Theater Review: Stoppard's The Real Thing From Roundabout Theater

October 17, 2014, 2:23 pm

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Currently in previews at the American Airlines Theater, Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing has all the right elements: an all star cast, a hip set, a great soundtrack featuring 60s pop and operatic favorites, but it lacks one crucial element - an emotional core.

Ewan McGregor plays Henry, a charming yet unhappily married playwright, who casts his wife Charlotte, (Cynthia Nixon), as the star of his newest work. In the opening scene of the play, which we learn is really Henry's play, Max (Josh Hamilton), builds a house of cards that promptly collapse when his wife slams the door, allegedly returning from a business trip in Switzerland. But wait, she never brought her passport! Such marital deceptions permeate Henry's real life when he begins an affair with Annie (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Max's offstage wife. Will theirs be true love or will life imitate art as it so often does?

In a play that explores the sanctity of the written word and the nature of fidelity, we have a lot of fun watching these couples flirt, banter and reconcile, yet there's an absence of true emotion that left me feeling lighter than I should have in a play about jealousy, knowledge and the preservation of one's self in a marriage.

The flat sexual chemistry between McGregor and Gyllenhaal partly accounts for this disconnect. They tease and edge each other on, but it feels more like camaraderie than a passionate love affair, making the play's eventual focus, Annie's possible infidelity feel less consequential than it should. The one sign of raw emotion comes early on, when Annie tells her first husband, Max, that she is leaving him for Henry. He grabs on to her in a desperate embrace and doesn't let go.

There are several subplots, one involving Henry and Charlotte's free-loving, free-thinking daughter, another about an imprisoned soldier who Annie meets on a train and later helps to produce a political play, much to Henry's dismay. Smugly defending his own genius while dismissing the idea that a cause equates with real art, Henry exclaims: "He can't write!"

Still, the play is very entertaining, especially McGregor, who rhapsodizes with so much wit and joy it is impossible not to root for him. It helps that his lines get the biggest laughs, such as his wry comparison of Beethoven and Buddy Holly. "I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course," Henry muses.

If anyone flounders here it's Cynthia Nixon, trying a little too hard to be nonchalant and clever in her contempt of true love. Nixon originally played the minor role of Henry and Charlotte's daughter in the play's 1984 production, but she doesn't quite fit as the strong-minded Charlotte. It doesn't help that her ill fitted wardrobe is incredibly distracting; in one scene, she towel dries her hair so awkwardly it took immense willpower not to run over and hand her a comb.

Still, The Real Thing has plenty to offer. The sharp dialogue, the comedic delivery and energy of the actors onstage and the philosophical questions explored about the nature of art and relationships are more than you can ask from a night on Broadway. See it, just don't expect to get too many real answers about that crazy little thing we call love.

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A Conversation with Jack Persekian, Director and Head Curator of the Palestinian Museum/Artistic Director of Qalandiya International

October 18, 2014, 7:36 am

≫ Next: A Quiet Place: The Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford

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The second Qalandiya International (Qi), also known as the Palestine Biennial, will take place from October 22 - November 15. It's the largest contemporary art event in Palestine. Exhibitions and programs will be staged throughout the country. Sites include Jerusalem, Haifa, Ramallah, Gaza, and Hebron. It will feature the work of over 100 Palestinian and international artists. Each artist's work will contribute to the theme "Archives, Lived and Shared." Along with the exhibited art, QI will include lectures, tours, and performances. The first Qi, with 250 artists and speakers, attracted 6,500 visitors.

Everything about the Qi is significant. The "Qalandiya" of the title refers to a notorious West Bank checkpoint. It also refers to life in pre-Occupation Palestine. A collaborative project that focuses more on collectives than individuals, it serves as an act of defiance in response to oppressive and Occupation events. Its aim is two-fold. Encouraging public dialogue, it will present an undistorted image of Palestine to the rest of the world. It will also allow Palestinians to examine their cultural heritage and its place in world culture.

Below is a conversation with Jack Persekian, the Artistic Director of Qalandiya International. He's also the Director and Head Curator of the Palestinian Museum.


JS: What was the impetus to stage the first Qi in 2012? What were initial responses of the local community? What did local critics and other cultural commentators say?

JP: I think we had an urge to unite our efforts, to prove that we could do something together that is greater than what we're all doing individually yet separately.
The local community, from what I can perceive, welcomed the initiative - in fact, they embraced our unashamed interference in their daily routines! And the press and so forth were also very positive. You have to understand that it was an extraordinary thing to undertake at the time, when on so many fronts we were experiencing a lot of instability and fragmentation. We still are, of course.

JS: Why hadn't it been done before?

JP: I think each institution is so overwhelmed with its struggle for survival, that we do not tend to think of raising our heads above the water to look around and see each other! This was a chance to talk and think together how we could do more than simply survive - how we could try to make our home a better place to live in despite of all the difficulties we were facing.

JS: What were its criteria for success? Did you meet them? Is there anything you would have done differently?

JP: Honestly, I think the only criteria for success that we had at the start was to get the institutions to buy into the idea and give it a chance. Now that we're presenting its second edition, with a far bigger number of participating institutions, I think, goes to show that it's been pretty successful, so far.

I can't think of much that I would have done differently. It is what it is not because I took the initiative, but because all the various partner institutions and all the people who were involved in its establishment worked seriously together to made Qi happen. I was pushing from one end, but this project was like a snowball: once we got the ball rolling it took its shape from everything it met on its way.

JS: What was the biggest challenge in mounting it? What did it teach you when you planned this year's Qi?

JP: The biggest challenge was to give direction to Qi, in its first edition, whilst still allowing it the freedom to respond to and change with the diverse environments it came in contact with, letting it engage with and learn from these distinct contexts.

I learnt that proprietorship, possession and control, main drivers of art production and its circulation nowadays, can be irrelevant and counterproductive in a place like Palestine where art still has a long way to be able to claim its place amongst the people.

JS: What was your biggest surprise?

JP: I was surprised and very happy with the warm reception Qi received in the various towns and villages where events and project took place, but what I remember most clearly is a certain moment during the opening ceremony of Qi in Qalandiya village, when one after another, the various people involved (the head of the village council, the movement against the apartheid wall, the different partner institutions etc) all came on stage to congratulate everybody on the successful realization of the project and the uplifting positive message it brought when so many other things were so far from positive. It was an extraordinary atmosphere of joy and hope.

JS: What was the origin and evolution of this year's theme, "Archives, Lived and Shared"?

JP: This has a long story. My work at the Palestinian Museum exposed me to the work several institutions are doing in archives. Learning a bit about the nature of these many different archives, the kind of research they're conducting and the difficulties they're facing, I became dismayed by the fact that all these institutions were still dealing with the challenges of figuring out the modalities of digitization, classification, storage and public access to their archives separately, not thinking about the fact that so many other organisations were struggling with these exact same questions. I began to think about how they might share ideas and solutions: resources are scarce here and sharing can definitely produce a result far greater than the sum of its parts, as I think was proven by Qi. Qi 2014 became a way of raising awareness of the urgency of the situation and the possibilities that lie ahead if the "owners" of archives adopt a model similar to Qi.

JS: What message do you want to convey to your various audiences: Palestinians? The Middle East? International? Or might it be the same message for each audience?

JP: Solidarity.

JS: Exhibitions and programs are taking place in venues that are both historically significant and politically charged. Please explain how the staging of the Qi is an act of defiance.

JP: If defiance is a visible outcome of Qi from your far corner of the world then I can deduce that we're at least defying the forces that are seeking to quiet us and to shut us down. Qi in essence is an act of living, of learning, of inspiration and self-actualization, on the individual, group, community, and national levels. These things are extraordinarily defiant.

JS: Do the various artistic collaborations have anything in common in terms of subjects themes, styles, and materials?

JP: Qi II (2014) has agreed to look at archives as a practice not only of documenting and preserving the past, but more importantly as an element shaping our future. Several institutions have taken the challenge and delved deep into their archives, bringing them to life through exhibition projects, art productions, talks etc. to be disseminated through the wide network of Qi. Qi II is titled: Archives, lived and shared.

JS: What's the walkaway you'd like visitors to have as they work through the various artistic collaborations and educational programs?

JP: I hope that they will walk away with some profound sense of these words by Mahmoud Darwish: "We have on this earth what makes life worth living"

JS: More than anything else, the show seems to be about identity. How is that manifested here?

JP: In our unstable environment everything is challenged, distorted and threatened, including and in particular the deepest foundations of our identity. Hence from the outside acts that are quite normal elsewhere are seen as acts of steadfastness and defiance by a nation whose very existence is challenged and disputed.

JS: Qi seems to be much greater than the sum of its parts. How does it differ from, say, the Sharjah Biennial, in terms of its staging and its constituent parts?

JP: Sharjah Biennial is a top down act, while Qi is grassroots, working from below and not attempting to move up. If you like, it acts like a tectonic plate, shifting and moving and sliding to produce, hopefully, change and difference in the landscape.

A Quiet Place: The Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford

October 18, 2014, 12:13 pm

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"The concept of wings as metaphors for the soaring of one's mind suggests a sense of contemplation, a sense of spirit..."

- Nathan Oliveira



A panoramic view of the Windhover Contemplative Center

The newly opened Windhover Contemplative Center, a 4,000 square foot rammed-earth and wood structure which occupies the former site of a parking lot, wouldn't exist without a deeply held conviction of the late Nathan Oliveira (1928-2010): that quiet contemplation feeds and fuels the imagination.

Years of working in the silence of his own studio and also the solace he found during long walks in the peaceful Stanford hills -- where he delighted in watching soaring birds -- convinced Oliveira that each of us has an inner imaginative world that blossoms through observation and meditation. "If you persist and you believe in it your world opens up to you," Oliveira once stated. "Sometimes that takes an entire lifetime." Beginning in the 1970s Oliveira worked on images of birds and flight that culminated in the paintings now permanently on display at the center. These images, in turn, led to the idea for the Windhover, which will extend the artist's uplifting vision into the future.



A detail of Nathan Oliveira's Diptych

Oliveira's Windhover paintings take their name from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), that uses the flight of a falcon as a metaphor for spiritual striving and realization. A portion of the poem is etched into reflective glass visible near the building's entrance. The imagery of the four Oliveira paintings on view at the Windhover includes wings, catenary curves and a kestrel, all presented on semi-abstract grounds.

