The Dressing

Do you have to go to New York City to see high-quality productions of contemporary opera? The Maryland Opera Studio at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center under the direction of Leon Major puts that question to rest by offering a remarkable retrospective of the work of Dominick Argento. The Dresser attended the impressive opening nights of Argento's operas Postcard from Morocco (April 20, 2012) and Miss Havisham's Fire (April 21, 2012).

Postcard from Morocco, a one-act opera of 90 minutes that premiered in 1971, is based on a libretto by John Donahue and liberally rearranged by the composer. In his musical memoir Catalogue Raisonné as Memoir, Argento said that initially the "utterly surreal" libretto about strangers waiting in a train station with unassigned dialogue baffled him. So what the composer did was, "cut each page [of the libretto] into fifteen or twenty horizontal strips and taped the sentences together again in a different order." He used the libretto he said as a "blueprint" and assigned the lines to "any character I fancied since I knew exactly who the singers would be." From Argento's words alone and without ever attending a performance, one can fully appreciate why this popular chamber opera has repeatedly been compared to Gertrude Stein's and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts and Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach. However, the Dresser walked out of the Clarice Smith's Kay Theatre saying to her seatmate, didn't you hear the Benjamin Britten, the Peter Grimes, in this piece--that part when characters sing about boats? The next day, the Dresser asked Argento about this and what he said is that his admiration for Britten is top of his list.

In the April 21 "Talk with Dominick Argento," the composer said that Postcard from Morocco is sympathetic to the human condition and he cautioned that the worse thing one could do is to ask a person, "What do you do?" The Dresser believes that by extension, the operagoer should not ask what Postcard from Morocco is about. The odd thing about the characters in Postcard is that they are identified not by name but by the things they carry. And yes, the things these seven characters carry around the train station tell the audience a lot about them but these items also show us what these characters do and how they behave.

As to production itself, the singing was exhilarating--the trio about the hatbox that included Mandy Brown (Lady with a Hand Mirror), Ashley Briggs (Lady with a Cake Box), and Ilene Pabon (Lady with a Hat Box) nearly levitated the Dresser from her seat but every singer made significant contribution to this performance. Cleverly choreographed were the four mimes, who mostly operated from a red-curtained stage at one edge of the railroad station. Sweep of the hat to Izumi Ashizawa, the Movement Consultant. Kudos to the Director Pat Diamond, the Scenic Designer James Kronzer, and Costume Designer David O. Roberts.

Argento in his April 21 talk paid high compliments to the exceptional work that was coming out of Leon Major's opera studio and how welcomed he felt at the University of Maryland. He also quipped that it wasn't always the case that he could enjoy Postcard from Morocco, because "half of the productions I didn't hear very well because of slamming exit doors." To this the Dresser says to hurry to see this production. It's exceptionally engaging in all aspects.

Miss Havisham's Fire has quite a complex backstory about its creation. Argento was commissioned in 1977 by New York City Opera to write an opera for Beverly Sills. She had an idea she floated about an opera on the Empress Carlotta of Mexico. So Charles Nolte set to work writing a libretto he titled The Phantom Empress. However, Sills paid a visit to Argento in Minnesota where he is based and asked if he had any other ideas and he suggested a possible expansion of a monodrama called Miss Havisham's Wedding Night (drawn from Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations) by John Olon-Scrymgeour. Sills said she loved the idea of working with a character that was a folle d'amour.

In Catalogue Raisonné, Argento said he was somewhat disappointed not to work on the Carlotta opera because he had already been thinking about several scenes. Then there was the sticky problem of delivering the bad news to Charles Nolte. And the crowning blow was that after Argento wrote what he considered the best music he had ever written, the New York Times critic in 1977 thoroughly panned Miss Havisham's Fire. Was it because it was overly long? Was it because the role of Ms. Havisham was written for the astounding abilities of Beverly Sills who withdrew because she had a recurrence of cancer? Was the squeaky platform where the inquest scene the cause of such a harsh review? Whatever the reason, the criticism hit Argento hard and he revised the opera and had a second premier in 1979.

Continue reading "Argento Retrospective: The Singing that Fills" »

What the Dresser loved about Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2012 was the time poets had to talk to each other. For example, the Dresser started STR Day 3 (March 24) by engaging in a conversation on the street with Minnie Bruce Pratt. This was an extension of Minnie Bruce's talk the day before during the panel Poet's Forum: How Political Engagement Affects the Writing Process. For Minnie Bruce, the writing process, starts at a personal level moves into a social context and concludes with the large worldview.

ADVOCATING POEMS THAT FEATURE NUMBERS

Based on comments made by JoAnne Growney on STR Day 1 in the panel Writing to the Media/Writing for the Media regarding how one gets poets to pay attention to the power of numbers in their work, the Dresser decided to drop in to JoAnne's workshop Counting On. While the Dresser only participated in the initial head count that included individuals making introduction of themselves with numbers significant to their personal life, she wanted to support JoAnne's premise that use of numbers create vivid specificity in the poetry of provocation and witness.

