to negotiate these kinds of scripts. He's a master of the effortless. Bully for him.

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Quick Questions with Holiday Inn Standout Megan Sikora

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One of the things about Holiday Inn, the "new" Irving Berlin musical currently running at Studio 54, is it is a big, obvious old-fashioned musical comedy. This means there are a lot of showy performances. A standout one is given by Megan Sikora, an actress in her tenth Broadway show. Sikora, who began her career in the ensemble, plays the vapid Lila, who leaves her fiance, Ted (played by Bryce Pinkham), in order to continue to pursue a career in show business.

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Even though the character doesn't have a full solo number, it is like she does. Sikora makes an impression when she is onstage. As she has done previously--notably in Curtains, in which she played a sexpot understudy desperate for her big break, a character not that far removed from Lila--Sikora commits to having fun with the material. She sounds great on her parts of songs such as "Heat Wave" and "It's a Lovely Day Today," but this character is really about personality. You can't nail the ditzy blonde while giving a performance that is reserved. Yet if you go too far you'll cause audience members to completely roll their eyes each time you enter. Sikora manages to go just over-the-top enough. You can picture her Lila as a real human(ish), but you still have to laugh at her. In real life, Sikora is living a very different life than Lila, married to fellow Broadway veteran Barrett Martin and raising a son.

Because of how much I liked her performance, I asked her to participate in my recurring feature where I ask actors random, often silly, questions taken directly from the subject matter or text of the show. This time we did it over email. Below are the results.

Would you choose Jim or the road?


Jim. I always choose love, which hasn't been the best for my career!

What little thing in your life is most important to you?

The little 4 year old that wakes me up every morning. Our son keeps everything in perspective and keeps us laughing.

What is your favorite Irving Berlin song?

"The Best Things Happen While Your Dancing." It's from White Christmas but it makes me so happy because I truly believe that statement.

Can you imagine yourself living on a farm?

I can imagine myself spending weekends on a farm! I am a vegan so the idea appeals to that part of me but I am a city girl through and through.

Are you free for anything fancy?

I'm pretty simple, I don't need fancy things. But if there's a beach involved, why not!

Photo of Corbin Bleu and Megan Sikora in Holiday Inn by Joan Marcus.

If you want to contact me, you can find me on Twitter @CaraJoyDavid. I also welcome emails at carajoy@gmail.com. Please do not send me a Facebook message if we are not friends on Facebook. I will not see it.

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The Life-Changing Magic Of Losing All Your Stuff In A Fire

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“Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love.”


Living with someone else’s book collection, as I do now, is somewhat akin to losing your dog, then moving in with someone who has one. My boyfriend’s books inhabit every room of this apartment, slouching, dormant, comfortable. It’s been a year and I still don’t really know any of them. There’s a copy of The Moviegoer by Walker Percy in our living room, which I remember noticing when I used to come here before I started living here, before the fire. It catches my eye every so often, like a stranger on a train I’ve mistaken for someone I know. I’ve still never picked it up.


“When we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”


To say I miss my old apartment feels a bit like saying I miss a gypsy caravan or a guy I picked up at a bar—it seems somehow inauthentic to be surprised to lose something you’ve always known was temporary. And yet, I find as the year anniversary of the fire approaches, my chest is tight at the memory, and I can somehow conjure the space more vividly than I’ve been able to in months. Anniversaries are like that—the echoes of our own footsteps sounding from the past like laughter in an another room. The apartment, sunshine yellow, with two gaping wardrobes in the living room, mismatched light fixtures like eyes from different faces; the deep blue kitchen with the light switch you had to tickle on and the tuft of pink insulation above the stove; my bedroom, crammed to the gills with years of accumulated shit. It wasn’t built to last. It wasn’t, as it would turn out, even built for humans (the Post Office would refuse my mail-forwarding paperwork in the weeks after the fire on account of it being illegal to forward mail from a business to a residence). And yet, I miss it just the same.


“What is the perfect amount of possessions? I think that most people don’t know.”


The night of the fire, I brought a bag of laundry to the Manhattan Avenue Cleaners. Irene, sporting her usual array of rings and thimbles, weighed my frayed leopard-print laundry bag, openly inspecting my clothing for mysterious stains, as she’s done since I was 23. “5 pounds,” she said, vanishing into a fleet of dry cleaning bags. I had no idea in that moment that the contents of the bag—a pair of leggings, a bra, 4 pairs of underwear, a striped shirt, a pair of pants, two teeshirts, and a dress—were to become the only articles of clothing I owned that would be spared. After the fire, my boyfriend and I went to Target, and I bought a clothing wrack and a pack of pink hangers (the first bright color to enter his apartment since the lime green walls and brown trim of the funky dude who lived there before us). Each article of clothing had its own hanger and enough room around it to look like a stylist had chosen it. As I began to fill in the gaps, these original pieces took on great emotional significance. At day’s end, I would find myself taking a role call to make sure they were all there, the thought of losing one of this rag-tag team somehow unbearable.


“What you wear in the house does impact your self-image.”


I had to buy everything new and all I wanted were clothes to sleep in. I had never realized how much of my femininity is tied to what I wear. It’s both the immediate validation of controlling how I appear and appearing to my satisfaction, and the underlying confidence it fosters, the sense of mastery that comes from knowing I’m able to adequately provide for myself. Before the fire, I had completely taken this for granted and was utterly blindsided when I lost my belongings—I felt shabby in my bones. I had been completely dispossessed (my roommate wrote a compelling piece about renter’s insurance after the fact, unfortunately too late for me) and suddenly I no longer found myself on equal footing with my peers. I was 26, having battled my way through dead-end jobs, love lost, and innumerable merit badges of the early twenties that amount to progress. Materially, however, I was 17, the age I had been when I stopped growing out of my clothing and began to accumulate a real wardrobe. I felt as I had felt then—malleable, disoriented, unformed, forgettable, changeable, vulnerable.


“Not every person you meet in life will become a close friend or lover.”


My boyfriend and I always joke that we only went on one date. In reality, we did go on dates for a few months, but the fire makes our courtship look like the scrolling text at the beginning of Star Wars in proportion to the rest of the series. Universally, no one knew what to say about the fact that I had lost all of my possessions, and my being newly in love came swinging through the jungle of conversational awkwardness like a vine into safer territory. In the context of my whirlwind romance, the fire seemed like a drama-heightening plot device, a tacky writing teacher’s red margin note. “The fact that they move in after two months isn’t believable. Add tension? Robbery? Fire?”


The truth is, I don’t know how I had the balls to move in with him—or what possessed him to offer. It still makes my stomach turn to think about it—not the fact that we live together, which we have happily ever since, but the memory of that moment, when everything was gone and someone offered me their hand and I took it because if this worked out it would mean I’d gained more than I’d lost.


“After all, our possessions very accurately relate the history of the decisions we have made in life.”


When I was 9, my mom read us the D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, my brother, sister, and I lumped snugly together like socks in a drawer. I fell passionately in love with the stories, to the point where an 8-cassette tape set was purchased; I devoted hours to Kathleen Turner talking about how Aphrodite would have preferred Aries to Hephaestus. I took the book to boarding school with me at 15, and used to read it privately when I was homesick and use it as a hiding place for fragments of my own stories. It came with me to Baltimore for college, where a chunk of the front cover went missing my freshman year after an a capella concert. I shuttled it from sublet to apartment in New York and remember taking it as a sign when I saw its familiar cover winking out at me from the glass cases in my company’s lobby when I interviewed for my job. I don’t think I ever thought about how I would share it with my children because I just assumed I would. The last time I saw the book, it was on its shelf covered in soot from a wall the firemen had axed in search of renegade sparks. I never saw it thrown out and in my head its presence continues there, preserved like a TV star in a re-run or a grave at Pompeii.


“The process of assessing how you feel about the things you own, and bidding them farewell, is really about examining your inner self, a rite of passage to a new life.”


After the fire, a few people commented that I was like the pyro version of Marie Kondo. I actually had read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up before the fire and had been utterly intimated by it. Marie is, after all, the author of the sentence “I never tidy a room. Why? Because it is already tidy.” When I reread the book after the fire, it was because it was the closest thing I could find to a guide for how to continue your life after you dramatically lose all of your possessions in one go. According to Marie, the circumstances in which I now found myself actually had the potential to increase my happiness. Of course, I hadn’t only lost my possessions, but my actual home—and yet I found solace in the book just the same. So much of growing up is learning lessons again and again until they stick. Marie’s teachings reminded me of something I’ve had to relearn in one way or another at every turn of my life—that home is a feeling which dwells in each of us and the things we hold onto are often our way of finding it.


“It is not memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure.”


When I think back to the apartment itself and feel this gaping hole in my chest, it’s not really for the apartment or for the stuff. It’s because the apartment represents a fixed moment in my life—like high school or college—that is now behind me. It’s so strange to have been so ready for it to be over and still miss it just the same. I lived in that apartment with my beloved long-term roommate, a wonderful Craigslist stranger-turned-friend , and a dear friend who would up only being there for a short spell before it burned down. But when I think back to my time there, what I recall most vividly are the vast hours I spent alone in the space—the flicker-lit, jankity, imperfect space that taught me how to be on my own. There is no female Peter Pan or Aladdin, but that is how I felt in those years—such a strong sense of being my own master, of having the run of the place whether that meant tanning on my roof, or befriending the fruit-stand cat, or staring at my own reflection in the mirror for 10 minutes until my face looked like my grandma’s. There were so many nights where no one knew where I was and no one would know if I came home or not. I have never known such perfect solitude, and yet so much of what enabled me to keep crushing loneliness at bay rested on a deep sense that this time was fleeting.


“The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not the person we were in the past.”


I’ve colonized a corner of our bedroom with the books I’ve read in the last year. There are some aspects of rebuilding that are like this—brick by brick. Others I can instantly tap into, a familiar recipe, the next episode of a T. V. show. Sweeping gestures, like paint coats and curtains, make the apartment appear more mine than perhaps it is. I’ve kept the bins of strange and sentimental things I grabbed the day after the fire in our hallway, an inventory that has dwindled as I’m able to let more and more of what is ruined fall away. Mostly, I am grateful for the soft landing—had the timing been a few months earlier, I would have been made to feel the full weight of my loss, bouncing from couch to couch as I tried to formulate a plan. I’ve now told the story so often that sometimes it’s as though it didn’t happen to me at all. And yet, as the days align, the chill in the air whips up the threads that were cut short, and I find myself close enough to touch that other life I fell out of so accidentally late one October night.


