Tag Archives: Tim DuRoche

Bob Hicks, Dance, General

Conduit at 15: the art of failing

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By Bob Hicks

Let’s hear a great big round of applause for failure, art’s best friend.

Conduit turns 15!Mr. Scatter got back to Puddletown just in time to take in Sunday night’s final performance of Conduit‘s four-night 15th anniversary benefit celebration, for which he’d been asked to give a little halftime talk with drummer/writer/arts instigator and general man-about-town Tim DuRoche.

We’d had about a minute and a half to compare notes, but of course, we’d both been thinking about it, and Tim’s comments were, as usual, as sharp as a full-lather shave in a Wild West tonsorial parlor.

Pressed into speech, Mr. Scatter found himself to his own surprise abandoning his sparse notes and talking instead about the joys of failure. Over the years, he confessed, he’d seen some things in the Conduit space that had made him shudder. Then he’d gone home and thought about them, and after he’d thought a bit, sometimes he’d still shudder. But other times he’d think, “Aha! That’s what they were getting at!” and his window of perception would open a little wider.

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Dance, General, Martha Ullman West

Elegant, physical, forward dance: The pleasure was ours

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Phase Phrase, tere Mathern. Photo: Performance Works Northwest

Our partner-in-scattering Martha Ullman West, taking a break from the balletic battles, scurried over to Performance Works Northwest over the weekend for a shot of contemporary-dance fresh air. Here’s her report:

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“I am wired for skepticism. I cannot leave the questions alone. They unravel everything. My skepticism is like an old screen door. There is a metal smell and old dust that stings my nose. There is a tiny hole in the screen, which I can’t help but worry larger with my finger.”

— Sarah Hart

What that text had to do with the movement, the elegant, thoughtful, considered and highly physical dancing presented at Performance Works Northwest last weekend beats me, but Daniel Addy’s installation, consisting of a screen door with a moist green landscape projected behind it, and on the other side of the studio, a window with a watery view, framed The Portland Project handsomely.

TouchMonkey. Photo: Performance Works Northwest The show began with TouchMonkey, in the persons of Carolyn Stuart and Patrick Gracewood, who are longtime practitioners of Contact Improvisation, a form based on trust and the ability to make on-the-spot kinetic connections. Stuart was wearing a black cloth over her eyes, which meant her responses to Gracewood were entirely by touch and contact.  Their duet, titled Special Alembics, (nice pun!) was performed to music played live by Eddy Deane, Alley Teach, and David Lyles of The Contact Lounge Band.

The performance was at once sensual and intellectual, and downright suspenseful. My God, what are they going to do next? I thought at one point, as they entwined and re-entwined their bodies on the floor, becoming at times a single body that appeared to have eight misplaced limbs. Nobody “wired for skepticism” can dance with a partner blindfolded, it seems to me, particularly one on whom she depends to shape the next step in the dance.

Tere Mathern, one of this city’s most cerebral choreographers, came next with Phase Phrase, performed by Hannah Downs, Sally Garrido-Spencer, Vanessa Vogel and Mathern herself. As they went along they embellished the propulsive phrase they performed and then stripped it down again, characteristically geometric and angular.  The four women to some degree played off one another, but this dance was pretty clearly planned ahead of time, with plenty of contact — one dancer touching another on the shoulder, causing that dancer to extend her arm in a straight line — but little improvisation. Tim DuRoche created a score that was minimalist to the Nth degree; I’ve liked his previous collaborations with Mathern and Mary Oslund, but this one I found exasperatingly repetitious.

Sometimes dancing is just about dancing, despite the program note about Gregg Bielemeier‘s Tracings that explains it is a duet working with the idea of distilling form, vessel and shadowing. And what a pleasure to watch Taylor Alan Young, a recent arrival in Portland, incorporate Bielemeier’s relaxed-appearing movement style into his own body. That kind of ease, that comfort in one’s own skin, is hard to come by, particularly the juxtaposition of small movements of head, neck, hands, against large, traveling ones.

