The Dressing

Ever since the Dresser attended Anne Waldman's tribute reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl," she has had it on her list to see the National Gallery of Art's exhibition "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg." The show closes September 16, 2010. On August 28, 2010, the Dresser made her way to the exhibition through throngs of Tea Party folks who were leaving the "nonpolitical" event at the Lincoln Memorial where the Reverend Martin Luther King delivered his "I Had a Dream" speech 47 years on this day. The Dresser feels sure the spirit of Allen Ginsberg was hovering just outside the NGA to witness white men and women, some of them carrying "Don't Tread on Me" flags and dressed in Tea Party t-shirts and occasionally National Rifle Association ball caps, high on the religious rhetoric of conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck and the veiled political comments of presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.

THE HUMANITY OF GINSBERG'S PHOTOS

The exhibition of 79 works displayed in three rooms is comprised of black-and-white photographs. These photos are portraits of Ginsberg and the people he knew, including such notorious literary characters as William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso. The show also included photos of his family members like his paternal grandmother whom he called Buba--Buba who had come to America, learned English, and had written a patriotic essay in her broken English entitled "God Blast America."

Dare the Dresser say that the young Ginsberg in those 1950s style glasses with black frames (he often handed over his camera to friends like Bill Burroughs to have shots of himself taken) looked a lot like some of her own family members? Besides the fascination with his poems "Kaddish" and "Howl" and the weekend she spent in 1980 at a small conference in California, Pennsylvania with Ginsberg himself, the Dresser suddenly realizes the bearded poet (this was always the visage she knew) always seemed more familiar to her than just some celebrity poet--familiar, family, these words both come from a Middle English root meaning "of a household." Nonetheless, Ginsberg was not self-centered. He also captured family members of his friends. Still, these photos of people he only came in contact with because of his friends seemed to validate his own family situation, that is, ordinary people who, like his mother (she was institutionalized with mental problems), wore life on their faces like an open book.

THREADING THE BACK-STORIES

Despite the predominance of male portraits, what impressed the Dresser was the humanity threaded by the running commentary of Ginsberg. In surprisingly legible handwriting, the controversial poet wrote the back-stories of each photograph. For example, a 1990 photo of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan shot in New York City explained how moments after the photo was taken a group of homeless men chased Dylan and Ginsberg out of the small city park because they believed the pair were shooting photos of them.

Clearly some of the plain portraits benefit from the back-story inscriptions. For example, the 1964 shot of an old Jack Kerouac. Ginsberg says this photo made Kerouac look like the late senior Kerouac. And again note how Ginsberg had his eye to his friend's family.

There are also images that speak a world by themselves but clearly benefit from Ginsberg's text. The 1953 drawing room shot of Burroughs and Kerouac shows the Naked Lunch author, eyes closed with hand out to the younger man. Without reading Ginsberg's words, one knows Burroughs is instructing Kerouac with some impassioned counsel. Ginsberg wrote these words which also serve as the title of the photo, "Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945..." According to Ginsberg, Burroughs was telling the On the Road author (On the Road was written in 1951 but not published until 1957) he needed to sever the strangling ties to his mother. Kerouac, who called his mother Memère (which means granny or grandma in French), said his mother was the only woman he ever loved.

One funky photo shot in Tangier serves as a symbolic still life of the Beat Generation that includes Burroughs, composer-novelist Paul Bowles (he holds a camera), and Gregory Corso. In the background are two teenage boys crouching behind these men as if they were eager to catch their fire. However, Ginsberg's text calls the boys shades and said they died young.

Relationships clearly were a theme of importance to Ginsberg who notes on a portrait of Lucien Carr that this was the man who introduced Ginsberg to Kerouac. Further Internet research also informed the Dresser that Carr, who stabbed a man to death--the man had been stalking Carr for years, also introduced Burroughs to Kerouac. (Dear Reader, you might know that Burroughs accidentally killed his wife when he was trying to shoot an apple off her head with an arrow.) Kerouac was nabbed as a material witness in the murder Carr committed and to extricate himself from jail after his father refused to help him, Kerouac married his girl friend Edie Parker (that marriage was annulled after one year). One of the Ginsberg photo shows Jack and Edie on a bed with their feet pointing to an open window. She is sitting up and he is lying down. They look like friends hanging out on a dark day with nothing to do. Nothing to do except let Ginsberg shoot a photo of them.

Overall, Ginsberg had some unusual friends--there are photos of Carl Solomon (the man Ginsberg met during a stay in a mental institution and who figures into the poem "Howl") and Wavy Gravy (a Vietnam antiwar demonstrator and the chief of security at Woodstock). Clearly many of Ginsberg's friends were outside ordinary social boundaries, but so was he.

Continue reading "Photos of the Beat Poet, Allen Ginsberg" »

While critics over the centuries have noted that Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream--written around 1594-1596--was an early work (meaning not as fully developed as, say, his late comedy The Tempest--written 1610-1611), it was nonetheless filled with the genius of its author. Likewise another genius, Benjamin Britten had his fun with this play and turned it into a full-scale opera, which premiered in 1960 at the Aldeburgh Festival. On August 15, 2010, at the Barns of Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, the Dresser caught Britten's opera under the stage direction of Patrick Diamond and baton of Steven Osgood.