All quotes between the paragraphs above were originally published in the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed Press, 2015).

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Choreographer Larry Fuller Discusses His Work with Robbins, Prince, Sondheim and More

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Larry Fuller rehearses with Patti Lupone in the original
Broadway production of 'Evita.' Photo: Martha Swope.

By Bob Rizzo, ZEALnyc Contributing Writer, October 17, 2016

Choreographer Larry Fuller is responsible for the staging of some of Broadway's most iconic musicals. Whether it was his Tony Award nominated dances in Evita, or his staging for the murderous Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, his stylized movement always held your attention. Larry has staged both the Tony Awards and the Emmy Awards and has worked numerous times with legendary Broadway director Hal Prince.

On Monday, October 17th, the Dancers Over 40 will be honoring Mr. Fuller with one of their signature panel and performance nights. The evening, Larry Fuller: High Flying Adored, features Judy Kaye, Loni Ackerman, Sarah Rice and Jim Walton, among others at the St. Luke's Theater.

I spoke with Mr. Fuller on the phone at his home in Pennsylvania to talk about the event and his career.

Before we start I'd like to congratulate you on receiving the 2012 Legacy award from DO40C.

Thank you very much. It was a great deal of fun. Of course, I was honored and flattered that they did that.


How did you first hear about the organization?

John Sefakis who is the president of DO40 got ahold of me to do some sort of activity for them. I didn't know of the organization at the time, so I wanted to be sure they were doing something I felt was of real importance and interest to me. I found out that they were, and still are, indeed doing great work to support dance legacy. The fact that they donate to Broadway Cares was also a big attraction for me to begin with.


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(L to R) Larry Fuller, George Marcy, Carol Lawrence, Lee Roy Reams and Norma Doggett-Bezwick at 2012 Dancers Over Legacy Awards.


When did you know you wanted to be a choreographer?

I got into being a choreographer by a stroke of really tragic luck. I was one of two assistants for Carol Haney on the original Broadway production of Funny Girl. I also was the dance captain and was in the show when it opened. Unfortunately, Carol was a diabetic and got double pneumonia three months after the show opened, and died at the age of forty.

After her passing I inherited Funny Girl. I recreated most of her work and did some additional work of my own that I was asked to do for the first national tour. I also did it in London with Barbra Streisand. The whole experience really opened up a door for me, as I had no idea I was a choreographer, let alone a director. Luckily I was given the opportunity to keep doing it.


You've done five Broadway musicals with director Hal Prince. How did that relationship come about?

Another stroke of luck, though this time it wasn't tragic thank God. By that time I had gone to Austria and Germany to work. A short time after doing West Side Story over there, I worked at the Theater an der Wien opera house in Vienna. They were doing the Broadway production of A Little Night Music in German. Since there is no dancing in that musical the contracted dancers at the Opera house had nothing to do for four months. I was hired to teach them jazz and tap dance. They asked me to create a Broadway dance evening that was to be done on the theater's dark night. I also put myself in the show. I was what I call Tommy Tune-ing myself.

When Hal Prince came over to put the finishing touches on A Little Night Music, we met during social gatherings at the theater. We got along great and he stopped in to watch a couple of my rehearsals for the dance evening I was directing. We also discovered we were fellow Aquarians. Though he left before my show opened, I translated the nice reviews I received into English and sent them to him. That was the beginning of a correspondence between us.


So what was the first show you did with him?

I actually worked for him, not with him. When a production of Candide was going to be done in Vienna, Hal contacted me and asked me to stage it. He and all of his people were tied up working on his Broadway production of Pacific Overtures at the time. I was flabbergasted and honored that he would give me that to do. Here I was doing Voltaire in German and I didn't even speak it very well.

I also got lucky with the film of A Little Night Music that was being shot in Vienna. It was postponed for so long that the choreographer, Patricia Birch, was only available for the first three weeks of the rehearsal. I was hired at Hal's suggestion to be her assistant during rehearsals and then help put her work on film once she left. That was my first actual experience working with Hal. Obviously we must've gotten along well because months later he offered me to choreograph his next Broadway musical, On The Twentieth Century.


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(L to R) 'On The Twentieth Century;' Adolph Green, Larry Fuller, Imogene Coca, John Cullum & Betty Comden; photo: original publicity.


During your Broadway tenure you've collaborated with some legendary composers and lyricists including Stephen Sondheim, Cy Coleman, Comden and Green, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Do you have a story you'd like to share?

It was when I was working with Stephen Sondheim on Merrily We Roll Along. Both Hal and Steve would meet with me in the lounge of the theater where we had a piano set up to go over what I was going to redo that day. When we got to the end of Act One there's a song called "Now You Know" which features the whole company. The central character, Franklin Shepard, is being tossed somewhat friendly advice from various characters. They're singing in couplets during the number. I said to Steve that I'd like to give a specific couplet to someone on the other side of the stage as I was planning for something important to happen and wanted to take the attention over there. He said, "Oh no, you can't do that." Hal and I just looked at each other and I asked him why not? He said, "Because that is the rhyme scheme of the character singing it, so you cant give it to someone else." Now these were ensemble members and not characters you would recognize even though they did all have names. I said " Do you mean to tell me that every person on that stage who has a name has their own rhyme scheme?" He said, "Yes, well of course." I looked at Hal and said, "Did you know that?" Hal just wryly smiled and shook his head no. I said, "Okay Steve, I'll find another way to do it." I thought to myself how amazing that was. Who the hell would've known that he gave every single character their own rhyme scheme? He was just that amazing.


Of all the musicals you've choreographed what was your favorite?

Why Evita of course! That show actually gave me the chance to do some real dancing. "Buenos Aries" is an eight-minute production number. But people don't think of it as a big dance number as most of the focus is on Eva as she's singing. When I first did it, I thought to myself what a smasheroo dance number this is going to be. It ended up getting a nice applause but nothing spectacular. Then came "Peron's Latest Flame" with the soldiers and the aristocrats. It had constant staging. They never stopped moving once they got onstage but it really wasn't dancing. During the first preview the audience started applauding in the middle of the number. I was baffled and wondered what they were reacting to. I guess it was the style of the number as no one had ever seen something like that before.

I was hired as a swing dancer for the original production of West Side Story. At that time Actors Equity would allow performers to do partial performances. In the case of West Side Story, if a character such as Baby John or Action had an injury, they were allowed to do just their acting and singing part. As soon as any dancing would start they would somehow get upstage, sneak off, and I would sneak on. I would do their dance position in the number and at the end of it I would sneak off and they'd come back on.


Speaking of 'West Side Story,' what was it like to work for Jerome Robbins?

I was the only person in the entire company that hadn't been there from the very beginning of rehearsals. I never got the chance to go through it with Mr. Robbins. One night when I was on for one of the Jets, Mr. Robbins was there checking on the show. We were told he would be giving a note session after the show and to please get out of costume immediately and report to the stage. When we finished, I ran downstairs because I wanted to be the first one to stand next to God. That is more or less who I viewed him as, and still do, because I think he's the genius out of all of them.

There we were, the whole cast, sitting on the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre. During the note session I remember him turning to Carol Lawrence who was sitting there with a little pad and pencil. He slowly said to her, "Fake, Fake, Fake." Every time he said the word she wrote something down on her pad. She looked up at him with a look like, "anything else?" I guess she had been through it many times.

By the end of the forty-five minutes of notes, I figured he must've liked me. He hadn't criticized me yet. Well, the last thing he did was to turn to me with his laser beam stare and point to me with his thumb up. He said to me, " You stuck out like that, with a sore on it." That was the end of the note session. I was totally destroyed. I thought I was going to be fired.


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Choreographer Larry Fuller at work.


I imagine any performer would feel that way. How did you manage?

Two of the guys, Tony Mordente and Jay Norman, took me out for a beer. I was all but crying, as I was so upset. They said that they'd all been through it and it was just my day in the barrel. They told me that the company thought I was doing a great job, but maybe I should think more about being a Jet, and less about worrying about the choreography. I have to say that that was the best piece of advice that I was ever given as a performer.

From that day forward I played raging anger from A to Z, or I should say A to B, because that's all I knew how to do. Whenever I went on I was just as angry as I could be. At least I didn't get fired.

Many years later when Jerry saw my work in Evita and Sweeney Todd he became a mentor. He even recommended me for some very good jobs.


What are your thoughts on the new generation of choreographers?

I loved what Jerry Mitchell did in the original production of The Full Monty. In that basketball number he took non-dancing actors and made them seem to be dancing. It was all an abstraction of the basketball vocabulary of movement. He did such a phenomenal job with it by telling the story through the characters and staging. I thought to myself that this guy is really something. Of course, he's gone on to show us that he is.

I also like Casey Nicholaw because he knows how to build an exciting number. It's really well demonstrated in Something Rotten. A lot of new choreographers don't know how to do that. It's something that you either know or you don't know. You can kind of learn it, but he can do it in spades.

Another choreographer is Sergio Trujillo. When I saw Jersey Boys I thought this guy knows how to take a traditional, now considered old-fashioned style, and make it work. He had to do number after number of doo-wop staging with four guys. That can really be a cliché, especially when you have to do so much of it. He managed to stay within the style and create something new. Again, it's a talent you can't teach. You either know it or you don't.


Well put. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Bob.


Tickets for Dancers Over 40's Larry Fuller: High Flying Adored available through Telecharge. For more information on Dancers Over 40 please visit: DO40.
______________________________

Bob Rizzo, a Contributing Writer for ZEALnyc writes frequently on Braodway and Dance. More information is available at his website, The Dance Coach.

Read more ZEALnyc features:

Broadway Stars perform at the 20th Anniversary 'Nothing Like A Dame' Benefit honoring Tony Award nominee Marin Mazzie

Fall for Dance Festival at City Center Hits Another Home Run This Year

Shoe Designer Phil LaDuca lets his Heels do the Dancing on Broadway and Beyond

For all the news on New York City arts and culture, visit ZEALnyc Front Page.