What all three choreographers have in common isn’t Hart’s intriguing text, but rather the experience and wisdom to abstract from it a mood, or an atmosphere, or a dance that expands the horizons of the audience and at the same time provides a great deal of pleasure.

The Portland Project was skillfully curated by Anne Furfey, who produced it along with Linda Austin as part of Performance Works Northwest’s Alembic series.

Taylor Alan Young (left), Gregg Bielemeier. Photo: Performance Works Northwest

Bob Hicks, Cities, General

The city and the Rose Quarter: First, do no harm

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Le Malade Imaginaire, Honore Daumier

“Government should practice the same principle as doctors,” President Obama said the other day. “First, do no harm.”

He was responding to critics who say he’s been too timid on the banks, shying away from the get-tough part of the takeover business. Going too far, Obama argued, could make things worse instead of better.

Whatever you think of Obama’s tactics in this particular case, “First, do no harm” isn’t a bad principle for government, even — and maybe especially — when government decides it’s time to be bold. Be bold, yes. But also be sure. Before you do something radical, make sure it’s actually going to make things better rather than worse. That isn’t a conservative or a liberal stance. It’s just a sensible one.

It’s a principle that Portland Mayor Sam Adams seems to be ignoring in his rush to tear down Memorial Coliseum — one of the city’s best-designed buildings — and replace it with a $55 million minor-league baseball park as part of a complicated package to free PGE Park for exclusive use by a new major-league soccer team, push through a government-funded $200 million convention center hotel, and synergize with a Portland Trail Blazers plan to transform the Rose Quarter into an entertainment district that would seem to be more at home along a suburban shopping thoroughfare than in a vital corner of the central city.

Whoa, Nellie. What’s that choking sound? It’s the gurglings of architects, preservationists, planners, veterans groups, North/Northeast Portland residents and economic analysts reacting to having something shoved down their throats. In a word, ouch.

Fellow Scatterer Barry Johnson, in a post headed Demolishing Memorial Coliseum — a bad idea inside a bad plan, has an excellent analysis on his Oregonian/Oregon Live blog, Portland Arts Watch; read it here. Oregonian reporter Mark Larabee filed a good report on gathering opposition to the Rose Quarter steamroller here; and The Oregonian’s Ryan Frank reports here on Adams’ effort to push for the 600-room convention center hotel, a plan that so far is opposed by Multnomah County exec Ted Wheeler, whose support is necessary if the thing is going to get built. In addition, architecture and design writer Brian Libby has been weighing in frequently (and critically) at his Web site Portland Architecture, and Tim DuRoche has this sharply worded argument on his blog for Portland Spaces magazine.

I don’t want to turn this into a diatribe about public spending on sports. I happen to be a lifelong baseball nut, and although soccer isn’t my game, I know it has a big following here. A couple of points: Despite the argument that PGE Park is a bad space for Triple-A baseball, in fact it’s a terrific place to watch a ballgame, a little gem along the lines of Seattle’s old Sicks Stadium or even Boston’s Fenway Park. Sure, it usually has far more empty seats than filled ones — but that’s because baseball destroyed its minor-league system decades ago in terms of audience allegiance (how do you follow a team when the players shift week to week?). And this: Fifty-five million dollars for a 9,000-seat minor-league park? Does it get torn down in turn if and when the city lands a major-league franchise?

As for Memorial Coliseum, yes, it’s been allowed to get shabby. But that’s fixable. And a little imagination could turn it into a genuine attractor (and economic kick-starter) for the area. A few years ago, when he was The Oregonian’s architecture and planning writer, Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg championed a plan that would turn the Coliseum into a first-rate community athletic center, with Olympic pool, indoor track facilities and other active-participant draws. I thought it was a great idea then, and I still do — something to attract people to the area all year long. I’m sure there are other good ideas much better than tearing the old girl down. Can we seriously consider them, please?

