FLORIDA GRAND OPERA YOUNG ARTISTS
With the Lynn University Philharmonia Orchestra
March 17-18: Saturday – 7:30 p.m., Sunday – 4 p.m.
Seven Florida Grand Opera Young Artists are joined by the Lynn University Philharmonia Orchestra performing highlights from some of the most popular and famous operas, including La Boheme, Romeo and Juliette, Rigoletto and La Rondine.

THE BEATLEMANIACS
March 31-April 1: Saturday – 7:30 p.m., Sunday – 4 p.m.
Imagine what it would be like if The Beatles were performing today. The Beatlemaniacs brings the sounds of the “Fab Four” to life with spectacular visual lighting effects, video/multi-media presentations and costume changes. In full regalia, The Beatlemaniacs span the musical library and history of the Beatles.

Tickets are $45/mezzanine, $50/orchestra, and $65/box. They are available for purchase at the Lynn University Box Office, located in the Wold Performing Arts Center at 3601 N. Military Trail. Tickets also may be purchased online at http://our.lynn.edu or by phone at 561.237.9000.
About the Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University.

The 750-seat Wold Performing Arts Center, located on Lynn’s campus in the heart of Boca Raton, is easily accessible by both I-95 and the Florida Turnpike. The Wold Center features superb acoustics, a modern lighting system, a large, light-filled lobby, and flexible space well-suited for dramatic productions, concerts and other cultural events. With an elegant salon, outdoor sunset terrace and intimate black-box studio, this new center is home to numerous concerts and events, including live theatrical performances by the Lynn’s theatre arts program and professional Live at Lynn Theatre and Jazz Series, as well as Conservatory of Music concerts.

Pina Bausch

Wim Wenders’ recent movie Pina has opened up a wealth of discussions, panel presentations, commentary, and musings on the artist, as well it should.  As one of the best films on Dance covering one of our century’s great Dance artists, Pina is as evocative as the woman it portrays.

Like so many contemporary discussions of artists, Pina Bausch often is positioned to stand alone, as indeed she does in certain terms, or to be referenced as a purely German artist.  But Pina’s underpinnings come not just from her German influences but also from the strength and vision of some of the most essential North American artists of the generation before her, some of whom are omitted and unsung. 

The Fundamentals of Pina’s American Exposure

In Europe Pina began her studies with Germany’s influential choreographer Kurt Jooss, who also taught Birgit Cullberg, who founded the Colberg Ballet in Sweden.

When Pina arrived in New York in 1958 with a scholarship as a “special student” to the Julliard School of Music, she studied with some of the greats of the time, including Jose Limon, Alfredo Corvino, and Margret Craske, with Anthony Tudor and Anna Sokolow as the main fountains for inspiration.  She then went on to dance in the companies of Paul Taylor as well as the celebrated innovators, Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer, who had danced with Sokolow for years.

Paul Sanasardo/Donya Feuer Dance Company

Pioneers of Modern Dance

Sanasardo and Feuer were enormous pioneers of the day, exploring greater possibilities within movement and giving birth to a new form of dance as they presented evening-length modern dance work revealing movement’s relationship to the human psyche.  There was a kind of emotional theatricality here that was unique to the stage at this time.  The pieces were intricately autobiographical and often surrealistic, intellectual, and yet simultaneously synthetic and sensual.

Both Sanasardo and Feuer had studied and danced with Martha Graham, as well as with the equally great Antony Tudor and Anna Sokolow.  It was natural that their work would represent next organic octave of exploration after being caught in the cross-pollination of Tudor and Sokolow. 

 A Mecca for Modern Dance

The Paul Sanasardo/Donya Feuer Dance Company and their studio in New York became a mecca for dancers looking for deeper meaning in the artform.  Dance scholar Mark Franko has said that the role of Sanasardo and Feuer in the 1960s dance avant-garde was as important and influential as the better-known experiments of the Judson Dance Theater. 

Spreading Their Legacy

Donya Feuer left the company to work with Igmar Bergman in Europe, ultimately creating award-winning films of her own as well as directing stage productions, with special attention to Shakespeare.  She single-handedly introduced Modern Dance to Sweden where future contemporary choreographer Mats Ek and his brother, the dancer Nilas (the sons of Birgit Cullberg) were her students.

Paul Sanasardo sustained the company in New York, making new pieces and running the studio.  He eventually went on to direct The Batsheva Dance Company in Israel.

