Category Archives: Dance

Dance, General, Martha Ullman West, Theater

So much dance we can’t keep up

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It’s not just rock around the clock in Puddletown: It’s dance around the calendar. Autumn, winter, spring and even summer, you just can’t keep this town’s dancing feet down. Art Scatter senior correspondent Martha Ullman West has done her best to keep up with the action, and reports here on some of what’s been kickin’ in town lately.

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By Martha Ullman West

Portland is having a dance boom, even though those who swim in Terpsichore’s wake are having a hell of a time staying afloat.

Danielle Vermette, Darren McCarthy in "Backs Like That." Photo: Sumi WuUsed to be things were winding down by the time you reached the summer solstice, and there definitely was a time when addicts like me found it impossible to get any kind of movement fix once the Rose Festival was over. Not this year — I actually had to make choices, not having managed the art of being in two or three places at once. So to several emerging choreographers as well as some much more established ones, I apologize for not making it to their performances and herewith offer some thoughts on those I did see.

I’ll start with Carol Triffle’s new musical Backs Like That, which I saw on June 18th. It’s the latest in her series of quirky commentaries on what Balzac called the human comedy, with more than a little irony implied, and as usual with an Imago piece, it is greatly involved with movement.

Continue reading So much dance we can’t keep up →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music

Christine Calfas, tiny taiko, big WHOOP

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By Bob Hicks

That’s WHOOP, all upper-case. Small word, big noise.

Last time we wrote about Ten Tiny Taiko Dances it was first-gathering time, when everyone involved was meeting and hatching ideas. It was sort of like the first real date after the speed-dating hookup: everyone was pumped about the possibilities, but also just a little nervous and not sure what to do next.

Time flies. Today, as Mr. Scatter basks temporarily in a sunny little subtropical village dotted with palm trees (locals call it “San Francisco”), he realizes that suddenly this audacious collaboration of Mike Barber‘s Ten Tiny Dances and Portland Taiko‘s big bad sonic boom of drumming is almost upon us: Performances are at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the Winningstad Theatre.

Who’d’a thunk Barber’s devilish little squeeze of a dance format (Ten Tiny Dances is performed on a 4-by-4-foot platform) would go out on a date with the extroverted Japanese American drumming of Portland Taiko? Christine Calfas, for one.

Christine Calfas in her attic studio, preparing to WHOOP.To see how this oddball matchup was shaking down, last Sunday afternoon Mr. Scatter putt-putted over to Calfas’s attic Studio 297.

We scrambled upstairs with crushed-mint iced tea and a highly attentive gray cat named Govinda, then sat by a low platform with a laptop computer on it and a drum set — it belongs to Joe Trump, Calfas’s musical collaborator on her tiny dance, WHOOP — in the background.

Against the wall, neatly arranged on a futon on the studio floor, an array of black-handled knives glinted softly in the light.

“I’ve been working with blades as images for a while,” Calfas explained, including a piece for last summer’s Richard Foreman Festival. WHOOP, she added casually, will include 88 knives (is it coincidence that this is also the number of keys on a piano?) “plus nine more knives, plus two circular saws.”

Continue reading Christine Calfas, tiny taiko, big WHOOP →

Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, General, Theater

Monday links: Polaris, Heald, Dixon

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By Bob Hicks

On Saturday night, tucked between a Friday night chocolate truffle-making soiree and a groaningly good Sunday night dim sum dinner (the Scatters bought places at both convivial tables last month at the estimable Portland Taiko‘s annual benefit banquet) Mr. Scatter trekked to the studios of Polaris Dance Theatre for another benefit fund-raising event.

Polaris Dance Theatre's "Simple Pleasures" All Access dance programThis time he was working, covering the event for The Oregonian, and it turned out to be remarkable — well worth twisting and ducking twelve blocks through the crowds and police blockades for the Rose Festival’s Starlight Parade. Mr. Scatter does not know if Ivory floats, but pretty much everything else in downtown Portland was either riding a float or watching from the sidewalk as the floats floated by.

The benefit was to support Polaris’s All Access program, which teaches dance to all sorts of people who wouldn’t ordinarily think of dancing: think wheelchairs, paralysis, Down’s Syndrome. A lot of those students performed during the party, and it was eye-opening. Keep an eye out for the extraordinary Wobbly Dance. Read about it here in Oregon Live.

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DON’T MISS Marty Hughley’s terrific profile of actor Anthony Heald in Sunday’s Oregonian.