Most of us laugh wryly now and again at Portland’s penchant to talk anything and everything to death before taking action. But while it may have cost us here and there, that earnest inclusionary tendency is also an essential part of what makes the city work. We don’t mind haste when haste is necessary, but we want deliberate haste — haste that pauses long enough to make sure that the issues are clear and the stakeholders have been heard. Around here, rushing things unduly is a hell of a way to run a railroad — and right now, what’s going on at city hall feels exacly like a railroad job. Is there a doctor in the caboose?

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Dear Sen. McCain: It’s the arts economy, stupid

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Lincoln was a Republican. The WPA didn't mind.So much for bipartisanship. All of a sudden it feels like we’re back in the bad old days of the 1980s and ’90s “culture wars,” when the right-wing juggernaut raised fears of chocolate-coated performance artists to push its narrow view of American culture and its broad view of the body politic as a happy economic hunting ground for the plucking of the many by the few. Maybe the language isn’t as strident as when Annie Sprinkle was flashing and Jesse Helms was waxing apoplectic, but the tactic’s still there, as Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma (whose daughter, ironically, is a prominent opera singer) and the recently right-wing-radicalized John McCain are making clear.

For Coburn’s arts slashing-and-burning, see here and here.

And listen to McCain’s recent take on the economic stimulus plan, which he apparently fears might benefit someone other than brokers and bankers if he doesn’t act swiftly to stem the unwashed tide:

“$50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts — all of us are for the arts. Tell me how that creates any significant number of jobs? After-school snack program is probably a good idea. Do we really want to spend $726 million on it?”

Hell, no. Let them eat Twinkies. On their own dime.

Now, listen to the response to McCain from Tim DuRoche, Portland arts administrator, drummer, and writer of the smart Burnside Blog at Portland Spaces magazine. Tim sent us a copy of his letter:

Dear John–

I understand you are not aware of how funding for the arts creates jobs and stimulates the economy. So, I’d like to tell you what I do for a living and what our organization contributes to the economy. I work in community programs for a major theater company in Portland, OR—providing outreach, access and public programs to local and regional audiences and schools (approximately 200,000 people a year visit our theater), all of whom buy tickets, eat in restaurants, pay for parking, shop, and ride public transit, activities which dramatically fuel the local and regional economy.

The construction and operations of our theater (which opened in 2006) is predicted to produce a total economic impact of $116.4 million during construction and the first 10 years of operations. Investment of these funds were associated with the provision of 510 temporary jobs during the 24-month construction period, and 12 permanent jobs created and then retained during operations of the theater.

In addition, 104 existing theater operations jobs were retained through this project. An estimated total of $46.7 million in direct, indirect and induced wages will be paid during the construction period and ten years of operations. $15.8 million in Federal, State and Local tax revenues are estimated to be generated over twelve years, including $6.7 million during the 24-month construction period, and $915k annually over 10 years when fully operational.

Additionally the building is a LEED-certified Platinum historic renovation that was redeveloped on a brownfields site, engaged high-performance green technology that reduces overall potable water usage by 89%, diverted 95% of construction waste from landfills, and retained over 79% of the existing 1891 structure, among other sustainable features—ensuring that every system was designed to maximize the health of users and reduce the energy use of the building.

This is triple-bottom line proof why Sen. Coburn’s Amendment 175 is so off-base. Investing in arts and cultural infrastructure is an investment in the American spirit, it produces jobs, creates an economic multiplier effect that buoys our city’s mobility and freedom to dream, and translates into dollars that make sense for communities. It is not just social capital that the arts produce but hard capital, economic impact on the highest order–and one you can applaud nightly.

Thank you so much for asking what I do.

Sincerely,

Tim DuRoche

Community Programs Manager

Portland Center Stage

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Our friends at Culture Shock have also been following this closely. They found this provocative challenge to the arts world from Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones for its “stunning political ineptitude.” Time to think tactics, ladies and gentlemen.

Bob Hicks, Cities, Environment, General

Architecture notes: Doyle’s demise, Sam’s folly

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At the risk of making Art Scatter look like an architecture and planning blog (we’re deeply interested, but others cover the territory fare more systematically) a couple of things are sticking in our craw. Well, my craw, at any rate.

