COOKING WITH JANE: HOPE STONE PUTS THE COOKING SHOW BACK ON THE STOVE

Penny Tschirhart, Susan Blair, Alicia Moore Chew, and Lindsey McGill in The Cooking Show

Photo by Leticia London

Imagine Carol Burnett as a post-modern dancer, now add a touch of mother Teresa, and you get Jane Weiner. Since arriving on the scene Weiner has consistently cranked out a steady stream of compelling dances. Her opus on all things eatable, The Cooking Show, is back on the stove. This wild and crunchy romp comments on everything from the mind-numbing silliness of weight- loss commercials to American’s love affair with the stuff of their sustenance. There’s even a little romance with a piece of meat. In between food fights there's a compelling and hilarious dance.

She’s gathered her favorite group of savvy dancers/performers including, Susan Blair, Bonnie Boykin, Janie Carothers, Alicia Moore Chew, Amy Ell, Siri Ell, Christian Holmes, Jim Lawrence, Lindsey McGill, Joe Modlin, Erica Sandberg and Penny Tschirhart with a special guest appearance from Ibiza Restaurant’s Chef Charles Clark, pianist Vinhlac Stephen Tran, as well as students from the Kid’s Play Ensemble. Between donut gobbling, cheeto stomping and flour flinging, we found a chance to chat. Forgive the food puns—the willpower weakened.


The Cooking Show was a smash hit last time around. Is this a reheat or did you redo the recipe?
It’s a re-heat, but I added quite a few new ingredients.

There’s a good amount of food flying in the show. You seem like a bit of a troublemaker. Were you the kid in the cafeteria that started the food fights?
Yes. I was. I remember standing in the corner a lot.

Food and Dance. How do those words go together?
They are both a huge part of my life.

At one point it looks like Amy Ell has a love affair with a piece of meat? Care to comment?
Amy Ell is a fabulous actress. Her use of subtleties also amazes me. She plays in a coy and smart way using just the right amount of energy with her character to keep her reactions both believable and a surprise. Here is a devout vegetarian shaking it up!

There’s one serious section of the dance. Talk about the down side of food.
I see it all over, so many girls especially unsatisfied with themselves. It runs rampant, “look like this or that’” or otherwise you just don’t fit. We get messages to feel bad about ourselves from movies, TV, and Magazines, which causes this low self-esteem epidemic.

Somehow you manage to snag the best dancers in town. How much of the cooking do you let the dancers do?
I come in with set movement phrases, but they are so good with my movement, that I get to mold and re-shape. I love it when they take liberties and show their flavor. The partnering always happens when everyone in that section is there and I think, “Who would be the neatest/coolest to move thru the air right now.” So I need them, and their energy. They also add so much commitment and passion that very soon the movement and the pieces are their own.

Aren’t rehearsals a bit messy?
We usually wait until very close to show, because yeah, we are really messy.

How did you get the idea of combining Betty Crocker and opera?
I have Alicia and her wonderful ability of making the serious dramatic and humorous. With her sense of trying just about anything I throw her, I thought it would be fun to take the back of a peanut butter cracker wrapper and put it to a Gregorian type chant. “Blessings to Julia Child” came from the actual ingredients and Alicia’s very funny side,

Inquiring minds want to know: are the dancers really eating the donuts?
Come and find out for yourself.

Do you, can you, cook?
If I put my mind to it, yes, but I very barely have a mind at the end of the day. I have a great guy now that cooks real nice, so I am treated to that on a rather frequent basis and that is swell.

What’s your next dish (piece)?
My next piece is called See Me. I want to use a blind person, and a very young child, my company, and Terrence Karn. No pun intended, but as much as I love The Cooking Show, I long to sink my teeth into this piece.


Hope Stone presents The Cooking Show on November 5th at 8 p.m. & November 6 at 2:30 p.m. at the Cullen Theater Wortham Center. Tickets are $25, and if you bring non-perishables (5 items minimum) the cost is $20. Call 713-526-1907 ext. 1 for information and reservations.