LEARNING NOT TO DISCOUNT DISABILITIES

So, the Dresser took her leave from the conference room in the Thurgood Marshall Center housing the numbers workshop and hurried over to the True Reformer Building for readings from the anthology Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. With this new imperative to find the power of numbers, the Dresser perked up when Kathi Wolfe read from her poem "Blind Ambition,"

"If you were Helen Keller,"
my teacher says,
"you'd get a gold
star in arithmetic."

It turns out this poem is Kathi's declaration that numbers were not her childhood friends and that Kathi, with her condition of low vision, was not particularly happy to be compared to "Goody-Two-Shoes Helen." However, Kathi overcame her disdain of Helen Keller, wrote a collection of poems about this blinddeaf woman who, in her childhood, was known as Spitfire and Little Bronco, and has elevated this legendary hellion to personal guru. Most Americans know only of Helen Keller through the play The Miracle Worker. Keller, a 1904 Radcliffe graduate, went on to achieve status as an author, political activist, and lecturer. In Beauty Is a Verb, the Dresser was pleased to note these lines by Kathi in Helen's voice from "The Sun Is Warm: Nagasaki, 1948,"

....................................Twenty-four
teachers scorched, doctors decapitated,
patients incinerated. And they say
America won the War? I do not want
peace that passes understanding: I want
understanding that brings peace. Mr. Nagai,
I touché your singed, nearly skinless face.
I don't have much time left, you say,
but I a well for the sung is warm.

In this reading from Beauty Is a Verb, editors Michael Northen and Sheila Black generously promoted other writers in this 384-page book with a graphically breath-taking photo on its cover. For example, "Excavation" by Kenny Fries who was born missing various bones in his legs and feet.

Tonight, when I take off my shoes:

three toes on each twisted foot.

Disabled, crippled, deformed. Words

I was given.

Both Kathi's and Kenny's poems bear numbers of profound loss.

Also participating were Ellen McGrath Smith and Kara Dorris. Here's an excerpt from Kara's prose poem "Wanting to Be a Girl." Notice how Kara particularly emphasizes numbers by using their symbols as opposed to spelling them out.

When I close my octopus eyes, I see 4 arms, 4 legs lift. I want only 2 of each. The sky said stay, meant to be, this parasitic twin, a bleed to what a girl should be. But I ache for what my body is--fused spines, one heart dissolved in another, doubled ribs protecting lotus flower lungs.

Here the Dresser will say hold onto that image of conjoined twins.

PALESTINE/ISRAEL: FINDING THE LEGS TO STAND ON

The Dresser broke for lunch with Alicia Ostriker and Barbara Goldberg. Both poets have new books that speak to Jewish culture. Alicia's The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems combines her studies of Midrash (commentary on scripture--Biblical stories and teachings) with her own brand of feminism. Scorched by the Sun by the Israeli Moshe Dor is Barbara's translation with the author into English. This collection deals with the love of the land Israel versus the love of a flesh and bones woman.

Lunch was a prelude to Before There Is Nowhere to Stand--Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to Struggle, a streaming reading from a forthcoming anthology (Lost Horse Press) by many poets who interleaved their voices poem by poem--Grace Beeler, Rick Black, Joan Thaler Dobbie, Edward Morin, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alicia Ostriker, Willa Schneberg, Ingrid Wendt, Carolyne Wright. Subject matter included the tragic mishap of the young American woman Rachel Corrie crushed by a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip who became a Palestinian martyr, a suicide bomber in Jerusalem, a Palestinian father (Naomi Shihab Nye's father) on dialysis writing on separate slips of paper his dream to plant olive and fig trees on his former land. After this program, "Utopia, another name for a smiling prison," a line from Alicia Ostriker stuck in the Dresser's memory as she continued to ponder the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Dare the Dresser say there were no Israeli voices present in this reading? Certainly the challenge for future Split This Rock Festivals is to embrace the stories of all sides of social justice issues.

FINDING THE TRUTHS AMONG THE DISPARATE

For the Dresser, Day 3 of STR concluded by a featured reading with the distinctly different voices of Khaled Mattawa, Marilyn Nelson, José Padua, and Minnie Bruce Pratt. To open this program came a recording of June Jordan's mellifluous voice reciting her poem about truth and chopping down cherry trees, eating the fruit, and spitting the pits into the Potomac. If a single poem has the power to heal, it has to be this one.

Continue reading "Split This Rock, Poems That Count, Days 3 & 4" »

The Dresser re-entered the Split This Rock Poetry Festival on the second day by attending the panel Poet's Forum: How Political Engagement Affects the Writing Process. Beloit Poetry Journal (BPJ) editors John Rosenwald and Lee Sharkey headed this panel. The Dresser was made aware of the importance of the BPJ's role in the Festival the night before when Kim Roberts read the following poem from the BPJ Split This Rock Chapbook 2012, a special issue of the magazine which showcased featured readers of this third STR Festival.