Designed by Aidlin Darling Design, the glass-enclosed center shows the influence of Japanese architecture. As they approach the building, visitors will pass through a long stand of bamboo that delineates a kind of barrier between the outside world and the center's meditative space. In the building's interior are three rooms that feature four Oliveira paintings -- Big Red, Diptych, White Wing and Sun Radiating -- all of which are visible from both inside and outside the building. Skylights and motorized louver drapes provide carefully modulated natural light. The thick rammed-earth walls, made from soil excavated directly from the site, help moderate heat and sound.



The Reflection Pool

A reflection pool near the building's entrance features two "scholar's rocks" that are in fact a pieces of architectural debris from the university's boneyard. The sound of running water, which flows into a rectangular fountain, helps dampen outside noises. A pebble-floored Zen garden rimmed by benches appears at the building's opposite end, sheltering a single tree and another small fountain.



An Interior Fountain

Stanford's Office of Religious Life is overseeing the Windhover, which will provide a quiet alternative to Stanford's relatively busy Memorial Church, which hosts services, weddings and concerts. The center fits in well with two of Stanford's current initiatives -- the Wellness Initiative and the Arts Initiative -- and compliments the display of three Oliveira paintings in the new Anderson Collection at Stanford. The Windhover Contemplative Center joins Houston's Rothko Chapel and James Turrell's "Twilight Epihany" at Rice University as one of a slowly growing number of American structures that meld contemplative practice with the visions of modern and contemporary artists.



The Reflecting Pond

In a 2009 speech in Vancouver, the Dalai Lama offered his opinion that "The world will be saved by Western Women." During my visit to the Windhover Contemplative Center a group of Stanford women chatted on the benches of the Zen garden and shared their sense of excitement about the new center. I couldn't help envisioning these young women growing into adulthood, their imaginations sheltered and nourished by the Windhover, to fulfill the Dalai Lama's prediction.


Visitor Information:

Windhover will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. to students, faculty and staff.
A Stanford I.D. card is required to enter.

Docents will lead tours for the public from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Tuesdays.
Visit the Cantor Arts Center website for more information.

Visitors are asked to refrain from using cell phones, tablets, laptops and other electronic devices while inside the center.

Links:

Windhover Contemplative Center Opens on Stanford Campus

Nathan Oliveira on the Windhover Project (SFMOMA Video)

Master Class

October 18, 2014, 2:14 pm

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Steven Assael said always to consider the interior of things. He drew a parallel between the literal interior volume of a form, and the internal meaning of art. He said this meaning was a precious liquid, and the artwork itself the vessel.

Steven Assael turned his attention from the nature of art to its making. He described the analysis of an object - a head, for instance - as a simplified geometric object in space - a box, for instance. He praised the understanding of the box, how the understanding of the box gives the head derived from it a sense of completeness. He extolled Van Dyck, commenting that looking at his portraits, "you can almost feel the back of the head."


Steven Assael, demonstration construction of the head

Steven Assael returned to the philosophical side of the parallel. He speculated on our attraction to the figure in art, that it fascinates us not for its form alone, but because, in studying it, we study the mystery of what makes us human. He considered the proposition that art is a surrogate for what is in the mind, a shadow, that we never see the real work of art. But then he disagreed, proposing that when the model in the mind inevitably clashes with the capabilities of hand and medium, something better emerges; Steven Assael placed himself at the procedural point of overlap between mystical and materialist positions.

Steven Assael commented that one must always draw, one must carry a sketchbook all the time. "A bad drawing," he said, "Is worth more than a good photo on your phone. A good photo doesn't go into your mind, it goes into your laptop."

Steven Assael said all of these things in the first hours of the first day of a workshop he held on drawing and painting, which I happened to attend several months ago.

Here's a puzzle for you: Can drawing be taught, and can a great draughtsman teach it?


Steven Assael, Cassey, 2013, graphite and crayon on paper, 11" x 11 3/4"

I lack much in the way of an art education, so I have pondered this problem by reasoning on it from the outside. I figure there are two answers:

No. Of course it can't be taught. This is a categorical certainty.

And yes. Practically speaking, you can do something so much like teaching it, that you might as well be teaching it.

Categorically speaking, the art impulse is unique to the individual. It makes itself felt, or it does not. It takes a unique form in everyone in whom it arises. It cannot be bestowed. Each artist, to make anything of any worth, must discover, by whatever means, their own unique way of drawing, of grappling with the panoply of the world and the imagination, and leaving some sensible residue of it on the page.

There is nothing for it but practice, reflection, experimentation, and discovery.

But practically speaking, it is possible for some Virgil or Beatrice to help the budding artist along. Steven Assael is mighty in his own technique, but self-disciplined in desiring that his students should discover themselves, not him. He preaches a philosophy, but it is a philosophy without any particular doctrine. He does not provide rules or answers for his students; his central metaphor is that the interior of an object is like the interior meaning of art, but he presents its converse without jaundice. Although for him art is meaningful in the intuitive and classical sense, he notes that it is also viable to try to represent emptiness, the void, space not as the container of form but as a blankness in which all existing things ultimately collapse. "What is right," he explains, "depends on what you want. You have to work out what you want. You might not get it, and what you get instead will often turn out to be something you want more."

There are, I suspect, three phases to the standard art workshop - the lecture, the demonstration, and the practice. Assael completes the lecturing and gets down to work, making a portrait of his model, Dayna Offenbacher. To watch a master draughtsman at work is illuminating, but it is a dangerous illumination. Assael demonstrates his own principles at work. They are principles just right for him. It is easy to confuse their rightness for him with their rightness for oneself.


right to left: Assael and Offenbacher at work, August 2014

I think that Assael is generally thought of as an expert at capturing likeness. This is not especially true. His representations often diverge radically from the model. It is easy to confuse their authority with verisimilitude. But their authority arises from Assael's confidence, and his confidence derives not from copying what he sees, but from subordinating what he sees, and even what he knows, to his primary art impulse - in his case, an impulse toward burgeoning, fleshly formfulness.


Assael's demonstration, work in progress (perspective construction explicit on tracing paper over primary drawing)

Offenbacher is fashion-model thin, and has a fine hollow-boned lightness. She could not be more opposed in build to Assael's intuition of overpowering mass. His eyes seek bricks, whereas she is fabricated, after a manner of speaking, from aluminum and glass. So in his demonstration drawing of her, he rounded off her individuality toward that boxy mean he carries in his head.


Assael's demonstration portrait of Dayna Offenbacher

There is a right way and a wrong way to understand this demonstration. The wrong way is to be convinced by it, to take his specific means for oneself. This is the great danger of all attempts at art education, particularly by talented teachers. What could be better or more appealing to the novice draughtsman than to get results like Assael's? There are many facets to being an artist, but one of them is to be literally the best in the world at what you do, because you invented a way of doing things and became a master of it. It is possible to learn to draw like Assael - as long as the pupil does not mind remaining second best, and unoriginal.

What is the right way? It is to take seriously the advice Assael himself offers, that you have to work out what you want. Assael's example, his demonstration, is understood most properly as inspiration. It offers a set of tools to try, but always to try skeptically, and to be ready to put down. Assael offers some very powerful means of working out what you want. But how can you really follow his advice?

He says "work out what you want." This breaks into two parts: working and wanting. Wanting is a matter of confidence, of that unteachable artistic core that exists in the pupil, or does not. And working is just that - practicing until you approach to a clear perception of your wanting, and an ability to unleash your wanting onto the paper, where it will express its unique nature in a form that surprises even you. The work consists, as Assael advises, in drawing all the time, in carrying a sketchbook and drawing all things - "including TV, including imagination, including memory" - in making bad drawings as well as good ones - in learning to see profoundly and to make "as if effortlessly - skill-lessly - an illusion of lack of skill resulting from working without thoughts getting in the way." Only a master can think without thinking, and the road to mastery is work.

This is the third part of the workshop: the practice, where the students spend several days making their own drawings and paintings of the model. I think going to an art workshop is a bit like hiring a personal trainer. You could probably go to the gym on your own and get in shape. Even if you didn't know what you were doing at first, you'd figure it out eventually. You don't really need a trainer. A trainer can't lift your weights for you, and he can't make your lifting any easier. But his company and guidance and price will compel you to show up and get the work done. So too it is possible to spend several days drawing and painting on your own. But it is often more likely that the art student will do it when attending a structured, intense course of study, with the inspiration and guidance of a teacher like Assael. Assael, in turn, nurtures the individual natures of his students, suppressing as much as possible the innate bias of workshops toward churning out pupils who copy their master.

For my part, I thought all of this was fascinating. I learned to draw and paint in almost complete solitude, taking many years to figure out some things that are quickly learned in class. I like what I did, and I like my sense of possession of my techniques. But if I'd known of workshops like Assael's early on, I might well have made use of what he offers along the way.

Thanks for having me over, Steven; I loved watching you work, and I learned many things and thought many thoughts.


Steven Assael, drawing, 2014

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Steven Assael online: http://www.stevenassael.com/
Workshop work by Assael and his students: http://steven-assael-student-blog.tumblr.com/
Future workshops: http://www.stevenassael.com/workshop-info/ [next is in Tampa, Florida, October 24th]

First Nighter: Gotham Opera Company Enlivens Two Martinu Works

October 18, 2014, 3:41 pm

≫ Next: The Art of Falling: Hubbard Street Dance and Second City's Comic Liaisons

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Leave it to Neal Goren. He's cherry-picked Bohuslav Martinu's comic one-acts Alexandre Bis and Comedy on the Bridge as the first of the Gotham Opera Company's 2014-15 season, and he's owed three or more cheers for doing so.

It's a risky notion, since the Czech-born Martinu (1890-1959, who spent much of his life in Paris, isn't particularly well known in these parts. On the other hand, that's precisely the sort of choice Goren fans have come to expect, and good on him for sticking to his strong inclinations. Gotham Opera Company loyals will undoubtedly remember that the founder/artistic director/conductor put up a Martinu double-bill in 2002--Hlas Lesa and Les larmes du couteau.

The two pieces he's showing off now have a common theme, and both might have been called Cosi Fan Tutte, if the name hadn't been taken by a predecessor. Come to think of it, Martinu was clearly bowing to Mozart with the brief operas in which the possible infidelity of women is shown.

In Alexandre Bis, or the Tragedy of a Man Who Had His Beard Cut, the bearded title fellow (Jarrett Ott), shaves his facial hair to return as his supposed Texas cousin in order that inamorata Armande (Jenna Siladie) be tested. The outcome--involving the love goddess Philomene (Cassandra Zoe Velasco), a portrait of Alexandre that comes to life (Joseph Beutel) and Oscar (Jason Slayden) another contender for Armande's attentions--results in little good for anyone.

In Comedy on the Bridge, lovers with safe-passage notes arrive at, yes, a bridge, manned by guards from opposing factions, each of whom allows the arrivals on but refuses to let them off.

