Performing Arts

Walker pals The Bad Plus are on tour in Europe, and during a recent train ride from Cork to Dublin, band members started comparing rock musicians with authors:

The rationale of these parings could be specific or intuitive. In musical alphabetical order it begins with linking AC/DC to Julia Childs. Rationale: they are both extremely popular, are reliable craftsmen, and exude a charismatic, "come on and get it" quality. A more typical and legible pairing is Kate Bush–James Joyce: in this case, Bush's lyrics are in the Joyce tradition. Some other more indirect connections include Douglas Adams to Phish (their fans are similar types and both artists are whimsical) and Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Vonnegut (an adolescent's discovery of each one has a similar thrilling quality).

Now the band is hosting an “invitational” on their blog where readers can submit band/writer pairings. A few samples:

AC/DC–Julia Child

Alice Cooper–Stephen King

Tori Amos–Alice Walker

Björk–Italo Calvino

Kate Bush–James Joyce

The Beatles–Roald Dahl

David Bowie–J.G Ballard

Jeff Buckley–Frank O' Hara

Captain Beefheart–Allen Ginsburg

Johnny Cash–Carl Sandburg

Nick Cave–William Faulkner

The Clash –Hunter S. Thompson

Leonard Cohen–John Updike

Elvis Costello–William Shakespeare

Cream–Jane Auel

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young–John Steinbeck

The Cure–William Gibson

The Doors–Jack Kerouac

Bob Dylan–Ernest Hemingway

The Eagles–Tom Wolfe

Mark Eitzel–William Carlos Williams

The Flaming Lips–Shel Silverstein

Earlier: Dave King of The Bad Plus interviewed by Performing Arts Curator Philip Bither on Ornette Coleman’s music.

Never one to sidestep controversy, Bill T. Jones addresses US politics in his new work Blind Date, to be performed at the Walker March 10. Hear a podcast of Jones talking about the work and its themes of patriotism and the culture of “toxic certainty” that leads to conflict.

More on Blind Date:
“Asking the big questions,” Lisa Traiger, The Washington Post, November 11, 2005

“Saith What Lord?,” Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice, October 4, 2005

“Political footwork from Bill T. Jones,” Ginia Bellafante, International Herald Tribune, September 21, 2005

Watching Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan biopic, No Direction Home last weekend, I was struck by a few things (other than the length of Dylan’s fingernails; seriously, watch for it): the amazing footage of Woody Guthrie, Billie Holiday, Dylan, a pre-wrinkle Johnny Cash, Odetta and others; the weirdness of seeing 20-somethings like Dylan and Joan Baez singing lyrics far deeper than their ages would suggest; and the zeitgeist that these folk musicians were either channeling or shaping themselves. Born in ‘71, I realized that I can’t fully grasp the optimism and fear of those times–the promise and peril of the civil rights movement, war in Indochina (that eventually snowballed into the Vietnam War), a growing progressive consciousness–and how Baez’s music reflected or contributed to these social changes. So I also have no idea how Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker felt when she heard–in English, a language she didn’t then understand–the haunting voice of Joan Baez in 1967. Now 45, De Keersmaeker visits the Walker December 1-3 to perform a work set entirely to the album Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2.

Called Once, this first-ever solo performance by De Keersmaeker is partly a movement homage to the music and the era, but seems just as vital right now. The piece, which only has two stops in the US (New York and Minneapolis), ends in a way the Village Voice calls “sensational… in the deepest sense“:

Gradually she sheds articles of clothing until she winds up in black panties with flickering images from “The Birth of a Nation” projected on her body and the back wall.

Given the presence of that film, widely excoriated as racist, and Mr. Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” as well as her decision to end with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” this might seem a typical European exercise in America-bashing. But the recurrent images from the film are of war, not the Klan righteously defending the sullied honor of Southern womanhood. Religious fundamentalism is hardly confined to this country. Ms. Baez and Mr. Dylan are both very American. And the bulk of the Baez songs are old folk ballads about doomed love.

The performance actually takes its name from one such love song, Baez’s “Once I Had a Sweetheart,” and fittingly includes these words from Baez: "Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning, If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.” The image of a solo dancer covered, erased almost, by images of war from Griffith’s film, seems a sobering one, especially as innocent lives are wiped out in today’s wars. But De Keersmaeker seems to have a more uplifting message than that. The work also includes this Baez mantra:

“Action is the antidote to despair."

Here’s what De Keersmaeker has to say about Baez and Once. Get your tickets here.

The following review is courtesy of Jim Bovino, Director of Flaneur Productions

Some thoughts on Mabou Mines' DollHouse:

In 1878 Henrik Ibsen wrote:

There are two kinds of spiritual laws, two kinds of conscience, one in men and a quite different one in women. They do not understand each other; but the woman is judged in practical life according to the man’s law, as if she were not a woman but a man.... A woman cannot be herself in the society of to-day, which is exclusively a masculine society, with laws written by men

This was written while finishing A Doll's House, which premiered the following year. Ibsen's most immediate philosophical and political statement, A Doll's House dramatized the spiritual and existential destruction of women living within a patriarchal system.