Artists Caring about Health Care: Potboiler Artists for Change presents an evening of dance music and theater

Rebecca Valls in Red Square

Since closing Chrysalis’ doors in 2005, Choreographer turned activist Linda Phenix, has found a new mission to focus her artistic mind upon. She’s gravely concerned about health care—or the lack there of—in our country today. To that end, she’s gathered a group of equally concerned artists to present an evening of work addressed the growing crisis of health care.

DH: How urgent a crisis in this?
LP: Oh, it is a crisis for sure! In addition to the 45.8 million uninsured, estimates put an additional 45 million as underinsured. In addition, people with employer-based coverage are feeling more insecure. Lose your job, you lose your health insurance. Also, more and more corporations are passing through health care expenses to their employees.

We will have national health care in our lifetime. We will have to because the current system is not sustainable; in fact it is imploding before our eyes. Like others passionate about this problem, I would like to speed this up to eliminate the hardship that many Americans are experiencing in our current system.

However, this will not come from the top down. A majority of our elected senators and representatives have been co-opted by the health insurance lobby. Politicians receive affordable health care insurance provided by the American taxpayers, but they worship at the altar of the for-profit health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies. But, there is some hope on the horizon. There is a bill in the house with about 50 representatives who have signed on in support of it. The bill, HR 676, is also known as US National Health Insurance Act. But, this bill will need support from “the people.”

DH: How did an evening of artists doing work on this subject gel and how did you find like-minded people to participate?
LP: I approached a lot of performing artists who go to my church with whom I have worked on projects, and know they have a special interest in social justice issues. I also pulled in some of my former dance buddies for the same reason. It was important to work with artists who have an interest in the project and time to commit to it.

DH: How will the evening work?
LP: Stories representing what is happening to lower and middle income are told through dance, songs, monologues, skits, etc. Some of the stories are horrific, especially 2 that represent the working poor. And it isn't just people without insurance we will hear from or about. One of the most powerful stories is about a woman with cancer who is living a hellish existence with her insurance company that won't cover this and won't cover that, and when she complained to the state of Texas, she was told that the insurance company was "in the right."

While the pieces are separate, we put them together to create a flow that is different from a repertory concert. The show starts out light and fun and becomes more serious as the stories emerge. Live music by singers and instrumentalists provides a powerful glue to link the pieces.

DH: What can audience members expect to learn?
LP: They will learn why our system is collapsing and about efforts to change it with comprehensive reform. They will learn about Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) as a reference resource to become educated about the health care crisis. This research-based organization of physicians has been hard at work on this issue for about 20 years. The audience will also learn about what is happening at the state level through the organization Health Care for All Texas.

DH: How is art, as in dance, music, and theater the best way to learn about all this?
LP: Art reaches and teaches people in one way. Power point presentations reach and teach in another way. Both approaches are valuable, but some people respond better when they learn about something through art.

DH: What myths (lies perpetrated by the health insurance industry) are debunked in this show?
LP: One such myth is that poor people can get Medicaid. It’s not so easy to qualify. We will hear some stories about this. Another myth is that the for-profit health insurance industry contains costs through competition. This is the biggest lie ever! Health care costs have been driven up by the health insurance industry.

DH: How does age factor into the picture?
LP:ob lock is a serious problem for the 50-plus crowd. If you are 50 and you have had a serious or chronic illness, there is a good change you will experience job lock, defined as staying with a company just for the health insurance. It makes it hard to make a move. In fact, employers don't want to hire sick people because it increases their health care costs.

DH: What does all of this say about the moral integrity of the health insurance industry?
LP: What is going on in this country with regards to health care is immoral beyond belief. We have CEOs of health insurance companies making as much as $47 million per year. How do they pull down these salaries--by doing everything possible to deny coverage to sick people!

We have the most incredible administrative waste with 1500 private insurers, not to mention the increase in administrators to deal with the companies in our hospitals’ and doctors’ offices. We have investors making money off of this too. Health insurance company profit margins are extremely high. How do these guys maximize profits? They avoid insuring the sick.

