Monthly Archives: March 2011

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music, Theater

A Japan benefit; theater & dance tips

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UPDATE: On OregonLive, Ryan White has just posted this announcement of a big-name benefit for Japanese disaster relief at the Aladdin Theatre on March 27. So far, the list of performers includes pianist/bandleader Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini, singers Holcombe Waller and Storm Large, dancers from Oregon Ballet Theatre, new-music adventurers fEARnoMUSIC, the Pacific Youth Choir, PHAME Academy, the Shanghai Woolies, and singers Ida Rae Cahana and Carl Halvorson. Check Ryan’s post for details.

© Rich Iwasaki 2008© Rich Iwasaki 2008

By Bob Hicks

You’ll be hearing about a lot of benefit performances and emergency fund-raising drives to help the victims of Japan’s triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. Perhaps you’ve already dug deep.

picture-1One performance coming up is particularly close to me, because I serve on the board of Portland Taiko, the outstanding Asian drumming and movement ensemble. At 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, PT and the Portland State University Department of Music will host a performance at PSU’s Lincoln Hall Room 175. A lot of people in Portland Taiko have family in Japan. As artistic director Michelle Fujii puts it, “Seeing the tragedy in Japan unfold was difficult for many of us in Portland Taiko on a personal and visceral level.”

Among others, the performance will include Portland Taiko, Takohachi (Japanese taiko and dance), Mexica Tiahui (Aztec drum and dance), Mike Barber (Ten Tiny Dances), Natya Leela Academy (traditional South Indian classical dance), Carla Mann and Jim McGinn (leading Portland contemporary dancers), and Hanzaburo Araki (shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese end-blown flute).

The performance is free, but volunteers from Mercy Corps and other organizations will be on hand to take donations. Hope to see you there.

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Bob Hicks, Dance, Film, General, Language

Mishmash: a knee fit for an Irish jig event

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By Bob Hicks

Must everything we see and do be an “event”?

Irish horndancing and jig shoes. Photo: Skubik at en.wikipediaMr. Scatter noticed this pernicious form of marketing and advertising breathlessness beginning as a trickle a couple of years ago, and it’s become an all-taps-open flood. The most ubiquitous torrent is the “major motion picture event” — which means “movie that cost a lot to make and needs to make a whole lot more to recoup its costs,” or just plain “new movie” — but it’s spread to many other areas as well. A rainstorm is a “weather event.” A sale on socks at the mall is a “merchandising event.” A rational political speech is an “imaginary event.” Just kidding on that last one.

The subject rose yet again this morning when Mr. Scatter spotted an ad in the New York Times for Michael Flatley’s new movie Lord of the Dance 3D and promptly erupted into a minor hissy fit event. Now, Mr. S can take Michael Flatley or leave him, though he’d rather do the latter. (All these lords a-leaping remind him of a good friend’s dismissal of the background characters in operas and story ballets as “happy peasants.”) And Mr. S hasn’t jumped on the 3D wagon: he can’t figure out how to get those glasses over his regular glasses and still see what’s going on on the screen. No, the problem was the line right below the movie’s title in the ad: “THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE EVENT.”

Why? Mr. Scatter asked himself in an exasperation event. Why not just “THE NEW MOVIE”? Or — gasp — nothing at all? Mr. Scatter dreams of a day when this hyperventilating linguistic gaseousness will simply implode and disappear.

It could. As the Michael Flatley homepage so eloquently proclaims: “Nothing is impossible … follow your dreams.”

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Bend it like Beckham. Gray's Anatony.On the other hand, the Lord of the Dance 3D ad reminded Mr. Scatter that today is St. Patrick’s Day, and then he recalled where he was and what he was doing exactly three years ago: lying on a hospital operating table, his left leg splayed open like a flounder getting filleted, while a highly gifted surgeon inserted what is essentially an entirely new and artificial knee. Loyal readers might recall this post from March 17, 2009, Celebrating a year of the Artificial Me, which recounted the trials and eventual joys of surgery and recovery. Mr. Scatter still can’t dance a decent jig, and he still can’t play the piano. But then, he couldn’t before the surgery, either. And these days, unless an anniversary rolls around, he rarely gives his pain-free knee a second thought.

Saints be praised.

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ILLUSTRATIONS:

  • Irish horndancing and jig shoes. Photo: Skubik at en.wikipedia
  • Bend it like Beckham. Gray’s Anatony.
General, Humor, Laura Grimes, shopping

Finally, an uplifting story about bras

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By Laura Grimes

This newsflash is for everyone who knows my woes. Everyone else can ignore it. I ordered bras online.

Brassiere advertisementNormally, this is not something I would discuss in public. My flushed cheeks and Mama-taught-me-better ways insist on it. But, given my past experiences shopping for underitems while coping with Large Smelly Boys, this might possibly be an occasion for a raucous public celebration. Before we jump around, though, let me first put on a sports bra.