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Writers - 5 Reasons You Should Write for an Audience of One

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"Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience, every reader is a different person."
― William Zinsser (from On Writing Well)


One of the things we often forget as writers, is that essentially we are writing for an audience of one.

However many people end up reading our work, each individual person will have their own relationship with what we have written. Some will love what we write, some will be indifferent and some will flat out hate it.

From the writer's perspective, coming back to this vision of an audience of one reader is helpful for a few reasons:

1) Staying Focused
When we write for an audience of one it's easier to stay on topic. We focus simply on the message we wish to convey and we go ahead and craft it.

Trying to write for the internet or an audience at large is a mistake. Our message will get muddled, we'll slip off topic and we'll try to squeeze too much in.

2) We Keep Our Message Simple and Concise
Writing for an audience can lead us to over-explaining, being verbose and generally muddying our message. Writing for one instead frees us up. We can keep our message simple, concise and direct.

The best writing can often be about not just what's on the page, but what the writer has decided to leave unsaid. Leaving the reader space to breathe and think, to join the dots themselves and come to their own conclusions. Concise can be powerful, just look at the Haiku greats for inspiration.

The same applies to simplicity in our writing. Writing for an audience of one means we feel less pressure to use the fancy words when something simple will do just fine. We do away with the fluff and concentrate on the message.

Simple writing can be powerful writing.

3) We Write in a Friendly Tone
If we're writing for one, we can do away with formality and pretend we're writing for someone we know. This could be someone in our life we know well or an imaginary audience of one to serve our topic at hand.

This approach can soften the tone and helps us relax into our own unique writing voice.

4) We Stop Trying to Be All Things to All People
Trying to write for an audience of many can dilute our writing. We get distracted from the core message because we're trying to make a piece of writing (blog post, article, book) accessible and exciting to everyone.

However, the best writing makes it's mark not because it's all things to all people but because it resonates with a few.

Hemingway isn't for everyone but many consider him a genius in the craft of writing. He's rightly an established great because of it.

JK Rowling is not everyone's cup of tea but that hasn't stopped her transformative work touching the lives of so many (young and young at heart) people. She stuck to her guns, stayed true to her own vision and her books are all the better for it.

Great writers write to tell a tale. They are committed to the story and message first and foremost. Of course they want an audience to find it, but the message comes first.
Concentrating on an audience of one can help us fight the urge to try to make our writing all things for all people.

5) We Avoid the Trap of Hacks and Trying to Game an Audience
In a world full of hacks and shortcuts, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we're actually writing for a human being rather than for traffic hikes, accolades and social media likes.

Of course we want people to find our work but sensationalist headlines and formulaic material is not the route to our best writing. We owe it to ourselves and our audience to strive for better. More than that, we owe it to the craft of writing itself to do better.

Forget the gaming, write for a real person. It may not be a fast route to stardom (is there really any such thing?) but it's likely to lead to your best work.

There's a power in focusing on one. Try it the next time you write something.

Carl is a writer. He writes short books full of big ideas. He is also the proud owner of Frictionless Living.

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A Conversation On Creativity: Endocepts & Exocepts

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On the one end, there is Howard Stern. Have you caught on to his penchant, which is to mine the headspaces of his musical guest artists? While Stern wears his suppression schtick like a sash o' badges and purports to be unable to hold a tune, his delving, to try and understand just what it is from where words and sound come together as original songs, redeems the "shock" chat for which he is better known, and makes for some of his best interviews of all.

On the other end is artist Carmelo Blandino, who I featured alongside Hunt Slonem in an earlier article entitled Kindred Spirits, published here at HP. Having interviewed Carmelo rather extensively, I know his receptivity to inspiration is a major definer of his very existence. Blandino's intuitive communications with his unconscious self help illustrate the link between the inner creative process and its outcome. In his words:

I bring my body to the studio out of habit. I've trained myself to do this so that the triggers of being in a studio immediately put me in a condition of receptivity. I am creative everywhere I go, so I prefer to respond to it in my studio, where I can use paint because its my preferred method of expression.... I then wait for very brief moments in the Now and remain in stillness.... fully aware of my presence within my body. That stillness within, which I observe, is communicating with me. There is a flow of direct knowledge that is transpiring... communication from the conscious to the unconscious. I walk... trusting that something will transpire. Once it "downloads" into me I can feel that surge or sense of urgency to put down onto my canvas whatever is feeding me at that moment. This can be as quick as a few minutes or last through the evening. I've come to recognize that my body is capable of working quickly and responds quickly to what is being given to me.... Often I've worked on several paintings throughout the day (and) into late night and not realized the body of work I've created. It's a sense of timelessness that takes over, as that is when I am in the presence. It's a void where space and time disappear and truth of being emerges. Creativity is presence.


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The full spectrum of creativity and the building of individual legacies can be as vastly different as the two above-mentioned men are. But creativity is the tie that binds, whether as giver or receiver. It is the drive, the voice, the language, I wish to explore in this part II HP article, my follow-up to So There: Hunt Slonem & What I learned On Kindergarten.

Endocept and Exocept:

In Roman mythology, the birth of Athena, springing full grown and fully armored from the skull of her father Zeus, is a classic metaphor for the endocept transmogrifying into an exocept. It is an explosion of a something, fully grown, with a life of its own. These terms are rather new, having been coined in the mid 70s by psychologist Silvano Arieti (1914-1981). They are nearly unknown in laymen's conversations on creativity. Try looking them up online - our most basic indicator today of that reality. Try typing them without a corrective override by your computer system. Their absence in online dictionaries and in my auto correct proves as much.

It is to the everyday, Arts-based vernacular that I would like to add these two terms I learned of as student, which have stayed with me for their logical clarity and usability.
They break down Inspiration's Before and After. The following definitions are mine, based on Arieti's original text:

Endocept - is the innerly held, subconscious creative stream/idea still not fully formed, an in-process creative fermentation that resides within the chambers of the mind (aka the soul), below any level of awareness. Arieti referred to an "incubation period."

Exocept - is the endocept manifested up, out and into the consciousness of the creator in what seems fully formulated fashion, a creative concept/thought entity that can appear to explode into one's awareness, for which creative action - often fervent and feverishly paced - is undertaken to realization and completion.

Creativity:

Having studied creativity and creative thinking as a student and having experienced it first hand, I know what it feels like to be energized by warp drive-level inspiration, when what I produce is so torrential in its outpouring and so completely formulated that it's all I can do to keep up with the explosion of words or images I am compelled to put to paper or canvas. I know the Drang when inspiration kicks into high gear, and I have not the least bit of fear of the Sturm that often triggers it. Hurt and struggle, integral to being alive, are an artist's necessary blessings in disguise, for it is from this darker place that the Muses speak, more profound for their soul bearing and spirit flaying.

I have also, in the throes of some work, experienced prolonged peaceful periods, where a blissful state of focus takes over. Time, time of day, day or night, mean nothing. To call it a "creative high" is no misnomer or understatement. And that high? It gets in the way of the everyday. It can be utterly jarring to be pulled back, up, out and into the present moment from some creative immersion. It does not make for easy civility when reality comes knocking.

Creative output, competing directly with the ordinary everyday and with basic obligations to self and loved ones, leaves me to conclude that one's Muse is also one's gremlin. And there's that tangential line crossed when the need to self soothe (like a fat pour of red wine at 2 a.m.), to bring self down from some euphoric, creative high, becomes the challenge. Even sleep and dreams come to be seen as welcome conduits for inner threads of thought and even full-on stories, rather than a time of rest.

Think on this a moment: I am willing to bet you have experienced this too, at some wonderful point, when what you were doing was everything and everything else was nothing....

The Addictiveness of Inspiration:

Inspiration, that insistence to create, comes from deep within and is seldom in synch with that which otherwise fills life to the gills. And while it comes with its assorted ills, those who have ever been in its addictive thrall cherish the experience and want more of it.

I look back on creative projects and sessions with not only a basic sense of accomplishment, I recall the feeling of being so wrapped up in the process, with a desire to go back there again. It's the kind of pull an extreme athletes might feel, once back at home in the safe and sedentary, where memories of pleasure mixed with pain and fear blend into a singular, irresistible intoxicant. Having always been fascinated by those who seek goals involving maximal hardship, I think of mountain climbers. Humans who trek up Mount Everest must accept the possibility of death as an integral part of the experience. I believe they seek something akin to what all true, laboring artists want out of life: For every accomplishment, it is the journey there and back that beckons time and again - the deeper and the darker it is, the brighter it is at the top.

Creativity as Universal Connector:

I believe creative energies are messages and histories carried over time and multiple dimensions, both internally and externally derived, whether in our DNA or as the metaphysical counterparts to physicists' String Theory, where the connectivity of all intelligent beings comes together at that miraculous, incalculable spark. Our creative endeavors connect societies and individuals over vast spans of time and place like nothing else does. Picture a pyramid. Think of Mozart. Imagine our beautiful Earth as seen from our Moon. Creative expression takes one over millennia and to the heavens and back again in a moment. Creative doers - they perch comfortably on the very event horizons scientists and mathematicians laboriously seek and tally via sequential symbols, numbers and letters, which are themselves representational, creatively wrought pictures borne of the universal, binary reality that is 1 and 0, yes and no, To Be or Not To Be.

Those with imagination are our soothsayers and societal catapults into the future. Creative endeavor, aside from the fundamental function that is reproduction, is our best, living attempt at immortality. The spark that makes out of each mere human a creator links him or her to all sources, past, present and future. It is the closest thing we mortals have to forming and then even naming our very own constellations.
Man procreates; Art elevates.

The Need to Support Creative Output:

The fight to acknowledge the full spectrum of creative expression is as vital as is the fight to keep the Arts in our everyday and in our schools. It is likewise a beautiful key that helps unlock the doors to global societal evolution. As I noted in an article published at Huff Post back in 2014, In Support of the Arts as Conduit for Extreme Expression and Catharsis, I continue to maintain, with all my heart, that:

Through support for and access to the arts, we give each and every member of society the opportunity to evolve through their expressiveness, no matter how contrary it might be, for in confronting and coming to understand the expression, we are not struck down but allowed to move forward together.


