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Bob Hicks, Cities

Guvs duck art; pick a peck o’ PICA

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By Bob Hicks

Over at Oregon Live, Friend of Scatter D.K. Row reports that Oregon’s two major gubernatorial candidates, Demo John Kitzhaber and the GOP’s Chris Dudley, have pretty much nothing to say about how they would or wouldn’t approach statewide funding and other support for the arts. Both ducked a request by the statewide lobbying group Cultural Advocacy Coalition to talk it out in a town hall meeting before the election. And both ducked the chance to comment to D.K. for his story.

Timberline Lodge: the last word in Oregon cultural funding? Photo: Kelvin Kay/Wikimedia CommonsNo surprise here. With the state budget circling the toilet bowl and getting ready for the big flush, neither candidate is likely to come out promising anything to anyone about arts and culture. Remember last year, when the Democrat-dominated legislature raided the state’s supposedly sacrosanct Cultural Trust fund in an attempt to pay the bills.

Portland city commish Nick Fish, who’s also a board member of the Cultural Trust, called the candidates’ no-talk “a missed opportunity.” But even some arts leaders expressed sympathy for a pair of guys caught between a rock and a hard place. “When I think of the immense economic problems the next governor has to solve, my stomach hurts,” Chris Coleman told Row. “The notion of even advancing a cultural agenda would be hard right now. So I understand. If I was running for governor, it’d be hard for me to find time for the arts.” Coleman is artistic director of Portland Center Stage. He also happens to be board president of the Creative Advocacy Network, Portland’s coalition of arts boosters in the political ring.

Whoever wins the governor’s race, don’t be expecting a neo-WPA, folks. The feds are pretty much out of this picture, FDR’s kicked the bucket, and we already got our Timberline Lodge. Arts and culture will be looking at a lot of pay-as-you-go. Oops. That’s sort of what the Cultural Trust was before the big raid, wasn’t it?

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The trouble with TBA, the annual late summer/early fall festival thrown by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, is that it always hits town in late summer/early fall.

A lot of people set their annual calendars around this thing. Here at Art Scatter, it always sneaks up on us, and, too often, slips right past us. We tend to be traveling a lot this time of year, and preparing young heathens for schooling, and tending to such crucial matters as putting up the annual supplies of pickles and chutney.

All of which is to say that (like the guv guys on arts funding) we have pretty much nothing to say about TBA this year. Fortunately, several other keen observers do. Here are a few places to look for news and comment:

Arts Dispatch. Barry Johnson sees and extrapolates.

Urban Honking. PICA’s own site invites such luminaries as Mead Hunter of Blogorrhea to do the Monday morning quarterbacking.

Oregon Live. Expect steady updates from The Oregonian’s cultural squad.

Culturephile. Anne Adams and Claudia La Rocco have been pickin’ em and writin’ em for Portland Monthly’s blog.

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PHOTO: Timberline Lodge: the last word in Oregon cultural funding? Kelvin Kay/Wikimedia Commons

Bob Hicks, General, Journalism, Music

Mr. Scatter becomes a lobbyist (with a laptop)

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As the old joke goes, tonight’s the night!

This is not Mr. Scatter. Not by a long shot. It's Storm Large.
Art Scatter regulars might have noted that it’s been Philip Glass Week in Portland, and tonight at Keller Auditorium his 1993 opera Orphee opens in its West Coast premiere, performed by Portland Opera. Reports are promising: Glass liked the dress rehearsal so much that he whipped up a deal to have all four performances recorded and turned into a CD for Orange Mountain Music. It’ll be this opera’s first full recording.

And sitting in the lobby, along with his laptop and four other local members of the blogospheric chattering class, will be Mr. Scatter, there to file a continuing stream of instant analysis, much like a pontificating television face on a national election night:

“Orpheus has been caught on camera looking over his shoulder, and that could spell serious trouble for Eurydice’s chances in the tensely fought Afterlife race. At stake is control of a sprawling district that runs from the far shores of the River Styx to the lush meadows on the surface end of the cave opening. We’ll update you as we learn more. But this could be bye-bye to a once-promising career. Over to you, Storm.”

