AND SO IT GOES – Neil LaBute trains his eye on race and gender relationships in Ensemble show
By TED MILLS, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
Not just a blistering treatise on race, Neil LaBute’s “This Is How It Goes” delivers a course on unreliable narrative in theater. Like the skin of an onion, layers of truth pull back as the play progresses until we’re never really sure about the truth of the matter. And Mr. LaBute does this without disappearing inside his own cleverness. Part of the reason lies in the play, but the rest lies with the cast and crew of Ensemble Theatre, assembled for this season’s final show at the Alhecama Theatre.
Category: Writing
OMG, I made the NY Times!
My friend Maury called me today to tell me I was in the New York Times this Sunday. My reply? “Wha-huh?” (I think that’s all I could say.) He was surprised too, and had heard about it himself from Michael Smith, who used to work with him.
So I had a dig around on the website and found the article. It’s about plus-size and odd-size performers in dance companies, written by Claudia La Rocco. Here’s the relevant section:
When the choreographer Larry Keigwin envisioned “Bolero NYC,” he said, he imagined performers of “different shapes and sizes.”
“My objective is to mirror New York,” he explained last fall. “I’m not going to put a bunch of ballerinas on stage imitating that.”
But neither did he look to his peers; instead he held open auditions. The final group, which danced with his company last month at the Skirball Center at New York University, might have been a snapshot of the foot traffic on any given city block.
Differences for civilians are one thing. “Bolero NYC” shared a program with two other Keigwin works, including “Natural Selection,” performed without one of its original dancers, Hilary Clark. Reviewing the show in 2004 in The Santa Barbara News-Press in California, Ted Mills took issue with Ms. Clark’s body, drawing unfavorable comparisons with the “unceasing athleticism” of the other dancers. “Not that you’d know from the publicity or, from what I can tell, most reviews,” Mr. Mills wrote, “but Ms. Clark is a plus-size dancer, and her inclusion in this last work raised questions about Mr. Keigwin’s intentions.” Mr. Mills saw “old-fashioned shock-the-bourgeoisie” tactics at work.
Ms. Clark’s membership in the company ended shortly after that review. When rehearsals resumed on the company’s return to New York, she said, she was not informed. Mr. Keigwin said that the break had stemmed from “a combination of things,” but Ms. Clark is skeptical. She heard through a friend, she said, that Mr. Keigwin wanted “a more classically modeled company.”
Ms. Clark, who now performs with Tere O’Connor Dance, found her dismissal, she said, to be “a result of the larger issue” that “the unfortunate and superficial assumptions of who and what type of body should be dancing diminishes dance’s very potential and range of experience.”
On one hand, to be quoted in the Times is pretty damn cool, and I’ve been tooting my horn all evening. On the other hand, the article sounds like I single-handedly destroyed Ms. Clark’s career. I don’t really think I had an issue with Ms. Clark and much as I did Keigwin.
I don’t have that particular review up online yet, but here’s what I wrote about the one piece.
Mr. Keigwin’s final piece, “Natural Selection” was a “world premiere”, though a version had been performed in North Carolina last month. Not that you’d know from the publicity or, from what I can tell, most reviews, but Ms. Clark is a plus-size dancer, and her inclusion in this last work raised questions about Mr. Keigwin’s intentions. Unlike Ms. Clark’s earlier solo piece, “Natural Selection” didn’t feel tailored to her talents, and the unceasing athleticism of the rest of the company (with dancers being spun, thrown, and catapulted) couldn’t help but focus our eyes on Clark’s weaknesses, instead of allowing us to see her on her own terms.
Plus-size dancers are such a rarity in the field that I doubt most audiences know what to think. Last year’s Faculty Dance Concert at UCSB featured a similar dancer (Summer Lederer) in a work with Catherine Cole, choreographed by Valerie Huston. I mention it only because its attitude towards its performers (Ms. Cole is missing a leg, which Ms. Huston used to great advantage) was uncompromising and rewarding, unlike Mr. Keigwin’s use of Ms. Clark. His felt like a tactic not unlike the shouting during intermission, to afflict the comforted, to render mute the dance critics. To not mention Ms. Clark is cowardice; to write on her without caveats is to risk offence. But so be it.