The giddy, frustrated ladies are Popelka (Siladie) and Eva (Abigail Fischer). The interested, suspicious men are Ucitel (Slayden), Sykos (Ott) and Bedron (Beutel). The uniformed, rifle-bearing sentries are played by Christian Smith-Kotlarek and Aaron Sorenson, and there's a late appearing officer (Joshua Dennis).

Both operas are directed by James Marvel on a stunning black-and-white Cameron Anderson eye-candy set (trees, the dominant feature). He presents Alexandre Bis as extremely stylized and does very nicely by his merry intentions. Sung about in French, the shenanigans are amusing. Marvel mounts The Comedy on the Bridge, sung in Czech, in a far less stylized manner. Since the comedy in this one isn't somehow comical enough--somewhat trying, actually--the director might have played it even more straightforwardly.

Of course, you can't rush the music, and who would want to? Not Goren, that's for certain. Martinu's score for Alexandre Bis is jaunty and jovial and even includes satirical hints. Goren brings it all out. The Comedy on the Bridge is strung with militaristic riffs that Goren also makes the most of.

Of course, it isn't surprising that The Comedy on the Bridge, written in 1935 between the two great wars, has a military undercurrent. Stranded on the bridge, the focal characters are in a neither-here-nor-there predicament, which must have reflected how any number of Europeans felt at the time. Martinu's situation as a Czech expat in France is probably another underlying element.

If so, he has found a way to turn anxiety into good clean fun, and Goren and company have craftily built on that.

The Art of Falling: Hubbard Street Dance and Second City's Comic Liaisons

October 18, 2014, 4:42 pm

≫ Next: From Lizzy Bennet to Fanny Price: My Jane Austen Journey

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"If music be the food of love/ then laughter is its queen" - Procol Harum, A Whiter Shade of Pale

Early on in the ingenious collaboration between Second City and Hubbard Street Dance, Procol Harum's counterculture hymn permeates Chicago's Harris Theater as actors and dancers assemble in rows of folding chairs facing the audience. Suddenly actor Tim Mason pulls his Beats out of his ears, the music stops, and we realize that we're watching a sketch unfold in the passenger cabin of a Southwest Airlines flight (that will end in tragicomedy in Act II). Beats-less, Mason must fend off his oversharing seatmate, the formidable Rashawn Scott, who confides that she is Cleveland-bound with a plan to jumpstart her flagging marriage by shagging LeBron James' uncle. Meanwhile, the dancers around them enact a wondrous dance of air travel tedium, a marvel of minimalism, interrupted periodically by a jolt of turbulence - all of this to atmospheric jazz accompaniment by Second City's nimble Julie B. Nichols and Emma Dayhuff in the pit.

The entire evening proceeds in essentially this vein - a variation on the staging of a classic story ballet, with Second City actors as the soloists, supported by a corps de ballet who amplify the emotion of the moment, or provide a provocative counterpoint. With the added frisson of dancers not merely qua dancers, but as props, furniture and decorative objects.



Second City may have pioneered sketch comedy since its formation in 1959, but this latest collaborative project takes the art form to visually spectacular and emotionally satisfying new heights. The crispest scenes, in a surreal and slightly kinky departure from Frank Loesser's hit musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, conjure up a 1950's office in which the ingénue temp - writer/actor Carisa Barreca, "going from office to office, living on the edge" - gets lost in a seething whirlwind of activity, with dancers embodying and animating the office furniture, typewriters, a vending machine, stationary bike, a messenger bag, drinking fountain, and a "Hitler staple gun." The office boss orders the receptionist to get rid of an offensive crucifix he dubs "Black Jesus" - a black dancer who stands with arms extended, supporting the legs of another dancer who hangs behind him upside down in a side split - but is gently rebuked by a black employee who calls the crucifix "Regular Jesus."



In a parody of erotic music videos - exemplified by Chris Isaak and model Helena Christensen rolling around topless in the surf in Wicked Game - Jason Hortin tries to get into a romantic mood with a blow-up doll, to the sounds of Isaak's heavy breathing. But the doll, portrayed by Alicia Delgadillo in an admirable display of controlled technique, appears to have a slow leak.



The format is punctuated by a terrific improv routine by Second City's Tawny Newsome, playing a cynical Croatian crone in a caftan, leaning on a walker, with an accordion player in terrorist garb (full body unitard and black stocking mask) lounging behind her. ("My weird sex troll," she remarked offhand.) She discourses on insecurity and asks intimate questions of a couple in the audience, upon which dancers on stage improvise movement to match their answers. To the question "what is a gift one of you gave the other recently?" Friday night's couple answered "tickets to this show." Which sent Newsome reeling for a moment - "This is gonna get really fucking meta" - and the dancers improvised a slinky little soft shoe number, with clapping. Overall, however, the dancers seemed less inspired in the improv than the actor; they really shone in the choreographed segments, into which the actors blended seamlessly - no mean feat given the differences in training and experience.

The other detour in format was provided by a series of pas de deux excerpted from choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo's Second to Last. Cerrudo's trademark gliding, swooping and spiraling movements, and deft bravura-free partnering create beautiful curves in space, the women in attractive lingerie generally hovering just inches above the ground. Nichols and Dayhuff do their best to breathe new life into Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel (much loved, inexplicably, by contemporary dance-makers), but the piece felt misplaced at the top of Act II. It would have served a better purpose as the penultimate number, seguing into the moment when our hero, non-dancer Joey Bland, finally conquers his anxiety, his "fear of falling," and attempts to dance, with the encouragement of his lover, Travis Turner. The two in their awkward pas de deux strike a moving contrast to the icily handsome Cerrudo choreography.



The most thrilling and virtuosic dancing of the evening occurs to the strains of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake in a scene titled "White Office Swan." Barreca and dancers fly around in wheeled office chairs - sitting, lying, contorting themselves in various aerodynamic postures - in formations that sometimes appear random but must have been perfectly choreographed to avoid collision. The effect is stunning, and likely to rival the swan corps of the Joffrey Ballet (which, coincidentally, is presenting Swan Lake half a mile away at the Auditorium Theatre.)

Sculpted by director Billy Bungeroth with a stable of writers and choreographers from the two companies, the least compelling aspect of the evening was the conventional storyline involving the two gay lovers, around a theme that equates the risk in making a romantic commitment to the risk of falling, a risk that dancers embrace everyday. The notion of falling is further incorporated into a parallel storyline about a plane crash, which in these days, as we continue to wait for news of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, simply doesn't resonate as prime material for comedy. (Would it have been so hard to write the sketch around parachutists or hot-air balloonists? Or even paratroopers, providing ample opportunity to take swipes at the military-industrial complex?)

While the overarching message is slight, The Art of Falling has many moments that recall the power of Pina Bausch's surreal physical comedy, while mining a rich pop-cultural vein that had the packed house in stitches. A whimsical riff on our modern-day obsession with selfies was filmed directly downward from the ceiling in a dreamlike segment about a bike ride gone awry; projected onto a screen, it involved some manic crawling by the dancers. More emphatically skewered were passive-aggressive dance teachers, legendary choreographer Jiří Kylián's iconic Petite Mort (a dance whose title translates to "orgasm" and which involves near-naked men prancing about with fencing foils, "also known as a dick dance," explained Travis Turner helpfully) and Portland ("the place where dead atheists go.")

May The Art of Falling live on in versions 2.0 and beyond, hopefully bringing dance audiences into comedy clubs, and comedy audiences into the opera houses.

Photos:

1. Hubbard Street + The Second City in The Art of Falling. Center, from left: Tim Mason, Jesse Bechard, Carisa Barreca and Joey Bland. Below, from left: Travis Turner, Jessica Tong and Rashawn Scott. Far right: Tawny Newsome. Hubbard Street Dancers, clockwise from top: Alice Klock, Jason Hortin, Emilie Leriche, Andrew Murdock, Jane Rehm and Michael Gross. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

2. Joey Bland and Hubbard Street Dancer Alicia Delgadillo in Hubbard Street + The Second City's The Art of Falling. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

3. Hubbard Street + The Second City in The Art of Falling. Foreground from left: Carisa Barreca, Tim Mason and Rashawn Scott. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

4. Tim Mason, left, Rashawn Scott and Ensemble in Hubbard Street + The Second City's The Art of Falling. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

5. Hubbard Street + The Second City in The Art of Falling. Carisa Barreca, center, with, from left: Jesse Bechard, Alice Klock, Michael Gross, Emilie Leriche and Jonathan Fredrickson. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

From Lizzy Bennet to Fanny Price: My Jane Austen Journey

October 18, 2014, 7:12 pm

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At age 12, my obliviousness was a survival instinct. As my peers experimented with make-up and clothes, I wore a sports bra to school, my hair frizzing into the stratosphere. Most days were spent doing what I loved best -- reading.

Inevitably then, my mother one day showed me the six-hour spectacle of Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle falling in love despite their best efforts. But my first exposure to Jane Austen only left me with more questions: Did people really have hair like that back then? Why so many hats? Is there nothing to do in England except go on walks and eavesdrop? How could a man ask a woman to marry him when they'd never even had a real conversation?

But my mother, in her wisdom, simply handed me the book and told me to read it. Despite my initial doubts, I devoured it. Austen's witty, knowing narrator transported me through time and space. Pride and Prejudice allowed me to experience the grown-up tribulations of falling in love and finding yourself, all while engaging in charming banter and fending off the local mean girl with rapier wit.

Naturally, for Christmas I received an anthology of Austen's novels -- which I proceeded to lug around school for the next six months. Instead of conjugating Spanish verbs, I travelled to Bath with Catherine Moreland. Instead of learning about the different parts of a cell body, I traded gossip in the Highbury parish with Emma. I would look up from Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne Elliot declaring his undying love to find the boys in my class making fart noises and spitting paper wads into my hair.

In short, middle school was a bit of a letdown compared to the world of Jane Austen. So was high school, for that matter. As I descended deeper into my 19th-century refuge, there was never any doubt that I was Lizzy Bennet. Everyone wants to be Lizzy, but I knew I was a true heroine.

It seemed fitting then, that a few weeks into my first quarter of college I took a weekend off to attend the Jane Austen Society of North America's conference celebrating the 200th anniversary of P&P. Dressed in an Empire waistline, my hair pinned up, glove-clad hands sweating, I attended my first ball. Everyone who saw the pictures made the obligatory Lizzy looking for her Darcy joke, but to me the conference only cemented my position as everyone's favorite character.