DH: Why do we still have this system?
LH: We have this system because we seem to think that market place practices can be applied to everything. Well, the market does wonderful things if you need to buy a house, a car, a VCR, a dress, etc. Managed care and all the other host of cost-saving schemes that have been perpetrated by the health insurance industry have driven up costs while making life miserable for many Americans.

Did you know that we spend more in the US on health care than every other developed country? Yet, we get so much less for our money. Part of the why is about Americans themselves. We can’t blame all of this on insurers and politicians. We have to ask ourselves the following: Is health care a right or a privilege?

DH: The evening is not all performance. What’s the lecture about?
LP: Joe Bak will give a short talk in the second act to help people understand the complexities of our current system. Dr. Bak knows this stuff inside and out and is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and Health Care for All Texas.

DH: Will there be any practical advice on what to do about all of this?
LP: People will leave with suggested action steps. Hopefully we will fire up a lot of folks.

DH: How does the show end?
Mary Ann Pendino’s monologue closes the show. It is a killer momen, a true, gritty, story that takes on point blank the immoral practices of private insurers. Pendino's piece is "an elephant in the living room” moment.


Uncovered: The American Health Care Story
a performance of true stories about the U.S. health care crisis
By Potboiler Artists for Change-a Coalition of Houston Artists
Sunday, October 30 at 7 PM at Barnevelder Movement Arts Complex, located downtown at 2201 Preston Street
Contact Linda Phenix 713-975-7218
drjsbak@airmail.net

Reshuffling the Deck: Merce Cunningham Performs at the Wortham Center

Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Photo by Tony Dougherty

The logic of one event coming as responsive to another seems inadequate now. We look at and listen to several at once. For dancing it was all those words about meaning that got in the way. Right now,
they are broken up.
they
do not
quite
fit,
we have
to shuffle
and deal
them out
again.”
-Merce Cunningham, Changes, 1968

Merce Cunningham, master of change and chance, altered the terrain of modern dance forever. If Martha Graham is the mother of modern dance, Cunningham is the rebellious child. Cunningham was a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1939-1945. But, by 1952, when Cunningham launched his first dance company, no trace of Graham could be found. Clearly, Cunningham paved the way for post modern dance.

His early experiences in the I Ching grounded the role of chance in his work, which, some 200 pieces later, is still active. Employing chance gave Cunningham a way to override habit and create fresh relationships between movement, music, and visual art.

I came of age as a dancer when Cunningham technique was the mainstay in training. Its emphasis on uprightness and mathematical structure appealed to my preference of artifice- free dance. Cunningham freed dance from the confines of story, narrative structure, meaning, and reliance on music. A generation of choreographers, including myself, benefited from this particular set of freedoms. Dance was finally free to be itself. Many things can happen all at once. Even the viewer was freed from the sometimes difficult task of “figuring it all out.”

Cunningham may well be considered the greatest living choreographer, if not artist, of our time. I’m not alone in that opinion; Cunningham has won almost every major award including the National Medal of the Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, and a MacAurthur Fellowship. No other artist has embraced technology, chance, and uncertainty like Cunningham. He set the standard for experimentation at every front in dance.

He began collaborating with new music legend, John Cage, in 1944. Their personal and professional relationship continued until Cage’s death in 1992. He’s collaborated with the giants of abstract art including Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Frank Stella and Jasper Johns. Cunningham calls the set element of his work, “décor.”

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC), on their 4th Society for the Performing Arts visit to Houston, will be performing two seminal works in Houston. Ground Level Overlay (1995) and Split Sides (2004). These two works provide a perfect entry into Cunningham’s world for any dance lover. There’s no one way to look at a Cunningham dance. A complex layering of movement, music, décor, and costume creates a dynamic whole. There is no message—only a rich and varied experience.