LOVE YOU, I DO, & OTHER NONSENSE

Shakespeare's comedy is a complicated story that weaves together the pending wedding of immortals Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian Queen, Hippolyta with the parent-defying teenage hormones-gone-wild love chase of mortals Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Further complicating the story is a fight between Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen Titania who refuses to allow an Indian changeling to be given over to her husband as his henchman. The madcap extra is a group of tradesmen who prepare a play for the wedding entertainment of Theseus and Hippolyta, but accidentally get mixed up with the mischief Oberon has his man Puck exact on Titania.

Britten's opera, which he adapted from Shakespeare with the help of his life partner tenor Peter Pears, cuts out most of Shakespeare's first act. The opera jumps immediately into the fight between Oberon and Titania. The consequence is that an unschooled viewer (meaning someone unfamiliar with the Shakespearean source) has lost the anchoring details of the Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding celebration from which the entire set of complications derives. Therefore when the audience gets to the end of Patrick Diamond's production, one has to either access one's internal file of Shakespeare's summaries to figure out how fine base-baritone Michael Sumuel playing Theseus and able mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti playing Hippolyta got on stage so late in the opera or merely throw up one's hands and mutter, "Who are they?"

COMPLETMENTING THE GENIUS

If one chooses to spend all the time and money it takes to put an opera on stage, it's incumbent, particularly on the director, to bring his or her own genius to the production and not only creatively fill in the gaps for the audience but enhance the work of the original creative team--the composer and librettist. Certainly Britten's overture with its sweeping strum from the harps and odd sliding sound from the violins gives the musical space to do this. How so? Maybe something as simple as a quick dumb show that allows Theseus and Hippolyta to be seen at the beginning of the opera.

There are many aspects of the production that reach toward the collaborative genius of which the Dresser speaks. The inspired but minimal set by Erhard Rom with lighting by Robert H. Grimes includes a steeply raked stage (better for the untiered seating on the first floor of the Barns of Wolf Trap) a light in the shape of smiling crescent moon, twinkling high-intensity stars, a circular staircase where Oberon makes his dramatic entrances and exits, and gauzy curtains that open and close on a circular ceiling rod, a circular space defining Titania's bedroom.

Photo by Carol Pratt

Camille Assaf costume design and Elsen Associates hair and makeup design for the collective set of fairies are both whimsical and artful. All the fairies except Oberon have red hair. Everyone in the magical community is dressed in green. Outfitted in pajamas, the children fairies--in real life they are part of the Arlington Children's Chorus--have untamed topknots that make them look like they get their hair combed once a month, if that. The named fairies--Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, and Moth are dressed as estate maids (short green dresses with frilly white aprons) and use feather dusters. While Oberon wears pajamas, he also wears a silky robe that closes only with a sash. Titania wears a sparking gown that makes her look like a mermaid. Could it be that the costume designer padded--here the Dresser drops in the softer British word--her bum? Other characters, mortal and immortal, wear contemporary clothing including Bottom, who, as leader of the entertainment for the royal bridle pair, sports a Batman outfit.

Continue reading "Complementing the Genius of A Midsummer's Night Dream" »

Thomas Pasatieri's name may not be a household moniker but it should be for those who attend new opera and current day film. The Dresser stands in awe of his record--twenty-two operas and film orchestrations that include: American Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Shawshank Redemption, Fried Green Tomatoes, Legends of the Fall, The Scent of a Woman, and others.

DADDY, DON'T TOUCH ME

On July 24, 2010, the Dresser attended the last performance of Opera Alterna's Capital Fringe Festivalproduction of Padrevia, a one-act that Pasatieri premiered in 1967. The story is drawn from Boccaccio's Decameron and is a tale about a possessive father named King Tancred who is keeping his beautiful daughter Gismonda in isolation at Castle Padrevia. She despairs over her father's attention and is lonely for a suitable companion. She considers taking her life and asks the new gardener Guiscardo to compress poisonous leaves that she will carry in her amulet until such time that she can no longer stand to live. While he does what she asks, Guiscardo convinces her to live and they fall in love. When the jealous father discovers them, Guiscardo is executed and his heart is delivered to Gismonda in a royal court chalice. She mixes the poison from her amulet into Guiscardo's blood, drinks the lethal cocktail, and dies. King Tancred hardly blinks a tear but falls on his daughter's body to kiss her passionately. It's a compact story that suits opera well. In Pasatieri's opera, an actor narrates and three singers enact the tale.

THE MUSICAL CHALLENGES

To date, the Dresser has also seen productions of other Pasatieri operas, including The Women (a one-act premiered 1965) and Signor Deluso (a one-act premiered 1974). She has also seen excerpts done in New City Opera's 2006 VOX showcase of Frau Margot (a three-act opera premiered 2007). What the Dresser knows from experiencing these productions (three out the four were produced by Opera Alterna) is that the neo-romantic music of Pasatieri requires subtle interpretation, particularly in the soprano parts. Having heard the outstanding soprano Lauren Flanigan sing excerpts from Frau Margot in the 2006 VOX showcase of new operatic work (she was also the soprano who premiered the work for the Fort Worth Opera in 2007), the Dresser has tuned her ear to the standard set by Flanigan. While Daniele Lorio, who sings the role of Gismonda, is a capable performer--the acting for her death scene was horrifically absorbing, Pasatieri's music does not seem suited to her capabilities. Even so, there were notable bits of vocal performance that the Dresser enjoyed, including her duet with tenor Siddhartha Misra (Guiscardo). Misra's entire performance was impressively good. Baritone Tad Czyzewski as King Tancred gives a suitable performance as does actor Chris Dwyer doubling in the role of narrator and guard who delivers the bloody heart.