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Original Painting, 2015, by Carmelo Blandino, property of the author
Original Drawing by Kimann Schultz at age 15
All photos by Kimann

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Alma-Tadema: Classical Charm

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Leeuwarden, capital of Friesland, produced Rembrandt's beloved wife Saskia Uylenburgh, along with Mata Hari and M.C. Escher. But there's another native son who's been largely forgotten since his heyday in Victorian London. "Alma-Tadema: Classical Charm" at the Fries Museum hopes to change that with a dazzling retrospective on the distinctive 19th century painter (October 1, 2016 to February 7, 2017).

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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Coign of Vantage (detail), 1895, oil on canvas, 58.88 x 44.45 cm, Collection of Ann and Gordon Getty

Eighty paintings have been assembled from private collections and museums around the world by curators Elizabeth Prettejohn, Head of Art History at the University of York, and Peter Trippi, a New York-based independent scholar of 19th century British art. "Alma Tadema: Classical Charm" is organized chronologically -- from a teenage self-portrait to his late masterpiece The Finding of Moses which sold for a record smashing $36 million in 2010.

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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Finding of Moses, 1904, oil on canvas, 137.7 x 213.4 cm, Private Collection, courtesy Christie's. Photo © 2016 Christie's Images Limited

Born in the village of Dronrijp in Friesland in 1836, Lourens Alma Tadema moved to nearby Leeuwarden with his Mennonite family at age three. After studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the ambitious painter set up a studio in Brussels. It was on his honeymoon to Rome and Pompeii in 1863 that he fell in love with antiquity.

Within a year or two, Alma Tadema was producing his first Roman-themed paintings. Inspired by the ruins of ancient Rome and Pompeii, his everyday scenes took on a mythic quality. The artist owned over 160 volumes of photographs of Greek and Roman antiquities. A selection of the antiquities he collected and his Italian sketches are on view.

In 1870, recently widowed with two young daughters, Alma Tadema relocated to London where his Belgian dealer had a gallery. Roman antiquity was highly fashionable, and many English and American collectors were smitten by his exotic, seductive evocations of the classical world. He changed his name to Lawrence Alma-Tadema. The "Sir" followed in 1899 when he was knighted by Queen Victoria.

The painter's second wife Laura Theresa Epps, and his daughter Anna Tadema were also artists; the show features 18 of their works, along with dozens of drawings, prints, and studio objects. Many were gifts from Alma-Tadema and his daughters to the Fries Museum. There are also watercolors and drawings of Alma-Tadema's costume and stage designs for London productions of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar.

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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Amo Te Ama Me, 1881, oil on panel, 17.5 x 38.0 cm; 42.2 x 57.6 cm (frame), Collection Museum of Friesland, Leeuwarden

In the 1880s, the close-knit family moved to a stunning 66-room house and studio in fashionable St. John's Wood. Decorated from top to bottom in Roman style, this "enchanted palace" attracted frequent guests and clients. A Hall of Panels featuring gifts from friends, including Sir Frederic Leighton and John Singer Sargent, has been reassembled.

Reproductions of his works helped make Alma-Tadema famous internationally. A portrait of the etcher responsible, Leopold Löwenstam, recently resurfaced after more than a century on the BBC television program Antiques Roadshow. After Löwenstam fell in love with Alma-Tadema's nanny, the artist gave the painting to her as a wedding present.

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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Portrait of Leopold Löwenstam, the etcher, 1883, oil on canvas, 52.1 x 64.7 cm, Private Collection, England

When Alma-Tadema died in 1912, the celebrated 74-year-old artist was buried at St Paul's Cathedral. Shortly after his death, he abruptly fell out of favor. Art historians considered his paintings kitschy, but filmmakers were inspired by the luxe scenes of ancient Egypt and Rome. Hollywood directors Cecil B. DeMille, William Wyler and Stanley Kubrick looked to Alma-Tadema's décor and costumes for their blockbusters Cleopatra, Ben-Hur, and Spartacus. More recently, director Ridley Scott studied Alma-Tadema for Gladiator. This connection is vividly illustrated in a spacious gallery where film clips play directly above Alma-Tadema's colorful paintings.

"Alma-Tadema: Classical Charm" travels to the Belvedere in Vienna next year (February 23 to June 18) and Leighton House Museum in London, former home and studio of Sir Frederic Lord Leighton (July 7 to October 29). The exhibition kicks off a calendar of events in Leeuwarden-Fryslân, chosen as the European Capital of Culture for 2018. From Amsterdam, Leeuwarden is an hour and ten minutes north by car and two hours and fifteen minutes by train.

For more information, visit http://www.friesmuseum.nl/en/see-and-do/exhibitions/alma-tadema-1/

Susan Jaques' recent biography, The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia was published in April by Pegasus Books.

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8 Artists on Sound

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Captivating, agonizing, nostalgic - sound can induce a plethora of experiences. In video artist Bill Viola's words: "like angels, sound can cross between the physical and the nonphysical world." Hear how he and 7 other artists inhabit the sonic world.

"The voice is the oldest instrument," states Japanese poet Tomomi Adachi, who combines his voice with his own wondrous musical inventions to create sound works between poetry and music. Norwegian singer, composer, lyricist and writer Jenny Hval's work deals with issues of gender and sexuality: "I was looking for an otherness in the voice, a sort of sincerity," she explains of her approach to her musical expression.

American video artist Bill Viola hears sounds everywhere: "Anything that's moving is making sound. It's a kind of background noise for the world ... When we're going through our daily lives we don't even recognise that." For Danish jazz guitarist Jakob Bro, whose work is based heavily on improvisation, those everyday sounds are allowed to bloom in the studio: "The melodies have to be released to be appealing," he says.

Also featured in the video is American poet, artist and musician Patti Smith and performances by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, American composer and musician Glenn Branca and Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono.

Click on the names to see the full interviews with Tomomi Adachi, Glenn Branca, Jakob Bro, Jenny Hval, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Tomas Tranströmer and Bill Viola.

Produced by: Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen
Edited by: Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2016

Supported by Nordea Fonden

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Kent Nagano Discusses Ten Years with Montreal Symphony

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Montreal Symphony music director Kent Nagano.

By Mark McLaren, ZEALnyc Editor in Chief, October 18, 2016

This year marks a milestone for the American-born conductor Kent Nagano, now in his tenth year as music director of the Montreal Symphony. In results against which other orchestral music directors (and their boards) might not like to be scored, his tenure in Montreal has correlated with some striking accomplishments for the organization. His is not a name that floods classical music chatter. Over the years, Nagano hasn't always appeared in published shortlists. But press chatter is inappropriate and inadequate in measuring the success of this conductor who is a mix of breezy-affability and disciplined intelligence.

Throughout his career, Nagano has been a quiet force in positions with organizations that also fall below the chatter. With Opéra de Lyon, Manchester's Hallé Orchestra and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (and Montreal), he has won five Grammy Awards (six additional nominations) and five Diapason D'or. He has championed new opera, conducting the world premiers of Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin in Salzburg, works by John Adams (Death of Klinghoffer), and Peter Eötvös (Three Sisters) and commissioned works by Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm and Unsuk Chin. He has advocated for lesser-know repertoire like Hindemith's Cardillac, Shostakovich's The Nose, and Messiaen's massive Saint-François d'Assise (1995 Grammy nomination).

I spent time with the Montreal Symphony in August reporting on its Classical Spree summer music festival, where I found a unique organizational personality - a charming combination of fun, community, and razor-sharp quality. Montreal's reputation has always been solid (Dutoit recorded extensively with the orchestra from 1977-2002) but has been less present of late, last playing in New York in 2011. That changed last season with raves during a ten-city US tour ('This is a sound with tremendous polish but little varnish, and the result is exciting...').

I spoke with Nagano on September 7 as the Montreal Symphony opened its season. In this, the first of a three-article series, Nagano talks about his ten years with Montreal, accomplishments of the orchestra and organization, and the place that the orchestra holds within the city's community. In ZEALnyc's second installment, Mr. Nagano discusses an event quite rare for a symphony orchestra - the introduction of a new instrument (the octobass) to the Montreal Symphony in mid-October. And in our final article, Mr. Nagano discusses his work on the development and world premier of Kaia Saariaho's opera L'Amour de Loin, which makes its US debut at the Metropolitan Opera in December.

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Montreal Symphony at Olympic Park;
opening of its Classical Spree summer music festival.


MM: Congratulations on Classical Spree, I had a very nice time.

KN: I must admit, everyone really felt so jubiliant after this year's Classical Spree. It was a little tiny milestone for us. Whenever you try to put a new idea into reality, it is a little bit tenuous for the first couple of years. And for us, we've had the very good fortune of having the community respond in a very big way, so the first four years were clearly going in the right direction. Then this past year at the festival, everyone, all the players, the audience, the public whom I spoke with, the soloists that visited us, everyone had a feeling that it was now a kind of tradition.

MM: I have to say, it was very impressive musically. It was fantastic to hear Arabella Steinbacher playing Prokofiev at 11:30 in the morning. And I was struck by the community support throughout the festival.

KN: Yes, and it is the chance for the orchestra to really spend time with, and get very, very close to our audience. We have several initiatives, because for us, it is important as a performing ensemble, that we maintain our relevance within the community. So that the community feels that they can identify with what we are doing, that they feel that the concert hall is their concert hall. Not the OSM's, not Kent Nagano's, not some international soloists, but that actually the concert hall is a meeting point for the whole community. I think that everybody felt that, and it sounds as if you could feel that too, the warmth between the community and the orchestra.

MM: Yes. Talking about the community, I wanted to hit on a few milestones over your tenure with Montreal. One of those milestones is Maison Symphonique. I understand that plans were on the drawing boards as you arrived, then came the economic crisis. Talk to me a little bit about that process and your thoughts about Maison Symphonique.

KN: Well, it was a bit of a long history behind the idea of a new concert hall. My older colleagues have told me that before I came, for something like 30 years there had been an attempt to build a concert hall. Sometimes things got so close that even a new concert hall had been announced. I think that happened twice with my predecesor Maestro Charles Dutoit. But always, for whatever reason, economic downturn, political leadership where different priorities were suddenly taken up, the hall never got built.