The Influence of Sanasardo and Feuer

The influence of Sanasardo and Feuer is more highly celebrated and felt in Europe, but the work was born in North America.  One can say that a great deal of the backbone of  Contemporary Dance in Europe was culled from the backbone of their work.

In this regard, the two were a vital and visceral influence on the evolving Pina, providing a solid underpinning for her own evolutionary and visionary contributions to the expansion of Modern Dance.

For beautifully articulated insight into this subject matter, please refer to the writer Ane Daly’s book, Critical Gestures.

Mark Franko’s book on Sanasardo/Feuer and The Studio for Dance, Excursion for Miracles,  is another essential for understanding the early days of modern dance in America.

Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled 1

“Up in Smoke” is a compilation of objects exploring the ephemeral airborne particles that we call smoke.  The curator describes it as exploring,  “The dual nature of fire and its attendant smoke – an entity that we command until it rages out of control”.  The curators got their inspiration from observing smokers from the hospital who would assemble right outside the museum, conveniently located directly next to the hospital.  The exhibit is a compilation of objects taken from the Fleming’s vast collection including many ancient pipes as well as various pictures displaying smoking scenes.

I gazed at a pipe handcrafted by a UVM student in 1908 and wondered how different this student was from students today?  I pictured a very cold Eskimo smoking from the long curved Inuit pipe from the late 19^th century.  I stood with a blank look on my face as I face as I attempted to conceptualize the age of additional pipes.  An Effigy pipe from Western Mexico manufactured in 300 BCE was 2312 years old (assuming I did my math correctly)!  What were they even smoking back then?!  I know what they were smoking in China in the 19^th century because of a huge wooden, engraved Opium pipe.

A cute vibrant painting caught my eye.  The caption below the art read,“Raja Smokes his Hookah”. I looked at the title and I knew for sure, the curator placed this exhibit on the Vermont campus for a reason. The hookah features watercolors from India painted in the early 1800’s.  If there’s one thing that UVM students can’t resist, it’s smoking Hookah and vivid colors.

My mind was racing thinking about how the role of smoking has changed throughout history.  Why and what have people smoked throughout history?  Do we have an inherent need to have an altered sense of the world or is this activity more about a social ritual?  As I pondered the different topics brought up in the exhibit, I haphazardly meandered into the second exhibit at the Fleming museum.  Ah ha!  Everything made sense now, this was the reason the curator had used such devious tactics to hook innocent hookah loving students into visiting the educational museum.  It was to force them to experience an amazing Contemporary photography exhibit displaying some of Iran’s most famous photographers.  “Persian Visions” is unique because instead of seeing how the US depicts Iran as we often see in news media we are offered a look at how Iranians see Iran in their day-to-day life.  A quote on the wall read, “The exhibit’s fortunate arrival in the US is most timely because of our growing interested in – and distance from – the breathtaking beauty of Islamic art.”-Gary Hallman.

Pilobolus (Photo by John Kane)

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County is proud to present a special two-night-only engagement showcasing the critically-acclaimed dance troupe, PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE. World-renowned for their innovative mix of the human imagination and corporeal dexterity, and memorable performances on widely televised programs such as the Academy Awards and “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” PILOBOLUS is destined to create a wondrous dance spectacle for South Florida audiences. The troupe will make its Arsht Center debut on March 2 and 3, 2012 at 8 p.m., in the Ziff Ballet Opera House as part of the Knight Masterworks Season, Sanford and Beatrice Ziff Dance Series. Tickets range from $25 to $90 and are on sale now. Tickets may be purchased through the Adrienne Arsht Center box office by calling (305) 949-6722, or online at www.arshtcenter.org.

 
Renowned across the globe for an imaginative mix of humor, invention, and drama, PILOBOLUS creates a wondrous dance world with each performance. The company incorporates dance, gymnastics, performance art and shadow play. Employing the human body as pure sculptural matter, the dancers link and unlink, twist and tumble, creating an ever-changing series of forms, many evocative of the natural world. All this translates into a visually dazzling body of work that, through both intelligent humor and bittersweet melancholy, has amazed audiences for more than four decades Having performed live on stage in 63 countries and counting, PILOBOLUS has become an American dance institution—and a dance genre unto itself—and remains as innovative and influential as ever.