To be fair to Opera Alterna and its artistic director Jay Brock who has a theater not an opera background, the Dresser finds it exceedingly adventurous that this small company has gained the cooperation of such a prolific composer whose work one would not ordinarily be exposed to. Working with the resources provided by the supporting contributors to the Capital Fringe Festival (Padrevia was produced in the Mead Theatre of Studio Theatre, one of the better venues offered to the Capital Fringe Festival) also presents significant challenges. For example, the entire set of five performances of Padrevia was done with an out-of-tune piano. What were Brock's and his music director Jeffry Newberger's options? The Dresser knows that this theater company, like most small performing arts companies, struggles financially. Even if they had a sugar-mommy/sugar-daddy, how easy would it have been to immediately schedule a piano tuner and how well would the tuning have held for that particular instrument (after all, not all pianos are created equally)?

The bigger question for the Dresser was how did the singers manage? While standing around the kitchen of a friend's house last night, the Dresser got into a conversation with a musician and a multi-arts performer. Both veteran performers know the rigor of showing up at an unknown venue with little time to correct deficiencies in the resources provided. Neither the musician nor the singer-dancer thought it was unusual that singers for a low-budget theater production had to put up with a miserably out-of-tune piano. They both said essentially the same thing--each performer has to figure out whom to rely on and do the best he or she can to stay true to the intention of the creative work. The Dresser gets this and understands that a different standard has to be applied in such a situation. Maybe what the Dresser realizes from this casual conversation is that it is possible to create a memorable performance, such as the one Siddhartha Misra managed to achieve, regardless of flawed resources.

Leslie McGrath equates hunger of the stomach with sexual appetite in her poem "How to Wolf a Cook." While the poem spins from MFK Fisher's book How to Cook a Wolf and plays with the Red Riding Hood fairy tale, there is an element of cannibalism that links this poem to Padrevia. In the case of King Tancred, he ends the opera literally feeding off his daughter's lips while she has consumed her lover's blood. Both poem and opera speak to the corruption of innocence.

HOW TO WOLF A COOK

Prepare the mise en scène: lower the lights
and pour from her slim-necked carafe a half glass
of something chilled, astringent. Now let
your ravening gaze travel her nether-curves
as she spoons the stew or ladles the soup
into a shallow bowl and dresses it
with thyme she's torn from the stem.
You notice her thumbprint in the biscuit
as you bite down, a bit of gristle buried
in a chunk of lamb, the potatoes
neither raw nor soft, but to the tooth.
She's in your mouth, wrestling
your tongue into an admission
of hunger--no, need--you'll speak
her words, your breath scented of her resin.
And once you've polished her off, toe to toque,
you'll wipe your trembling mouth on her red cloak.

by Leslie McGrath
from Opulent hunger, Opulent rage

Copyright © 2009 Leslie McGrath

Photo: Nickie Brock

To witness Anne Waldman in performance reading Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," a seminal poem of protest and despair, as well as her own brand of politically driven poems is to ride an emotional rollercoaster of incantatory voices--rabbi, sadhu, American Indian shaman, Gertrude Stein just to name those spiritual leaders who come to mind immediately. After Waldman's July 23, 2010, performance at the 5th & K Street Busboys and Poets, a Washington, DC restaurant chain supporting poetry in a big way, the Dresser asked this performer who Allen Ginsberg called his "spiritual wife," to talk about her incantatory style. Waldman said she studied Indian singing with American composer La Monte Young.

What she didn't say in that brief interaction after a riveting performance that caused sweat to run down her face under the hot lights during a record-breaking day of Washington summer weather was that she practices writing in the style of the Indian raga that builds through repetition and recombination moving in and out of possible climaxes. Also she has played in a gamelan orchestra for some years. There the music is circular, not linear, and the music ebbs and flows and never seems to conclude in the way western music is expected to end.

The format of the 8 pm program (there was also a 10 pm performance and a final performance on July 24) called "Howl in the City," was an hour and a half of introductory talking heads who surprisingly had exciting bits of information (more on that later), a warm-up act by Chris August who is a ranking slam performance artist, Waldman's performance of "Howl" with an effective improvised score by a classical music string quartet led by violinist Matthew Hemerlein (originally the music was suppose to be Lee Hyla's score for "Howl" composed for the Kronos quartet), and Waldman reading of several of her own poems. Judging from the program brochure, which included other performance poets Kenny Carroll, and Venus Thrash, the Dresser suspects that each of the other programs had a different warm-up act. The program co-sponsored by Andy Shallal--owner of Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock under the leadership of Sarah Browning in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art where currently an exhibition of Allen Ginsberg's photographs hangs was funded in part by grants from Poets & Writers and the Alice Shaver Foundation and Passenger Bar.

IN SEARCH OF GURU

What the Dresser knows about Anne Waldman is that she is a surprising combination of opposing ideas and actions. In the early 1980s, the Dresser went on business to Boulder, Colorado, where Waldman lives. To balance the trip (the Dresser had a day job but her night job was poetry), the Dresser called Waldman and asked if they could meet. Generously Waldman invited the unknown poet to her home where she was introduced to Waldman's first husband and baby son. Then the two poets went off to find a yogi guru who was supposed to give a lecture that night. When the guru could not be found, the two went to the Boulderado Hotel for drinks, switching gears from spirituality to hard spirits.