Mabou Mines affirms Ibsen's original philosophical position, but extends and problematizes it by casting actors of short stature in all of the male roles. What results is a literalized vision of universally arrested development; while outwardly exerting control, the men in this production also suffer under the weight of their own crippled system. They seem either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge their condition of moral and ethical truncation, committed to ritualized power and the status quo as children clinging to mother. Indeed the men in Bruer's dollhouse seem preoccupied with the womb, suggested by the enveloping red curtains and nursery room set design, fiercely holding on to a sense of security and comfort and infantilized by a dependence on the maternal order of a literally miniaturized world created and maintained by women on their behalf. A row between Nora and Torval early on ends with an enforced silence. Torval then comments on how "cozy and peaceful" their house is. This refrain is heard throughout the action.

The very pregnant maid Helene telegraphs the status of the inhabitants of this dollhouse as not yet born morally or ethically, and creates a profound dramatic tension through this imminence. When Nora and Torval's dear friend Dr Rank dies, this tension is somewhat relieved as he is enveloped in Helene's arms and carried off-stage, perhaps to be finally born. This masterfully sets up the denouement, but in the end it is Nora who is born.

There are moments of intense physicality that become almost slapstick. Rather than resulting in comic effect, it becomes a grotesque physical awkwardness, further literalizing the notion of these people as children not yet adept at their bodies' mechanics. Nora crawls around the stage, simultaneously reducing herself to her husbands stature and suggesting an inability to manage the demands of her adult body.

This is a production at once grand in its ambition and modest in its scope. Conceptually it attempts to unpack the subtext of Ibsen's script, literalizing its emotional content while remaining philosophically consistent with the original. The casting of actors of small stature in the roles of oppressors recalls Nietzsche's assertion that the strong must protect themselves from the weak. When those in positions of power are ethically or morally diminished the result is a general contamination of social conditions. Indeed the small men are still in charge.

The following review is courtesy of Marcus Young, Minneapolis-based artist

Some notes from Friday night’s Mabou Mines DollHouse.

The pianist, a woman, takes a deep solo bow center stage before beginning the overture..odd. Red curtains drip into place portending a large sadness. Be aware a play is starting.

Tall women, small men. A larger-than-life live piano plays for a miniature stage piano. Self-consciously melodramatic acting immediately followed by moments of heartfelt, heart-breaking delivery. It's all out of proportion and mismatched.

For the first two acts all the quirks are strangely balanced. Punch lines land with light winks. Moods shift as quickly as opening a dollhouse window. The energy was of a three-ring circus. Strong man, fat woman, animal-tamers, jugglers, all coordinated into a soft-shoe dance. Add exaggerated Norwegian accents, cheap physical gags, and a wild dream sequence, and the show was buoyant. If after a long while the game became a little predictable, Maude Mitchell's emotionally available Nora would come to the rescue. It was her tense and prolonged silence in act two, which we knew was killing her, that stole our hearts for good.

Playing with a dollhouse is inherently clumsy. Furniture moves out of place. Things topple over, but Lee Breuer wants it all to fall apart. Ibsen's play, however, is neatly structured. Whereas Breuer and cast breathe beautiful, updated life into the play for the first two acts, the last act is burdened with unnecessary responsibility to be serious. The text is sacrificed for spectacle. The soft-shoe goes beyond tarantella and attempts grand opera.

Yes, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House, with it’s door slam heard around the world, is an important work about women’s independence, so I imagine the director wanted to pull out all the stops for the last ten minutes. That's probably why the set transformed, came alive and began acting. The music, no longer underscore, took center stage and was acting. The lip sync was acting, the nudity was acting, the pianist was acting, and even the director was acting. The actors’ acting and the text were lost, up against larger and larger theatrical gestures.

Powerful lines like "I don't love you anymore" didn't move me. Torvald asks, "Where are you going?" Nora responds, "To take off my costume," but now the double meanings are gone. The final moments of the show were epic but without emotional intensity and release.

I return to earlier moments in the play. The live piano plays for the actor playing the fake miniature piano. Nora comforts her small Torvald embracing him like a doll. Many times I acknowledged the artifice yet allowed it to play me anyway. There, Breuer and Ibsen were in conversation. The balance was such that I could hear both of them, and they both had good things to say.

Tonight is the opening of Mabou Mines’ DollHouse (running through Sunday afternoon), and the Ibsen.net cup runneth over with interesting and informative tidbits about all things Henrik Ibsen: the history of A Doll’s House, an alternative script ending to appease enraged audiences and lily-livered theater producers (though written and vehemently denounced by the author), and photos from the first-ever performance in 1879:

Enjoy your macaroons, little birds.