THE INTERNATIONAL FRUIT OF WELCOME

A pineapple is the perfect gift
to bring to a blind date.
A pineapple is like a blind date:
spiky and armored at first,
with the hope of sweetness inside.
A pineapple is the perfect housewarming gift.
You don't have to wrap it,
it doesn't spill inside your car.
It comes in its own house.
A pineapple is the perfect birthday gift.
You might prefer a coconut,
that planet molten at the core,
but a pineapple has a better hairdo,
better wardrobe; it never
goes out of style.
Think of all those historic houses
with pineapple bolsters, pineapple finials,
pineapples carved above lintels.
Such a sophisticated fruit:
every sailor wants one.

by Kim Roberts
from Beloit Poetry Journal Split This Rock Chapbook 2012

The Dresser thinks this poem captures something essential about the STR Festival in its theme of welcoming and encouraging new relationships or rewarding existing relationships. The STR Festival embraces poets of every ability, color, gender, nationality, occupation, form, etc. hoping to find under spiky hairdos or heavy coats of armour some kind of goodness. The Dresser believes that even poets with political beliefs not in synch with the left leanings of the core crew of STR would be welcomed provided they were willing to engage in meaningful dialogue.

Dialogue about how political engagement affects the writing process was what John Rosenwald and Lee Sharkey were encouraging by having Douglass Kearney, Khaled Mattawa, and Minnie Bruce Pratt read and talk about poems published in their special edition chapbook. Of three poems published in this chapbook, Minnie Bruce chose "Turning the Switch Off" to read and discuss. This is a poem that deals with habit, a behavior William James impressed upon Gertrude Stein would deaden creativity, that behavior keeping people from progressing, from achieving genius or, in the case of this poem social justice. Minnie Bruce writes, "How hard to break the habit of work, obedience not to the machines, but to those who own them."

Khaled Mattawa chose to read "After 42 years," a poem he at first told his commissioners he would not write. The subject matter, the regime and fall of Muammar Gaddafi, was too personally painful for him--for all the losses suffered during Gaddafi's reign of terror. His poem ends, "There is no after until we pray for all the dead," but indeed where does one begin and how long until the mourning has staunched the pain of so many losses?

Douglas Kearney read "Thank You But Don't Buy My Babies Clothes with Monkeys on Them," a five-page discourse, exposé, rant, and philosophical treatise on commercial racism. Doug's reading and discussion was a profitable follow-on to the performance he gave opening night of STR. To see his work on the page in conjunction with how he reads (emotionally super-charged) and discusses it (both emotionally engaged and standing back at a distance) gave the Dresser a whole new appreciation for this poet whom she encountered first as a librettist for the Anne LeBaron opera Crescent City at the 2009 New York City VOX new opera showcase.

In the discussion with the audience for this panel came points about cultural literacy (how ordinary people fail to recognize their own acts of racism, misogyny, homophobia), contradiction (Doug says he likes to deal with contradiction with juxtaposition), the intersection of entertainment and violence, authenticity of voice (and what about the gatekeepers, Minnie Bruce asked, who say "That is not poetry"), the ridiculous (take the power of racism that reduces a human being to an object), and the legend of the importance of poetry in the Arab world (Khaled talked about the "poets of the tribe" who kowtow to a dictator).

The Dresser capped day #2 by joining STR Director and poet Sarah Browning, her assistant director Bob LaVallee, and maybe 90 to 100 poets at the Supreme Court to protest their ruling that equated money with speech as it relates to Super PAC donations. The form of the protest was a Cento, a poem created line by line by many contributors. The lines, limited to 12 words, included quotes by June Jordan (STR 2012 is dedicated to her poetic legacy) and Langston Hughes (STR names comes from Langston's poem "Big Buddy") and many references to the recent murder of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot by an over zealous neighborhood watchman who seems to be getting away with this crime under the Florida stand your ground law. Here's the line the Dresser contributed, "Letter to the Editor from Gertrude Stein: "Is money money" or speech?

Even if the Dresser has said this before, she'll say it again: Sarah Browning, founding director of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival knows what she is doing and how to run a well-oiled event even if it is competing with the Cherry Blossom Festival. Take for example, the poster announcing the third biennial conference that the Dresser was greeted with as she ascended the Washington DC Metro escalators. Let's say Sarah is not your out-in-the-ether poet. No, she is grounded and is fighting for social justice through poetry.

THE WORD MADE STRONG THROUGH MEDIA

On the street, the Dresser ran into poet and co-editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal Lee Sharkey. When asked, Lee said she had already been to some excellent panels. The Dresser knows how discriminating this poet-editor is and took this for a good sign. Additionally, the Beloit Journal is a Spit this Rock (STR) publications partner.

At the press table in the historic Thurgood Marshall Center for Service and Heritage, the Dresser met Lacy MacAuley, who is the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Media Relations Manager, and as it turned out a presenter at Writing to the Media/Writing for the Media, the panel discussion that the Dresser wanted to attend. The Dresser thought this panel would answer the question how does a poet press for social change once his/her politically charged poem is written. Certainly the panel gave lots of clues like Emily Schwartz Greco's handout "Op-Eds: Writing Tips/Placement Strategies" and Lacy's handout "How Do I Get into the News," which sorts out what is newsworthy and how to write a proper to-the-point news release. However what the panel also did was open the Dresser's eyes as to how Sarah Browning, who is an associate fellow at IPS, operates. And, yes, IPS, has a strong personnel presence at STR though is not listed as a sponsor. On the STR website, it states, "Split This Rock collaborates with the Institute for Policy Studies on an occasional basis to bring poets and social justice advocates together in the 'think tank.'" The Dresser thinks it is very important to have access to a liberal think tank if one is to achieve a new level of active poetry, poetry that can change the world.