After the experience of Waldman's Busboys "Howl" reading, the Dresser could imagine this slender woman pulling off a scene like the one Stieg Larsson depicts where his character Lisbeth Salander downs two hard-core motorcycle thugs and rides off on one of their Harleys. For "Howl in the City," Waldman wore big jewelry--shoulder-length American Indian designer pieces the Dresser guesses, a large stone ring, and wide bracelet with some kind of large white stone shaped in a bar. Look out, dude, for that heavy jewelry! In the style of New Yorkers (and yes, she grew up in Manhattan), she wore black pants and black-on-black striped top with a long raw silk scarf in black with some white decoration (should the Dresser call that her tallis?). On her naked feet with painted toenails, she wore silver sandals with heels. Dude, the Dresser doesn't know if she kickboxes, but don't mess with her even if she is wearing stylish shoes that barely protect her feet.

The Dresser found Waldman's recitation of the Moloch rant of "Howl" scary. Moloch refers to (1) the Biblical idol in Leviticus to whom the Canaanites sacrificed children and (2) an industrial figure in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a film that Ginsberg said influenced "Howl." There was something about the way Ginsberg's spiritual wife could slide from spoken voice to song, about how she was comfortable pausing to drink some unknown liquid from a white coffee cup between the sections of "Howl" and to stand back to hear the string players work their own mystical set of sounds that said this performer is a powerful being and clearly not a woman riding the coattail of the legendary Allen Ginsberg.

Continue reading "Howling in the Nation's Capital" »

Percussion opens, closes, and leads the way in Peter Oswald's agile poetic adaptation of the Hindu sacred epic The Ramayana, which has been artfully produced by the Constellation Theatre Company and its artistic director Allison Arkell Stockman. Tom Teasley composed the percussion soundscape and delivers a standout performance as the only musical performer. The Dresser, who has acquired a growing interest in percussion composition since hearing Gérard Grisey's "Le Noir de L'Étoile," thinks that what made Teasley's concert of original sounds unusual was that he added scat singing to the mix of drums and odd keyboard instrument called the melodika.

Like Homer's epic poems the Iliad and Odyssey, The Ramayana involves war, an arduous journey, love and honor (or duty versus desire), and the mix between gods and humans. The main character is a blue-skinned god named Rama. The multi-talented and good-looking Andreu Honeycutt portrayed the ideal man-god Rama. His acting, singing, and dancing convinced the Dresser that Rama was a magnet for love and hate, two opposite emotions associated with charismatic leaders.

Equally attractive in theater arts and looks was Heather Haney as Rama's blond wife Sita. While Kendra Rai's costume for Sita, a mix of peacock blue and hot pink would have been enough to keep the Dresser's eye fixed on her, there was something about the intelligent way she moved and commanded the stage that went beyond how alluring the characters of The Ramayana found her. After all, Sita, Mother of the World, is kidnapped by Ravanna, the demon King of Lanka, and even he, a vile three-headed monster, treats her with kid gloves.

While all of the performers were excellent, another stand out performer was Joe Brack as Hanuman, the monkey god. His role calls for physical strength (e.g., he swings from a rope that projects into the audience) but also for a balance between the animal and man-god worlds, which he does with good timing and appropriate corporal movement. When he is tapped to find Sita, and that means he must cross a large body of water, the way he stood up showed how he overcame being a monkey and transformed into a superhero.

Also worthy of note are Anna St. Germain's masks for the monkey troupe and the headdresses of the demons that sport their other heads. A large and beautiful fabric of silky blue stripes is used to create the ocean to good effect.

This colorful two-hour-and-ten-minute show with one intermission performed in Washington DC's 150-seat Source black box theater has been playing to sold-out houses for a number of weeks and will continue to do so until it closes June 6, 2010. The Ramayana was originally produced by the Birmingham Rep in Birmingham, England and then moved on to London's National Theatre. With a touch of Shakespearean mastery and modern day conversational touches including rap, Oswald's script is a mix of one liners, comic quips, and easy-to-follow storyline. The Dresser left the performance feeling like she carried away some of the supernatural energy of The Ramayana.

In Kim Robert's long poem The Kimnama, the poet leads the reader on her journey through India. She mixes the ancient with the current day. In the follow excerpt, she mentions the monkey god Hanuman who has the power to grant wishes much in keeping with the story of The Ramayana.

Tuesday, Mangalvar,
..................... is the day to wear yellow
............ and make charitable donations

of yellow lentils to the poor.
..................... You should never cut your hair
............on a Tuesday.

Instead, pray to Hanuman,
..................... the monkey god,
............to grant your wishes.

On Saturday, Shanivar, you should donate
..................... black lentils to charity.
............Never purchase anything containing iron,

such as a new car, on a Saturday.
..................... Shani is an angry god,
............but you can appease him

if you look at the reflection
..................... of your face
............in a pool of black oil.

by Kim Roberts
from The Kimnama

Copyright © 2007 Kim Roberts

Photos by: Daniel Schwartz

Here the Dresser presents herself as a student and not a reviewer.

On May 15, 2010, composer John Supko and the percussionists Todd Meehan and Doug Perkins of the Meehan/Perkins Duo provided critique to the Levine School of Music composition students of Frances Thompson McKay. The event was funded in part by grants from the D. C. Commission on the Arts and the Randy Hostetler Living Room Music Foundation as well as sponsors of the Meehan/Perkins Duo including Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Black Swamp Percussion, and Pearl/Adams Musical Instruments. The Dresser will say, despite the non-review disclaimer of this essay, that the master class concert offered a remarkable set of compositions with accomplished performers.