But as my freshman year continued, I began to wonder if I'd been mistaken my entire life. Maybe I wasn't a Lizzy, after all. William Deresiewicz -- who, incidentally, is an expert on Austen -- would agree that, along with excellent sheep, top-tier institutions are very good at creating Lizzy Bennets. Nascent cool girls envied by women and desired by men, confident without taking anything too seriously. Someone fun! light and bright and sparkling, in the words of Austen.

Throughout my freshmen year, I met many young women who fit this criteria far better than I did. Privileged young women who were universally good at everything, who knew only success. Lizzy faces many setbacks, but never outright failure -- which is something I became familiar with during my freshman year.

I returned home to Portland for the summer to do the most decidedly un-heroic work of babysitting, with more questions than ever. Austen never prepared me for talking to my parents about changing my major, trying to translate my passion into a career, boys who are not yet men and more interested in their phones than the five-feet, eight-inches (ten inches if you count my hair) of fabulousness standing right in front of them.

But while working on an essay that would eventually fail to gain even an Honorable Mention in the contest I'd previously won, I received the final death knell -- I am the heroine everyone despises.

Fanny Price, the protagonist of Mansfield Park, is no one's favorite heroine. From her name to her lukewarm "romance" with her cousin, she always comes in near the bottom when ranking the Austen canon. But as I struggled through re-reading Mansfield Park while working on my doomed essay, I realized we had a great deal in common -- we are both reserved, judgmental, old-fashioned, struggling to compete.

Until this moment, I never knew myself.

Of course, I still like to think that maybe I am an intriguing mixture of Anne and Fanny, an old soul who improves with age, who learns from her mistake. But for so long, Lizzy Bennet was an integral part of my identity, an influence on what I wanted from life, an assurance that I too would someday find a Colin Firth emerging from the lake. But the great and powerful Jane Austen has spoken, and declared me a Fanny Price.

In an essay for the New Yorker, Christopher Beha argues that we shouldn't look to fiction for examples on how to lead our lives. And while I agree with many of the points he makes, on this we differ. We are all socialized with stories, and to a certain degree we all imagine ourselves as on the paths of our own hero's journey. Austen deals not with journeys to the underworld or witches and wizards and elves, but with sisters. Families, communities, gossip, and self-discovery. By simply living my life, I emulate her heroines.

Austen may not have given me exact guidance on how to survive college, but she is relevant now more than ever. More than half of Millennials are single? The Regency period suffered a shortage of marriageable young men as they went off to fight Napoleon. The Boomerang generation may be stuck at home, but so was Jane -- and any woman who didn't marry. Even though Austen achieved some moderate success in her own time, she still died while living with her mother and sister, at age 41.

Even Austen herself couldn't compete with Lizzy Bennet. Can any of us? I love Lizzy, but only now am I realizing I can't be her. In May, Mansfield Park turned 200, and it will probably take another 200 years for me to resign myself to Fanny Price as my innate heroine. But nonetheless I raise my glass to the Catherines, the Emmas and Elinors, the Mariannes, Annes, Fannys and Lizzys and even Janes that reside in all women. A heroine does not always succeed, and she is not always heroic, but she endures nonetheless.



My finest hour at JASNA Annual General Meeting ball in Minneapolis.

Tilt Shift Terror With Photographer Rob Reeves

October 20, 2014, 8:52 am

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All Images Copyright Rob Reeves

As Halloween draws closer and closer, I decided I'd need to find some spooky photos to feature here on the blog. As luck would have it, Rob Reeves and his tilt shift terror project fell right into my lap. How timely. Although I am normally not a fan of "trick" photography - some will be annoyed that I consider tilt shift a trick - I really do like this work. It is done well and to great effect. There is something special about the way Rob frames these images, chooses the subject matter, and makes use of color. It all combines to not only make some great and very unique images, but spooky ones too!

Just in time for Halloween, we are treated here to some very spooky houses and other street scenes. In fact, I imagine some of these homes to look kind of like they might when seen through a lopsided mask - quite like many kids and adults alike will adorn in the coming days. So go ahead, take a look at Rob's work and get spooked!



Michael Ernest Sweet: Rob, I have to say I am normally not a fan of tilt-shift photography. I'm kind of a plain Jane when it comes to photography. I don't like HDR much either. I guess, frankly, I think an image should have power and effect without resorting to gimmicks. All that aside, I like this work - a lot. There is something cinematic to the effect here that really does enhance the idea of horror. How did this series come about?

RR: First off, I should point out that I'm not using any HDR here. Outside of basic exposure/contrast/color corrections, all of this stuff was made in camera. But I digress. This series came about through simple exploration of equipment. I rented a tilt shift lens and started exploring it's capabilities. I've always loved architecture and night photography, so it all just came together.



MES: Oh, sorry. I wasn't suggesting that you were using HDR, I was merely doing a brief inventory of the techniques which I don't like. Moving on, why the horror angle? Have you always had a fascination with the horror genre? I ask because as a child of the 80s, I have always been a big fan of the horror movie. Did you draw any inspiration from that era of cinema?

RR: I'm actually really uninterested in horror movies generally. That's not to say I don't like thrilling movies, but the classic blood-drenched horror movie doesn't do much for me. I'm way more interested in movies like Event Horizon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jurassic Park, Alien, etc., as well as the works of HP Lovecraft, where the horror is always off screen and the sets play a huge role in the tension. A stabbing is just gross, but an unseen force of nature is truly unsettling.

MES: It seems to me that color is rather important to this series. What made you go with color and do you think the photographs would have the same impact in black and white?

RR: I really, really love that sickly, subtle green I can pull out of the shadows sometimes. It's unnatural and earthy. Maybe it harkens back to that force of nature angle. I've converted them to black and white to play around and really liked some of the results, but for consistency's sake I've left them in color. Maybe one day I'll do something more monochrome on film.



MES: Can you tell us about the equipment you used in this series and the technique you employed?

RR: Most of it is shot on a 17mm tilt shift lens, with some of the earlier work done on a 24mm tilt shift. All of it is on a Canon 5D Classic except for maybe one or two very recent ones where I had access to a 5Dmk3.

The technique is pretty basic. I'll walk around late at night, usually around midnight, and when I find a house I'd like to take a picture of I try and focus to the best of my ability, hold the remote button for a spell, then check my exposure and adjust from there. When I get home I do some basic contrast adjustments in Lightroom, split toning, and more often than not leveling it off. That lens makes it surprisingly hard to keep things level.

MES: It seems you are primarily a commercial photographer (weddings, portraits etc.) and yet you've created this series. Do you do anything else we should know about you aside from the weddings and portraits? Street or fine art or experimental, for example.

RR: Most of my photography is street photography, but that's a function of it being something I can do all the time. This series was actually a senior project in college that I kept doing after graduation, and I keep finding things to do with the lens. I'm also doing a lot more film photography lately, but there's not a lot of that to share, as darkroom printing is super, super hard to do well.



MES: How did you get into photography anyway?

RR: Smartphones. I had an iPhone 3Gs, a slough of apps, and a summer in San Francisco to mess around. After that I bought myself a point and shoot camera, and then a beginning dSLR, and on and on. Soon I was getting my degree in photography and figuring out how to do this full time.



MES: Who are some of the photographers who've inspired you the most? Please tell us about some contemporaries as well as masters.

RR: I grew up with an Ansel Adams calendar in the house, so I'm sure some of that soaked in, possibly in direct opposition to the Edward Steichen book that was in the family's library. Ralph Eugene Meatyard has an awesome sense of unreality and works the shadows very well. Josef Koudelka combines documentary, street and landscape photos together beautifully. When I was introduced to his work it was very validating. Lately I've been getting more and more into street photography, so people like Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank, not to mention the beautifully bizarre photos of Diane Arbus have really been sinking in (I hope).

As far as contemporary work, I'm really inspired by Andreas Gursky for his monumental scale and Todd Hido, who does creepy night time pictures of houses about one thousand times better than me. I'd also like to throw in Moriyama and Ralph Gibson for those beautiful, high contrast black and white images.



MES: Is this series over or do you have some grand plan in mind for this work?

RR: I'll probably keep making them, but not at the same rate I was. It's difficult to find the time and motivation to leave the house and traipse around the neighborhood so late at night with expensive equipment. I've actually been doing street photography with the same camera/lens setup, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm actually working on a small zine of tilt shift street photos, so it's going to have a very different feel.



MES: Are you completely digital or do you work with analogue as well? Just curious, I've recently gone back to a 100% analogue workflow and I love it. So I'm always asking to see where others are with this fork in the road.

RR: Professional and commercial work is done digitally for the fast turnaround time and safety net for sure. I'm also doing this project digitally so I can check focus and exposure on the fly. Anything else is about 50% film these days. Film has become something of a meditation for me. I love getting in the darkroom and making prints, having a physical print, and it's so different than anything I get out of a digital camera. Film really lets me feel like I made something.



MES: I couldn't agree more. I think there is something about photography that will always necessitate the use of film to be truly authentic. Digital is great and has its place but I think the idea that it must kill film at some point is over. After all, television didn't kill the radio star. Not exactly anyway. Rob, thanks for this, it was great to speak with you.

RR: Great speaking with you, too! And if I may add one thing about film photography, there's currently a kickstarter for Film Ferrania going, which should have a few days left when this goes up.

Rob Reeves is an Oakland-based photographer. He specializes in portraiture, street, documentary and fine art photography (which are really all the same thing when you call it wedding photography). Check out a small exhibition of some of these but mostly other tilt shift photos at 1000 Broadway Suite 109 in Oakland, CA. You can also follow Rob on Facebook.

Michael Ernest Sweet is a Canadian award-winning writer and photographer. Follow Michael on Twitter @28mmphotos to get updates on new blog features.

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Birdman: Existentialist Selfie

October 20, 2014, 9:08 am

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I like Alejandro G. Iñárritu's directorial work, and a movie starring Michael Keaton was a plus. A trusted friend had seen Birdman in Telluride and gave it high marks. Off to the movies!

Keaton's work has grown darker, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Would he be the antic Beetlejuice? Or, the square-jawed, somewhat reluctant patriarch of Batman? Y'know, the daddy who makes it clear that nobody else is capable of saving the world so he'll have to do it? The story rushed headlong into all the hard questions revolving around love, death and what gives life meaning, but they were overlain with the pop culture vagaries that make everything and everyone seem shallow these days.

The movie opens with Riggan (Michael Keaton) in his backstage dressing room floating cross-legged with his back to us. I rolled with it and marveled less at his yogic weightlessness than with the question of whether he knows one of his shoulders is higher than the other and if it's painful. The camera holds steady, tightening in, for perhaps the longest scene in the movie.