WATCH MY LIPS VERSUS WHAT IS PENNED

Next on the Dresser's list was Page & Stage: What's the Fuss?, a panel led by Regie Cabico on the struggle between spoken and written poetry. The panel included Jeffrey McDaniel, Rachel McKibbens, and José Padua. The conversation was heavy on the spoken word side, which includes such terminology as performance poet, slam poet street poet, bar poet versus the page poet. When the question was raised to the audience about what individuals considered themselves most said both. Jeff McDaniel spoke passionately about how he had to overcome his reputation as a slam poet. "I feel like I had to be like Helen Vendler and stab, stab, stab to kill my past as a slam poet," said Jeff. Rachel McKibbens spoke to the issue of how invisible women writers are. She said, women have to just write their stories and F those who criticize. "We have to get our gears unstuck." Rachel said poetry does not come from poetry but from all sorts of sources and definitely books. Mixed into the discussion were issues of prejudice against cultural minorities and gender identity. Lisa Wijnovich, who called herself a poet farmer, said, "poets belong at the crossroads."

PAYING TRIBUTE TO JUNE JORDAN

Dovetailing seamless with the Page & Stage panel, the Dresser's evening ended with the featured readings of Douglas Kearney, Kim Roberts, and Sonia Sanchez. Master of Ceremonies Sarah Browning also introduced the young poet winner Lauryn Nesbitt and her "Poetic Hyst." Lauryn held her own with the outstanding and deeply moving readings/performances of the features. From Kim Roberts came the pineapple poem ("A pineapple is like a blind date:/spiky and armored at first"), which is part of the Beloit Poetry Journal special edition for Split This Rock. From Douglas Kearney came the singing and acting explosion of sound about such topics as the horrific killing of James Bird Jr. From Sonia Sanchez, who is clearly a griot who chants, hums, sings, came separate tributes to Sterling Brown and June Jordan. This particular festival is dedicated to June and Sarah put her voice into the room at the beginning of the reading.

By the way this year's STR is 500 strong and completely sold out. Stay tuned for another report from the Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

New American opera fans and aficionados of the upscale Broadway musical gather around. After partaking in a workshop March 21, 2012, the Dresser advises you to make note of a newly commissioned work by composer Conrad Cummings and librettist Michael Korie called Positions 1956.

UrbanArias, a well-connected opera company producing chamber operas reaching out to a young audience, will premiere Positions 1956 April 13 in Rosslyn, Virginia, during their 2012 Spring Festival. Positions 1956 is this two-year old opera company's first commission. The cast selected for this premiere includes top young talent Amedee Moore as the Bride, Jesse Blumberg as the Groom, and Vale Rideout as the Trainer and Dance Instructor. Noah Himmelstein directs and Robert Wood provides musical direction.

Award-winning Michael Korie, with nominations for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for the musical Grey Gardens, centers Positions 1956 around social instruction that emerged in the year 1956: the sex manual for newly weds, the muscle magazines for male body building, and the rise of the ballroom dancing business. Here's lyrics from "The Bride Must Remember."

The bride must remember

In each fiber of her core

She must help, and hew

To her duty and grave obligation

For he is a man,

The pulse throbbing in his veins

Is the pounding of his elemental reproductive instinct!

He is alive with desire!

His organ must respond

In positions of intercourse

In the holy marriage bond!

She is equipped for pleasure

But hers is not essential.

Without his, her ecstasy is inconsequential.

He is alive with desire!

From Part I "Marriage Manual"
Positions 1956

This YouTube excerpt from "Sitting Position" gives a taste of the neo-classical music that frames Part I "Marriage Manual."

This 80-minute opera will get you thinking about how things have changed between men and women or have they?

Since March 18, 2012, during a VERGE ensemble concert when the violinist James Stern recited all five sections of T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," the Dresser has been pinching herself trying to understand how she feels about an artist who has considerable talent as a violinist sharing his stage time in the delivery of a monolithic poem where the violin performance becomes secondary. The Dresser admires Stern's poetic performance, which was fluid--he moved around the Corcoran Gallery of Art's tiny stage without a misstep--and completely at ease--he knew this poem passionately well.

When the Dresser hears Eliot read "The Waste Land" knowing he was an American from Missouri but who had developed a British accent, this also gives her pause. In truth, the Dresser finds the poem itself overwhelming. It is loaded with centuries of literary allusions and commonplace interactions with characters Eliot created and brought to life. Though the poem was published in 1922, the themes of immorality, violent sexual encounters, loss of spirituality and dual fears of life and death still seem to talk to our current day issues. The Dresser studied it in college with a favorite professor and it is a poem with which one can never have too many encounters. It's also a poem that has affected how the Dresser looks at the world. She never fails to associate the month of April with Eliot's opening lines:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Not to mention those opening lines with lilacs breeding out of dead land resonant with Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd," a tribute to the assassinated American president Abraham Lincoln.