The first work on the program, Ground Level Overlay was developed using DanceForms, a computer choreography tool Cunningham began using in 1991. DanceForms was developed by a joint project between the computer science and dance departments at Simon Fraser University. Choreographer and computer scientist, Thecla Schiphorst, tutored Cunningham on the program and he has been using it successfully ever since.

DanceForms makes the work even more rhythmically and technically complex as the program is capable of making movements that dancers cannot actually do. The dancers need ample time to get the movement into their bodies. “DanceForms 1.0 is both a powerful choreographic tool, and an interesting device for archiving movement phrases (or even entire dances). It presents the moving body in a built domain whose possibilities are limitless, and this challenges dancers to extend their movement potential to incredible virtuosity. It has deeply influenced the way that Merce builds movement, and the way that his dancers locomote through space,” states Cunningham dancer Jonah Bokaer.

Cunningham’s dances are known for their cool detatched feel. But, according to MCDC’s archivist, David Vaughan, Ground Level Overlay is a highly dramatic work that conveys a “something happening in the streets, urbane feel.” Although the movement for Ground Level Overlay was developed using DanceForms, Cunningham still goes into the studio to teach the dancers the old fashioned way. At 86, Cunningham is still active in every aspect of the company and gets around with the aid of a wheelchair, walker, and holding on to the barre.

The décor is by Leonardo Drew, an African American sculptor, who had never done previous work for dance or theater. Cunningham was intrigued with one of Drew’s sculptures he noticed at a friend’s house. Shortly afterwards, he invited Drew to do the décor for the piece. Drew had never even seen a Cunningham dance before.

There’s always a good story behind the music in any Cunningham piece. The music was recorded in a two million gallon water tank at Fort Worden in Port Townsend. The tank, known as the “The Cistern Chapel,” boasts a reverberation time of 45 seconds and has a nearly perfect evenness in tone quality. Musicians Stuart Dempster, Takehisa Kosugi, and Christian Wolff will be playing live, interacting with these taped recordings, creating yet another layer of sound.

Chance plays a substantial role Cunningham’s Spit Sides, the second work on the program. There is two of everything in this piece: two separate dances, two sets of costumes, two separate decors created by two separate visual artists, and two lighting plots. And, let’s not forget, music by two major rock bands, Radiohead and the Icelandic group, Sigur Ros. A roll of the die will determine what dance we see first, with what décor, and so on. There are 32 combinations possible. The dancers, used to a life of uncertainty, are ready to perform either dance in an instant.

Unfortunately, Radiohead and Sigur Ros will be not performing live as they did at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2004. Dempster, Kosugi, and Wolff will be playing Radiohead and Sigur Ros’s music live.

Cunningham himself will be on hand with the die to determine the order of the evening. The dancers will find out at that moment what dance comes first. Cunningham dancers are old hats at last minute decisions. It’s customary for the dancers learn of their costumes, décor, and music for the first time on opening night. The dancers rehearse in silence. The whole evening comes together for the audience.

One set of décor is by a young photographer, Robert Heishman, who participated in a workshop with the company’s then general manager, Trevor Carlson, in Kansas City. Heishman was still in high school at the time. Carlson was so impressed with Heishman’s work that he showed it to Cunningham and the rest is history. The second set of décor is by London-based artist, Catherine Yass. “It’s one of the funniest dances Cunningham has ever made with lots of variety in the choreography,” states Vaughan.

According to author Roger Copeland, Cunningham has single-handedly modernized modern dance. This octogenarian is still shuffling the deck, making dances that challenge our brains, and rocking the status quo.

SPA presents The Merce Cunningham Dance Company on Friday, October 21, at 8 p.m. at Wortham Center’s Cullen Theater. Call 713-227-4SPA or visit http://www.spahouston.org/.

Broadway Ballerina: Krissy Richmond Returns to Houston for Chicago

Krissy Richmond in Chicago

Ballerinas on Broadway? It was a “why not” situation for Krissy Richmond, a former Houston Ballet principal (1980-1993). Richmond returns to Houston for the TUTS production of Chicago. She plays Caitlin Hunyak, the Hungarian scapegoat, and the only woman in the show who truly did not kill her husband. With choreography by Fosse, Chicago is a virtual feast for an ex-ballet dancer.