Make of that what you will.
IN CONCERT: Showcasing Beatles’ range – Tribute presents a chance to hear George Martin’s arrangements live
By TED MILLS, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
April 24, 2007 8:42 AM
There was nothing stuffy about the way The Beatles approached classical music. They might have been flag-bearers of youth culture in the ’60s, but their hunger for an ever-widening sonic palette never led them to separate themselves from musical history. And with George Martin as producer, a former classical student who could knock out complex arrangements as The Beatles could melodies, the band indulged in copping licks not just from Chuck Berry, but also from the compositions of Vivaldi and Stockhausen.
So when a crack Beatles tribute band, backed by the Santa Barbara Symphony, played the Arlington Theatre on Saturday, there was nothing of a concession about it. This wasn’t the Longines Symphonette Society plays “A Hard Day’s Night.” This was an exceedingly faithful recreation of a mostly studio-bound oeuvre, and something that, even if they had not decided to stop touring in 1965, the Beatles may not have been able to pull off, had they wanted.
MOVIE REVIEW: Worth turning off
April 20, 2007 12:00 AM
“The TV Set” takes on prime time TV, and misses
By Ted Mills
Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence Kasdan (“The Big Chill”), has never gotten a fair shake in Hollywood.
His 1998 film, “Zero Effect,” was originally all but ignored, but has slowly gained a cult following by those lucky enough to have seen it. “Orange County” turned out to be the one Jack Black comedy nobody went to see. And Kasdan directed episodes of the ill-fated but cult-followed “Freaks and Geeks,” before it was cancelled.
Some of his apparent bitterness comes across in “The TV Set,” which takes on prime time TV much like “The Player” or “The Big Picture” took on the studio system.
But maybe “The TV Set” isn’t bitter enough. There’s little rage directed at a system designed to reward mediocrity. Nothing stings as it should, even though all the pieces are in place.
MOVIE REVIEW: This ‘Fuzz’ is sizzling: “Shaun of the Dead” writers return with winning cop parody
By Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
April 20, 2007 10:32 AM
In 2004, “Shaun of the Dead” successfully transplanted the George A. Romero-spawned zombie genre, setting it within London’s slacker pub culture.
Unlike the minds behind most parodies, “Shaun’s” Edgar Wright (writer, director) and Simon Pegg (writer, actor) loved the genre they were ribbing, and they never let humor get in the way of good filmmaking. To this end, “Shaun” can be counted among the best of the zombie-film genre. Their latest collaboration, “Hot Fuzz,” does the same for the buddy-action film.
Pegg plays it straight this time as Sergeant Nicholas Angel, a London cop so good his superiors reassign him to a rustic village just so he won’t make the rest of the Metropolitan division look bad.
Sound Bytes: This Week’s Music Review
April 20, 2007 11:25 AM
ARCADE FIRE
“Neon Bible”
MERGE RECORDS
After their monumental, romantic debut “Funeral,” Canada’s Arcade Fire seem to have reached inside themselves for their more muddied follow-up, “Neon Bible.” There’s still beauty here, but it’s of a dark, velvety variety. Songs such as “Windowsill” and “My Body Is a Cage” start small and build outward, yet rarely find a catharsis.
Only “No Cars Go” hearkens back to the sound of “Funeral,” with piles of strings and brass and a frontal drum assault. Win Butler’s lyrics remain dour, but look for that ever-elusive transcendence. On “Neon Bible” that lights seems even further away.
OF MONTREAL
“Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?”