The Dresser never fails to see hyacinths but is tossed into Eliot's lines:

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing...

So indeed, the Dresser is grateful for James Stern's dramatic performance but that does not put to rest how she feels about hearing this poem introduced by Stern's arousing violin performance of Leon Kirchner's "For Violin Solo," (this is an atonal piece that ends with a whimper as the bow slides into silence--definitely a good introduction to Eliot's masterpiece that ends with a repeated chant for peace) and then the second-half-of-the-concert edge-of-the-seat selection that brought violinist Stern back on stage with Audrey Andrist at the piano and James Ross playing French horn in György Ligeti's "Trio" (1982).

Should Stern have said something to introduce his program? The Dresser is not sure because she found his written program notes over intellectualized and therein lies the danger with Eliot. What she thinks could have helped was a simple statement, written or spoken, saying how Stern came to memorize this poem and what performing it means to him as well as a straightforward list of the short violin passages that punctuated the spoken performance. The Dresser gets how Stern links Ligeti to Eliot through his concert title "Masters of Allusion." Ligeti's "Trio," with its subtitle "Hommage à Brahms" nods to the past in order to achieve a new direction in Ligeti's work. But after the concert what remained with the Dresser was the idea of a very accomplished violinist reciting T. S. Eliot.

Gypsies, by Jenő Józsi Tersánszky and Krisztián Grecsó, is a Hungarian play combining text from the original 1931 version. Katona József Theater presented this work at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater for three performances starting March 15, 2012. A play spoken in Hungarian with English surtitles, it is theater with a cultural difference.

Body movement and staccato text played a big part in what made it stand apart from the usual approach to Western theater. There was a lot of text, which meant a lot of surtitles to read so the Dresser had to work hard at keeping up with the story. Essentially, the story explores the clash between gypsy and Hungarian cultures. The Hungarians of this play don't like the gypsies because the Hungarians say gypsies steal things. Mostly the Hungarians don't understand the gypsy culture and this makes the Hungarians nervous and afraid. Yes, this is about a small town attitude and when the patriarch of a gypsy clan is shot dead after he and his family run out of their house which has been hit with Molotov cocktail, the Hungarian officials: detectives, policemen, firemen, and the coroner don't know what to do. The family has stolen the body of the dead man stymieing the criminal investigation. An out-of-town journalist with a fancy recording device shows up to write about what has happened. The townsmen don't like her because at the root of their behavior is an intolerance for any kind of difference.

The sets were masterful in a high-tech way--big structures that moved seamlessly. There was much in the acting that was amusing, but some scenes seemed purposefully boring, so boring that the Act I curtain falls slowly on Hungarians talking endlessly about what to do about investigating what has happened at the gypsy enclave where no townsmen wants to go. The play ends in much the same way with the bereaved widow cussing about what has happened in the bar her husband would frequent. And a lot has happened including the revelation that the husband impregnated their daughter, spurned the foster son who loved that daughter in favor of another man much like the patriarical rogue. The favorite scenes included gypsy men playing their air instruments with such passionate moves that the Dresser could almost see the violins, accordion and cymbalom.

Bill Yarrow's poem "Burying the Hachet" echoes some of the negative and exotic energy perpetuated by Katona József Theater's production of Gypsies. The poem like the play also surprises the reader/audience with the intrusion of modern day inventions like the Jumbotron or a hand-held recording device.

BURYING THE HACHET

I wanted the pain to go away,
so I let them stick me. No luck.
I still feel rotten and now my head
deliciously empty for decades is
clogged with thought of dying.
Forget it. I'm doomed, I'm a goner.
I'm riding the rails of deterioration
I know it. Soon I will be boneless
and alone. But I am not alone.
Not yet. In the other room
my mother is wrestling a mongoose.
Between round she sits on a
radio instead of a chair. I can't
quite hear what is playin so
I say, "Turn it up. Turn it up."
A fireman holding an ice pick
adjusts the volume. The Chemical
Brothers appear on the Jumbotron.
Australia secedes from the U.N.

by Bill Yarrow
from Pointed Sentences

Coming out of studies with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham as well as work with Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp made her reputation in modern classical dance by combining elements of classical ballet with modern dance, off-the-wall experiment with Broadway jazz, and uptown shiny with downtown dirty. Her dance style is known for its quirky and often comic movements: squiggles, shoulder shrugs, and little hops. She was the dance artistic director who put older and younger dancers on stage together as well as dancers of all different heights.

Over the years, the Dresser has followed Tharp seeing her choreography done by American and International companies--New York Cit Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, and Hubbard Street Ballet as well as The Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet--and superstar dancers, like Mikhail Baryshnikov. On February 23, 2012, she saw "Twyla Tharp: All American," a retrospective done without sets and presented by the Washington Ballet. This included Tharp's seminal crossover work Push Comes to Shove (world premiere American Ballet Theatre, 1976), Surfer at the River Styx (world premiere, American Dance Festival, North Carolina, 2000), and Nine Sinatra Songs (world premiere Twyla Tharp Dance, 1982). Tharp in her customary workout clothes and high top sneaks was among the well-dressed Washington, DC, Kennedy Center audience and took a bow with the company in apparent appreciation for the good show.