“It is an honor to present the Pilobolus Dance Theatre company as part of our Dance at the Arsht Season,” said M. John Richard, president and CEO of the Adrienne Arsht Center. “The dance troupe’s iconic and imaginative mix of humor, invention, and drama, coupled with incomparable dance, gymnastics, performance art and shadow play will surely leave South Florida audiences in awe.”
PILOBOLUS began in 1971 at Dartmouth College as an experimental dance company, and quickly became renowned across the world for its imaginative and athletic exploration of creative collaboration. The company has also been featured, with great popularity, on broadcast media: In 2004, CBS’ “60 Minutes”; in 2007, the Academy Awards, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, and shortly thereafter, the “Oprah Winfrey Show”; twice in 2008 on the “Late Show with Conan O’Brien”; and sixteen times in conjunction with football games on the NFL Network. PILOBOLUS has received a number of prestigious honors, including the Berlin Critic’s Prize, the Brandeis Award, the New England Theatre Conference Prize, and a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in cultural programming. In June 2000, PILOBOLUS received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in choreography. In 2007, artistic directors Robby Barnett and Michael Tracy, along with PILOBOLUS co-founder Jonathan Wolken received the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Endowment Fellowship from Dartmouth College. In 2010, PILOBOLUS was the first collective to be given the Dance Magazine Award, which honors men and women who have made lasting contributions to the art.

Pilobolus (photo by John Kane)

 
Pilobolus’ Arsht Center engagement will also include a Modern Dance Master Class at 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 3, 2012. The 90-minute master class will incorporate the company’s signature work themes: dance, gymnastics and performance art. The class will focus on the PILOBOLUS method of collective creativity, how individuals make things, solve problems, and meet challenges in groups. The educational program will be held in the Peacock Foundation Studio located in the Ziff Ballet Opera House. The class is FREE (reservation required) and is open to participants of all range of abilities, ages 16 and up. Those interested in participating must call (786) 468-2270 to make a reservation.

Following a critically acclaimed and sold-out run at the Broward Stage Door Theatre, Neil Simon’s classic comedy, Last of the Red Hot Lovers will open at the Miami Beach Stage Door Theatre on Friday, March 9, with performances each weekend through March 25th.

Last of the Red Hot Lovers is a comedy about Barney Cashman, a middle-aged, married nebbish who wants to have an affair. Barney, pitch-perfectly performed by Len Cashman, selects his mother’s uptown apartment for the rendezvous because of its ambience – and the fact that his mom will be out doing volunteer work two hours every week.

His first choice as paramour is Elaine Navazio, an experienced sexpot, played wittily by Elissa D. Solomon. When Barney asks “Are you as cold as you seem?” Elaine retorts, “I need gloves to take off my underwear.” It becomes clear that the seduction is going nowhere. Determined to experience an adulterous affair, the play takes one comedic turns after another as Barney continues be unsuccessful in his choice of partners. Shira Abergel, in the role of Bobbi Michelle, a beautiful actress he picked up in Central Park, and Carol Sussman, as Jeanette Fisher, his wife’s moralizing best friend, provide artful entertainment and witty banter as the scenario unfolds.

Michael Leeds’s masterful direction of the cast ensemble deepens the audience’s emotional connection to this Neil Simon Comedy, and the critics agree. “Stage Door delivers an intriguing take on The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, one that isn’t just the same old simple Simon,” wrote Christine Dolen in The Miami Herald. “It’s hard to imagine how the Stage Door Theatre’s production of the Neil Simon comedy “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” could be any better.” says Rod Hagwood of the Sun-Sentinel.

Opened in 2011, the Miami Beach Stage Door Theatre is operated by Derelle Bunn and David Torres, co-founders of the Broward Stage Door Theatre, their flagship theatre in Coral Springs, and winner of the 2011 Carbonell Award for Best Production of a Musical in 2011.

Performance Schedule:
Last of the Red Hot Lovers runs March 9 – 25. All performances are on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM; Saturdays and Sundays at 2 PM. Tickets are $38 for all performances except for Saturday evenings, priced at $42. Tickets are available at the Box Office at the Miami Beach Stage Door at the Byron Carlyle, 500 71st Street, Miami Beach or by calling (305) 397-8977. For further information, please go to wwwstagedoortheatre.com.