Levine School students and faculty played seven works by seven composition students. All of the compositions included percussion. The Dresser will discussion what she learned following the order of composition presentation.

Fantasy for Percussion and Piano by M. C. Starr
In this composition, the piano has a conversation with timpani drums with a few comments from the snare. What is particularly interesting about what Mr. Starr does in this work is that occasionally the pitches achieved by the timpani blend with piano chords. John Supko phrased this as "pitch material of the timpani melds with the piano chords." One of the problems of this piece was how to contain the timpani so it would not overwhelm the piano. Mr. Starr said he had considered using rototoms, tune-able drums that have no shell and are not as loud as the timpani. Supko said he preferred the "Cadillac sound" of the timpani but thought the snares did not enhance the work. Todd Meehan suggested that the timpani drums need to be placed not in front of the piano but to one side so that a better balance of sound could be achieved. Meehan also said that between the pianist and timpanist, a "flexible leadership" needed to be established.

Black Line for snare drums by Aaron Burger
Supko noted the challenge in writing a solo composition for the snare drum. He asked the composer, who was also the performer, if he could "push the rhythmic language of this piece" so that the vocabulary could be larger. Supko suggested going for a mysterious sound that would include softer dynamics that might be made by also using a brush. "How about making one end the stick and the other the brush?" In the conversation between Supko and Burger, the Dresser also realized how inventive the title is. The title refers to a subway line colored black and therefore the composer, a graduating high school senior, was actually giving himself an unusual terrain to explore--was there something dark, sinister, mysterious about the transportation experienced on this line?

Bells for bowed psaltery and percussion by Nicholas Turnbull
At age 13, composer Nick Turnbull collects stringed instruments. Among his collection is a compact zither-like instrument called the psaltery, which he played for the performance of "Bells." To the Dresser, the piece seemed like a medieval folk tune. Supko while taken with the sound of the psaltery urged the composer to use the instrument as a "straight forward melodic agent versus using it to create atmospheric sound."

Fantasy in F-sharp Minor by Michael Yue
(for violin, cello, percussion, and piano)
"Full stick on the grand," professor McKay suggested as the instruments were being positioned for this composition. This was in contrast to Starr's "Fantasy for Percussion and Piano" where the lid of the grand piano was only opened halfway when it needed full volume to balance sound with the percussion. And from the fully exposed piano harp, the Dresser could hear the fluid arpeggios. The music was Romantic in flavor and heavy with emotional content that was unexpectedly complex. The Dresser reread the composer's bio several times. A sixth grader and yes, he looked like an elementary school boy, not even old enough for middle school. Supko cautiously queried, "Have you heard of a minor Neapolitan or a Neapolitan chord because that is what you are doing with some of the chords? The minor Neapolitan chord is something Eric Satie often used and it's a rather sophisticated harmony." No, Master Yue was not familiar with the term. Supko was impressed at the doubling between piano and vibraphone and how the "notes are glittering like stars in the sky." The Dresser thought the string instruments and piano represented Western classical music in this composition while the vibraphones leaned East. After the concert, she spoke with the composer who said that he had travelled to Taiwan and yes, his Chinese background came out in the vibraphones.

Trio Sonata for flute, cello, percussion, and piano by Jules Metcalf-Burton
Supko said something about this composer's composition reminded him of the "idiosyncratic music" of Franco Donatoni. The Dresser isn't familiar with Donatoni but has learned in her Internet search that he worked with the 12-tone scale, which is also what this home-schooled high school junior was doing. The Dresser found the exchange between the flute and violin satisfyingly engaging. One unusual thing is the bowing of the vibraphone. This accent was performed not by the percussion who was busy with the timpani but by the composer. One suggestion was that the violinist might be able to perform that part of the composition but certainly not with the violin bow. Supko also pointed out that the title of the work was misleading since a sonata is a multi-movement work and this was not.

Three Short Pieces for Vibraphone and Piano by Ben Gunby
The consensus from Supko and the Meehan-Perkins Duo was that this delicate and sophisticated work begged for more music. The composer, a sophomore at a DC private school, said he would think about expanding the piece.

Streams for oboe, clarinet, percussion, violin and cello by Steve Messner
Supko characterized this sophisticated composition as having a Steve Reich attitude.

In Cliff Bernier's "Estero Beach," the poet captures the musical voice of nature and how an artist consumes, digests, and writes that down. The poem is an apt homage to this extraordinary master class at the Levine School.

Estero Beach

The voice of the palm fronds
draws its breath from the surf,
the measured exhalations
of waves on Estero Beach,
the cathedral of coconuts
on its bank, cantatas
scored with serranos and limes.
Julio translates the voice
with the nib of a pen
from a chair in a cantina,
the loops of his l's and t's
the stems of olives and figs,
his lyric Tequila
in a shot glass.
Eucalyptus and jacaranda
whisper the rolled r's
of the tide in his ears,
the generations,
the prayer of the surf
hymned by paisanos.
Julio pauses to listen to the voice,
and notes in the layered
rosary of leaves
that compose the pastorals
of the evening
the ascending breeze in the cantina,
the lines on his page,
the tortilla o's of the moon.

by Cliff Bernier
from Earth Suite

Copyright © 2010 Cliff Bernier

Soup? Art? The Dresser is thinking about Lily Tomlin's comedic play on Andy Warhol's cans of Campbell soup. When does what is ordinary cross the line and become art? On April 29, 2010, the Dresser saw Kate Moira Ryan's Bass for Picasso and on May 1, 2010, she saw the exhibition of Picasso's artworks that were selected from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both shows had points of artistic engagement but neither achieves artistic perfection.