Shylock (Anthony Heald) listens in the court. Photo by Jenny Graham.Heald, the Broadway and Hollywood vet who gave it up to move to Ashland and join the acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, tells what prompted him to make the leap into relative obscurity, and why he’s happy as a clam about it. Heald is getting ready to open as Shylock in the festival’s new production of The Merchant of Venice. Interesting side note Marty dug up: Heald is the first Jewish actor ever to play the role on the festival stage.

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AND DO CATCH local beer baron and Scatter friend John Foyston’s review of K.B. Dixon’s slim novel A Painter’s Life, also from the Sunday O.

K.B. Dixon's "A Painters Life," Inkwater PressBetween epic motorcycle trips and learned sessions with master brewers, Foyston’s been known to paint up a modest storm of his own. And Ken Dixon, who in the great long-ago wrote an occasional witty and perceptive art review for Mr. Scatter at a Large and Important Daily Publication, is a writer with a singular miniaturist approach to the puzzle of the written word. His books are wry and elegant, carefully measured for precise effect, and they maintain a sly satiric distance. At a time when the art world sometimes seems nearly strangled in a tangle of theory and jargon, even the name of Dixon’s artist-hero seems perfectly chosen: Christopher Freeze.

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ILLUSTRATIONS, from top:

— All Access performers from Polaris Dance Theatre’s “Simple Pleasures” program.

— Anthony Heald as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.” Photo: Jenny Graham/Oregon Shakespeare Festival/2010

— K.B. Dixon’s “A Painters Life,” Inkwater Press

Dance, Environment, General, Martha Ullman West, Theater

Goodbye to Lena, swan song for Gavin, the Brontes and kickin’ with Cedar Lake

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By Martha Ullman West

Art Scatter is always pleased as punch to accept an essay from its chief correspondent and occasional world traveler, Martha Ullman West. MUW has been a busy woman lately. Herewith we offer her personal recollections of the late, great Lena Horne; her thoughts on the swan song of dancer Gavin Larsen, retiring from Oregon Ballet Theatre (plus other thoughts about OBT); Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance; and a comic theatrical riff on the Bronte sisters. Whew: That covers some territory!

Cropped screenshot of Lena Horne from "Till the Clouds Roll By," 1946. Wikimedia Commons

First and second thoughts on a Monday morning —

I was going to start this post with some second thoughts about Oregon Ballet Theatre‘s recent Duets concert series and specifically last Sunday’s matinee performance, Gavin Larsen‘s last as a principal dancer.

But I logged on to my e-mail an hour or so before I began writing and found that a high school classmate had forwarded me the New York Times obituary for Lena Horne, so I’ll start with some extremely vivid memories of her that go back, oh dear God, 58 years.

Original poster from Lena Horne's 1941 movie "Stormy Weather." Wikimedia CommonsHer daughter, Gail Jones, was a year ahead of me at a Quaker boarding school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., called Oakwood. The glamorous Lena Horne was a loving, devoted mother, who always came to Parents Day — and so did my father, believe you me.

First memory: October of my freshman year, Lena in a red velvet suit, prowling (no other word for it) along the football field, definitely deflecting fatherly attention from the game as well as the nubile cheerleaders, although Dad claimed for years he heard a Quaker referee calling “Thee is out.”

Second memory: Two years later, a cold wintry day, I was running barefoot down the hall of my dormitory when that unmistakable voice called from Gail’s room, “Child, put your shoes on — it’s freezing in here.” I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, and there she was; looking, needless to say, stunning. And stern. I put my shoes on.

Third memory: The American Masters PBS show twelve years ago in honor of her 80th birthday (and she looked about 50, I might add), which I imagine PBS will reprise and I urge all Scatterers to watch. Daughter Gail Jones’s history of the Horne Family is also well worth reading. As is the Times obituary. Lots of “Stormy Weather” in Lena’s life; damned if she did, damned if she didn’t, and did she ever overcome, with astonishing glamor and grace.

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There was plenty of grace of a different kind, and glamour best described as casual, as Oregon Ballet Theatre’s dancers filed past Larsen at the second intermission a week ago Sunday. Larsen was still in her Duo Concertant practice clothes costume, crowned with a ballerina’s tiara. The casual part applies to the jeans-clad dancers who each gave her a single rose and a kiss as they walked past her: It’s a tradition that began, I believe, at the Paris Opera Ballet.

Continue reading Goodbye to Lena, swan song for Gavin, the Brontes and kickin’ with Cedar Lake →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General

The big bounce: BodyVox’s ‘Trampoline’

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Jamey Hampton's "Trampoline," at BodyVox. Photo: Michael Shay, Polara Studios

Feeling a little low? Need to bounce back from a bad day? This looks like a dizzy way to do it.

