The dance community will come together tonight for the seemingly controversial 4th annual Sage Awards. I have had the pleasure of being a part of the Sages in many permutations. The first year, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was under a rock. The second year, I attended the festivities at the bidding of my colleague, Kristin Van Loon, who invited me to pre-Sage cocktails (Who in their right mind would pass up a drink and eat spread anyway?) The third year, I was on the Sage Award panel, I performed in the show and I actually was awarded, which really meant something to me, but that’s another story. This year, in exchange for a ticket, I am blogging about the Sages. I really wanted to volunteer in some way, as I did last year. (For the 07 party at the Ritz, I picked up and delivered nearly 100 loaves of bread and 10 butter cream frosted cakes donated by Wuollet’s Bakery located in some crazy dale-like suburb. It must have cost me 30 dollars in gas just to find the place.) (more…)
When I met Walter Kitundu, shortly after I started working at the Walker in 1998, he was making music. And musical instruments. And intricate dollar-bill drawings. And god knows what else. Now, as of Monday, he’s a MacArthur Fellow, honored with a $500,000 grant to continue his inventions — and all of us at the Walker wish him warm congratulations.
A quick scan of Kintundu’s website offers ample evidence of the 35-year-old San Francisco resident’s catholic creative impulses: from sometimes sharply political dollar drawings to remarkable nature photography (a raccoon testing the buoyancy of a river log, for instance, shot during his ongoing residency at Headlands Center for the Arts) to musical compositions to visual art. But what he is perhaps best known for is inventing and building instruments, most notably the phonoharp, a hybrid of turntable and stringed instrument. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as looking “like something John Sebastian might sample on a reunion tour of the Lovin’ Spoonful,” the instrument “creates a sound that combines the gentleness of the plucked strings with an LP spun on the turntable.” That sound captured the attention of the members of Kronos Quartet, who each wanted one. They hired him on as Kronos Instrument Builder in residence, and he ended up writing a composition for phonoharp specifically for the group; it was performed at last year’s San Francisco Jazz Festival, with Kitundu accompanying on clarinet (he’s reportedly building four “trumpet violins” for the quartet as well).
A native of Rochester, Minn., Kitundu has a long history with the Walker. Performing Arts Residency Coordinator at the turn of the millennium, he also co-wrote a commissioned piece, entitled simply 8, for the opening of the Walker’s 1999 exhibition of Robert Gober’s art. And last year, he opened up a concert by So Percussion and Matmos in the McGuire Theater. Living in San Francisco for the past decade, Kitundu is employed as a MultiMedia artist at the Exploratorium and is currently the Wornick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Wood Arts at the California College of the Arts, in addition to his work for Kronos.
“We’re thrilled for Walter. We had the pleasure of working with him at WAC in his formative days,” says Doug Benidt, associate curator of performing arts. “His omnivorous curiosity, unfailing grace, and ease of medium manipulation was evident early on. It’s a remarkable statement of achievement and a proper cosmic turn for the better. His career is shaping into an exceptional compound… instrument builder, bird photographer, composer, designer, musician, woodsmith, (what’s next?)… Walter is a true artist who now has the luxury of dollar-drenched research limited only by his preferences.”
They came, they saw - and, judging from their words - they were impressed. Below are a few favorite observations from reviewers at last weekend’s performances of Merce Cunningham’s masterwork, in a setting that (if we might boast a bit) will likely never be topped.
“Cunningham’s dance has the fascination of an underwater dive,” wrote Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed. “Ninety minutes is a long sit for an abstract work in which nothing repeats and nothing is predictable. And Cunningham doesn’t obscure the slow passage of time. Digital clocks face the audience, ticking off the seconds.
“But that only makes the sensation of an oceanic adventure all the more realistic. A chronograph is a diver’s lifeline because one experiences time differently when submerged. Underwater, one is alone with one’s senses. You bear your own wondrous or terrifying witness.
“That, the wondrous part, is what happens in Ocean.”
In the New York Times, Alastair Macaulay, who has seen Ocean performed in four different settings since its 1994 premiere, wrote: “Amid these dances it’s possible at times to see strange seabirds, shoals, boats, mariners, modernist takes on imagery from the “ Odyssey” and “ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” though they don’t cohere. There are more marvelous things I can’t explain: scenes that make me feel these dancers are coping with the tilting surfaces of mighty waves, others where they seem to be submerged beneath the surface and others that make me see precisely how far above the water this flock is flying with wings outstretched, occasionally shifting its formation.”
Rebecca J. Ritzel took a more plainspoken approach in the Washington Post:
“An honest invitation to one of the three sold-out performances here this week could have gone like this: “Hey, want to go out to the quarry this weekend? A lot of people in lilac spandex are going to dance to an orchestra’s rendering of singing whales, crashing icebergs and barking seals. And it goes on for 90 minutes! With no intermission!”
Does it sound interminable? Or fascinating?
For 3,600 people over three nights, most of them from the Twin Cities, the answer is the latter. They are willing to pay $50 and drive 180 miles round trip to watch modern dance in 50-some-degree temperatures, exhibiting the kind of fortitude you expect from Minnesotans when the Golden Gophers play the Wisconsin Badgers.”
And here’s a great piece from the St. Cloud Times’s Adam Hammer, covering all that went into setting up this monumental production; plus another nice “color” piece (as opposed to a review), from Jeff Severns Guntzel at from MinnPost.com.
That’s how critic Ben Ratliff describes Jason Moran’s interpretation of a legendary 1959 concert by Thelonius Monk. In “Echoes of Monk, 50 Years Later,” the the New York Times writer puts Moran’s “In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall” in the context of other tributes set to mark the golden anniversary of Monk’s jazz milestone. True to form, rather than merely reprise the songs Monk performed with a 10-piece band, Moran is creating a personal, transformative take on the event itself - one that he’s bringing here next May, in his first full-scale Walker performance since he helped celebrate the 2005 re-opening with a specially commissioned piece. So even though we only just noticed the first tinges of color on the oak tree out back, for jazz fans it’s not too early to anticipate spring.
Patricia Mitchell from the Walker’s Visitor Services department shot these photos yesterday at the Rainbow Quarry outside St. Cloud, as the stage went up for Merce Cunningham’s Ocean. Each performance is very sold out, but we’ll have more posts linking to reviews and other impressions of this landmark show as they come in.