FISH AS CENTERPIECE

Bass for Picasso, which runs at New York City's Theatre Row's Kirk Theatre until May 23, highlights a dinner party given by a food critic. The focus of the meal is a whole fish prepared according to a recipe by Alice B. Toklas, the woman who for most of Gertrude Stein's adult life prepared the majority of the great Modernist's meals. The guests and chef in Ryan's play are all Lesbian or gay and they are all in crisis over the partners they have or once had.

Domesticity, not the high life of excess, stays front and center with the visible players. The Dresser says visible because there are sexually precocious children of the food critic Francesca (played by Anita Hollander) and her partner Pilar (Felice Neals) (the children play upstairs out of sight with things like nipple clamps) and the drug-addicted partner of a doctor named Joe. Joe and his partner are supposed to be present at the dinner party, but only Joe makes it to the table.

Central to the story are the friends Kev (Terry Small) and Bricka (Mary Theresa Archbold) who are the first guests to arrive. Kev who is a playwright has a drinking problem. Bricka, as a new widow with a small child, has "in-law" problems. The in-laws want custody of the child their deceased daughter bore. Kev was once Joe's partner and the audience learns slowly that Kev has not come to closure with Joe. Bricka's partner had had an affair with Pilar. Once Bricka realizes who Pilar is, Bricka wants to cause trouble between Pilar and Francesca by seducing Pilar. To further complicate the story, Kev and Bricka seem to be sexually attracted to each other.

ONLY ONE LEG TO STAND ON

Out of this soup of characters and situations, what makes this dark comedy worth digesting and whose story is this? The Dresser was impressed with the flinty light that emanated from Anita Hollander. She plays the food critic who has only one leg to stand on. The other leg, which she removes to menace her unfaithful partner Pilar, is artificial. Yes, Anita Hollander is an amputee who does not hold back. Despite the title that links the food critic and her partner who is an art detective (she authenticates artworks), the story does not belong to them. By the end of the play, the Dresser realized that this is the story of Kev, Bricka, and Joe. They are not only linked by past relationships but also by the play Kev has written at their expense. Did Kate Moira Ryan mean to keep this a secret or did the playwright lose control of her characters?

There are plenty of whacky lines and situations to make Bass for Picasso work better than it does, but only if the director (who in this production is Ike Schambeian, the artistic director of Theater Breaking Through Barriers) had made it possible for these able actors to rise to the campiest kinds of behavior. Felice Neals as Pilar gets the closest to this kind of acting style and the Dresser could imagine her walking out of Picasso's portrait of a man with a lollipop, one of the more striking pieces in the Met's current Picasso exhibition.

THE COLOR OF THE EYES: RED, BLACK, BLIND?

One perverse thought the Dresser had after going through the five rooms of Picassos at the Met was that playwright Kate Moira Ryan and director Ike Schambeian might have benefited from seeing this Picasso exhibit which included "The Blind Man's Meal" (a well known work from Picasso's Blue Period), an illustrated get-well letter from Picasso to Surrealist Jean Cocteau, and a large brass arm that might have been used as an oversized door knocker. However, a visitor to this exhibition also has to understand that the Met has many drawings that don't add up to more than idle doodles from the master who at the end of his life produced multiple drawings every day. Ok, give the Dresser a black eye, but she believes that even Picasso could not mass produce art.

Talking about perversion, Ryan made sure to emphasize what Picasso said to Alice Toklas after she presented her highly decorated cooked fish to him. After exclaiming how beautiful the fish looked, he said that she should have presented the decorated bass to Matisse and not him. In other words, her artful fish spoke more to Matisse's style than to Picasso's. With the title Bass for Picasso and the emphasis on a misdirected presentation to the wrong artist, the Dresser wonders what playwright Ryan meant to say. Was it that the guests weren't worthy of the meal? This seems too simplistic. Was it that the guests didn't recognize what was artful? For example, Kev incorporates the mishaps of Joe and Bricka into his play, much to their horror. Of course this begs the question about what is fair game in the attempt to create art and how do events from every day life and its tragedies move to a higher plane of reality?

So again what is the difference between what is ordinary (soup) versus something that transcends (art)? The Dresser thinks art is all about how things are put together and what sense can be made of the juxtapositions.

Barbara Crooker in her poem "Vol de Nuit/ Night Flight" explores how ordinary things can be transformed.