When I first came to Montreal, we were playing . . . I have to say it wasn't a bad hall, but it was a hall that was built for a multi-purpose function. It was a little too big for most of the repertoire, we're talking about 3,500 seats, and the accoustics were meant to hold amplification as well as ballet and opera. So naturally, as having the accoustics for the entire spectrum of classical music, it was very difficult to be specific. It was nearly impossible to play Haydn, Mozart, any of the early classical repertoire. Johannes Sebastian Bach was very difficult.

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Wilfrid Pelletier Hall, Place des Arts, Montreal Canada

But we decided when, I first came, that this repertoire should not be avoided at all, that the OSM really needed to serve our community with a full range of music. So we began a very strong initiative in Mozart and Bach and Hayden. We filled the house, the older Wilfrid Pelletier hall, 3,500 seats every night. But it really was apparent to everyone that the time for a new concert hall had arrived.

I did officially make the appeal for a new concert hall before I even started. I made an address to the Chamber of Commerce, to the business community, and the business community responded very positively. And the public responded very positively. And if both of those things happen, it is much easier for the political structure to actually follow and say "yes." The community-at-large, and specifically the business community recognized that quality of life helps business recruitment. Quality of life issues help give the perception that the city is very active in its vision and in urban planning, and the communithy really did come together with the orchestra. We realized this jointly--the community, politicians, businesses, musicians, and myself. We did realize this, and I would consider that an historic milestone. It is the first real designated concert hall in Quebec.

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Maison Symphonique, home of the Montreal Symphony in Montreal, Canada.
Photo provided by Diamond-Schmitt Architects.

So, that was the first step. The second step was that the orchestra really needed, if we were to keep going, a highest-level symphonic choir. So we started a new symphony choir as the second initiative, and that choir has now earned the reputation as one of the world's great international choruses. We just built a choir from scratch, the Montreal Symphony Chorus.

TO VIEW A VIDEO OF THE MONTREAL SYMPHONY CHORUS CLICK HERE


The third initiative was, when we built the hall, we always felt it should have an organ. Quebec has quite a strong religious background, and the Catholic Church was such an important part of the Quebec area. And we have still a lot of active churches and within those churches, there has been established a very strong culture, scholarly culture as well as popular, culture of the organ. A very strong role for the organ. We wanted an organ in the new concert hall, but we ran out of money before we were able to establish it.

So that became the third major initiative. Once again, when community leaders, politicians, business community, the orchestra and myself, we all joined hands together and we successfully installed the organ two years ago. This has been a major accomplishment for the community, and it is one of the few cities that I know of that whenever we announce an organ recital, it is sold out. So it has really taken a very popular turn.

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Organist Jean-Willy Kunz at Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique at Maison Symphonique, Montreal Canada August 13, 2016. Photo: ZEALnyc.

And I think that these kinds of projects, when we accomplish it together, bring everyone a little bit closer together and should be celebrated. We try to insure that no artifical walls or barriers go up so that there is not even a hint of separation or elitism or detachment between our orchestra and our community. That is especially important in the twenty-first century, and it really is not healthy for the general cultural life of a city.

So, I think what you were able to witness with us, (and we were so happy to have you), you saw what happened at the olympic stadium--35,000 people, you saw what happened at Virée Classique. Our opening concerts tonight and this week, we're repeating the program four times, you can't get a ticket to it. We are beyond sold out and I think that is the result of what can happen when everyone joins hands and works together to make the highest quality possible.

MM: It is impressive how you talk about the relationship with the community. Over the past ten years since you arrived, do you sense a change in the relationship that the community has with the orchestra, during your ten years?

KN: Well, one of the things that I think the community and the orchestra can be very proud of, is that in coming together and in making projects happen together, we've seen is a radical physical difference in what the audience now looks like.

When I first got to the city, many people on the administration staff said, '...oh dear, we have a grey-haired syndrome here...,' meaning that our audience is getting older and older. But, we decided over the course of the season, that we would never change one thing - we felt that the one thing that transcends generation is the natural human tendancy to appreciate exceptional quality.

So rather than push the bar down, we pushed the bar very, very high, where we challenge the audiences with extremely adventurous programming. We promote not only very well-known marquee international soloists, but we support young and up-and-coming soloists that our audience takes under its own wing. They feel that the young soloists belong to them, and are a part of our tradition in Montreal. The same thing with young composers.

The result, after ten years, is that the audience today--and I think you probably felt that when you came to our concerts--is so much more homoginized. All from as young as 8, 6 years old up to people who have already retired from their profession and everything in between. Families come. In short the concert hall looks like Montreal. It looks like what you see when you walk in our parks, walk on our streets. That's what our public looks like.

And I think that's been the most remarkable change, and that again, something that both the community and the orchestra can celebrate. Because that happened with everyone working together.

TO VIEW A VIDEO OF THE MONTREAL SYMPHONY CLICK HERE


Look for more from ZEALnyc's interview with Maestro Kent Nagano in October, when he discusses the introduction of the octobass to the Montreal Symphony.

Later in November, we conclude our three-part series with Maestro Nagano's thoughts on Kaia Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin, an opera that Nagano played a role in developing, and which has its US premier at the Metropolitan Opera in December.
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Mark McLaren, ZEALnyc's Editor in Chief, writes frequently on classical music and theater.

Read more from ZEALnyc:

Northern Exposure -- A Captivating Arts and Cultural Season This Fall in Canada

The Metropolitan Opera's General Manager Peter Gelb in an Exclusive Three-part Interview with ZEALnyc

Fall 2016 Opera Preview: Here's What You Shouldn't Miss

Classical Music Sizzles this Season -- Read ZEALnyc's Picks for What's HOT!

For all the news on New York City art and culture, visit ZEALnyc's Front Page.

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Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation

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It's somewhat disconcerting that Nate Parker chose to name his film after D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), since the work of the great silent film director was itself filled with racist stereotypes. Despite its innovations and technical virtuosity, the Griffith masterpiece treats history in a far different light then Parker did Nat Turner's rebellion. But as has been reported The Birth of Nation is rife with its own controversies. The film's release has been overshadowed by the director's unremorseful attitude about his potential involvement in the rape of a Penn State student back in l999. He was acquitted of the charges, but the victim subsequently committed suicide. There had been an out of court settlement between the victim of the assault and the university for $17, 500. Ironically the amount Parker received for distribution rights from Fox Searchlight for the movie was $17,500,000, a record for a film exhibited at Sundance. There are further complications in that the film's depiction of the rape of Nat Turner's wife has been attacked as being historically inaccurate. When the Variety story broke in which Nate Parker's past was revealed, his fortunes seemed to turn overnight. From being at the lionized, he became a pariah. He was abandoned by celebrities like Spike Lee, who had previously trumpeted his cause. The film has done poorly at the box office. Still there are lots of directors who have had to deal with controversy and scandal, most prominently Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. So is it possible to give the film and its director a fair shake while at the same time sympathizing with all the victims, on screen and off? Is the director like the character he portrays the victim of a lynching (albeit of another's kind) and one that's the product of the current climate, in which the attempt to protect victims of rape, inadvertently ends up producing its own set of injustices? All of the controversy surrounding The Birth of a Nation irremediably affects one's view, even as you sit anonymously in a darkened auditorium. However, all this said, and trying to take the film on its own merits, it's hard to see what all the fanfare was initially about. Parker is a one man show. He wrote directed and started in the film and there were probably those who regard or regarded him as a new infant terrible, our generation's answer to Orson Welles. But the film is an almost straightforward piece of historical hagiography with paper thin melodramatic characters. If you expected something esthetically ambitious with brilliant narrative disquisition and a complex cinematic style to match, you may find yourself disappointed. The Birth of a Nation has been subsumed and finally drowned by in its own controversy, but some of the lack of buoyancy may also reside in its own stilted and somewhat narrow design.









{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}

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Damping The Triangle

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The vegetable garden is riotous: the Sunflower has grown impious with age and now leans inappropriately into the midst of the tomatoes, the Black Eyed Susans are running rampant, the herbs are all shot. My sons, ages eight and five, loopy from their Saturday morning soccer games, are enjoying their precious ninety minutes of computer screen time in the kitchen. My wife Gilda is in the library composing. Although the air is crisp, the October sun is still warm when you're in it. I'm in my workshop throwing together a cold-frame for the garden from an old window and scraps of plywood.

Like the historic Victorian in which we live, the workshop is home to many ghosts, all of whom seem to have grown accustomed to us to the extent that they don't seem to mind us being around. We've brought our own with us, of course, and they're around, too, echoes of what happened here before us.

I only listen to the radio when I work with my hands. A small silver Sony boombox sits on the workbench, sawdust lodged in every crease. I'm not surprised when WMHT announces that the second Daphnis et Chloé suite of Maurice Ravel is up next. Although I haven't heard the piece in years, I know it as well as I know my childrens' faces. Music, as Anne Sexton observed, swims back to us. Pop songs on the radio inspire an array of associations for me, sure; but serious concert music invariably triggers deeper ones. That's why I compose it. Great compositions, like great people, fade from memory, but never really die away entirely. All we have to do is to play or listen to them again, and they're born anew.

I'm heaving the circular saw onto the workbench as my father-in-law Bernie walks in the door. Every so often he throws cool stuff he's collected over the years into the bed of his daughter's childhood classic red radio flyer and drags it down the street to our house, where he spreads it out like a cat delivering dead mice and together we pick through it. "Keep what you want," he announces, "and throw out the rest. I'm not saving things anymore." I hand him a paper cup full of hot coffee and he sits heavily in the canvas chair I leave set up for him. The Ravel begins, burbling in the clarinets, the solo strings and flutes giving us the bird calls that have launched a thousand film scores. Bernie fishes a lure from the stash he's brought and holds it out to me.

"I got this from a fellow when I was a lifeguard at Crystal Beach," he begins. Post-stroke, the vital, athletic, classics teacher whose daughter I was courting who I got to know two decades ago moves more slowly; he can no longer read his beloved Shakespeare, or remember that he's told the same story before. In fact, I've heard this one, but it's a good one, and I'm glad to hear it again. "Have you ever caught anything with it?" I ask him. "Nothing but carp," he laughs, and I smile, thinking of Carpathia, the enormous, proud, and cruel Black Carp who eats flies and carrot sticks that I have told the boys in bedtime stories lives at the bottom of Lake Katrina at Yaddo.