POLYVINYL RECORDS
“C’mon mood, shift back to good again!” sings Kevin Barnes on Of Montreal’s eighth full-length album. Main man Barnes manages to do so, as he mashes together disco-rhythm riffs with a psychedelic’s penchant for layered vocals and flowery instrumentation. This helps to cover lyrics of depression, suicide and rejection in a very jolly way. Recorded in Norway and Barnes’ hometown of Athens, Ga., the album is more a Barnes solo project than previous works. The album’s centerpiece is the 11-minute “The Past Is A Grostesque Animal,” a rambling rant about, well, who-knows-what, backed by Neu!-like electronics and a looping, cooing male chorus. If this is Barnes truly going off the deep end, then listeners will feel inclined to dive in, too.
THE FALL
“Reformation Post T.L.C.”
NARNACK RECORDS
This is The Fall’s 26th official album in a 30-year run that has seen only one constant — lead vocalist Mark E. Smith’s caustic voice and enigmatic lyrics. The 2006 touring band — three good-to-go Yanks and one Greek wife on keyboard — unfortunately are undone by a studio recording that can’t match the sonic palette of 2005’s “Fall Heads Roll.” So we get a bit too many muddy jams, such as “Fall Sound” and “Systematic Abuse,” the obligatory cover (Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever”), and studio goofs, “Insult Song” and the interminable “Das Boot.” If only more songs sounded like “Coach and Horses,” two minutes of tight riffery and time-travel lyrics. But, alas, they don’t. Now don’t worry, with The Fall, wait a year and the next album may be a masterpiece.
IN CONCERT: Not Bach, but British rock – Pops concert backs Beatles songs with orchestra
By Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
April 20, 2007 9:58 AM
“He’s unlike any composer. He’s just…very British.”
Martin Herman, a professor of composition and electronic music at Cal State Long Beach, is not speaking of Elgar, Holst or Vaughan Williams. Instead, he’s singing the praises of George Martin, Beatles producer and arranger. Though the Fab Four wrote the songs, it was Martin who provided the backing and arrangements for “Eleanor Rigby,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “A Day in the Life” and many more.
On Saturday at the Arlington, the Santa Barbara Symphony will showcase the music of The Beatles in “The Classical Mystery Tour,” the third Pops concert of the season.
IN CONCERT: The City of Austin’s Powers
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
April 20, 2007 9:56 AM
“You can see as many live bands in Austin in one night as in two weeks in Los Angeles,” says Peggy Jones, the programmer and founder of Sings Like Hell, the Americana music series that has reached its 10-year anniversary at the Lobero.
To make it 10 years, though, Jones has had to live in the center of American music. Since 1999, she has made the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas, her office. Her work hours have become 5 p.m. to closing time.
Any band worth their sweat passes through Austin, and Jones helps divert some of the best to Santa Barbara. The result is Sings Like Hell’s broad menu of Americana.
ONSTAGE: Dancing with backbone
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
Theatre UCSB’s spring dance concert features the work of faculty choreographers and cream-of-the-crop seniors in its six parts. At left is a scene from “Bone Whispers,” choreographed by Tonia Shimin. PHOTO COURTESY OF THEATRE UCSB
April 13, 2007 9:37 AM
Looking at the title of Theatre UCSB’s spring dance concert, “From the Backbone Forward” — opening tonight at UCSB — one might wonder where the phrase comes from. It’s not from a choreographer’s advice or a movement technique, oh no.
“I thought that was a good way to describe all these pieces,” artistic director Stephanie Nugent says. “In one way, we’re all moving forward (artistically). But it’s also a way of talking about the movement of a dancer through space.”
Themes of birth, development, and heritage flow through the six pieces comprising “Backbone.”
Paavo Jãrvi – Conducting Electricity
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
April 13, 2007 12:00 AM
It could be argued that the Estonian capital of Tallinn should evoke the same response in music lovers as Prague or Vienna. The Tallinn Conservatory gave the world at least one famous living composer, Arvo Pãrt. The city also produced the musical Jãrvi family, including Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conductor Paavo Jãrvi, who brings his baton to the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday night, in an event sponsored by CAMA.