Here are my owlish teammates, and where you can follow their instamusings:

Storm Large. The rock diva and musical-theater star of Cabaret and Crazy Enough will post at www.stormlarge.com. You’ll recognize her. She’s the tall good-looking one, and her posts will probably be littered with Words Not Ordinarily Associated With Art Scatter.

Byron Beck. If Portland’s a town, Byron’s the man about it. He knows just about everybody, and just about everything, and dishes it out when and where the mood strikes. www.byronbeck.com

Jim Withington. The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art has been one of Glass Week’s sponsors (it has a long relationship with Glass) and Jim will be blogging on PICA’s Urban Honking.

Cynthia Fuhrman. Portland Center Stage’s resident marketing genius is very smart and very funny and no doubt will be a lot of fun to read. She’ll be posting on the PCS blog. Rumor has it that while the other bloggers will be sipping beer as they type feverishly away, la Fuhrman will be pampered with cocktails, no doubt with colorful little paper umbrellas to pretty them up. It’s rigged. Florida election here, folks.

Marc Acito. BONUS PICK. The witty Portland novelist (How I Paid for College; Attack of the Theatre People) and playwright (Holidazed) actually has a role in the opera. But when he’s backstage he’ll be blogging on the show at The Gospel According to Marc. Amazing exploit!

That’s all, folks. Until tonight. News at … oh, 6:30, 7, 7:15, 8, 8:30 ….

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PHOTO: This is not Mr. Scatter. Not by a long shot. It’s Storm Large. Credit: Laura Domela

Bob Hicks, Film, General, Music, Theater

Mr. Scatter steps out from behind his wall of Glass

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"Orpheus and Eurydice," Nicolas Poussin, 1650-51

ABOVE: “Orpheus and Eurydice,” Nicolas Poussin, 1650-51. Musee de Louvre, Paris. INSET: Philip Glass, composer of “Orphee.” Wikimedia Commons.

DON’T LOOK BACK. Bob Dylan gave that sage advice, possibly after considering the experiences of Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt after peeking back at the lost pleasures of Sodom, and of Orpheus, who doomed his wife to the Underworld by glancing over his shoulder as he was leading her back from the far side of the River Styx.

Well, Mr. Scatter’s made a couple of rash decisions lately, and he’s determined not to look back: Mrs. Scatter would be seriously ticked off if she turned into a salt lick in Hell. Onward and forward, eyes on the prize.

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RASH DECISION #1: I’ve agreed to be one of Portland Opera’s speed-bloggers on Friday night at the opening performance of Philip Glass‘s Orphee, a 1991 opera (premiered in 1993) based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and on Jean Cocteau‘s mysteriously poetic 1949 film adaptation, also called Orphee. Portland Opera‘s production will be the opera’s West Coast premiere.

Philip Glass/Wikimedia CommonsWhat this means is that, while you’re filing into Keller Auditorium before the show, I’ll be in the lobby seated at a table with several other bloggers, dashing out immediate impressions and committing them to cyberspace before I have time to repent and delete. I’ll have a backstage tour beforehand, and yes, I do get to see the show, after which I’ll dash back to my laptop and blog some more. This will be either the rough draft of history or outtakes of an unsifted mind, but I will Not. Look. Back.

To prepare, I’ll be on hand for Creativity and Collaboration: An Evening with Philip Glass, a Tuesday night gathering with the composer at the Portland Art Museum’s Kridell Auditorium, where Glass will talk about his music and career. The evening’s sponsored by the opera, the Northwest Film Center (which screened Cocteau’s Orphee last night) and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, which has a long history with Glass. I’ll also get a chance to talk with Glass in a group interview Tuesday morning with a quartet of musically savvy Portland writers: Marty Hughley, Bob Kingston, James Bash and Brett Campbell. Glass’s trip to Portland will be pretty brief: By opening night of Orphee he’ll already be in Mexico City, performing some of his chamber music.