The performances by these young dancers were uplifting and energizing. Jared Nelson in Push Comes to Shove gave a standout performance. He has the strength and grace to make his leaps effortless. Surfer at the River Styx is a barefoot piece that includes moves that look like football tactics and kickboxing, but what made this composition exceptional was the live percussion by provided by Donald Knaak, a. k. a., the Junkman. The Dresser's favorite piece of the Sinatra Songs was "That's Life" with strong performances by Audra Johnson and Jared Nelson.

The February 22 viewing of the installation piece "Fragile" by Eiko and Koma in concert with the Kronos Quartet at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center etched stark contrast into the Dresser's mind versus the joyful and exuberant "Twyla Tharp: All American" by the Washington Ballet. Eiko and Koma studied with Japanese dance legend Kazuo Ohno, one of the originators of butoh, also known as the dance of darkness. Butoh often involves extreme or absurd environments, dancers in white body makeup who move with hyper-control and at an extremely slow pace. While it can be playful, it is usually grotesque and shocking.

The stage setting for "Fragile" was a plot of fragrant mulch augmented with a shroud-like cloth, black feathers, reeds, and dried leaves. Eiko and Koma in white body makeup but no clothing or shoes lay in the dirt and debris and made minimal movements as the music and text recordings played. The text clued the audience into the meaning of this installation as voices talked about the recent nuclear disaster in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant but there were also other texts listed in the program that spoke to other assaults on our planet and natural environments such as sounds of Weddlell seals, (the Dresser guesses the sound of these seals speaks to the issues of global warming) 1967 riots by Japanese students at Haneda Airport, reports of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, a recurring playing of the recording of the Peace Bell from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The Kronos Quartet sat on chairs on the perimeter facing across this plot of ground toward the audience who were free to find seats on boxes positioned around the black box theater, sit on pillows tossed on the floor near the performers, stand, and to come and go at will. The performance with one twenty-minute break ran from 5 pm to 9 pm.

As an installation, the performers also built special rice paper walls with embedded feathers that led into the darkened black box theater. Ghostly images hung on the entry wall of the Kogod Theatre. In the lobby of the Clarice Smith Arts Center, Eiko and Koma built a teahouse with a pond. Then they projected an image of themselves into the water. The Dresser found the pond spooky because the water moved occasionally as if the dancers were actually under the water creating the sudden ripples.

The Dresser showed up for this performance around 7:30 pm. While she got a program listing the pieces Kronos would play, she was unsure where they were in the list. Because of the non-restrictive environment, the Dresser was able to peer over the shoulder of the cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and of course what came up next was "Flow," a composition by Laurie Anderson that the Dresser knows for its characteristic and pleasing musical stutter. What was essential and engaging to the Dresser in her experience of "Fragile" was the close up performance of the Kronos Quartet, who have been in residence this semester at the University of Maryland. The Dresser also heard "Takeda Lullaby," a traditional piece arranged by Kronos; some lieder by Gustav Mahler; Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll"; "Boyiwa," a song of mourning over a corpse, songs from Henryk M. Gorecki; Morton Feldman's "Structures"; Osvaldo Golijov & Gustavo Santaolalla's "Darkness 911" and "Quartet No. 5: III" by Philip Glass.

If, Dear Reader, you want to know if the Dresser liked "Fragile," she would have to say it made a lasting impression, much like seeing The Garden of Early Delights by Hieronymus Bosch or the grotesque surreal landscapes of Salvador Dali or René Magritte. In "Considering Magritte," Marilyn McCabe's five-part poem (three sections are shown here), the dual problems of appearance and how things fit with the norm speak to the world of movement crafted by the choreography of Twyla Tharp and the performance art of Eiko and Koma.

CONSIDERING MAGRITTE

3. Le mouvement perpétuel

My head's a ball.
I dress myself in multi-
syllables. High brow? Yes,
all that's left of the old hare-
brained circus act, back and forth
on my trapeze. I repeat myself.
Have I told you this?
Have I told you this before?

4. Problems and Affinities

A door is a hole: leaf
a tree: boulder mountain: man
his own death.
Q. How is the rain
like a cloud? A. Like a puddle's
like a buffalo: roaming, amorphous.
The problem of water
is that we are all water
but look so much like ground.
The problem of sky
is it looks like surface
but things fall off it all the time.

5. Entr'acte

Between acts we dismantle ourselves,
blow the spittle from our tongues,
empty our legs of bone debris
and attempt reduction by means of flame,
half-heartedly. It seems strange
to speak so plainly through grease-
paint, scratch so visibly
under our wigs as if we weren't bald
or balding, to chew Turkish delight
under incandescent light. It's not easy

here. We're ourselves in sheep's
clothing, naked in some veils,
repeating lines we thought we knew, slacklip-
staring at tattered copies of our scripts.
What's my line? What's the time?
We're neither here nor there.

