All Around the Edge

Friday night’s theme is “Before the Edge”,  with art and performances with sexual themes that are playful and teasing, such as a Atomic Cheesecake Pinup Pageant and performers such as

• Eliza Charming
• ShortStaxx
• Lee Luscious/Lee Harrington
• Coco Mource
• Dix Washington

and other art and performances on the site. The headliner is the famous sex educator, performance artist, and feminist Annie Sprinkle.

Saturday things get a bit darker, with performances featuring more BDSM and kinky themes such as flesh pulls, rope bondage, and poetry.  Some performers like Lee Harrington and Annie Sprinkle will be reprising appearances with a more explicit theme, and they will be joined by fetish performers such as Klawdya Rothschild, Julie Simone, Graydancer, Sacred Mark Sanctuary,  and more.

It all takes place at the Load of Fun gallery, 120 W. North Ave in Baltimore, beginning at 7pm. Admission is $15.

image used permission of Suzannah Gerber

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I feel that – it warms my heart, actually. At age 18 I started on what I thought was going to be a career in musical theatre, but got a bit sidetracked, and didn’t end up getting my degree in dance until the venerable age of 29. Ten years later, I have taught ballet to three year olds and the rumba to 70 year olds, worked with world-class dancers like Heidi Latsky, presented before World Dance Symposiums, and danced on stage to “Let’s Get Physical” with Foxy Veronica’s Peach Pies at a goth club.

Because in the end it’s not about the movements or the technique, Milia. It’s about your movement, your technique, and your body moving. You want to dance? Dance, then. If you make the movement authentic, it will be good.

Pina Bausch and Tanztheatre Wuppertal

I’m having trouble finding the documented evidence, so this is anecdotal, but when I was at one point doubting my ability to dance when compared with the 18 and 19 year olds I was training with, my mentor Douglas Rosenberg told me about Pina Bausch. Aside from being a fantastic dancer and choreographer herself, he told me that at certain points in her career she’d refused to have any dancers younger than…oh, 35 or 40, I don’t remember which…in her company. They hadn’t lived enough life to put the meaning that she wanted into the movements.

Now, this may be an unfair comparison – many young dancers are exquisitely expressive, and age is no virtue – but it has served as inspiration to me as my movements change with age. The legs do not lift me as high, but the intention behind the leap has more depth now than it did before. And in the end, there is always a new Spring in my step.

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All About Numbers

As the video on their site will tell you, in the past 9 years Artistic Fraud has called for:

• 81 school desks
•  32 flourescent semaphore flags
• 790 maps
• 36 vibraphone keys
• 2400 square feet of polyester wedding dress lining
• Over 300 performers.

You can see a short film about the relatively small production Fear of Flight on YouTube now, and hear the ensemble as they blend and create their vocal stagescapes (score by Jonathan Monroe). It’s fascinating how the score backs up the dramatic collaboration of the characters on the stage…

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Haylie Duff, Not Hilary Duff

Yes, that’s right. Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle is not hosted by Hilary Duff, as I wrote, but by Haylie Duff, her sister and co-star for the movie Material Girls. Haylie has also appeared on Broadway in Hairspray, but her longest and most recognized role was on the long-running TV series 7th Heaven.

For Search she is more than just the front of the show; she also serves as executive producer. Her attitude about the show seems very straightforward: “I don’t do any of the eliminating or judging. I’m always auditioning for things so I see them as my peers. They’re wonderful, talented girls and they’re already professionals.”

“…one of the most realistic reality shows…”

Says Cari Kroop, of CommonSenseMedia.org, mentions that the show is better than most reality-based theatre shows because it “doesn’t waste any time airing footage of the untalented hopefuls who didn’t make the cut during open auditions…it’s a process that’s as ruthless and unemotional as a real-life Broadway casting…” And watching people’s hopes and dreams get crushed on the air is what reality TV is all about, right?

Longtime-absent and perennial-favorite TV blogger Beckylooo also commented on this particular phenomenon of the shows, but with the opposite point of view. “There’s an argument to be made,” she writes, “that offering a cross section of the folks who showed up is in fact more real that pretending the sh***y dancers never existed.”

While I would agree that showing the whole spectrum of hopeful dancers is perhaps realistic, that only really applies if they show them in the first round of auditions. My problem is with the policy of allowing the really awful people to get through the first round – something that is not realistic – and then parading them in front of the home viewers accompanied by the outrage of the judges who complain of wasted time when they invited the dancers back in the first place.

Then again, that’s holding the reality shows to a standard of reality that is…unrealistic. So I just sigh and say that’s entertainment, I guess.

Warning: Here Be Monsters

Under the category of “some things are just better off not existing,” apparently Warner Brother’s theme parks are coming up with their own answer to Disney’s long string of successful musicals with Creature from the Black Lagoon – the Musical! No, I’m not making this up, and neither is the L.A. Times

Why should we be scared? Well, the opening in 2009 promises, among other things, that audiences will be ““enveloped by the exotic sounds and scents of the jungle.”  (emphasis added).

Smell-o-vision comes back to the floorboards…

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Her son, Paul Sills, died of pneumonia today at age 80, having continued his mother’s work and shaped theatre as we know it today.