Sudden, whooshing ritardandi, extreme portamenti in the solo strings come from the radio: I conjur an image of myself buying a pocket score of it at Tanglewood in August 1985, inhaling it like the smell of tangy hibiscus tea, and trying to figure out the doublings, writing in the margin, "what is it that makes it sound so sexy?" Bernie continues his story and I think, "that has got to be the Philharmonic with Bernstein." Is Bernie all there? Am I?

I smell Borkum Riff pipe tobacco. My dead father's signature smell. I think of him, smoking his pipe, the steely aggravation he barely concealed while tolerating my nervous, fumbling movements as we built a cold-frame together when I was eleven. And here, 43 years later, I find myself building another, musing, "do I frighten my sons as much as my father frightened me?" My son, playing goalie this morning, throwing himself at the soccer ball, my heart outside my body, leaping with him. His glance to the sideline where stood his mother and me, like touching a rabbit's foot, reassuring himself that we had seen him. His brother, head down, kicking a nutmeg through the opposing goalie's legs and pumping the air with his tiny fists. "No," I tell myself, "they don't fear me."

We agree, as we have done countless times before, like two old ingenious Quijotes, that we're amazed we're still here, and realize we're still here because of our Gildas and our kids. I look over at Bernie and realize that it is my turn to tell a story.

The Danse générale begins. "I was a teenager when my school orchestra performed this piece at the Evian Festival," I begin. "I was a composer and not considered a member of the orchestra. But I was there and they needed a fifth percussion player for the big finish." Bernie smiles, half-listening to me, half to the music. "I was told that I had only two responsibilities by Chip Ross, the classmate who had been directed to put a triangle into my hands and tell me what to do." The Ravelian juggernaut gains momentum. The little workshop is filled with sound. "What were they?" asks Bernie. "First," I answer, "to hit the thing when it came time to, and, second, to dampen the thing when the piece ended."

"Sounds straightforward," says Bernie. "Exactly," I answer, listening for the snare drum tattoo that the old set of Durand parts had in the percussion parts as the cue for the triangle at the end, just as I had listened for it in France during summer 1983. "And here it comes," I say, realizing that there is no question but that this is the recording made by Ormandy and Philadelphia: the trumpets in thirds are not New York, and the strings are obviously Philly. What was I thinking? That was clearly John Delancie playing the oboe solo back there. But the music is orgiastic by this time, and the triangle is beating away. "I fulfilled my first responsibility," I tell Bernie. The piece ends, like a mighty emotional anacrusis, and there is silence. "Then," I tell Bernie, "the piece ended, and the last chord died away, leaving, hanging in the air, the decaying sound of one lone triangle, held proudly aloft by a scarlet-faced composer, realizing, as all his classmates turned to look at him, that he had failed them all."

"Nature," my teacher Homer Lambrecht once reminded me, "teaches us also how to let things die." We'll cut the Black Eyed Susans back; they'll return, they are perrennials. The rest we'll mulch, and we'll put the cold-frame up and start anew. We'll make, as Lenny insisted, our garden grow. Could I have damped that triangle all those years ago and still have ended up here?

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'Wow, I Love Your Hair!' : A Curly Top’s Hair Care Secrets

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As a curly top with a long mane, I am stopped every day with the praise “Wow, I love your hair.” As a kid I hated my knotty mop top. The girls with the silky straight hair always got the good attention while I received glares and comments about my mess of curls. Well now I embrace what is me and have learned to love my hair and welcome all of the great commentary about what was once the bane of my existence.



Hair Care Secrets and Rules


People ask me how I take care of my hair and I am pleased to share my own hair care secrets with the world. The first step is to embrace what is yours and then learn how to take care and nourish it. The most important thing to remember when caring for curly and any dry hair is that it easily breaks at the ends ― yes, this is why it seems like you can never get it to grow long no matter how hard you try.


Caring for a beautiful head of hair means taking extra concern to prevent breakage. From how to wash to how to handle, it is important to know the easy hair care dos. Follow some simple advice to get the hair flowing long and luxurious in order to love your hair.


1. No Everyday Washing


Say no to washing every day or even every other day. Curly hair tends to be dry so washing too often will deplete it of nutrients and just dry it out even more. I wash my hair about twice a week.


2. Condition, Condition, Condition


Hair care requires hair conditioning. Apply conditioner both before and after shampoo. Shampooing the ends of hair will ultimately cause more drying so before applying the shampoo put conditioner on the dry ends to leave it on while shampooing. Only apply the shampoo to the crown and nape of neck without touching the ends – these are really the only places where the hair is dirty unless aggressively working out or working in a dusty environment. Rinse out the hair and then apply a heavy amount of conditioner from roots to ends. Use a wide tooth comb to comb through the conditioner and rinse out.


3. No Rough Stuff


Never terry towel dry hair, especially fragile curly hair. Bath towels may feel fluffy and comforting but can harm the hair when using them to get the wetness out. Instead take a few sheets of paper toweling and gently use them to squeeze excess water from your hair.


4. Less is More


Do not use a lot of product, this will only weigh down your curls. Clear aloe vera gel is the key to keeping curls and dry ends looking their best and in check. Make sure that what you buy is pure and clear with no added ingredients, especially alcohol. Take a small bit of gel and apply to wet ends and to hairs around forehead. This is the miracle worker that helps prevent the dreaded breakage. Then shake out the wet locks and pouf them up a bit to let dry. If you must use a hair care product, then place a light hair mousse on wet head just enough to comb through from the roots to the ends.


5. Never Enough Love


Dry and fluff, and add a bit more love to the ends. As the hair is drying keep fluffing it up with your fingers. Dread heading out with a wet head, then blow drying is okay just don’t leave the heat on one spot. Fluff with one hand while drying with the other. Take blow dry breaks and add a bit of water and aloe to the ends to keep them from drying out. Once the roots are dry shake out your locks. Use a wide tooth comb for any styling, and to prevent breakage never comb out dry ends without first wetting.


6. Lullaby for the Hair


Take care to prepare hair for bedtime. Braid hair, or pull up shorter hair into a ponytail on top of head. This will keep it from knotting up when sleeping. Put aloe vera on the ends and comb through for extra nourishment. In the morning let your hair free! Shake it out and freshen it up with a bit of water and more aloe gel. Comb the ends gently to get knots out but only while using water to save the curly tips from breaking.


7. Keep the Cut Dry


The big reason for trimming curly hair is to get rid of the split ends and prevent more breakage. As soon as curly hair is wet, split ends disappear thus making it a guessing act as to where to cut. This can result in too much trimmed hair making it especially frustrating for those looking to grow out their hair. Make sure to go to a hair stylist who specializes in a specific curly dry cut like a Deva cut. For a proper hair care cut hair should be washed after cutting.


8. Color it Gentle


Keep the coloring as gentle as possible. There are many products that are more natural based formulas that will not be as harsh on your hair. After coloring is complete be generous with the aloe vera gel applied to the ends and delicate forehead hair.


9. Aloe Vera Gel is Your BFF


Welcome aloe vera gel as your very best friend forever. For fly aways and extra dry days just take a little gel and mix with water in your hands to wipe gently on top of your hair to keep it in place. Too much aloe will not hurt or add crunch like chemical filled hair products do. Keep the ends moist using aloe with water. Aloe vera gel is great for drenching the skin as well.


Take pride in your hair and pass on your own hair care secrets as they evolve. Everyone’s hair is unique and should be cared for as if a piece of art that is carefully sculpted. There are no bad hair days just ones that you can make better hair days out of. Never be afraid to dance!

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Street Art From Ferguson Now Part Of Unique City-Wide Art Exhibit

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Why would anyone spend six months carefully gathering painted plywood boards that have been stored in basements, garages or even in back alleys? Because those boards are now part of a significant, first-of-its-kind art exhibit in St. Louis launched in September and hosted by five different galleries at major cultural institutions throughout the city. Called "outside in/Paint for Peace" this exhibit has a remarkable back-story.
In November 2014 Ferguson, Missouri, and surrounding neighborhoods were in the midst of several nights of rioting and looting. But something happened during all of this. Something that didn't make many headlines -- a movement called "Paint for Peace."



More than three hundred colorful, moving paintings were created in less than a week, transforming block after block of plywood covered windows. The grassroots effort was organized by local residents Tom Halaska, Mike Lonero, Dana Sebastian Duncan and several others across the city. It exploded on social media so that within days an estimated 400 artists and volunteers armed with thousands of paintbrushes and using donated paint, descended on the boarded up areas creating art from the heart.
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Artists: Christine Warner and Brandon Wilkinson. Photo credit: Ryan Archer


There were no design parameters or selection committees. "I understood that what we were doing would keep on giving," said artist AJ Rosenberg whose art is featured in the exhibit. "Everybody was finding a way to be part of it -- creating the peace. It wasn't a consideration of, 'Am I going to be welcome? It was just, 'Go and do it.'"

Across the U.S., other communities have witnessed unrest and the calls for change ... but few had this community outpouring through art in response, as a way to begin the healing.
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Artist unknown. Photo credit: Michael Kilfoy


This art transformed the boards on which it was painted -- but also those who created the murals -- as well as those who witnessed the "Paint for Peace" effort. I was one of those. In many ways this remarkable event changed my life. I wanted to capture both this amazing story and the artwork and the result was the award-winning children's storybook "Painting for Peace in Ferguson."

The ripple effects continue. By building on the awareness generated by the book and by teaming with the community arts organization COCA, the city wide "outside in/Paint for Peace" exhibit curated by Jackie Lewis-Harris was created, which is now on display at major cultural institutions including COCA, the Missouri History Museum, The Sheldon Performing Arts Center, and the University of Missouri St. Louis into November.