Houston may not be Richmond’s home town, but it’s where she honed her dancing chops. While dancing at Houston Ballet, Richmond danced a number of choice roles in The Sleeping Beauty, Peer Gynt, Bartok Concerto, and others. She also worked closely with Christopher Bruce and danced in Trey McIntyre’s early works. “I danced every role in Nutcracker except Clara,” remembers Richmond.

A chance meeting with Broadway legend Gwen Vernon changed Richmond’s life forever. Vernon originated the role of Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway. Ben Stevenson brought Vernon in to teach jazz classes. Vernon encouraged Richmond to take a stab at a Broadway career. She also put her touch with the best singing teachers, because, as Richmond recalls, “you have to be able to sing.”

It was a long process and it did take a while for Richmond to gain confidence as a singer. “Now it feels just like something else that I do. I was fascinated by singing because it so different than dancing. You have to relax everything that you have been told to hold on to.”

Acting in musical theater is also significantly different than ballet acting. Richmond benefited from an acting teacher who was also a dancer. “Everything is very external. It’s all from a dance point of view. I had do let go of all of that, and learn to just ‘be.’”

Richmond landed a job straight away in the touring cast of Phantom of the Opera and she’s been working steadily every since. In 1999, she made her Broadway debut playing the Queen in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and went on to play Roxie Hart in the national tour of Chicago. She was cast in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You. “I got to wear a Chanel suit and that was fantastic.”

According to Richmond, Chicago shows off Fosse at his best. Fosse’s complex jazz technique, derived from the work of Jack Cole, provides a growth opportunity for any dancer. “I loved it at first, but I didn’t think that anything would come of it; I just had a passion for Fosse’s style.” Richmond will be teaching master classes at the Houston Ballet Academy. “Fosse loved ballet dancers so much; it’s a good idea to share this wonderful technique with them. Young dancers don’t realize that they have options other than being in a ballet company.”

As a true Broadway gypsy, Richmond isn’t certain on her next step. Before her Broadway days come to a close she would like an opportunity to play Sally Bowles in Cabaret. At the moment Richmond is thrilled to be back in Houston. “I am so excited to be back; Houston will always be my home.”

TUTS presents Chicago on October 11-23, 2005 at Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby. Call 713.558.8887 or visit http://www.tuts.com/.

Ko Murobushi Performs in Houston/ Breaking Boundaries with Butoh by Choy Su-Ling

Ko Murobushi in Handsome Blue Sky

NOTE: Ko Murobushi was orginally scheduled to perfrom in New Orleans as part of a five-city tour. Due to the complications of Katrina this extroadinary artist has ended up in Houston performing at Barnevelder on Wed, Oct 12th. I contacted my sister in the blogosphere in Malaysia, Choy Su-Ling, to see if she had anything to say on Butoh. Luck for us, she did.

Choy Su-Ling describes herself as a full-time part-timer. She is an arts contributor to The Star (an English daily in Malaysia), a Mass Communications lecturer at Taylors College for Universiti Sains Malaysia's undergraduate programme, and a Ph.D. student.

Su-Ling has a Performing Arts Minor (Dance, Theatre, Music) with University Malaya (UM), played Di Zhi (Chinese flute) for the university's Classical Chinese Orchestra, and performed with KESUMA, UM's cultural centre for Malay dance. She also studied jazz and tap with the Federal Academy of Ballet.

In addition to her duties at The Star, Su-Ling blogs on Break-a-Leg. I had the great pleasure of sharing an apartment with Su-Ling this summer during my fellowship at the Institute for Dance Criticism at ADF. We share a passion for dance, blogging, and potato chips.