This was a relatively peaceful moment . . . except for the voice which irritatingly dominates Riggan. We've all heard that voice, the one telling us to doubt ourselves. Riggan is a loveless actor staking his life and reputation on Broadway in a production of Raymond Carver's, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The voice is telling him to abandon this theatrical exercise in "art" and return to the sure celebrity of his movie star roles.

Death is not a member of the cast, but Riggan has heard its call. He wants his life to have meaning, but he is so not living in the moment. He reminds his ex-wife that "Farrah Fawcett died on exactly the same day as Michael Jackson," but no one noticed. Riggan does not want to be a Farrah Fawcett Footnote after he's gone.

His just out of rehab daughter (Emma Stone) screams at him that he doesn't even have a Twitter account or a Facebook page, therefore his existence is nil. His love of self prevents him from giving her any credibility or feeling the love standing right in front of him. She sets up a Twitter account for him which garners over 80,000 hits. If Riggan had only listened to her, he could have self-actualized with selfies and lived online into perpetuity.

The voice follows Riggan down narrow and twisting backstage hallways that are shadowed and not so clean. It quiets only when he is onstage. There he wrestles with dramatic egos other than his own. Lesley (Naomi Watts) is happy to finally be on Broadway and is not about to have the experience ruined by her boyfriend Mike (Edward Norton), who eerily echoes Riggan's vacuousness regarding love. His method acting means he's impotent except onstage. Riggan's lawyer and manager, Brandon Vander Hey (Zach Galifianakis) is a practical breath of fresh air in the stale oxygen residues left behind by other people. Cinematic, albeit satirical, references to superheroes and the actors who played them abound. At one point, Mike wonders if they'll replace him with Ryan Gosling. This is after he's flashed his six-pack for the viewer.

Is Riggan experiencing existential angst or is he just crazy? Sartre said that life has no meaning...that it's up to each of us to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that we assign to it. Personal love, the love between humans didn't matter to Riggan. They weren't as real to him as fame. He chose fame and went out with a blaze of glory . . . and lots of twitter hits.

The Fabulous Broadway Season So Far

October 20, 2014, 9:26 am

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Is this the best fall theater season in years? I think so. While I don't do reviews really, I felt the need to discuss this amazing season we're having. It would kick last season's butt in almost any competition.

This Is Our Youth: I wasn't sure how it would play in 2014. But it works so well. The critics loved it. The audience the night I was there loved it. Go.



Love Letters: I haven't seen it (I purchase tickets to Farrow's last night, then got held up), but the critics loved it too. And the opportunity to see any of those actors is special. I hear Carol Burnett is great.

You Can't Take It With You: This is my favorite play revival in many years. It's so joyous. Everyone works so well together. It's sort of amazing that there is not a real weak link, but there is not. I saw it fairly early in previews. One might expect early on it would have still been finding itself. Nope. It was there already, even in the beginning of its run. I hope a lot of its cast members are remembered come Tony time.




The Country House: I was sick when I was supposed to go, and haven't been yet. I know many critics didn't love the play, but I don't think anyone thinks this production is a real bomb. Everyone loves Blythe Danner and reading the Times review made me want to see it just for her.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: This was my most-highly anticipated fall show, which is often the kiss of death. Overhyping in one's mind is not a good thing -- most of the time there is a letdown. Not so here! I love this show. The critics love this show. I call it the Matilda of straight plays. It's a critical darling, from London, based on a book. Like Matilda, it's not absolutely perfect, but it's really great. It was a satisfying theatrical experience for me. Interestingly, my mother doesn't particularly like British things, she hates techno music and she is blinded by flashing lights. Therefore I didn't want to take her to this; she insisted though, not wanting to miss a big Tony nominee. She loved it too! She loved it despite it being British, there being techno music and there being flashing lights. She has been telling everyone to buy tickets.

It's Only a Play: Mixed reviews, yes, but a hit. I see it in a couple of weeks, so I can't comment on it particularly. It's certainly not killing the season though -- it's a success!

On the Town: Another critical hit! Another show I haven't seen yet! I see it this week and I'm really looking forward to it (despite the possibility people might be eating popcorn next to me). I was excited before the reviews, because I thought the choreography looked great. I also like John Rando. So there we go.

Only Holler If Ya Hear Me has truly bombed with critics and at the box office. Last season by this date we had already been subjected to Let It Be, First Date (which wasn't horrible, but shouldn't have been on Broadway), Soul Doctor, that odd Orlando Bloom Romeo and Juliet and Big Fish. The 2012-2013 fall was much better than that, but it was also less crowded, so less could go wrong.

What is to come? A lot of slam dunks. There are a couple of question marks, but it's still looking to be a good first half overall. The next opening this season is Disgraced on Thursday. I saw it off-Broadway but I'm going back to see the new cast, which includes my favorite star Chicago replacement ever, Gretchen Mol.

I hope everyone is going to head to the theater and see one of the shows already opened or a future offering. Producers won't present quality theater if people don't go out and support it. Yes, the ticket prices are high. Yes, it's a special treat that I know some people just can't easily manage. That is true. But if you can swing it financially there are a lot of great shows out there worthy of your investment.

Why We Take Pictures

October 20, 2014, 9:40 am

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"Why do you take pictures?" It's a loaded question that I get asked all the time and there's definitely more than one answer. My first camera was a purple Le Clic that my parents gave me on my 12th birthday. I dangled it from my wrist like a tiny box that held all of my prized possessions and secrets. That's what a camera was for me - a diary of sorts that captured everything from my bare feet in the grass to my sister's favorite toy sitting on her bed to my mother's briefcase in its usual spot in the dining room. I took pictures because I loved it and at the time it was that simple.



Digital cameras and our smart phones make it easier than ever before to photograph every minute of your life and I still get that question: Why do you take pictures? Because I love it, yes, and because I need it in my daily life. I also love to make lists so here are four more reasons why I'm constantly taking my camera out.

1. Because it makes me feel something

Moments are fleeting, time passes quickly before your eyes and landscapes are constantly changing. I think that what makes a photograph successful is subjective, but for me, the most important element is that it makes you feel something. What is it about a moment that moves you enough to capture it? A wave will never crash against the shore in the same way, my kids will only have one birthday celebration a year, and the light might never touch a person's face like that again, and the camera is there to document and preserve that moment so that it can live and move you forever. Beauty and art are everywhere.



2. To hold on to memories

There are days you wish you could hold on to and with your camera, you can. I'm as interested in capturing our mundane routines as I am in capturing holidays and special events. Since I had my kids I feel acutely aware of how quickly time goes and in our increasingly busy lives it's difficult to always be in the moment. Taking pictures helps you to hang on to those memories a little longer. Hardly anyone (except me, it seems) makes photo albums anymore but remember how you felt and how your smile spread across your face when you would hold those prints in your hand? We're looking at pictures on our screens more than ever but the feeling of wanting to hold on to memories is still the same.



3. To learn to see

Our eyes can only see so much and teaching yourself how to use them (and to actually look) is a skill you can practice. Take your camera with you and use it. Some moments happen quickly but if you've trained your eye to see and capture, then you can keep up. I'm trying to look at everything and I'm getting better at seeing in the process.





4. To tell a story

There are images that can transport you to a different time and place. I love being able to express myself through my camera and use it as an extension of myself to tell stories that people want to hear and that I want to remember. Take your camera (or phone) and take photos of everything from your lunch to the changing leaves of the season to your vacation to your family and friends. These are the images that tell your story.




So what about you? I'd love to hear why you take pictures in the comments and see your pictures on Twitter and Instagram. Share your photos using the hashtag #whywetakepictures so we can all see and stay connected via social media.




Follow Monica Shulman on Twitter and Instagram @monicalshulman.

Uncovering a Free Black Man's Past: Buying a Slave to Unite His Family

October 20, 2014, 9:42 am

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My ancestor, Lewis Freeman, was a free Negro who lived in Chatham, North Carolina from at least 1800 until his death in 1845. I would like to know when he was born. - Harold F.

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Dear Harold,

When searching for family roots in the South, a researcher might assume his or her African American ancestors were slaves. While it is true that, by far, the overwhelming percentage of black people in the South were doomed to spend their entire lives in slavery prior to the Civil War, it is also true that a small percentage lived as free citizens. And some, like your ancestor, were even able to prosper.

In 1840, for example, five years before your ancestor died, there were a total of 319,599 free black people living in the United States, about 13.4 percent of the entire black population, as Ira Berlin writes in Slaves Without Masters. Of those, 170,728 lived in the North and 215,575 lived in the South. North Carolina was fourth in the South behind Maryland, Virginia, and Louisiana with a total of 22,732 free blacks, or about 8.5% of the state's total black population. This makes sense, since the vast majority of free black people lived in the Upper South (174,357 in 1840 versus 41,218 in the Lower South in 1840).

Lewis Freeman was one of those free black citizens of North Carolina in 1840, which makes it more likely we'll find an answer to your search to find his birthdate. Unfortunately, however, few records from Chatham County or the Pittsboro area from the early 1800s exist. In North Carolina, births and deaths were not recorded until after 1913, and marriages were often lost or not recorded regularly before 1868. So, as is the case for many who lived in the 1700s and early 1800s, no clues exist about Lewis Freeman's age in vital records. Accordingly, to find the answer to your question, we had to search elsewhere.

Putting Down Roots in Pittsboro

Remarkably, your ancestor was a very successful early black settler in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Lewis was able to purchase at least 16 lots in town and 20 acres in surrounding Chatham County. We get a sense of his holdings from the will he wrote in January 1845 (and recorded in August of that same year). To his wife, Creecy, Lewis left their home and various lots in Pittsboro as well as 20 acres in surrounding Chatham County. His original house, located on Main Street in Pittsboro, was a typical one-room structure. Very few African Americans are able to identify the home their ancestor occupied before the Civil War, but you are among the fortunate ones! Although Lewis's home has been modified over the years, enough of it has remained to earn a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina.

Clearly, your ancestor accumulated an impressive real estate portfolio. Less clear is the source of Lewis's wealth. The early census records list him as being employed in agriculture, but he may very well have been more than a farmer.

In addition, and we are sure that this will come as a surprise to you and your family: your ancestor, Lewis Freeman, a free black man, was himself a slave owner!

Family of Lewis Freeman

Amazingly, according to the 1820 census, which we found on Ancestry.com, Lewis had two slaves living in his household: a male and a female, both under the age of 14.

A detail from the 1820 U.S. Federal Census for Lewis Freeman and household at Ancestry.com.