My fellow bloggers (sounds like the beginning of a political speech) on opening night will be actress/rock star Storm Large, man-about-town Byron Beck, arts marketer extraordinaire Cynthia Fuhrman, and someone (not sure who) from PICA. Our compensation, I’m told, will be “plenty of beer, nuts and cookies during intermission.”

I don’t have a Facebook account and I do not Twit, so here’s how it’ll work: I’ll start a Glass/Orphee post on Friday evening and write everything on it, hitting “publish” at regular intervals so the post gets longer as the night goes on. I’ll mark each new entry by its time, so you can get a sense of the “running” part of the running commentary.

And I will not look over my shoulder. Someone might be gaining on me.

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RASH DECISION #2: My friend Susan Jonsson sits on the board of Well Arts Institute, a group of theater and other artists who use writing and theater to, as they put it, “generate well-being, hope, and meaning for people in life-altering health situations.” Some very talented people are involved in this project, and the transformational possibilities of storytelling are near the core of what they do.

Well Arts Institute: hand to handSo when Susan asked whether I’d be a guest performer in Well Arts’ fall show, Voices of Our Elders, I said yes. The process is fascinating. Well Arts people do a 10-week workshop on memoir and creative writing with older people in care centers, listening to their stories, transcribing them, helping them shape them. The result is a show of monologues and a few dialogues from people looking back on their lives, on what was important, and contemplating what’s to come. It’s a fundamental form of personal history and an emotionally involving form of documentary theater.

Well Arts director Lorraine Bahr has assembled a good cast to present these stories: John Morrison, Ritah Parrish, Deirdre Atkinson, Steve Boss, Andrea White, Wendy Westerwelle and writer-performer Vince Falco. Each performance will also include a revolving lineup of guest readers: singer Shirley Nanette; actors Delight Lorenz, Luisa Sermol, Tom Gough and Susan Jonsson; onetime Broadway hoofer and legendary Portland director/teacher Jack Featheringill; Oregon Arts Commissioner and longtime theater supporter Julie Vigeland; and me.

I went to a rehearsal on Halloween afternoon at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, a rehab development housing arts, food and design businesses at 107 S.E. Washington St., near the riverfront in the close-in East Side light-industrial district. This is where the show will be, and it’s an interesting new creative hub, worth visiting: We rehearsed in front of the Zimbabwe Artists Project, a space covered with gorgeous appliques and fabric paintings created by women of the Weya region of Zimbabwe.

Voices of Our Elders runs at 3 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, Nov. 7 and 14; and at 3 p.m. Sundays, Nov. 8 and 15.  I’ll do my reading — a piece I like quite a bit, called The Day I Went to Enlist — at the Nov. 14 matinee. Ticket and other info here.

Bob Hicks, General, Journalism, Music

Music, maestro, please. But can’t you be a little nicer?

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So much going on in town, so little time. So VERY little time, when you’re on the road.

TBA? For a lot of people in Portland, PICA’s orgy of the experimental and unusual is the biggest arts deal of the year. Looks like I won’t catch any of it. Which is why, Dear Reader, you won’t be reading about it here.

Carlos Kalmar/Oregon SymphonyThe symphony’s kicking into its season. So are the opera and the city’s theater companies. Ballet is getting ready to haul out the slippers. Across the city, tuxedos are coming out of mothballs (OK, that’s an exaggeration: This IS Portland) and uptown revelers are dusting off their dancing shoes.

Me? This morning I’m behind the wheel again, making like Willie Nelson as I head for far eastern Oregon and the Wallowa Mountains. If Heaven can wait, so can All My Sons.

Yes, the League of Tough-Guy Arts Observers is going to have to do without me for a spell.