VOL DE NUIT / NIGHT FLIGHT

Now, isn't that more elegant than
taking the Red-Eye?
And don't you love it when the flight attendant
(Remember when she used to be a stewardess?
When everything matched her uniform,
even her luggage, and her makeup was heavy
and impeccable?) hands out pillows, blankets
soft as babies' dreams, eye masks,
ear plugs--everything Mother would do
but tuck you in and read you a story.
Or maybe she does--think of the fable
she recites at the beginning of the flight.
Or did you think it was true, that oxygen
miraculously drops from above,if the cabin
pressure fails? That your seat cushion becomes
a life preserver if you fall into the black night
of the North Atlantic? That emergency lights
will twinkle and glow, illuminate your path
to the exit chute, little constellations of hope?
Never mind. Relax into your backrest
of many positions. Enjoy the multi-course
many-sectioned meal brought to you hot,
without a kitchen in sight. Hear the tinkle
of the cart as she progresses down the aisle,
those cunning little bottles. Put on your headset,
find the channel with jazz or blues, unscrew
the metal top, sip your red, and voilà,
you're in Paris already, hours ahead of time.
So the pâté and camembert come in tin foil,
and the roll's hard as an iceberg. Thousands
of miles are rushing under your feet
beneath these silver wings. Soon,
you'll be racing the dawn, as morning throws
her rosy covers over the sky. Briôches,
café au lait, croissants and café noir will roll
down the aisles. You'll begin your long descent
from the land of the clouds. Things
may have shifted overhead. Everyone is speaking
in tongues, and none of them are yours.
You must go to le contrôle de passeports,
and you will need to declare: business
or pleasure. Someone is meeting you
at the gate; he's carrying a baguette
and a single red rose, knows the minute
your plane touches the tarmac.
Now you have reclaimed your luggage,
passed through customs, and entered
the terminal, where the rest
of your life is waiting.

by Barbara Crooker
from Line Dance

Copyright © 2008 Barbara Crooker

First two photos by Carol Rosegg from Bass for Picasso

Photo #1: (l-r): Mary Theresa Archbold as Bricka, Terry Small as Kev,
Nicholas Viselli as Joe, Felice Neals as Pilar, and Anita Hollander as
Francesca

Photo #2: Anita Hollander (left) as Francesca and Felice Neals (right) as Pilar

While the Dresser has done things like played lacrosse for a semester in college, donned the white jacket to fence, and participated in endless games of murder ball, she has never been into the martial arts and certainly not boxing. Therefore, what would she think of an opera based on Joe Louis, the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949? On April 18, 2010, the Dresser heard and saw Shadowboxer, an impressive world premiere at the University of Maryland's Clarisse Smith Performing Arts Center. The work is by composer Frank Proto and librettist John Chenault under the stage direction of Leon Major and baton of conductor Timothy Long.

THE BROWN BOMBER FROM HIS WHEELCHAIR

Chenault anchors his poetic libretto about the larger-than-life boxer, nicknamed "the brown bomber," through the memories of a sick old man confined to a wheelchair--Louis at the end of his life and now a shadow boxer fending off the ghosts of his former days. The audience learns that Louis came into the ring with stringent rules that helped promote him as a clean-living and honest fighter, who did not gloat over a fallen opponent. While Champion Louis did not smoke, drink, or do drugs, he was frequently seen in the company of white women despite having a loving wife and supportive mother. His fights with the German boxer Max Schmeling put the eyes of the Nation on him as a political warrior against the Nazi government. However, Louis's military service demonstrated that the people of the United States were still racially prejudiced. By the end of Louis's life, his wife Marva had divorced him twice (Louis was married four times though that is not brought out in the opera), he was in serious debt to the Internal Revenue Service, and he had a severe problem with hardcore drugs like cocaine.

CLASSICAL WITH JAZZ

Frank Proto creates a large classical soundscape for Shadowboxer. His music is complex and has accents that remind the Dresser of Benjamin Britten in Britten's less melodious moments. As a counterbalance to this classical schema played by 41 pit musicians, Proto positions eight jazz musicians on stage with the 15 cast members and twelve choral singers. The jazz occasionally breaks through in numbers like one sung by Louis's mother Lillie.

DON'T KILL HIM

The voice of Soprano Carmen Balthrop (Lillie) interrupts Louis's first fight with Max Schmeling (Louis loses) with profound emotional weight--"Don't kill him," she pleads. Although bass baritone Jarrod Lee as old Joe and tenor Duane A. Moody as young Joe perform credibly, the star of this production is undeniably Carmen Balthrop who understands the nuances of Proto's music. Mezzo-soprano Adrienne Webster as Marva, especially in duet with Balthrop ("a dream of Sunday punches") provides a strong performance.

Continue reading "Shadowboxer: Joe Louis Fights His Ghosts " »

What do teenage girls read these days? In her day as a teen, the Dresser read such works as J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Were these books written for teenagers? The Dresser doesn't think so. They were written because the author had to write. Well, same with Barbara Quick and her new historical novel A Golden Web. Quick is an author who has to write what her heart dictates.

Quick came to the Dresser's attention with her poetic novel Vivaldi's Virgins. Like Vivaldi's Virgins, A Golden Web is set centuries ago in Italy, focuses on a girl with ambition, and involves various deceptions that the girl must enact in order to advance herself. What's the difference between the two novels? For starters, Vivaldi's Virgins is marketed to an adult audience while A Golden Web is pitched to a teen audience.

Before the Dresser talks about other differences between the two novels, she wants to pose the following question. Would a fan of Vivaldi's Virgins enjoy reading A Golden Web? Based on her own experience, the Dresser would say yes because there are things to learn. For example medieval university students hired and fired their own teachers. Also the reader gets treated to a close up look at the book industry at that time. How were those illuminated books made? As in Vivaldi's Virgins, Quick agilely weaves in details that she carefully researched.

The major difference between the two novels is that Quick's writing approach in A Golden Web is more direct storytelling and begins in the way a fairytale might. Vivaldi's Virgins blends letters with narrative. In other words, the protagonist writes letters mostly to her mother and we the readers see these letters along with the protagonist's narrative. In keeping with the subject matter, the language is more poetically infused in Vivaldi's Virgins which concerns the life of an artist.