As one of Malaysia’s few dance writers, Su-Ling has a unique perspective. I am delighted to have this opportunity to reprint her piece.
-NGW


January, 2004

THE interview with Ko Murobushi was conducted over two days during a weeklong workshop. Then I watched him in a performance last Sunday – that added up to three trips to the Actor’s Studio, Bangsar, in Kuala Lumpur, for me. But then, this man that I “stalked” is one of the best-known Butoh dancers of our time, so you’ll understand my enthusiasm.

Butoh is a performance art that originated in Japan during the post-World War II era. The art was created by Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986) and Kazuo Ono (b 1906). Their early exposure to modern dance, the German neue tanze tradition, and their feelings of post-war Western rejection, drove them to rebel against conventional dance forms and to search for a way of moving that better fit their bodies.

Born in Tokyo on June 14, 1947, Murobushi was a student of Hijikata, and by 1968 he had already studied and performed widely with his sensei in Japan. He has since performed all over the world to high acclaim. He was in Malaysia as part of the weeklong Japan-Malaysia Technical Design Workshop, organized by the Protem Committee of the Malaysian Alliance of Technical Theatre and the Japan Foundation, Kuala Lumpur. The week concluded last Sunday with a Butoh performance – Open with Sand, Draw with Sand – showcasing what the workshop participants had learned.

As I delved into the mysteries of Butoh, I was forced to wipe the board clean and unlearn everything I knew about dance. This is an art form that dumbfounds critics for the values that most people would seek are not the ones Butoh strive for. Defining Butoh is futile, as its meaning has a way of mutating, hence eluding definition. But there are certain ideas that gather around Butoh, according to Murobushi:

“Butoh has as much to do with the mental state and meditation as with physical movements. Its movements are derived from an inner image that the dancer holds during the dance. The movements then come from impulses created by the image rather than conscious choices by the dancer. The Butoh dancer would hold an image or several images in his mind during a performance and then allow the body to freely respond as it will to it or them.”

“The other is the concept of the empty body. It is a feeling of returning to the starting point of a child’s body, which explains much of the movement in this form – slow, crouched – and seeming to constantly rediscover the use of limbs and torso. Like a child, dancers of Butoh empty themselves of lifetimes of movement memory, and remove the existence of their bodies from the social environment.”

The essence of Butoh lies in the mechanism through which the dancers stop being themselves to become or transform into someone or something else. If the image that is held is “sand,” the final goal is not to imitate sand but to become sand and think like sand. The significance is not so much the transformation into sand, but the transformation itself, that is, the fact that the dancer changed. Only in this way can they bring the body back to its original state.

For Hijikata, his inspiration for Butoh goes hand in hand with the literature of his time. He used words to inspire themes of movement in Butoh. This influence is evident in Murobushi as he, too, used a keyword in the dance workshop, “sand.” Each grain of sand has a solid body and yet it has a fluid quality that comes with no distinct form. He used that word as a medium for the dancers to find common movements and to explore what they usually cannot do with their bodies.

Murobushi is a minimalist when it comes to props. But in this choreography performed by Malaysian dancers Mew Chang Tsing, Caecar Chong and Kiea Kuan Nam, he decided to use sand based on an idea proposed by Chong.

“Prior to Malaysia, I had traveled and shared Butoh in several Asian countries. There is always a sense of cultural ‘hybrid-ness’ in these people as during the course of history, cultures go missing and then are rediscovered and born again. Communication with fellow Asians is very interesting as I witness the meaning of Butoh taking its own form. How Butoh is expressed or read may not be as spoken or understood by the Japanese. In that sense, the word itself is deconstructed,” he said.

As far as my memory goes, Butoh was first introduced in Malaysia in the mid-90s by Penang-born dancer Lena Ang. Currently, the only Butoh-influenced dance company in the country is Nyoba and Dancers led by founder Lee Swee Keong.

The performance by the Malaysian trio, although choreographed by Murobushi, saw a new interpretation in this next phase of Butoh in Malaysia. It was interesting to see the word reconstructed as it interacted with the dancers’ identities – all three are Chinese-literate overseas Chinese who are Malaysian in every sense. The lighting and sound technicians picked up on this as they watched the dancers at practice.