Why, you might reasonably ask, would a free black man own slaves? We can't know for sure in Lewis's case, but they may have been family members that he bought in order to keep them in his family, and protect them from being owned by white masters. It wasn't unheard of for black family members to be bought and kept as slaves by other family members in these years, since in many Southern states, freed slaves had to leave the state or face being arrested and sold back into slavery. In other words, it was a desperate, but clever, way to keep the family together.

While Freeman's will refers only to his wife Creecy and does not mention any children or slaves, documentation for the National Register of Historic Places does mention a son named Waller. And Waller's probate records from 1868 shed light on the matter:

That one Lewis Freeman a free man of color the father of the said Waller and Grandfather of the plaintiffs....purchased from one C J Williams of Chatham County, N.C. on the 11^th day of May 1814 Maria the Mother of the said Waller and with who the said Lewis lived as man and wife up to the death of the said Maria; this purchase was after the birth of the said Waller and the said [bill] of Sale from the said Williams to the said Lewis is registered in the office of the Register of Chatham County....the said Waller was purchased by the late George E Badger and the said Geo[rge] E Badger afterwards to wit on the 6^th day of October 1830 sold the said slave to his father the said Lewis.

What this means is Lewis purchased a woman named Maria, his first wife, from one man. Maria was his son's mother. And then, after their son, Waller, was born, he purchased Waller from another man. That way, Lewis, a free black man, was able to live with his slave wife and child as a family. Seven years later, after Maria had died, Lewis made a remarkable decision: he decided to sell their surviving son to a man named R. Tucker, who took Waller to New York City in order to free him. We actually found the deed of manumission executed on October 4, 1837! So you descend from two generations of free people of color! It couldn't have been an easy decision, but it ensured that Lewis Freeman's son would be a free man. Remaining in the South, Lewis married a woman named Creecy, who eventually inherited his estate.

Estimating Lewis Freeman's Birth Year

We believe that we have found the approximate answer to your question in the last federal census taken before the outbreak of the Civil War. As shown in an excerpt from the 1860 census below, Waller Freeman, Lewis's freed son, was recorded as 60 years old, meaning he was born around 1800.

A detail from the 1860 U.S. Federal Census for Waller Freeman and household at Ancestry.com.

If Waller was born in 1800, and his father was at least 18 years old when Waller was born, then Lewis was born no later than 1782, which was a year before the American Revolution ended.

We can only give you an estimate of your ancestor's age, because before 1850, exact ages were not given in the U.S. Federal Census. Only age ranges were noted. In the 1800 and 1810 U.S Federal Censuses in Chatham, Lewis Freeman was counted, meaning that he was free at least by the beginning of the nineteenth-century. But, like other free people of color and slaves, no other data was listed in those two records. But the census records from 1820, 1830, and 1840, however, give us more information, thankfully. In those, Lewis was listed as head of household and, assuming he was the oldest male listed, we can make the following guesses about his birth year:

Using the largest lower bound and the smallest upper bound (above), allows us to narrow the possible years of Lewis' birth to between the years 1741 and 1775, which means he would have been between 70 and 104 when he died in 1845. Like many people who lived in the early 1800s and before, we may never know the exact year of Lewis Freeman's birth.

Not every question we have about our ancestors can be answered; and sometimes when records exist, we still can't answer every question exactly. But by digging for clues and analyzing them within the context of their times, we can begin to get a sense of the kind of person they were and how they lived their lives. In your case, we can begin to see how very complicated the life of a free person of color could be, and the extremely difficult choices that they had to make to protect the people they most loved. Your desire to find Lewis Freeman's birth date enabled us to make three astonishing discoveries about your fascinating ancestor: first, we were able to uncover the extent of his considerable estate, indicating that he was certainly one of the most prosperous free people of color in his lifetime; second, we were able to unveil the complicated family structure he had to create as a "slaveowner" in order to live with his first wife Maria and their son Waller; and third, and most poignantly, we were able to discover the ingenious way that he invented to free his enslaved son. When death set his wife free from this earth, Lewis took pains to see that their son was set free from slavery in the South, by selling him to a friend who would free him in the North. Since it is highly unlikely that Waller would risk returning to a slave state and being illegally re-enslaved, it is highly likely that Lewis knew, by taking this decision, he would never see his son again. It would take a bloody civil war nearly 30 years later to relieve other black fathers in the South of that terrible burden.

Do you have a mystery in your own family tree? Or have you wondered what family history discoveries you could make with a DNA test? Send Henry Louis Gates, Jr and his team of Ancestry experts your question at ask@ancestry.com.

An Undying Bicycle Tradition

October 20, 2014, 9:59 am

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Post by Mimo Khair Photography.

Shanghai, a charming and unique city of contrasts, continues to develop and grow as it evolves into a modern day metropolis and a financial center in China. Despite its rapid metamorphosis, the bicycle tradition is alive and well in its busy streets as well as its quiet old alleys. There is something about bicycles that evokes romance and charm. Here I am sharing a selection of iphone photographs portraying the bicycles of Shanghai and Beijing.

Post by Mimo Khair Photography.

Post by Mimo Khair Photography.

Post by Mimo Khair Photography.

Post by Mimo Khair Photography.

3 Things You Learn When 15 million People Suddenly Know Who You Are

October 20, 2014, 1:13 pm

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Let me preface this list by saying that in no way, shape or form do I confuse myself for famous. But it's certainly not every day that you find yourself in front of 15 million new people, performing for the judges on The Voice. That kind of sudden platform will teach you a thing or two about human nature. So, here are three things I've picked up so far...

1. Marriage is suddenly an easier prospect.
Have you ever been proposed to by a perfect stranger? "Well, of course not you idiot, that's crazy. No one does that." That would've been my answer too, up until a few weeks ago at the beginning of all of this. The night I appeared on The Voice for the first time, I got a wonderfully written email on my Facebook fan page from a lovely lady in Texas who asked me to come to Texas, promised me that she was perfect for me, mentioned that her blonde hair fell all the way past her "booty" (her word choice, not my own), and that I could "read her like braille." She then mentioned that she and I were meant to be together forever, and asked if I would consider just marrying her. I do admire her for getting straight to the point. So, I got straight to the point and hit the delete button. Regardless, it was a very interesting and eye-opening experience.

2. Friendships are hard to maintain.
By necessity, and sometimes by choice, I lead a pretty selfish life in a lot of ways. My schedule is never constant, my plans change without warning and I'm never in the same place for very long. I've had really good friends tell me that they can't handle the craziness, and that they feel like I take the friendship for granted. I've had many of the same friends decide that the friendship isn't worth maintaining all because of the irregularity of my time. I have no hard feelings towards those people. In fact, I truly respect their honesty. But for those friends who understand that this is a dream I've been pursuing for years now, who put up with all of the nonsense because they know that it means the world to me, for those friends who don't mistake my long silences for indifference, I really do thank you deeply. Thanks for hanging in there, because I know it sucks sometimes.

3. Every once in a while we all need to be recognized on the street while we are picking up dog poop...
Roman emperors used to have guys whose only job was to walk behind them whispering, "you are only a man." If you're a history fanatic and I got some of those details wrong, forgive me. My only point is this: Sometimes, it's good to be reminded not to take yourself so seriously. On 42nd St. and Sixth Avenue, my dog, Jordan, decided it was time to go to the bathroom. And of course, being the good New Yorker that I am, I bent down to pick up his gift. At that very moment, a really nice gentleman very excitedly said... "I saw you on TV! You did an amazing job! Can we take a picture for my fiancé!?" I was flattered, being that this is still a recent phenomenon for me. I also realized it's really hard to be chic with dog poop in your hand. So, I dropped all pretenses of chic, along with the poop bag, and took the picture, and we were all happier for the experience. The moral of the story? Dog poop teaches us humility -- or something like that.

WATCH: Blessing Offor on "The Voice"

Dave Hickey: 'I Will Never Retire From Art or Writing'

October 20, 2014, 1:36 pm

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"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -- Diogenes

Whatever you think of writer/critic Dave Hickey, you have to give him this: He speaks his mind. Retired from "The Art World" but still more than willing to talk about art, Dave has been experimenting using Facebook as his water cooler but feels that as a medium Facebook has defeated him: Perhaps that is because his musings are often too wide-ranging, esoteric and paradoxical to simply "like."

I recently interviewed Dave Hickey via e-mail. I am posting his interview unedited, except that I did add a few French accents and hyphens where he had missed them...

John Seed Interviews Dave Hickey



Dave Hickey

In 2012, you announced your retirement from the art world. In October of 2013 Pirates and Farmers was published. Would it be fair to call you "semi-retired?"

No. I am retired from the art world. I will never retire from art or writing. Art is the way I think. Whenever I can, I fly to New York, stay in a midtown hotel, get a limo, and go look at art. The art never tells anyone that I have been looking at it. Nobody recognizes me.

In Pirates and Farmers you offer the metaphor that pirates - who you favor over farmers - tear fences down. What are a few of the cultural fences that you feel need tearing down right now?

I would like to tear down the vestigial fences that remain from the segregation imposed by "identity politics." The class barrier between blue chip artists and no-chip artists could be removed to everyone's benefit. I think the gentle womb of academia could do with a radical Caesarian. I think tenure should be abolished, and graduate schools, as well. I think the wall between 'high' art and 'low art should be demolished too. Since neither is any better or worse than the other--since everything, high and low, is blended in the same digital fastness, why bother? Counting by my clock, Art was obligated to abandon digital means twenty years ago. Technology is not a raison d'être.

You recently stated on Facebook: "I depend on the first person singular as a badge of modesty" and then went on to characterize yourself as "just this guy writing in the desert." As an internationally known critic and MacArthur prizewinner how modest can you really be?

First, except for a couple of Polish dudes, I am not internationally known. I have never been reviewed in any major publication. I have never had a good review. My books sell 100k copies at best. I don't get invited to book fairs. My writing is grounded in Victorian belle lettres, in Ruskin, Lamb, Carlyle, DeQuincey and Dickens. Out of tune with the times? Ya' think. I have six new books about art criticism on my desk. Having writ on water, I am not mentioned in any of them. My phone doesn't ring.

About the MacArthur award? I think it's bullshit. I was grateful for the honor, since it measures the respect of one's peers, but the money was crass, and condescending. I don't fucking do money. I make a living. The whole inference that I couldn't support myself made me look vulnerable, since the idea of supporting oneself is the first prerequisite for an independent critical voice. If you can't support yourself, they can touch you, so you maintain solvency. Now, everyone sees me wallowing in the largess of a poncey foundation, and I have hitherto been free, beholden to nothing and to no one.