Paul Sills, the “Orson Welles of Improv”

Maybe you’ve heard of some of the places Paul Sills’ influence was felt. Second City? The Kids in the Hall? OK, how about Saturday Night Live? 30 Rock? Broadway’s Ragtime? Or how about one of his students, a fellow by the name of David Mamet who achieved a thing or two on Broadway and in Hollywood? Maybe you’ve been to a Comedy Sportz workshop or performance in your town?

Really, looking at the list of people and places influenced by and trained through Sills’ techniques is like looking at the entire shape of our cultural milieu. And yet, hardly anyone has heard of him. Jeffrey Sweet, theater historian, says “Paul was never given his due. Nobody did more for the American theater.”

So, in the interest of giving him his due…

Paul Sills & Story Theatre

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Ariell Jacobs as Gabriella Montez

Though the role was originated on TV by Vanessa Hudgens, the nerdy star of the broadway show has been aptly originated by Arielle Jacobs. Considering how much HSM has become a worldwide phenomenon, in some ways her job as part of the touring company is even harder, bringing the show to a wider audience than just those who are able to make it to Broadway.

Even better is the blog that she’s keeping of her time on tour. Ranging from the reaction of Canadian audiences to funny stories about her cast members, it’s a personal and very engaging look behind the scenes. You can even email her questions at GabriellaSpeaks@gmail.com

I’m looking forward to see how she answers some of the questions posed on the Mercury News blogs, and I would recommend her own as a regular read. Among other things, it will turn you on to music she likes, such as this one: Green to Gray, by Gavin Creel:

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There was another part of the article, a minor part, that I found very interesting from a theatrical point of view. Apparently, when the streets were unsafe, they ran lines and coordinated the musical using things like cel phones, instant messaging, and other technological tools. They also had the DVD to watch to perfect the English language slang and musical numbers. Makes me wonder if you could actually put together an entire musical with those tools, letting the performers just come together at the last minute to perform. An interesting experiment in social networking…

Meanwhile, here’s the finale: We’re All In This Together

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Alexei Ratmansky

In the New York Times Chip Brown has written a piece about the very young artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Alexei Ratmansky. At 39 he has become “one of the most sought after choreographers in the world.” Instead of plotting his escape from totalitarianism, the article describes how he calmly waits for visa approval in order to bring his style to America.

The piece is in-depth, not only describing his creative process but also the environment that he lives in – like some other brave performers, the new Russia is sometimes a quite tumultuous place to be an artist.

Carlos Acosta

For those looking for more thorough summer reading, one of the greats of the ballet world has written a memoir that has movie written all over it. Carlos Acosta is a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet – and like other greats such as Nureyev, he was born under a communist regime: Cuba.

The story of his fantastic rise from street urchin breakdancing to Michael Jackson bootlegs all the way to premiere ballerino makes for fascinating (if at times hyperbolic) reading, according to the New York Times book review. Still, it might be just the thing for those of us recovering from the end of Dancing with the Stars…

images courtesy of Newscom

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And the star of the musical Chicago flew across the world to be with her. Now that’s a mother’s day present. On the other hand, she does sort of owe it all to Mom: “I decided to take her to dancing lessons because she was so shy,” says Natalie Ball, the new octagenarian.

It paid off. Wright has been in touring productions of Chicago in the U.K., Europe, and in the stage production in South Africa. She’s been on stage with Melanie Griffith and Brooke Shields. Now she’s preparing to move to America, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Most of all, though, I’m touched that she’s that dutiful a daughter. Now, to forward this article to all my kids…knew I shoulda made them stick with their dance lessons…

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Milia also directed me to the event profile on Facebook, which I have happily added to my profile (though I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, sorry). Theatre de Mazitou, the production house exclusively licensed by Disney to produce High School Musical in Lebanon, also talks more about their purpose in producing the musical.  They held the objective “to reinforce and enhance novelty in Lebanon, shake up their talents and intellect and give them a chance to express themselves in their country. The lines of work we approach are utterly in respective of the growth of children’s intellect, internal and external development as well as their output.”

The troupe had to overcome a situation not commonly faced by theatrical groups – on May 8th, the country fell into “chaos” as a general strike was called – and by strike, we’re not talking about people holding placards and marching in a line. “You could hear gunfire crackling across Beirut all morning” reports Robert Fisk. In spite of this, they carried on with the premiere a week later, and I’m incredibly impressed and hope they have a fantastic run. Kudos to them for the bravery in the face of very difficult times, and holding to the theatrical tradition of “the show must go on.”

“If the same Lebanese theater group were to put on something by Sondheim, would it bother you less?” asks Milia. I understand the question – the idea that some plays are “classics” and that something of a higher perceived quality, it somehow stops being cultural assimilation and becomes common human experience.

I don’t know if my objection is so much to the author of the show or even the quality as much as the language. I believe that there are probably excellent Lebanese playwrights and stories that, if U.S. theatre goers were more open, would add to the cultural richness of Broadway (not to mention TV and movies). But international cinema remains the purview of upper-class liberal hippy types (yes, I’m generalizing and stereotyping here) and the international theatre scene remains the purview of the Ivory Tower of academia. I think, in the end, we all lose out in the one-way spread of cultures.

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