I learned about these gizmos reading a big, elastic glossary dedicated solely to the language of bras. Who knew there was such a thing? And so long? A garment so confounding that it requires 90 terms to explain it. What it says, in part, about sports bras: “When you move, so does your bust. It’s called ‘bounce.’ ”

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Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Circle of fire: tending the anagama kiln

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Inside the belly of the beast: 2,400 degrees of transformative heat in the East Creek Anagama Kiln. Photo: RICHARD YATESPhotos: Richard Yates

By Bob Hicks

ABOVE EAST CREEK, OREGON —
The East Creek Anagama Kiln sits amid a forest tangle in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range, above East Creek, which feeds into Willamina Creek, which feeds into the Yamhill River, which feeds into the Willamette River, which feeds into the Columbia River, which empties into the Pacific Ocean, which crosses to Japan and Korea and China, where the anagama style of wood-fired kiln was born roughly two thousand years ago. “Theoretically,” says Nils Lou, pointing down to the rapid chuff of the creek below, “you could put a canoe in the water right there and go anywhere in the world.”

Through the front burner door, roughly 500 clay pieces are being transformed by the anagama's heat. Photo: RICHARD YATESTheoretically. Your canoe might get swamped, but the possibility of such a daring jaunt brings home the essential circularity of living with an anagama. (In Japanese, the word means simply “cave kiln,” so called because of its design that exploits the gravitational and structural advantages of burrowing into the side of a hill.)

Here we are, a decade into the 21st century, celebrating the contemporary possibilities of a troglodytic technology from the time of the first Roman emperor. And when I say contemporary, I mean it. The beauty of the anagama is that, no matter how rigorously you prepare the clay pieces being fired, what comes out of the crucible is largely a result of chance.

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Books, General, Theater

Tonight: first time for a First Time

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By Bob Hicks

It’s astounding to remember, but there was a time not too many years ago when seeing almost any sort of theater in Portland was a west-side-only affair.

Sandy Plaza, home of Triangle Productions' new Sanctuary theater space.Mr. Scatter recalls an east side cabaret space on Northeast Broadway between 14th and 15th, on the block where Peet’s Coffee is, and another cabaret on lower Hawthorne, around 20th, where people like Bonnie Raitt and the Flying Karamazov Brothers used to perform before they got famous. The old Sylvia’s Italian Restaurant on Northeast Sandy had a popular dinner theater operation for a while, and of course the legendary Storefront Theatre got its start in a little hole in the wall on North Russell. Maybe we’re missing something, but not much.

With the likes of Profile, Milagro, Portland Playhouse, Defunkt, Portland Story Theatre and a lot of others setting up on the east side, that’s deep history now. As big slices of the restaurant scene and even the gallery scene have crossed the bridges to the east in the past few years, so has a significant chunk of the city’s performance scene, and for some of the same reasons: cheaper overhead and proximity to audiences. Turns out, quite a few west siders don’t mind venturing across the river, and lots of east siders like not having to go downtown to see a show.

Now Triangle Productions, which has performed all over town since it began in 1989 and was an original partner in the Theater! Theatre! complex on Southeast Belmont, has a new home on East Burnside Street. Called the Sanctuary, it’s in an old commercial building called Sandy Plaza at 1785 N.E. Sandy Boulevard. We haven’t been inside the building, but Triangle producer Don Horn calls it a padded pew-style theater with seating for 100 to 200, a good capacity for intimate theater.

And tonight the Sanctuary gets an audience for the first time. Appropriately, the show is the Northwest premiere of Ken Davenport‘s small Off-Broadway show My First Time, about lots of people’s memories of their introduction to what used to be called carnal knowledge. Davenport also was producer of the hit comedy Altar Boyz.

Showtimes are 7:30 Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through March 27. However it turns out, Portland’s east side has a new theater space. And sometimes the first time’s the charm.

Bob Hicks, Cities, General, Journalism

Oregon history: just a thing of the past?

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By Bob Hicks

You can order popular images online at the OHS web site.It’s not often we call attention to a front-page newspaper story — after all, it’s right there on the front page; how could you miss it? — but today we’re doing just that. If you haven’t looked at it yet, please read Still Stuck in the Past, D.K. Row’s front-page story in today’s Oregonian about the continuing woes at the Oregon Historical Society in spite of the five-year levy that Multnomah County voters recently passed to help bail the place out.

This is no hatchet job. D.K.’s story is well-balanced and gives a good insight into the complex issues that have been hurting the society and its museum for years. In a way, OHS offers a disconcerting peek into the future of all sorts of public institutions, from schools to police and street departments, if the tax-revolt and “privatization” bandwagons continue unchecked. If you starve an institution long enough, it starts to make blunders and lose track of what it is and what it’s supposed to be doing.

Certainly the state’s now-you-see-it-but-mostly-you-don’t approach to funding has been a huge contributor to the historical society’s troubles. But the place has also had structural, managerial problems for years, to a certain extent since its glory days under its legendary leader Tom Vaughan.