DiSh – Dinner and a Show
The City of Miami Beach has launched “DiSh,” the moniker for Dinner and a Show, a program in which participating restaurants near the Miami Beach Stage Door Theatre offer ticket holders a 15 percent discount on their lunch or dinner simply by presenting their ticket or ticket stub. Miami Beach residents also receive a 10 percent discount on tickets at theatre. For the “dish” on participating restaurants, log on to www.mbculture.com/dish/.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto (left, D-Los Angeles) hopes to legalize bake sales and lemonade stands through the introduction of the California Homemade Food Act, AB 1616. Gatto introduced it after an artisan baker was fined for selling bread to local coffee houses. I hope it passes. Catering should not be an act of civil disobedience.

The state’s regulatory burden goes much further. In addition to the public health and wholesale labeling requirements (that baked goods have to be produced in a regularly inspected commercial kitchen), bake sales have to file an Intention to Solicit Notice with audited financial statements to the Business License commission thirty days before the beginning of a bake sale. This includes (surprise!) an filing fee. They must also collect sales and use tax, file for a county business license, and pay unrelated-business income corporate income tax. Heaven forbid a reception includes beer or wine. Let’s not even start with San Francisco-only requirements…

Sale of intermission refreshments does not balance the budgets of most arts organizations, but it does provide an important service to audience members and it is a way to get volunteers involved in supporting the arts. For organizations such as the SF Symphony and Opera where catering does factor into the bottom line, there is a reason why intermission refreshment costs so much. It has nothing to do with the cost of food.

"Remnants of the Harvest"

The AZ gallery is showing oils, photography, jewelry and prints by local women artists. Some standouts include Emily Gray Koehler’s color-reduction woodcuts; Lindsy Halleckson’s oils; and Megan Moore’s giclée prints.

Emily Gray Koehler uses crisp colors, and organic shapes and lines for her woodcuts. She has an eye for design and composition, giving her work an abstract quality while never leaving the realm of representation. In “Remnants of the Harvest” Koehler combines soft colors with strong horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines to produce a dynamic woodcut of a very ordinary subject.

Lindsy Halleckson uses pure form and color to produce quiet abstract paintings. These paintings are made to contemplate, not simply observe. Stand before “Silent Search, No. 1” long enough, and you will feel a sense of calm and relaxation. Halleckson’s statement reveals her intent: “I convey nature’s silence and peace with my paintings.”

The giclée prints by Megan Moore, made from her original oils, are an explosion of color, pattern and form. Moore states that her art is influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau. This is evident in “Coy Pond,” with its curved and patterned tree branches, and its overall rich color and flat picture plane. In “Fish Tank,” Moore again relies on a balance of colors and organic forms to achieve a simple, yet interesting composition.

The show runs through February 26.

AZ Gallery, 308 Prince Street, St. Paul, Minnesota

http://theazgallery.org/2011/12/a-midwinter-nights-dream/

Brooklyn Mack

In this case… everything.

First the stats:  from Elgin, South Carolina, he started his career at 12 years old, studying with Radenko Pavlovich and Milena Leben and then getting himself a scholarship at the Kirov in Russia.  From there he apprenticed with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, joined the American Ballet Studio Company, and danced with a number of other solid companies, winning medals and prizes until today where he is now in his 3^rd season with the Washington Ballet.

I was interested in Brooklyn Mack for his selection by Dance Magazine as one of the top 25 to watch for 2012.  YouTube was my resource, and I immediately opened the first video I found, which was the by-now hackneyed male solo in La Corsaire.

Riveted.  Since when did Corsaire turn sensual?  Watch Brooklyn Mack and you will see another Corsaire – one that slows down time, one that wallows in every movement, one that hovers an octave or more above the norm as he takes that extra breath into the next ecstatic moment.

Watch any of Brooklyn Mack’s roles, even on video where there is none of the bristle and spark that comes from live performance, and see the contemporary incarnation of Nijinsky… and more.

Do I gush?

Look at this boy’s epaulment, ballon, turns, and just plain connection to every present moment.  The impossible inventions he creates in the air.

My question is, who is doing what to grow the ballet boys today?  They are startling, and Mack is at the head of the list.

Second question:  what is Brooklyn Mack going to be in another two years, 12, 20?  Impossible to imagine.  All you can do is run, don’t walk, to see this boy perform.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  But let our Brooklyn Mack keep his, for it is indeed part of his pure and unique artistic scent.