Marilyn McCabe
from Perpetual Motion

Copyright © 2012 Marilyn McCabe

Photo from Nine Sinatra Songs: Brianne Bland

Photo from Surfer at the River Styx: JoAnn LaBrecque

Photos from Eiko and Koma's "Fragile": Karren Alenier

If you aren't thirsty, even an oasis in the desert may not garner your appreciation. The Dresser says this by way of having wandered in the recent past into the world of Turkish, Azerbaijanis, and Mugham music. In our fast Western world of rapid communication and transportation, the Dresser thinks the average Western music lover may need not only to adjust his/her ear but also breathe deeply to slow down and sharpen up the senses.

MEETING MUGHAM AMONG ELDERS

Jeffrey Werbock, an American who passionately promotes Mugham music, says that at the time this music started, the world was a dangerous place and people craved a transcendental experience to escape the body and the assaults from a hostile world. Mugham, a folk music coming from Azerbaijanis, Iranian, Arabic, and Turkish sources, marries classical poetry and musical improvisation.

Mugham music may be characterized as monophonic, modal, microtonal, meter free, and highly ornamented. However, if monophonic means one melody line, ornamentation can change the musical texture to heterophony, a variation working against the melody and not so familiar in Western music. Likewise modal is associated in Western music with measurable tones in a scale but the Mugham performance builds in intensity and rising pitches, particularly in the singer's voice, that are not well measured by modern scales. Microtonal particularly plays against the Western expectation that music is made from a system of twelve equal intervals to the octave. The microtone falls somewhere in between.

In a program sponsored by Karabakh Foundation on December 22, 2011, the Dresser heard Jeffrey Werbock speak and perform at a senior citizens community in Silver Spring, Maryland. He performed with Vladimir Gamarnik. The acoustics were bad and visibility was worse since it was a huge ballroom with chairs flat on the floor with no risers. The Dresser went right up to the front of the room to take some videos and could feel the excitement coming from these musicians who are modern day troubadours sharing their love for this music to people who probably have never been exposed to such sound.

EXPLORING MUGHAM WITH KRONOS

On February 18, 2012 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, Maryland, the Dresser heard the Kronos Quartet in performance with the Alim Qasimov Ensemble. A winner of the prestigious IMC/UNESCO Music Prize for performers (others who have won this award include Ravi Shankar, Yehudi Menuhin, and Benny Goodman), Alim Qasimov performs regularly in important concert venues with a variety of musical forms from pop to classical, including with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

Qasimov's music is Azerbaijani classical music in the mugham tradition. For this performance, his ensemble included singer Fargana Qasimov (his daughter), Rauf Islamov on kamancha, Zaki Valiyev on tar, Rafael Asgarov on clarinet and balaban, and Javidan Nabiyev on naghara. Both singers played the daf, a wafer-like frame drum. The kamancha is a bowed string instrument with a long neck and a lower bowl-shaped resonating chamber made from a gourd or wood. Often the bowl-shaped bottom has a foot, which accounts for its English name--a spiked fiddle. Precursor to the guitar, the tar is a complicated stringed instrument with a double bowl shape and three double courses of strings. It is played with a small brass plectrum. The balaban as it is called in Turkey and among the Azerbaijanis is a double-reed woodwind with a cylindrical shape that makes it sound somewhat like a clarinet or saxophone. The naghara is a long folk drum held under the arm and hit with the bare hand. The naghara is described in the Azerbaijani literary epic, "Kitabi Dada Gorgud" (Book of Dede Korkut--The Book of my Grandfather).

The Kronos players--David Harrington, violin; John Sherba, violin; Hank Dutt, viola and Jeffrey Zeigler, cello--opened the concert playing a dreamy composition by Michael Gordon that made the Dresser feel she was on a dock watching sea birds circle lazily while calling to each other in what might have been microtonal yelps. "La Didounak Sayyada" ("I'll Prevent the Hunters from Hunting you"), a love song by Omar Souleyman picked up the tempo and urgency with plucked cello and driving beat. It was decidedly Middle Eastern in its texture and color. "Tenebre," an east coast premiere by Bryce Dessner created a hypnotic effect that made the Dresser think, this is a lullaby for the 21st century.

Next the Qasimov Ensemble without benefit of the Kronos Quartet--Kronos left the stage as the Ensemble entered and climbed onto a raised platform outfitted with an array of pillows--played Shur Destgahi, a traditional spiritual piece that has a Muslim talking to the Almighty.

In the second half of the program, Kronos joined the Ensemble for a set of secular music that included love songs of various kinds including one that translates as "My Spirited Horse," which is about an offspring trying to make it home to his or her mother through mountain fog in snowy mountains.

While she loved how Kronos introduced the Qasimov Ensemble, what the Dresser wonders after this experience of the highest order with mugham is why she thought she needed to be on chaise longue by the sea with a bowl of grapes at hand.