Playing catch-up, I discover Bill Donahue’s intriguing profile in the current Portland Monthly of Carlos Kalmar, the Oregon Symphony’s conductor and musical director. I know Bill a little, and he’s not only a good guy but also one of the city’s most graceful writers. And he’s fearless. He admits right up front that he went into this story knowing next to nothing about classical music. Then he does his homework, and he does it well enough to write some gorgeous passages about life behind the scenes.

Trouble is, according to a lot of musicians, it’s tough to make up for a lifetime of neglect in such a short time. In short, they say, Bill didn’t know enough about the way orchestras work to be able to weigh his impressions adequately. They believe he misunderstands the complex relationship between conductor and musicians, and sees lots of controversy where little exists. True enough, a certain amount of ogre shows up in Bill’s depiction of the Big Bad Autocrat, although he also hints that all that aloofness and disdain might be just part of the maestro act.

Wherever you fall on this question, Bill’s story is a good read, and I recommend it — with this caveat: To balance it out, you should go to Daily Observations, symphony violist Charles Noble’s urbane and insightful music blog, to see how he and other musicians respond. The conversation — the dialectic, if you’re a Brechtian or a devotee of classical Greek philosophy — is sharp, and maybe by bouncing the two sides against each other you’ll find your own version of the truth. This is Noble’s main post on the controversy, and it includes a lot of reader comments worth your time.

Happy reading. I’m thinking about dusty roads and cowboy hats.

Dance, General, Martha Ullman West

TBA dance: “Pichet Klunchun and Myself”

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Dance writer Martha Ullman West, a charter member of Friends of Art Scatter, files this report on her meeting two years ago with Thai dancemaker Pichet Klunchun on his home turf in Bangkok, and on Klunchun’s public appearance in Portland a few days ago. On Sunday night, Klunchun took the stage at PICA’s annual TBA festival of contemporary performance in a conversation/performance with French dancemaker Jerome Bel.

In February of 2006, I interviewed Pichet Klunchun for an hour and a half on the ninth floor terrace of the Oakwood Hotel in Bangkok, at sunset. That’s important: Due to acute air pollution, Bangkok sunsets are spectacular, and watching Klunchun demonstrate some of the movements of Khon — traditonal Thai dance — against a sky that looked like a painting by J.M.W. Turner animated with time stop photography, made the experience as magical as it was informative.

Klunchun, wearing very western-looking jeans and a tee-shirt, told me many things that evening — some of them the same, and phrased in the same way, as he told French contemporary choreographer Jerome Bel in Pichet Klunchun and Myself, switch-and bait-interviews observed by an enthusiastic TBA audience on Sunday night in Lincoln Performance Hall. To wit: Klunchun identified himself as a professional dancer, omitting how difficult that is in Thailand, and talked about his attempts to professionalize dance as we do in the West. He spoke of Khon as a lost art and his desire to restore it as part of the culture. On Sunday night in Portland he pointed out that it has become a commercialized tourist attraction — tourists in this context are westerners, although there are plenty of Thai and Chinese tourists in Bangkok. But on Sunday night he omitted the information that he had directed Khon performances in Bangkok in which he fused the Western theatrical values that Bel self-consciously rejects with traditional movement and storytelling, reducing to 70 minutes what usually takes a week to perform.

On both nights he spoke, too, of the difference in energy between Western and Asian dance — the former outward toward the audience, the latter inward, circular, contemplative — but left out his own training in western dance and his own practice, not to mention the influence of William Forsythe, who has radicalized the classical vocabulary, deconstructed and fractured it, on the way he thinks now about traditional dance.

When Klunchun, dressed on Sunday night in clothes he could dance in, demonstrated at Bel’s request Khon technique — the seemingly impossible turned-back movements of the fingers, the turned-out legs, the aggressive stomps, the subtle gestures of characterization — he was as charismatic as he had been doing the same things in jeans in Bangkok. But at TBA his demonstration accounted for at most 10 minutes of a nearly two-hour performance — and performance it was — from which the magic was decidedly missing.

That loss I must lay in part at Bel’s self-serving door.

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