The “soundscape” had multi-tracks of Mandarin text, Chinese music with di zhi (flute) solo and other electronically engineered sounds, including the fluctuating thumps of heartbeats. The lighting accompanied the dancers through creation as the front of stage was lit where the dancers were balancing at the edge of a seemingly “new world” (standing uncertainly at the very edge of the stage), while the rest of the stage was engulfed in darkness. Chong and Kiea each carried a bag leaking sand. As it spilled forth the dancers left a trail of footprints.

Chong took a straight path that Mew followed while Kiea drew a winding path. Jade-green light followed the trails of sand and as both path met, the dancers encircled each other, forming a circle of sand at the centre of the stage. Patterned shadows were thrown onto the winding path and, for a moment, the stage looked like it was littered with the scales of a dragon.

Murobushi’s solo performance was a shock to the system, especially for members of the audience attending their first Butoh performance. But then the dance has been known to be even more shocking and disturbing than this, though it may not always be so.

You could feel his pain as he violently threw himself on to the ground and banged his bald head on the floor. You could even feel the disgust and the fierceness of absolute rejection as he crunched loudly on a mouthful of sand and then spit it out. As his screeching got louder and more frequent, the level of discomfort increased.

There wasn’t any choreography or direction in that item. What we witnessed was simply the purer form of Butoh where Murobushi did as he pleased, moved by impulses created by his mental images – none of which we could see.

There was a distinct difference between his performance and the Malaysian trios’, yet both were Butoh. But then, Butoh is supposed to be constantly changing and, in that difference, we have experienced change.

Reprinted from Break-a-Leg
http://break-a-leg.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_break-a-leg_archive.html


The Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex presents a special performance of Ko Murobushi’s Handsome Blue Sky. October 12, 2005, 7:00 PM Tickets: $12 general, $8 students. Tickets are available online at www.barnevelder.org or by phone at 713-529-1819.

High Drama at Houston Ballet with Cranko's Onegin

Barbara Bears and James Gotesky
Photo by Jim Caldwell

Houston Ballet opened the 36th season with a serious tone in New Orleans native Mireille Hassenboehler’s heartfelt curtain talk. She thanked the people of Houston for their generosity and reminded audiences to donate to the United Way’s Katrina fund.

There was no shortage of drama in John Cranko’s 1967 masterpiece Onegin. In Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse, Cranko found a story of ill-fated romance ripe with psychological intrigue. Onegin, easily considered to be Cranko’s strongest narrative work, demonstrates his profound abilities to tell a story in and through dance. And, what a story it is, filled with doomed love, regret, cruelty, and gut-wrenching drama.

Barbara Bears convinced as the bookish, but prone to poor choices, Tatiana. Bears’ nonchalant athleticism provided a perfect match for Cranko’s complex, airborne choreography. Why this aloof girl falls for the snobbish Onegin is part of the mystery of the story. Simon Ball, cool and detached as ever, played up Onegin’s loutish ways with a haunting authority. It was evident from the get go, he was in it for himself. Ball’s steely demeanor made that clear.

Laura Richards bubbled with innocent charm as Olga, Tatiana’s simple, but perky sister. Zdenek Konvalina danced Olga’s fiancée, Lensky, with honor despite a few unsteady moments.

In the final act, when Onegin is reduced to begging for Tatiana’s love, Onegin almost wins forgiveness. Cranko is at his best in the final duet between Tatiana and Onegin. Ball and Bears tore through the rough and jagged terrain of love with no possibility of a future with clipped precision alternating with soulful passion. It was a riveting conclusion of a story about difficult choices.

Tatiana had the final word as she unmercifully tore up Onegin’s letter as he had done earlier to her. He fled and Tatiana was left with the final tear as well. Bears handled the last moments of the ballet with a mature, understated depth. She’s done the right thing and banished the lout, but her pain and loss were palpable.

Reprinted from Artshouston, October 2005