If the Dresser finds fault with anything about A Golden Web, it would only be the title of the book. Personally, the Dresser thinks Quick could have devised a more alluring title. This one sounds like a video game for girls. That said, the Dresser has nothing better to offer without a long session of sitting zazen.

Nancy White in her book Sun, Moon, Salt has a lot to say about the difficulty of becoming and being a woman. This poem particularly speaks to the physicality of the life Alessandra Giliani chooses for herself in Quick's novel. Alessandra, an unusually intelligent girl, knows at the age of fourteen that she wants to be a doctor. She had to perpetrate lots of secrets to get herself the education necessary. Here's what Nancy White has to say about girls today.

LIFE OF A GIRL

She won the bloody birth and her mother
sliding past in a scream. She won milk from aching
breasts, love's merciless
gum and nip, the tyranny of the soft
brown button. She won the occasional touch
for her insatiable skin and the air
in which to puke and pee. She won
sleep's soft black socket.
She won day after day right out of the grudging sky
and first furious steps across
the room, father's hand to dangle on
from sink to stove. She won her run
right down to the mailbox hanging empty.
Hard things to chew, blades
to hold. She won her mother's no,

her father's yes, a cup to fill and pour.
She won a dress that showed her legs and shoes
for other girls to envy. She won eyes
upon her, a careful slowness when men
came to see her father's cabinet.
At school a silence against the army
of dangers, the eyes along her hem.
She won the moment where she began
to think, to close
the funnels and pipes leading to that lamp,
her body, and also clothes
like black sacks in which to store the prize.
She won a Greyhound trip alone, three hours
to tell her life so far to the interested woman
on her left and, when they stopped,

a sliver of dry and salty cheese.
She won in secret
things nobody ever named,
claimed the red beat, and that heavy spongy hill,
and the tunnel she'd once descended. She won
back her veins pounding at the pinpoint
center of the world, congratulated and
exacted herself, finger by finger. So, she won
quiet. And she won through to not
winning. To Eve sucking on a nectarine. And a pot
in which to cook strong soup, and leaves, furled and fallen,
the road going home in the half-light. She won
the whole mapless mountain and the churn of tart regret
just starting to curdle, already
gathering to yellow, to clean.

by Nancy White
from Sun, Moon, Salt

Copyright © 1992, 2010 Nancy White

What does it mean if the Dresser engaged more with the question and answer period than the performance of a new creative work by an artist of interest? What does it mean if the Dresser even raises such a question? Has she gone soft as a critic? Has she become more conservative in her view of experimental theater? Has her world narrowed down to only certain kinds of exotica?

CREATORS ON STAGE

On April 9, 2010, the Dresser took in Slide, a experimental theater piece co-commissioned by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as well as Stanford Lively Arts at Stanford University, Meet the Composer's Commissioning Music/USA program, and six other commissioning groups. (The Dresser assures you, Dear Reader, that she was not intimidated by the large community that gathered around this work seven years in the making, but rather wants to account for how large the audience is for this work.) The creators of the work--Rinde Eckert, Steven Mackey, and eighth blackbird (a sextet of musicians who break convention by not staying in place and do more than play musical instruments)--also convey the action of the work. This means the writer/librettist Eckert, the composer Mackey, and eighth blackbird players perform. Not a problem for the Dresser. She has seen this happen on stage and in film to good effect. Examples that come to mind start with Rinde Eckert's And God Created Great Whales, Horizon, and An Idiot Divine but also include but are not limited to Spaulding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia and any number of Woody Allen's films such as Annie Hall.

These insertions of creators as actors in their performing arts work to create alternate realities. Thus the creators can stare back at the audience (if they are live on stage) or attempt to influence the exactness of meaning in an attempt to understand or control what effect the work has on those who came to watch. By the way, Q & A sessions also work like this, even for creating artists who do not step out on the stage until after the curtain closes on their piece.

The Dresser will not neglect to say there is a musical number called "Stare," which Mackey calls the centerpiece of Slide. He describes this composition as containing "persistent juxtapositions of clarity and blurriness."

OUT-OF-FOCUS EXPERIMENT

What's Slide about? If the audience puts their attention on Rinde Eckert, who plays the role of Renard, they will see a psychologist who runs an experiment where he shows participants out-of-focus slides to gauge how much time it takes them to identify the object once it is shown in focus. Next Renard adds a shill who disagrees with the unsuspecting participant to further confound the participant's need to defend his original guess on the unfocused object. One of the things Renard talks about is the "ritual humiliation" of not guessing correctly. Eventually Renard comes to the conclusion, "Some things are better left unsaid. No sense in clearing up the past. Leave questions unasked."

Besides the experiment, the audience sees that Renard has a musical hobby for which he plays the tuba. After he becomes disenchanted with his slide experiment, he fixes on eighth blackbird pianist Lisa Kaplan (she is the only woman on stage) as an object of his unrequited love to stave off his loneliness. By the close of Slide, Renard wants to retreat to the windowless room that he describes as a cheap hotel but nonetheless a comforting place of retreat. (The program notes say this is where he lives.) The Dresser isn't sure, and didn't bother to ask, if Renard wanted the pianist to join the disillusioned psychologist in this room. The Dresser had already retreated into her own head thinking about a scene in Jim Jarmusch's film Mystery Train where a Japanese man shoots photos of an unremarkable cheap hotel room in the United States and when his girlfriend asks why he is doing this, he says, everything else he will remember but this he will forget.

Continue reading "Slide: What Is Out of Focus " »