I am Dave the Writer--no foundation--no institution---no artist friends---no connections---and no family. I write words and I am not a public servant. I want to be a pure because I do not believe, and I do not belong. So I got this award. I got this new constituency of dudes and dames on the dole. I got this tainted money that I used to pay off my wife's student loans, to buy her some cool stuff, and to refine my game of Texas Hold'em. Five years later, I was trying to put up a giant piece of art-graffiti under the Westside highway in Chicago. It was part of a sculpture show. The alderman went ballistic. The mayor went ballistic. I called up the MacArthur to curry a little hometown juice. The Foundation said, No. We can't help. We don't do that sort off thing. No, no, no, no, no, and don't call back. Today, I like my Peabody Award way better. It looks like a plus size penny.

Neurological research is discovering the mechanisms by which a viewer's brain interacts with art works, including intense reactions that are precognitive (sophisticated interactions with art happen before we analyze them). Have the past decades of art criticism put the cart before the horse by championing the primacy of language and text over visual understanding and aesthetic empathy?

Art starts where language stops, where the word stops and the gesture continues. Language is easy. Theory is easy. Critique is very easy. Art is very difficult. I have been saying this for fifty years. I majored in theoretical linguistics in graduate school to learn my palette, as a painter might study color, but also to learn where language stopped and the mystery began. The mystery of writing, I finally decided, resides in the phonotext--in the music we hear as we read---the sounds and silences. Since most people don't hear this music, I will always be an acquired taste. Also. I am less a critic than a theorist. The simple decision to write about something is an evaluative gesture. Then I theorize about that conditions under which the art might sustain itself in vogue.

You certainly aren't alone in disliking Jeff Koons, who makes pieces that you feel "... just stand there under the Christmas tree, dead out of the box." Have you read Jed Perl's piece on Koons in the New York review of books?

Jeff Koons manufactures objet trouvés. Robert Gober manufactures objet trouvés. They are oceans apart. You pick 'em. I find Koons lead-footed. I read Jed Perl's review of Koons: It sounds like a jejune, Manhattan catfight. I can't see why publishing in a periodical publication should mitigate the essential seriousness of what critics try to contribute, but Koon's myopia keeps us gazing down into the cocktail zone. You can't fly a lead balloon, so, if the cards fall right, I think Koons could achieve total oblivion in his own lifetime. His opening game was beautiful but I don't see him managing the endgame that well. He gets over-invested in retro-Fitzcarraldo technological projects. But what do I know? When I was running a gallery in Soho. I hung with Jeff a little in Fanelli's. I was always disappointed in the slow-pitch thud of his wit. So, maybe I find Koons a bit of a pedant. Koons does a lot of things that I like and I hate the art. Robert Gober does a lot of things that I hate, and his art has a diaphanous heart. Go figure.


How do you define beauty in today's art? Or the sublime? Are any contemporary artists achieving either?

Beauty is that which elicits precognitive affirmation. It is an indispensable asset to artists who have embarked upon difficult and transgressive career paths. I would pick DeKooning, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Warhol and Mapplethorpe as artists who needed beauty and managed it. So maybe I'm interested in "difficult" beauty---beauty that flies in the face of "the beautiful." Since the art world today is an amoral clusterfuck, not much beauty is really required. The sublime is beauty for boys---anti-sissy beauty---an irrelevant category in this moment.

You recently stated on Facebook: "I think craft, or working within a craft, is probably over." Why do you feel that way? Don't you think that there are some artists who might just come along and prove you wrong?

That was a stupid, old-guy bullshit thing to say. Craft and technology exist in an extra aesthetic dimension. We can do art with them or without them. My reservation about craft derives from the "Deus ex machina" nature of technique. Lets say you develop a way to make everybody cry, because you want people to cry on this occasion. The question is this: Can I use these devices to make people cry again, not because I care, but just because I can? I would say no. Art making creates a constant demand to subsume technique to the urgency of the occasion, to create more refined technique: fragile meta-techniques of which Edward Ruscha is the master.

You say: "The demotion of Pop Art into Visual Culture is the most outrageous misprision and re-purposing of art in the twentieth century." Can you break that down a bit? Just exactly how and by what process did Pop Art get demoted?

This observation dates me, because, with the exception of Jasper Johns and Robert Indiana, I knew the pop artists fairly well and I found them to be very serious artists. I always found their company very refreshing, very refined and very Beaux Arts. They had taken on the job of redeeming and refreshing popular trash by using premodern genres and imposing the high-art graces of size, scale, color, form, and gesture on popular drivel. When German sociology won the field in the seventies, the image was just the image. Size, scale, color, form and gesture counted for nothing. It was all "picture" for the Germans, so Pop art disappeared into muck of cultural theory. The artists all left town and the kids started collecting Donald Duck dolls. Under the guidance of German thought, art became culture.

As collectors of pop artifacts, I should note, the pop artists sucked. They just didn't do it. Tom Wesselmann wrote hillbilly songs but he knew more about the odalisque than anyone else in New York. Wayne Thiebaud painted cakes but his conversation was all Proust and Joaquin Sorolla, the deft Spanish impressionist. David Hockney painted swimming pools but he was never without an art catalog devoted to some obscure brand of painting--Scandinavian landscape, the last I remember. Ed Ruscha has a good collection of rockabilly records but the images pinned on his studio walls are all 19th century paintings: John Everett Millais, Caspar David Friedrich, and Thomas Cole's "The Course of Empire"---a subject Ruscha would address in paintings of his own, exhibited in Italy, the mise-en-scène of Cole's "Progress."

Roy Lichtenstein painted cold, high-modernist Pointillism. Rauschenberg collected junk, but he liked history paintings. He liked Harnett and Peto who inspired his early work. Rosenquist and Warhol liked fancy drawing and painting from the ancien régime. The last time I was in Andy's brownstone, there were four red-chalk drawings by Dante Rossetti of the blonde Fanny Cornforth. They were hanging in the entry hall on forest-green silk wallpaper: "Marilyns après le lettre." I would suggest that none of these obsessions or enthusiasms has shit to do with "visual culture." As a consequence, soggy-thinking and slovenly- looking stole the birthright of 21st century art.


You seem pretty active on Facebook. What do you think of Facebook as a medium of being in touch and hashing out ideas?

Facebook turned out to be sour gruel. I wanted a Toontown Chautauqua: smart, funny, dry, and just a little chippy. I offered up bite-size bits of wisdom cropped to the attention span of Millennials. I was hoping for responses in that mode. I didn't get them. I tried and tried again and all I got was lame excuses and obsessive money envy. It just didn't work. My present project is to mount a wiki-page to which we all can contribute using our names, and from which we all can all redact anything using our names. My bet is that the page will go black everyday, totally redacted. Maybe a cat picture will survive, but Facebook, as a medium, has defeated me.

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Walkabout: David Garrick and Unexpected Harmony in the Library

October 20, 2014, 2:04 pm

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I don't get around much anymore; not like I used to. Age, children and, yes, a diminishing cityscape are all factors. With once-ample opportunities for aesthetic nourishment in steep decline around town (in direct proportion, seemingly, to the ever-encroaching ascendance of sky-high co-op sales), I tend to stick close to home.

This past Saturday, however, I was reminded of what I've been missing. My brother Mark, bless him, invited me to a staged reading he was participating in of Catherine and Petruchio, a rarely (like, never) performed 18th Century adaptation of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew by the dimly remembered titan of that distant age in British theater, actor-manager-playwright David Garrick (that's him up there gamboling with "The Muses"). Presented by an entity that calls itself "New York's Piney Fork Press Theatre," the reading took place at a New York Public Library branch I'd also never heard of: the George Bruce branch on West 125th Street.

It was a nice autumn day. I took my kids, Lea and Sara, ages eleven and nine. Our first pleasant surprise was the library building itself, a gorgeous red brick and sandstone edifice designed in 1915 by Carrere and Hastings, I later learned - storied architects of the Main Branch on 42nd and Fifth. Down a flight of stairs, the girls and I found ourselves in the most charming little jewel box of an auditorium (our library system, I long ago discovered, has many) with a vaulted mini-proscenium painted a delicious cherry red.

Things only got better. Johnny Culver, the afternoon's impresario, introduced an opening act: "The Firth Sisters." Two unassuming young ladies slipped onstage bearing a guitar and a ukulele, respectively, and proceeded to sing three cunningly disparate songs -- "All of Me," by John Legend; Elvis's "Love Me Tender;" and "On the Street Where You Live," from My Fair Lady -- in exquisite gusts of intricate, effortless harmony; as organic as it was ethereal. The alchemy of setting, sound and sweet, offhand virtuosity was intoxicating. I mean, they were good! I'm hoping to learn more about The Firth Sisters; I literally had to halt them slipping out the door on the heels of their offstage exit to ask for a business card. Both seemed shocked by my request.

Next up: the main event. I don't believe I've ever attended a performance of anything actually written by David Garrick. The play proved a dead ringer for The Taming of the Shrew but shorter -- which was clearly Garrick's goal; apparently Catherine and Petruchio was so successful in its day that it supplanted Shakespeare's original for almost a century in England and for even longer in the U.S. I did find myself wishing at times that someone onstage would break into a song from Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate -- and then Mark suddenly did, tossing out a measure or two from "I've Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua."

I thought Mark was great. Who knew he could handle iambic Shakespeare-ish pentameter with such élan? His commanding Petruchio was downright scary, in a good way. Mark's colleagues were a delightful complement. I'm going to name them all because I can, and they deserve it: Kyle Minishew, Rob Lanchester, Yvette Bedsgood, Terri Matassov, Lauren Wiley, Lex Larson and Gary Martins. The director was Deloss Brown.

The library supplied an extra front row of cushy leather beanbag chairs that my daughters doted on. Not nearly enough of the remaining seats were filled. (Sigh.) Maybe next time.


Click here to read more about: The Piney Fork Press Theatre

Click here to learn more about: The George Bruce Branch of the NYPL

Click here to listen on youtube to: The Firth Sisters

In With the New: Aspen Santa Fe Ballet Marks Seventh Season at The Joyce

October 20, 2014, 2:24 pm

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ASFB performing Nicolo Fonte's "Heart(s)pace," photo by Sharen Bradford

What do New Yorkers love most about New York? The new part.

That could be why Aspen Santa Fe Ballet -- which runs this week at The Joyce -- has developed such a solid fan base among Big Apple balletomanes.

It's not that the company is particularly new anymore. Founded by Jean-Philippe Malaty and Tom Mossbrucker in 1996, the contemporary ballet company has lived long enough to see a whole generation of dancers rise and retire. Nor is it really a novelty in New York: In addition to making several appearances in the Fall for Dance Festival, ASFB is now marking its seventh season at The Joyce in 14 years -- a record for an out-of-state troupe.