The paintings, created on a monumental scale of 4' x 8' sheets of plywood and particle board, have moved from the streets where they were created to now shine in the light in a gallery setting. Now more of the community can continue to reflect on the emotions and questions that were present during the turmoil when they were created and that are still with us today.
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Photo Credit: Carrie Zukoski


The response to the exhibit has been very enthusiastic both among adults and families and school groups. It truly continues the dialogue that we need to have in this nation and the hope is that there would be interest in bringing the exhibit to other cities across the country.
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Multiple Artists. Photo credit: Ryan Archer


By coming together and helping one another, by setting aside fears or what divides us, remarkable things can happen. Another participating artist Christina Carroll said "It was incredible to watch as my community was transformed from a place of pain and sorrow, to the most beautiful gallery of art."
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Artist: Christina Carroll Photo credit: Ryan Archer


Through music and images this video montage below tells the transformational story of "Paint for Peace". More paintings can be seen in the nationally award winning book "Painting for Peace in Ferguson" a 2016 ILA Teacher's Choices booklist selection. Or you can create your own artistic interpretations by coloring in "Painting for Peace - A Coloring Book for All Ages". The "outside in/paint for peace" murals will be on exhibit in multiple locations this fall.

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Dylan: Birth of a Conceptual Innovator

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In Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan wrote that he couldn't remember when it occurred to him to write his own songs, but he did explain why he began:


Opportunities may come along for you to convert something - something that exists into something that didn't yet.

The language is surprising, and telling. Conceptual artists don't innovate by making things that are entirely new, but by recombining and recycling things that are old, creating unexpected syntheses of earlier styles or existing works within their discipline. Dylan understood this, and he wanted to follow the granddaddy of modern conceptual innovators:

Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open. He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that.








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Bob Dylan (1965). Image courtesy Huffington Post.

Picasso had created an unlikely synthesis of Cezanne, Gauguin, and Egyptian and African art to make Cubism; now Dylan brought Rimbaud, Brecht, and Allen Ginsberg to folk music:

What I did to break away was to take simple folk changes and put new imagery and attitude to them, use catchphrases and metaphor combined with a new set of ordinances that evolved into something different that had not been heard before.








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Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg (undated photo). Image courtesy Huffington Post.

Dylan didn't want to compete with professional songwriters:

Nothing would have convinced me that I was actually a songwriter and I wasn't, not in the conventional songwriter sense of the word. Definitely not like the workhorses over in the Brill Building, the song chemistry factory...Over there, they cranked out the home-run hits for radio playlists...all the popular songs, all the songs with crafty melodies and simple lyrics that came off as works of power over the airwaves.

What he brought to popular songwriting was intellectual:

One thing for sure, if I wanted to compose folk songs I would need some kind of new template, some philosophical identity that wouldn't burn out.

He believed he achieved that - "see into things, the truth of things - not metaphorically, either - but really see, like seeing into metal and making it melt, see it for what it was and reveal it for what it was with hard words and vicious insight." Years later, after his gift had abandoned him, he could look back with pride:

I've written some songs that I look at, and they just give me a sense of awe. Stuff like "It's Alright, Ma" [1965], just the alliteration in that blows me away. And I can also look back and know where I was tricky and where I was really saying something that just happened to have a spark of poetry in it.







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Bob Dylan in his New York apartment, February 1963. Image courtesy of Huffington Post.

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An Artist Goes to the Wall for a Brighter World

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It's impossible to find good news on the television these days, so I'm being forced to create my own. Luckily, this is not hard. I am surrounded by people who amaze me. My friend Ruth is one of them. Not only did she co-author my latest book, Creativity Unzipped: Why Your Thoughts Matter, but she created an entire body of work called FLOW that she donated to the Institute of Noetic Sciences--the whole works--as a fundraiser for their consciousness research. A new gallery in town, known as a "conscious lounge" (they don't serve alcohol, only healthy drinks, and have yoga sessions every day) hung the show and priced it so the gorgeous art would be affordable for people to buy and support IONS. http://www.noetic.org/

IONS got its start in the 1970s. Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, founded the Institute in 1973 after experiencing what he described as a "samadhi" moment--a profound sense of universal connectedness--on his return trip from the moon. His mission for the Institute was to "broaden our knowledge of the nature and potentials of mind and consciousness and to apply that knowledge to the enhancement of human well-being and the quality of life on the planet."

That's just what Creativity Unzipped does, only in simpler terms. It takes creativity out of the "artistic and very special" category and puts it in the "everyday birthright and everyone has it" category. We are born to create. If nothing else, all day long we create stories about what just happened and why we're the hero. Our mission in the book was to broaden everyone's awareness of their creative power: how it starts with their thoughts, intensifies with their words, and ends up being the very days they are living. More than anything else, it's our lives we're creating.

Ruth and I consider ourselves grassroots activists. We're trying to co-create a culture that we can be proud of. We try in our creations to raise consciousness, to stir up awe, to provoke thought and hope and action. She considers herself an "accidental activist," but from where I sit, there's nothing accidental about it. The latest of her generosities left me breathless.

A couple years ago, when she and her husband downsized into a smaller house, Ruth and Stanley donated quite a few works of art to Jewish Family Services here in San Diego. She heard from people for weeks about the impact of that art--much of it her own--on the workplace culture. People said it felt like working in a museum. They talked about feeling more dignified there. About feeling uplifted. Dozens of folks wrote to her in gratitude and a light bulb went off in her head.

This is the part that blew me away. "I'm going to create original work for any non-profits that want my art on their walls," she said as she was getting her work ready for IONS.

"Are you kidding?" I said in disbelief, imagining an outpouring of requests once I put the word out.

"Why not? That's what artists do. We paint. And we like to see our work on public walls. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to paint and donate my work to non-profits. Maybe I can get more artists involved. It could be a new thing."

A new thing, for sure. An evolutionary advance. A quantum leap forward from the old starving artist model to a new serving artist model. After all, giving IS receiving. Who knows where this might lead?

If you're a 501c3 non profit and would like to contact Ruth about her artwork, you can reach her through her website, https://ruthwestreichtheartist.com/

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Raiders Of The Lost Ark; For The 35th Anniversary, the Hitherto Unknown But Absolutely Stupendous Black Back Story

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Except for those who keep tabs on Hollywood scuttlebutt, it will undoubtedly come as a stunning surprise to most that both the movie and the video game, Spear of Destiny, were derived from the same source. The film mesmerized a generation and was the forerunner of the action extravaganzas that still pack 'em in at the cineplex while the video game was the mother of all the 3D shoot 'em up fantasies that are almost more addictive to the male adolescent than drugs. What will certainly prove absolutely dumbfounding, however, is the fact that the story responsible for the technological breakthroughs in cinematic special effects and computer player wizardry is about a religious artifact which, for centuries, has been the attribute of a black saint.

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Hoffburg Museum, Vienna

As St. George still is for England, St. Mauritius / Maurizio / Moritz / Maurice / Moro had, for more than a millennium, been the soldier / saint / patron / protector of the Holy Roman Empire. The very epitome of the Knight in Shining Armor since the time of Charlemagne, he could undoubtedly prove as important to the black masculine psyche today as he once was to the European military establishment up until the 19th century. Both the lore and the religious cult of the historical figure who was martyred along with an entire legion of his compatriots in Switzerland rather than participate in the persecutions promulgated there by the emperor, Maximian, would undoubtedly prove an incomparable source of inspiration and empowerment to young 'urban' males for whom such idealistic black imagery has been absolutely inconceivable.

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Goudstikker Collection, from the Greenwich Times

Even though he and his military attribute did not make the cut for an adventure flick, no doubt to avoid possible accusations of blasphemy resulting from such a crassly commercial association with so sacred a relic, early gamers and even skin heads knew that it was the Holy Lance, the one that pierced Christ's heart on Golgotha which had been the subject of Trevor Ravenscroft's 1973 bestseller, Spear of Destiny - the basis for the Lucas / Spielberg1981 blockbuster.

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Since it was the blood and water from Christ's side in which Christianity was born, the lance had, by the 9th century, been relegated to Mauritius precisely because of his color. Indicating as it did his origins from the ends of the then know world, his complexion represented the totality of mankind for whom Christ had died. It was symbolic, as well, of his geographical affinity to the sun which, from time out of memory, had always been identified with the godhead. The apparent contradiction of the black African as emblematic of the very source of light, was itself seen as an allegory on the biblical admonition that God's ways are not our ways.

But there is a far earlier and all too obvious a reason why this saint is still virtually unknown today. With the involvement of most European nations in the slave trade, which of them would have tolerated, much less encouraged, the allegiance to a black African who had once been nothing less than the personification of the military might and the theological aspirations of once the greatest power in Western history.

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Magdeburg Cathedral

With the elevation of his cult to national status in the 10th century, the spear of St. Moritz became the scepter of the Holy Roman Emperors. It was at his altar in St. Peters in Rome that they were crowned by the Pope in all possible pomp and panoply and the almost deafening acclamation of the populace.

Because of the large number of both Sudanese and Senegalese troops in the Islamic armies of the 11th 12th and 13th centuries, it is not difficult to understand why the figure of St. Moritz would become such a dominant one during the Crusades. The myth of Prester John, the Christian Priest and King who ruled a land of milk and honey in Ethiopia and who, therefore, posed a threat to the rear flank of Islamic military power can be traced to this black soldier saint, too. His cult became the basis from which the age of chivalry sprang. To it can also be attributed the source for the various black heroes and heroines of the great medieval romances the objective of which was to translate into a more secular idiom, the Imperial dream of a Christian world power.

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Schomburg Center, New York Public Library

The character of Fierfitz in Parzival, the 13th century epic by the German poet, Wolfram von Eschenbach, is a case in point. The love child of a black Moorish Queen reminiscent of the Queen of Sheba, the female figure of Solomon's wisdom, he, like St. Moritz, is the knight par excellence, the very model of the chivalrous ideal for his younger all white half-brother, Parzival. Out of this need to both transform and redeem the image of the infidel would come another of the most important literary works of the period, "La Quest del Saint Graal."

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Although unknown to most, to scholars this mysterious talisman at its center which at times appears as the cup from the Last Supper and at others, the Mosaic tablets is a conflation of both Old and New Testament symbols; a metaphor of Christ as the fulfillment of the law. Long believed to have been hidden in Ethiopia, these tablets are what the African King, Evelach, bequeaths to his grandson who marries the sister of Joseph of Arimathea. From these two mythical figures, one black and the other white, descend the Grail Dynasty and such of its scions as Sir Lancelot and the knight without equal, Sir Galahad.