Una Loughran of BodyVox sent along this photo, by Michael Shay of Polara Studio, of Jamey Hampton’s new piece Trampoline, part of Smoke Soup, a program of new works opening tonight at the BodyVox Dance Center. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter are out of town and so won’t be there, but it looks like a real upper.

“Trampoline started with six men and a woman,” Hampton says. “I wanted to see how high three men could throw a dancer if three men were going to catch her. Dramatically, it became a dance about how people can support and help each other.”

Sounds like the woman has more on the line than the men in this relationship. This is no time for butterfingers. Opening weekend’s sold out, but the show continues through April 10.

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music

Ten Tiny Taiko Dances: the first steps

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Life comes at you in waves, and before one wave pounds against the rocks another one’s just beginning to rise toward its crest. Arts groups in particular know this universal truth: While you’re busy smacking against the shoals of one opening night, several others are already gathering strength.

"The Great Wave Off Kanagawa," from "36 Views of Mount Fuji," by Hokusai; between 1826 and 1833. Wikimedia Commons.Portland Taiko‘s 2010 season begins this weekend with Saturday matinee and evening performances of The Way Back Home, featuring songs from last year’s CD Rhythms of Change. By the time it hits the stage this wave of sight and sound is going to be polished and shaped and sure of itself, like a Katsushika Hokusai print.

That’s this crest. While it was racing toward the shore, a group of almost 20 people met last Friday at Portland Taiko’s warehouse home just off industrial Northeast Columbia Boulevard to start the process toward the next big taiko wave, a collaboration between PT and Ten Tiny Dances that will play June 19-20. I was there in dual roles, as a journalist and a taiko board member. Here’s a taste of what happened:

“When people think of Portland Taiko they think of vast spaces with huge amounts of power,” says Michelle Fujii, PT’s artistic director. “And this is just the opposite of that.”

She isn’t kidding. The sound of taiko drums, born in Japan and modernized in the contemporary fires of North and South American performance troupes such as Portland Taiko, can be small and sensitive but tends toward the big and propulsive. The whole idea behind Ten Tiny Dances, which head honcho Mike Barber began at a wine bar in 2002 in what he thought would be a one-off, is to minimize. Each performance (this will be the 20th public series) consists of 10 short dances performed on a four-foot-by-four-foot platform. It’s all about compactness and discovering a fullness of expression through extreme limitations — like a haiku, or a rhymed couplet. So this collaboration promises to be something of a Mutt and Jeff: a meeting of attractive opposites.

Continue reading Ten Tiny Taiko Dances: the first steps →

Bob Hicks, Cities, Dance, General, Music, Theater, Visual Art

Recession blues: IFCC shuts down

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Actor Daniel Beaty in 2008's "Resurrection" at IFCC

Bad news often breaks on Friday afternoons, and today is no exception: The Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center is shutting its doors.

The Oregonian’s D.K. Row has the story on Oregon Live; expect him to explore it in greater depth soon.

Interstate Firehouse Cultural CenterThe city-run Portland Parks & Recreation, which owns the old firehouse and its grounds, announced that the non-profit IFCC’s board has voted to cease operations because of persistent deficits, in spite of decent attendance at events.

The center’s failure is a blow to Portland’s alternative and multicultural arts scenes. Over the years IFCC has had its ups and downs, but since it began in 1982 it’s been a welcoming space for emerging theater and dance companies, visual artists, musicians, and community events. Artists who often felt shut out of downtown spaces found a congenial home here, as did North and Northeast Portland residents who discovered the joys of having a vital art center close to home.

The shutdown takes effect May 1, but existing rental contracts through June 30 will be honored. That means, presumably, that upcoming shows by Rose City Vaudeville and Vagabond Opera, as well as IFCC’s share of Disjecta‘s Portland2010 biennial art exhibit, will go on as planned.

IFCC’s problems reflect the difficulties that the prolonged international economic crisis presents to cultural organizations, especially small and midsized ones. Put simply, everyone’s strapped for cash, and traditional sources are either tapped out or stretched thin. IFCC’s budget is built on just 20 percent earned income, the rest coming from foundation, corporate, individual and government grants. For everyone, those are getting tougher and tougher to nail down.

Read the parks department’s press release after the jump:

Continue reading Recession blues: IFCC shuts down →

Dance, General, Laura Grimes

The weekend gadabout report

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Pollice Verso, 1872, by Jean-Léon Gérôme/Wikimedia Commons

Hand me a hanky. I’m considered a – a – a  –retinue. Bless me.

So says Mr. Mead of Blogorrhea fame. It’s not to be confused with something in your eye.

Instead, I’m a retinue … to Mr. Scatter’s gadabout.

Ukelele Loki's Gadabout Orchestra

Lest you think I’m talking nasty, this comes from a communicable blog award that’s considered, um, a good thing. You have to be prolific to get it. It’s really called the Prolific Blogger Award.