"Years ago, when no one had heard of us, The Joyce was willing to give us a chance," said Mossbrucker, the company's artistic director. "Now, it's remarkable how often we meet people in our hometowns of Aspen and Santa Fe who recognize us from our performances in New York."

So what's given ASFB staying power in a city obsessed with all things new? According to Martin Wechsler, director of programming at The Joyce, it's "one-of-a-kind programming that you can't see anyone else perform."

ASFB, as it turns out, is just as passionate about the cutting edge as New York is. While many companies rode out tough economic times with tried-and-true programming, ASFB was busy tapping both established and emerging choreographers to create new works, which now form the bulk of its repertory.

"It's no surprise that people like new things. It's human nature," Mossbrucker said. "By nature, dance is about movement; it must not be held static."

To date, ASFB has commissioned almost 30 works from more than a dozen international choreographers, including such venerable names as David Parsons, Moses Pendleton and Dwight Roden, as well as the more recently up-and-come Alejandro Cerrudo, Jorma Elo, Nicolo Fonte, Helen Pickett, and Cayetano Soto, to name a few.

In the triple bill to be presented at The Joyce, new works by Fonte and Soto represent the choreographers' eighth and fourth collaborations with ASFB, respectively. Jiří Kylián's "Return to a Strange Land" rounds out the program.

"We find the commissioned work to be such a good fit for our company, since it was created for our specific dancers and exploits their individual strengths," Mossbrucker said. "Over the years, with [Fonte and Soto] having created multiple works for us, they have defined our unique aesthetic, and have become part of our family."

Fonte in particular is credited with shaping ASFB's aesthetic, which company literature describes as having "a European sensibility, glossed with American ebullience." A native of Brooklyn, Fonte spent most of his early career with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and then Nacho Duato's Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid, where he received his first ASFB commission in 2000.

"At the time, it was a small company that was in the process of figuring out its identity in the broader American dance scene," Fonte said.

Fourteen years later, the ten-dancer troupe is still small, but according to the choreographer, this has been a source of strength. With a leaner infrastructure, and roots in the adventurous arts communities of Aspen and Santa Fe, the company has managed to firmly establish itself on a foundation that most larger organizations would consider too risky.

"It's done an amazing job of fulfilling its role as a company geared primarily to the creation of new works," Fonte said. "They've been very ambitious in the right way. It's a small company, but that's allowed them to go big on ideas."

Repeat commissions have also allowed the choreographer to go further in his own ideas, he noted.

"When you have the chance to create several works on the same company, you get familiarity," he said. "But it's not just about familiarity -- you have to figure out what's going to be different the next time around. And when you figure out what's going to be different, you grow as an artist."

So what's different about his new work in the Joyce program, "Heart(s)pace"?

"It's bright!" Fonte exclaimed. "A lot of contemporary ballet is quite dark -- dark in tone, and literally dark. 'Heart(s)pace' is lighter. My starting point was compassion -- what it means, and how to convey it on a physical level."

ASFB performing Cayetano Soto's "Beautiful Mistake," photo by Rosalie O'Conner
Meanwhile, the Barcelona-born Soto said that his work in the program, "Beautiful Mistake," was more personally inspired.

"When I started working, I said to Tom and JP: I'm aware that I made two huge mistakes in the last year. I need to work them out," he explained. "I never said what they were, but I allowed the dancers to understand what I was feeling at the time. All that I was going through, all those scary moments -- they're universal as well."

Soto freely admits that choreography is a form of psychotherapy for him, but "beautiful mistakes" are also a major part of his creative process.

"You have to allow yourself to make mistakes," he said. "Sometimes when you're creating, something happens that's unpredictable and it's even better than your original idea."

Now living in Munich, Soto is one of Europe's most sought-after contemporary choreographers, but he enjoys the new expressions his ideas find in American dancers.

"I like working with American dancers -- they try harder; it's their life there," he said. "I think that they see that you're from Europe and they want to prove that they can do your style as well. I never have confrontations with them; they really believe in me. They have more heart."

Trust and open-mindedness may characterize American dancers, but these traits can be harder to come by in American directors, Soto noted. While European companies generally have more appetite for artistic risk, thanks in large part to generous and reliable public funding, many American companies favor a more conservative approach that they believe reflects audience preferences.

"Not Tom and JP, though. They are so uncomplicated," Soto said. "They give you all the facilities and resources to produce; a carte blanche. It's like a little family -- they trust you and that trust is really important for creation."

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet is running at The Joyce from October 22-26. For tickets and more information, visit www.joyce.org.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Chicago Landmarks

October 20, 2014, 2:43 pm

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Text and photography by Lee F. Mindel for Architectural Digest

Inside Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois.

Frank Lloyd Wright traveled to Chicago in search of employment in 1887, a time when the midwestern capital had emerged from the devastating fire of 1871 as a once-again bustling metropolis. Wright would go on to become the impossibly prolific leader of the Prairie School: He completed more than 1,100 designs, nearly half of which were built, and a number of his masterworks were set in and around the Windy City. I recently found myself there on a job as well, and thanks to the generosity of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust was able to visit many of those sites, including Wright's own home in the suburb of Oak Park, the Frederick C. Robie House, and the interior of Daniel Burnham and John Root's landmark Rookery Building. Thank you, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Join me on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Chicago landmarks:

Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois.

Another Wright-designed home across the street from his residence and studio in Oak Park.

Wright's Robie House sits on the campus of the University of Chicago.

The entry to the Rookery Building in downtown Chicago, originally designed by Daniel Burnham and John Root. Wright remodeled the lobby in 1905.

See more images of Wright's masterpieces at ArchDigest.com




More from Architectural Digest:

Frank Gehry's Best Work

The Best New University Buildings Around the World

Stunning Celebrity Living Rooms

Inspiring Bathroom Renovations

State of Art

October 20, 2014, 2:59 pm

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I first came upon Claudia Paneca's work when The Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn hosted one of their first annual open studio events. As I wove through the wonderfully diverse and extremely talented maze of artists, her work stood out because its depth wasn't betrayed by its simplicity. I wondered when director of ID, Lucien Zayan, would give her her own exhibit and it took a few years, but it was well worth the wait.



STATE OF MATTER, Cuban born Paneca's first US solo exhibition, used the time to grow into itself. Devoid of contrivance or pretense, the forms and sculptures all feel organic and recognizable even though they are completely born of Paneca's meditations. Made mostly porcelain, every piece seems to pulsate as it inhabits THE GLASS HOUSE, a greenhouse like exhibition space connected to Invisible Dog. Smartly curated by Gaelle Porte, it's the kind of show that takes you in, making you feel connected on a cellular level to the world you've stepped into.

I really enjoyed being a part of that world, so I asked Paneca how she created it.



What is State of Matter?

State of Matter is a ritualistic meditation to explore the dialectics of matter and non matter through a personal vocabulary of images, writings and symbols. I was inspired by questions like: What is matter? Is conscience a state of matter as some cutting edge scientists propose? What is the essence of a material, an image and the artistic gesture? How does one incorporate more "poetry of Being" into the hyper materialistic society that we live in today?



How did you choose the materials you wanted to work in?

I chose to work mainly with porcelain clay because It fascinates me. All clay has a special memory (the propensity to return to a shape previously held) but that memory is even more present in high-fired porcelain. Clay is a material that carries a lot of information, energetically, historically, symbolically, and I use it as encoded symbolic data through this project. Clay as metaphoric matter. The central piece for the State of Matter exhibition is a ring made of raw porcelain clay on top of a black wood that describe different states of the material: moist, dry, dust. This ephemeral installation is a meditative metaphor of the cycle of life in our own state of matter. All pieces emanate from this central core.

How did the space influence your work?

When I got the chance to my first solo exhibit in a non-traditional space The Glass House ended up being the ideal place to because its a space where the "inside" and the "outside" merged. This project grew from a deep meditation. The black canvas behind the white pieces were a way to incorporate that meditative space from which all the works came to light. The idea that the pieces inside The Glass House will look like specimens growing in a greenhouse was very close to the ideal. I felt like cultivating an interior space in a public place. In sunny mornings the play of light and shadows inside The Glass House takes all the black and white works to another dimension.



After seeing STATE OF MATTER, I thought a lot about the fleeting state of art world. About the legendary critics that are tired of the carelessness with which shows are curated and audiences who instantly forget those artists desperate to glibly impress so they can cash out. Fortunately for us, Paneca understands that the best way to impress is by making an indelible impression. One that poetically reflects our cellular collectiveness and speaks to that which we can all understand but may not be able to verbalize. Its these kinds of shows that keep the state of art strong.

Folk Stalwart Loudon Wainwright III Offers "Lots of Family Material"

October 20, 2014, 3:24 pm

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Having turned 68 last month, the iconoclastic folk singer and frequent actor in Judd Apatow films, Loudon Wainwright III looks sort of like Dennis the Menace all grown up. He's tall, lean, has a receding hairline with a shock of sandy-gray hair standing up from the middle of his head. He was wearing a button-down shirt, blue khakis, colorful socks and cordovan loafers for a one-off concert one recent Saturday in October at the Schimmel Center at Pace University in Lower Manhattan as part of a tour for his 23rd studio album released last month, I Haven't got the Blues (Yet).

A sense of playful menace is in his performance style, too. Like his son, the composer and pop stylist Rufus Wainwright, he seems completely at ease on stage, charismatic but with a soupçon or so of aggressiveness. "Thank you for that smattering of applause," he drawled at one point.

Introducing one of three affecting monologues fashioned from his father, Loudon Wainwright, Jr.'s longtime column from LIFE magazine in the '70s that took its cue from the novel and film Love Story, he misstated the author's name, saying "George Segal." Six or seven voices from the audience immediately called out "Erich!"

"Jeez," he said, as if to remark, "You New Yorkers, give a guy a break." And there you have it, this strange and compelling mixture of assertiveness and vulnerability. Saying the unsayable in his wickedly funny, well-observed folk songs, Wainwright is profane, smart, poking received wisdom in the eye and then grabbing your heart with a tender and devastating truth about life and love, mistakes and mystery.

Fathers and sons are a preoccupation of Wainwright's. One of the most touching songs of his 90-minute mostly acoustic guitar set, "I Knew Your Mother," that he said was written for son Rufus' 40th birthday a year ago last summer, touched upon their troubled relationship and his divorce from Kate McGarrigle, who passed away in 2010 and was part of a legendary Canadian folk duo with her sister, Anna, as well as mother to Rufus and Wainwright's other offspring, singer Martha Wainwright.

"I knew your mother, let me be clear.
We were lovers before you got here.
So, don't forget I knew her when.
Love was the means and you were the end."