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Tournai, from France Pittoresque

In his PBS series, "Man & Myth," Joseph Campbell claimed it was the divine injunction to bring justice to his subjects which Fierftz, the future Ethiopian ruler, Prester John, finds miraculously written around the rim of the Grail as he raises it to his lips, that is the first statement on the idea of legal justice for all ever made. True, the Magna Carta was written at about the same time as this once enormously popular saga but, according to Campbell's argument, it had been drafted by English barons for their own protection. And, as the National Archives and Records Administration here in the US have posted on their website, "The interests of the common man were hardly apparent in the minds of the men who brokered the agreement."

In celebration this year of the 35th anniversary of its release, just about every symphony orchestra in the world has been mounting live performances of the John Williams score along with screenings of the film.

What a great opportunity, therefore, to flag the almost incomprehensibly important black back story of this still unforgettable block buster to those who need it so desperately. The popular, high octane testosterone twist possible to the long forgotten and, indeed, suppressed story of once such a spiritually influential and politically powerful ideal of black manhood, offers us an educational opportunity of almost unimaginable potential.

September 22nd, is his feast day.

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Nobel Prize In Literature Goes To... Musician Bob Dylan!

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A most welcome surprise of the last week was the announcement that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan. Yes, to Bob Dylan! -- one of the most esteemed and beloved American musicians. And of course, he's a great poet as well. In more than a 100 years of its existence, the Nobel Committee has never given an award to either musicians or to visual artists.

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The new exhibition at the El Segundo Museum of Art, BRAIN, features several hundred portraits of Nobel Prize recipients taken by German photographer Peter Badge. Among them are familiar --and sometimes unfamiliar-- but always simpatico faces of physicians, economists, writers, and Peace Prize winners such as Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. It's a very timely and inspirational exhibition that makes you proud to be a member of the homo sapiens. But this exhibition left me wondering... isn't it time for the Nobel Committee to acknowledge the great contributions to humanity made by artists and musicians?

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Of course, it's a little bit too late to give a Nobel Prize to Picasso or to Stravinsky. I'm thinking about Picasso because of the excellent new exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, States of Mind: Picasso Lithographs 1945-1960. The exhibition has a particular focus -- 86 lithographs that give the visitor insight into Picasso's very intimate process of working on and editing his images step-by-step. On a few occasions, standing in front of a dozen variations of the same image, it was simply impossible for me to decide which one I liked the most.

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One unique lithographic print with the image of two nude women, where Picasso switched from black ink to red, is simply a knockout. While novels and poems of the great writers must be translated into many languages to be accessible to readers around the world, the works of great artists such as Picasso don't need translation. His art speaks directly to us the very moment we encounter it.

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My coffee table is currently being crushed under the hefty weight of the new monograph by Robert Storr, Intimate Geometries, dedicated to the great artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) who died a few years ago at the age of 98. She worked until the very end of her life. There are 800 pages of text plus 1000 photographs. It's amazing to learn that she received international recognition when she was already in her 80s. But her genius is so obvious even in her much earlier works. The question is why it took such a long time for the art world to catch on. In my opinion, she would be a great choice to win the Nobel Prize in Art.

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And here's another wonderful artist, Betye Saar, celebrating her 90th birthday with exhibitions at the Roberts & Tilton gallery in Culver City. It's a mini-retrospective, with some works dating back decades and some made as recently as this year. This exhibition coincides with Betye Saar's impressive museum show at Prada Foundation in Milan. Both exhibitions demonstrate not only the wide range of the artist's subjects and media, but also the very fact that Betye Saar continues to be at the top of her game.

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To learn about Edward's Fine Art of Art Collecting Classes, please visit his website. You can also read The New York Times article about his classes here, or an Artillery Magazine article about Edward and his classes here.

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Edward Goldman is an art critic and the host of Art Talk, a program on art and culture for NPR affiliate KCRW 89.9 FM. To listen to the complete show and hear Edward's charming Russian accent, click here.

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Julie Klausner, Matthew Morrison Join Star-Studded Broadway Benefit Roster

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NEW YORK - Gleeks and Difficult People rejoice! Julie Klausner (Difficult People) and Matthew Morrison (Finding Neverland) have been added to the star-studded Actors Fund Benefit, Proud Of Us And Other Short Plays, happening in Manhattan on Monday, November 14th. This breaking news comes just a day after Klausner's hit television show, Difficult People, was renewed for Season 3 by Hulu.



The Actors Fund is a national human services organization that helps all professionals in performing arts and entertainment. According to their website, the one-night-only benefit event, Proud Of Us And Other Short Plays, will be presented as an evening of readings of seven new short plays by actor and playwright Wesley Taylor. The event will take place at the The New World Stages, where Avenue Q plays, located at 340 W 50th St, New York, NY 10019.

Tony Award-winner Billy Porter will direct, Leslie Kritzer will host and Summer Strallen will read the stage directions. The cast includes: Skylar Astin, Carolee Carmello, Jack Griffo, Noah Hinsdale, Kevin McHale, Terrence Mann, Maulik Pancholy, Bryce Pinkham, Alexandra Socha, Will Swenson, Raven-Symoné, Mary Testa, Michael Urie, and Samantha Ware.

Ticket information:
Premium Orchestra + Reception: $500.00 (call to purchase)
Premium Orchestra: $250.00
Orchestra 1: $150.00
Orchestra 2: $75.00

PURCHASE TICKETS ONLINE or CALL: 212.221.7300 EXT. 133
Ticket line hours: Monday - Friday, 10 am - 4:30 pm. Visit "http://www.actorsfund.org/ to learn more about their work and the benefit.

Oh, Hello ft. Julie Klausner:






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Heisenberg--A Small Play with a Huge Heart Opens on Broadway

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Denis Arndt and Mary-Louise Parker in 'Heisenberg;' photo: Joan Marcus


By Mark McLaren, ZEALnyc Editor in Chief, October 19, 2016

Simon Stephens' delicate comedy arrived on Broadway last week, a legitimate successor to his outstanding 2015 Tony Award-winning The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time that closed earlier this season.

On the face of it, the two works are dissimilar. Curious Incident was busy and electric, with an equally vibrant narrative, while the narrative of Heisenberg is as simple as its production is spare. Except that both draw on mathematics and science for inspiration, overtly in the case of Curious Incident, and in the case of Heisenberg, for sound structural guidance that drives his seemingly random plot to an insightful and satisfying conclusion.

The play's title is a reference to the scientific principle arguing that the more precisely one particular factor of matter is understood, the less precisely understood is another. Einstein spent his four post-relativity decades desperately searching for a theory of everything, but it is Stephens who has discovered that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states a fundamental property as applicable to human character and relations as it is to atomic particles. And from this he has crafted a beautiful play.

Alex and Georgie meet by chance and as each is more precisely understood by the other over the course of six vignettes, they become, momentarily at least, much less so. Of course this is the writer's process, and analysis makes it sound heady. The result is anything but. Heisenberg is the reality we know and experience in that '...I don't even know who you are anymore' and '...who am I, anyway' kind of way. Stephens is wildly successful in applying uncertainty principles to human character and relations, codifying realities we know somewhere to be true, but haven't yet the language to exactly identify. Of course we know that people are contradictions and that opposites attract. But the distance between these platitudes and the specificity that Stephens' has reached is as wide as that between the cell and the atom. Sorry Einstein, but Stephens may have found your theory of everything.

And the result is exquisite - delicate in its observation of two damaged souls stumbling their way to the other.

Now I've used delicate twice and the evening is just that. But not so the dialogue, performances, and plot twists, each of which is as wild as an Einstein Halloween wig.

Denis Arndt's Alex is a stoic vessel of habit and disappointment who nonetheless surprises with interests and actions. His language is controlled, his communication direct, and his hidden self vast. Georgie is pure stream of conscious - funny, embarrassing, illuminating, a machine gun spew of idiosyncratic world observation.

Mary-Louise Parker has turned off-beat quirky into three-decades of career gold. Shoulders rolled painfully forward in an attempt to shrink into an anonymous dot, her insecure characters have a raging will to survive and the result is unfailingly sympathetic. While all of a type, her women are vivid and unique. Parker is gifted. Period. At 52, a skilled actor comparable to any. Her Georgie is a storm of enthusiasm, doubt, love, manipulation and contradiction. And, while very comic, thoroughly genuine.

This production is bare-boned, throwing the efforts of these two into nice relief and if you like watching the work of solid actors, you'll love this production. Surprises (and uncertainty) dominate in the eighty minutes we have with Alex and Georgie and the audience's experience is similar to that of these characters - the more we know the less we seem to know. The journey is fraught. It's humerous. It's always engaging and embedded in this seemingly small work is a deep probe into self-awareness (and not), understanding of the other (and not) and the continuous negotiation of (and in) relationship.

I was told a bit ago that given all the variables that need to be aligned, it is a wonder that any two people make a relationship happen, even for a short-time. But a relationship finally takes a leap of faith, perhaps the biggest leap of faith a person may make. Leaps are hard. They are particularly hard for Alex and Georgie.

Paraphrasing Alex: "I can't be with you. But I can be with you next week. And I can be with you the week after that."

Leaps are hard. Negotiation is continuous. But solutions aren't impossible.
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Heisenberg, a play by Simon Stephens produced by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Opened on October 13 and is scheduled to close on December 11, 2016. Directed by Mark Brokaw with Mary-Louise Parker and Denis Arndt. Scenic design by Mark Wendland, costume design by Michael Krass, lighting design by Austin R. Smith, sound design by David Van Tieghem, dialect consultant by Stephen Gabis, choreography by Sam Pinkleton.

Mark McLaren, ZEALnyc's Editor in Chief, writes frequently on classical music and theater.

Read more from ZEALnyc:

Broadway Stars perform at the 20th Anniversary 'Nothing Like A Dame' Benefit honoring Tony Award nominee Marin Mazzie

Choreographer Larry Fuller Discusses His Work with Robbins, Prince, Sondheim and More

'Fit For a Queen' Lifts a Female Pharaoh From Obscurity at The Classical Theatre of Harlem

For all the news on New York City art and culture, visit ZEALnyc's Front Page.

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