AT THE INTERSECTION OF TURKISH & JEWISH MUSIC

On February 17, 2012 at the Takoma Park Community Center Auditorium in Takoma Park, Maryland, Washington Musica Viva presented a program of Turkish Jewish music. This included Adnan Saygun's Suite for violin and piano, Op,33; Darius Milhaud's Poèmes Juifs and Mordecai Seter's Partita for violin and piano. What's always a treat from Carl Banner, founder and pianist of WMV, is that he teaches something about each of the pieces he plays. And to this program, he added musicologist Ronit Seter, the daughter-in-law of Mordecai Seter. Not only did Ms. Seter talk about Seter's Partita, but also she put it in perspective with the compositions by Saygun and Milhaud. Saygun began Turkish modern classical music. Milhaud merely alluded to Turkish and Jewish influences and was clearly a French composer. The Dresser stresses now that this program was neither mugham nor improvisational music but it was Western music with accents of Turkey and the Middle East. Darius Milhaud was Jewish but not of Turkish extraction.

Continue reading "Opening the Wells of Mugham & Turkish Music" »

The world of entertainment is changing. On February 17, 2012, at the Artisphere in Rosslyn, Virginia, the Dresser attended two events where everyone was encouraged to use smartphones during the performance. In fact, prizes were awarded for such behavior.

The two events headlined as "Art Gets Social: Social Media Meets Performance Art" were part of "Global Social Media Week." If you are suspicious that this is connected to advertising, be assured you are correct, but also be aware that the line between advertising and entertainment is so fuzzy now that even Andy Warhol's artistic vision seems too understandably clear. Come on now, Dear Reader, you can tell the difference between soup and art!

Event #1 (oops, the Dresser should not confuse the Twitter world by using the number sign # because in today's world that is a hashtag connecting tweets to topics that matter)--the Dresser will start again. The first event called "e-Geaux [beta]" was an improv performance piece cum tech demo to sell a software application by the out-there tech company Pepys Inc. e-Geaux would help Facebook users avoid friending uncool individuals. Part of the allure of this performance was that the performers asked audience to allow the e-Geaux team to access audience Facebook pages. So photos were pulled from audience Facebook pages and projected on a huge screen. Yes, even the Dresser's current Facebook profile photo appeared on screen.

Meanwhile folks were encouraged to tweet using #egeaux while the performers ran through options in their software with labels like e-Geaux Amigo, e-Geaux Trip, e-Geaux Stoke, Alter e-Geaux and even e-Breaux. As it evolved, a super tweeter in the audience (55 tweets in one hour!) was recognized as an e-Geaux Maniac and given a paper crown. The Dresser thought the conceit of the show, which had about 100 people in the audience with the average age of 32, was clever but could probably use another couple of performances to get the improv aspects working more fluidly. This was definitely a show that was all about me and the luck of the draw.

Event number two was a TWT Slam hosted by poet Holly Bass. What's a TWT Slam? It's like a poetry slam only the writer has a maximum of 140 characters to "impart poetic wisdom." As is Holly's hosting tradition, she began with an OPP (other poet's poem) by Gowri Koneswaran. Gowri K's poem "Techno Friends" dealt with the issue of "friends" on Facebook. Here, Dear Reader, applaud loudly for Holly Bass and her social consciousness. She does not make her poetry programs all about her, though she could because she is an outstanding and prolific performer.

About eight tweeters signed up to face and recite to an audience of about 75 people. Three judges--Angie Goff of NBC4, Glory Edim of Scoutmob, and Amy Saidman of Speakeasy DC--gave a one to ten rating for each performance (content and delivery) with 10 being the best rating. At Holly's urging, and who could resist her charm?, the Dresser stepped up to be the sacrificial goat--the writer who offers up a poetic tweet so the judges can set the rating bar.

Here's how the Nuyorican Poets talk about the goat poet:
"At the National Poetry Slam event, this is called the "Calibration Poet", but at the Nuyorican, we call these poets "Sacrifical Goats" and it means the same thing. This is a poet who is not participating in the Poetry Slam that night, but comes up at the start of the show as a way to give inexperienced judges a chance to practice their scoring skills before the "real" Slammers for that evening perform."

Using phrases from her poem "Diana au Courant," the Dresser offered:

She was a flippy lady

A real sixer in a deck

Of nines. Knew

Handle from

Muzzle, click

Of the cock

From squeeze 

Of trigger. Oh

She listened.

The judges ranked the sacrificial goat poem as 8, 8, 7. Seconds later the Dresser's tweet of this poetic fragment reaped an RT (another poet re-tweeted the Dresser's tweet poem to his followers) and then another tweet from some unknown tweeter offering free mobile porn. The Dresser was left to ponder soup or art?

Among the competing tweets were political (how Rick Santorum treats women versus gays), social media (is a girl still a virgin if she shows her boyfriend her tweets?), and personal topics (advice to oneself--give up the graviton to play spin-the-bottle). Among the competitors making the scene was publisher of The Folly print magazine Andrew Bucket. The winner of the TWT Slam won $140. Here is performance poet DJ Tao:

Although the Dresser didn't stick around until the end, she was glad she had attended both events in the "Art Gets Social" lineup. There is much to learn about social media etiquette and the boundaries of self-promotion.