This is like an accolade. It’s a nice gesture from Mr. Mead.

Mr. Scatter is the prolific one. I’m just the retinue. Which means I drop in now and then. Or act like a groupie. Or drive the car. Or something. Combine all this and what I really do is drive-by blog posts now and then.

The Large Smelly Boys get to be retinue, too. But we don’t let them drive yet.

Mr. Scatter is so prolific that he sits in his cute little kitchen nook and types away. We call him for dinner. We leave the hall light on for him. He just continues to tap-tap away. We leave crusts of bread on the table for him now and then. The Large Smelly Boys have grown mustaches since you last saw them, Mr. Scatter.

Mr. Scatter says he’ll have to acknowledge the honor more formally soon in the blog scroll. Actually, he said, “I’ll have to pass it along.” I’m not sure Mr. Scatter realizes that a condition of receiving the award is that on the site he has to add his name to Mr. Linky. I fully realize the irony of suggesting my husband will be both communicably prolific and the more responsible one in crafting a response.

Speaking of prolific …

*****

“I just sold a vasectomy.”

Continue reading The weekend gadabout report →

Dance, General, Martha Ullman West, Theater

Belly-dancing on the Nile: Our far-flung correspondent hobnobs and returns

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Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent, has been trotting the globe. She’s endured an evening of wretched belly-dancing on the Nile, chatted with a centenarian ballet dancer in Philadelphia, revisited the works of Jerome Robbins in New York, and returned home to Portland, where she found irritation with Random Dance and happiness with Oregon Ballet Theatre. Here’s her report:

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Here are some scattered (no pun intended) thoughts about what I’ve been seeing in the world of performance, mostly dance, since I departed on February 1st for a glorious Metropolitan Museum of Art tour of Egypt with a postlude in Jordan, followed by 10 days in New York, where I ploughed through many clipping files in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center.

These endeavors were interrupted by snow and a day trip to Philadelphia to interview Yvonne Patterson. She is a former dancer in Balanchine’s first companies, now a whisker away from turning 100, still swimming every day and teaching the occasional master class in ballet, no kidding. There was also a fair amount of hobnobbing with my New York colleagues, during which the state of dance and dance writing was discussed with a certain amount of hand-wringing on both counts.

The River NileThe worst performance shall come first: an unspeakably godawful belly dance demonstration on board the Nile River boat on which I spent four otherwise glorious nights.

I’ve seen better at various restaurants in Portland, although the effects of her lackluster undulations, which bored even the men in the audience, were somewhat mitigated by the sufi dancer who followed, a very young man who was completely committed to spinning himself into a trance, and therefore pretty compelling.

In New York, I was taken to see a play called Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, oh so cleverly written by Douglas Carter Beane, at Second Stage Theatre, starring the suave John Lithgow as a gossip columnist running out of copy and Jennifer Ehle as his equally ambitious and rather more unethical wife. They invent a celebrity to write about, and despite such wonderful lines as “I swear on a stack of Susan Sontag‘s Against Interpretation” and the cast’s finely tuned delivery of the lines, the ethics practiced by the real-life press these days made it all rather less than funny for someone who still thinks journalism is an honorable profession, or at the very least that it should be.
Continue reading Belly-dancing on the Nile: Our far-flung correspondent hobnobs and returns →

Books, Dance, General

Reminder: Dance Flight this afternoon

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I’ll be at Northwest Dance Project‘s studio in North Portland this afternoon for an onstage chat with Luca Veggetti, the Paris-based Italian choreographer who’s in town to update his dance Ensemble for Somnambulists, which he created on the company dancers in 2006.

Choreographer Luca VeggettiThis should be interesting. I sat in on a rehearsal a few days ago and afterwards talked with Veggetti for about 20 minutes. He’s smart and eloquent (he speaks five languages, fortunately including English), with a lot to say about his own background and the state of dance in general. He also has strong background in experimental theater and opera (“I was raised at La Scala,” he says) so his outlook is broad.

The format is the same as last Sunday, when I had a good talk with Maurice Causey, a freelance choreographer associated closely with Nederlands Dans Theater. Show up at 3 p.m., have some wine and cheese, watch a brisk rehearsal, then get ready for the interview. Last week a lot of people in the crowd asked questions, and I expect the same today. Address: 833 N. Shaver Street, just off of Mississippi Avenue. Suggested donation is $20 ($10 students), which helps pay for the event.

Veggetti and Causey will each have a piece in Northwest Dance Project’s spring performances, which will also include two dances by artistic director Sarah Slipper, March 12-13 at the Newmark Theatre.