First, the Riverdale School District’s decision to tear down an A.E. Doyle-designed elementary school in Dunthorpe, a move that’s far from surprising but depressing and exasperating, nevertheless: You get the feeling that the board never took the preservation case seriously; it just bulled ahead and did what it wanted to do. Noblesse, you might say, without the oblige. We wrote about this a while back. Now, we can’t think of any response better than those from Scatter friends Tim DuRoche, on his Portland Spaces blog, and Brian Libby, on his Portland Architecture blog. Read ’em and weep. Or get angry. Or both. This 1920 school building isn’t major Doyle, but it’s a model of how to do a modest building the right way — and after all, aren’t most buildings in most places modest? If you get the modest buildings right, the major buildings will follow suit.


Second — and not wanting to pick on Mayor-elect Sam Adams, who has a lot of energy and a lot of ideas — but what in the pluperfect hell is with his insistence on building that white elephant of a convention center hotel? I thought Metro had finally stuck a silver spike in this 600-room monster’s heart, but no: Sam just won’t let it die the death it deserves. This truly seems to be a case where money interests are overruling common sense and good public policy, which really ought to go together.

Let’s be clear about a few things.

— First, the chances of this $227 million project ever paying for itself are about as good as Bill O’Reilly’s shot at acing out Hillary and becoming Obama’s secretary of state. And let’s not even get into how much that estimated $227 million would actually end up being.

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Environment, General, Visual Art

Turning up the “Volume” on planning in Portland

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Art Scatter regular Tim DuRoche, a man of wide-ranging interests, has allowed us to post this account of Portland’s “Summer of Planning”, which is rapidly becoming a “Fall of Planning”. We’re especially happy to have his report of Portland planning chief Arun Jain’s talk on the last day of the “Volume” art exhibition, organized by Portlandart proprietor Jeff Jahn, in some ways the clearest expression of the uneasy relationship between art and urban planning. Tim writes about planning, urban design topics for Portland Spaces’ Burnside Blog.

By Tim DuRoche

With all the hubbub about cities and planning in arts circles—Sojourn Theatre’s Built, the Lawrence Halprin Fountain-centric City Dance, visual arts group shows Volume and the Thomas Sieverts-inspired Suddenly for starters, you kind of have to wonder—is urban planning the new black?

Or in the context of the lo-fi, local artscape, is an embrace of placemaking and the language of planning yet another double-coded, wink-wink social-practice gambit from the legions of folks making art that’s rife with sewing circle/swap meet simplicity?

The marquee-prominence of planning in cocktail-conversation Portland thrives because of civic engagement, while on the viz art end, Portland’s social-practice artists bank on a street-level participation that’s one part community charrette, part tea party, part cracker-barrel confession, and many parts Tom Sawyer whitewashing.

So what happens when an architect-planner meets a young-and-restless art posse head on?
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Dance

Deborah Jowitt out at Village Voice

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images-21.jpgI heard from Art Scatter friend Tim DuRoche that the Village Voice has let go Deborah Jowitt, its dance critic of 40 years standing, along with film critic Nathan Lee. Confirmation comes from dance critic Elizabeth Zimmer at the Arts Journal. The only other source I could find on the internet was Gawker (sorry), but it seems to be true. According to Gawker, she will be able to freelance for the Voice. Perhaps she will.

As the print media disassembles itself, arts writing of all sorts has become an early casualty, even “popular arts” such as film. Every week, it seems, brings news on the newspaper business website Romenesko that another critic position has been eliminated at a major newspaper. And as Gawker points out, the alt.weeklies — and the Voice was the ur-alt.weekly — have not been immune. The Voice has previously discharged the eminent pop music critic Robert Christgau, after all. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times eliminated its dance critic position, leading Lewis Segal to take a buyout from the paper. Segal is an excellent critic, and the idea that the LAT Times will go without his writing is sad — there is great dance in LA.

Back to Jowitt, for a moment.
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