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Bob Hicks, General

It’s Fat Tuesday: join the parade

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In Binche, Belgium, Les Gilles, an all-male group of about 1,000 Mardi Gras revelers, wearing their masks; 1982. Photo: Marie-Claire/Wikimedia Commons.

Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Carnival, Mardis Gras: Whatever you call it, today’s the day. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter tend not to do the dress-up thing — some days they never get out of their pajamas — but they appreciate a good display by other people. Far be it from them to rain on anyone else’s parade. Mardi Gras happens the world over — the photo above is from Binche, Belgium — but in the United States, today is the day that hordes of people fervently wish they were in New Orleans. Apparently, absinthe makes the heart grow fonder. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, Lent begins.

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In Binche, Belgium, Les Gilles, an all-male group of about 1,000 Mardi Gras revelers, wearing their masks; 1982. Photo: Marie-Claire/Wikimedia Commons.

Books, General, Laura Grimes

OBOB: It’s all about the stories

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Oregon Battle of the BooksBy Laura Grimes

Oregon Battle of the Books didn’t disappoint. It was nerve-wracking. And it wasn’t just me.

After the Ninja Unicorns’ sudden-death face-off among three teams for the eighth and final position to move on to the elimination rounds in the regional competition, I poked a dad who graduated from the Naval Academy.

“Tell me that didn’t get to you.”

“Are you kidding? Of course it did.” He slouched all his muscles as if to show the staggering weight. “I’ve been trying to be restrained. I’ve been calling my wife constantly to give her updates.”

I overheard one adult say to another, “I had no idea this could be so intense.”

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Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Egypt, antiquities, and the fall of Hawass

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By Bob Hicks

It appears that Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s legendary minister of antiquities, has become a part of the history he has spent a lifetime trying fiercely, and often controversially, to protect. Judith H. Dobrzyinski, on her blog Real Clear Arts, reports that Hawass has resigned under pressure amid rumors of looting and charges that he himself had been stealing from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Happier times: Zahi Hawass displays a Ptolemaic statue discovered at Taposiris Magna, in northern Egypt, on May 8, 2010. Voice of America/Wikimedia Commons.Read Dobrzynski’s several posts from March 3 and her followup from March 4: It’s a messy situation. And it helps answer a question we raised almost a month ago, in this post from Feb. 8: “What will (Hawass’s) role in any new government be? Can he protect the past and be part of the future, too?”

Art Scatter hasn’t had a lot to say about the revolutions sweeping northern Africa because, frankly, other people know a lot more about the situation than we do. Is this Ten Days that Shook the World, to be followed by Stalin? Is it the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which led to an internal divorce but also to lasting openness and freedom? Is it something very much its own, and will it play out differently in Egypt, say, than Libya? Revolutions have both intended and unintended consequences. They can be instruments of revenge — a person who invites grudges can easily become a target, whether it’s justified or not — and they are invitations to mischief. In a vacuum, or a chaotic shifting of power, corruption can be epidemic.

We simply don’t know what’s going to happen. We hope fervently that this will mark a new openness, fresh opportunities, more individual rights, especially for women in the region. We’re aware that it could lead instead to more extreme religious zealotry and a further clamping down on what we in the West think of as basic individual rights. We suspect that no matter what happens, dealing with the fallout is going to be bumpy for the West, which will want to influence events but will have to do so delicately, recognizing that it’s the African peoples’ land and the African peoples’ cultures, not ours.

For the broad worlds of history and culture, a vital issue remains as we framed it here a month ago: “Hawass suddenly has a massive task on his hands: how to protect and preserve his nation’s priceless cultural heritage in the face of a possible revolution.” That hasn’t changed, except the revolution is real and Hawass, barring yet another turnabout, won’t be making any of its crucial decisions. Still, this is everyone’s history. Whatever emerges, culturally as well as politically, the whole world has a stake in it. And most of us in most of the world can only watch and hope.

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Photo: Happier times for Zahi Hawass, displaying a Ptolemaic statue discovered at Taposiris Magna, in northern Egypt, on May 8, 2010. Voice of America/Wikimedia Commons.

Books, General, Laura Grimes

Books and the greater share of honour*

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Go Ninja Unicorns! Kick book! (Image courtesy of the Small Large Smelly Boy, 2011, color marker)By Laura Grimes

Today is the big regional competition for Oregon Battle of the Books. As we say in the Scatter household: Go Ninja Unicorns! Kick book!

The Small Large Smelly Boy has been reading and studying for months. Really, the plotting for this competition started a year ago when the team lost a late-round nail-biting battle at regionals by, well, a hangnail. It was a heart-breaking defeat, made more so because they had given the right answer. But they had to prove it. In an official challenge, after two minutes, they were off by two pages. The other team got to advance to the next round. That’s just the way it goes, though it turned my head about how a quiet, erudite book competition could be incredibly thrilling.

A year ago, we had to drive to (hell and gone) Estacada (motto: “We’re in the boondocks … just keep driving”). I was simply the schlepper. Water, lunch, reading material — I was good to go all day. I was happy to support my kid and all his hard work, but I didn’t take it too seriously.

Then the competitions started.

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