Category Archives: Dance and the other arts

Buttons: World’s Smallest Antiques

Around Town, Dance and the other arts, , ,

Buttons like these will be on display at the New Jersey State Button Show and Sale on Saturday, May 11, 9 to 4 p.m. at the Union Firehouse in Titusville. Here is the article in U.S. 1 Newspaper. It’s fun to see all the different kinds of buttons — and you might just find some you “have to have.”

One of the categories for this show is enamel buttons, as on the left. Below, a card of buttons that are are actually in the shape of what they depict: bird, rooster, crab, bear, elephant, flower, thimble, etc.

The NJSBS show is held twice a year for New Jersey and tri-state button enthusiasts who enjoy the artwork and history of buttons, including their manufacture and design. “Our shows attract quilters, crafters, antique collectors, reenactors, and those seeking special buttons to wear,” says Lillian Buirkle, president of the 71-year-old organization.

The fire hall is at 1396 River Road (Route 29), at the intersection of Route 29 and Park Lake Avenue in Titusville, opposite the Delaware River and D&R; Canal State Park (within easy access to the canal park), a half mile north of Washington Crossing State Park in Hopewell Township, and some five miles south of Lambertville and New Hope, PA. Admission is $2 for adults at the door, free for juniors to age 17. Also that day is the New Jersey History fair across the road in the Washington Crossing State Park. 

Johnson Frazier, a button historian and dealer, will present a 1:30 p.m. program, “Banners on Buttons,” showcasing buttons that display ribbons and flags in their designs, some as early as the 18th century, along with a brief history about the buttons pictured. Throughout the day there will be a variety of activities, including the judging of button trays entered into competition, an educational display of buttons worn on gloves, and a button raffle.
The fall show will be Saturday, September 7, at the same location. Contact Lillian Buirkle, (732-691-1776), email: buttonlady@optonline.netor visit http://newjerseystatebuttonsociety.org/

What’s Left Out — Art or Accommodation? NYT on Mitchell Rales

Around Town, Dance and the other arts

I started out to comment on the joys of living next to Princeton University, but this is turning into a wry comment on big-time journalism.

photo by Christopher Gregory/NYT

An article in tomorrow’s New York Times features a billionaire and his wife standing in front of an instantly recognizable sculpture, recognizable that is, if you wander on the Princeton University campus. Just east of Washington Road, behind Frank Gehry’s Lewis Library, is the humongous Richard Serra sculpture, The Hedgehog and the Fox, three giant rusty curving walls. In the NYT photo, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell P. Rales stand in front of it something that looks just like it, a Serra sculpture entitled Sylvester.

Wikipedia photo
(I can’t find the U.S. 1 photo
from the August 2000 installation story)

My first reaction is an appreciation of the privilege of living in Princeton. If you have a habit of walking on the campus, you are getting an unwitting education in contemporary art. See one Serra, you’ll recognize the next. See one Lipchitz, you will spot another.

Song of the Vowels by Jacques Lipchitz
at Kykuit (my photo)

We discovered this when we toured Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate near West Point, New York. Almost every sculpture that the Rockefellers owned, the Princeton campus has one by the same sculptor. Both the Rockefellers and the Putnam collection own a copy of Song of the Vowels by the Cubist sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz. 

My second observation is what the Times left out. The article tells of a 56-year old man, married to an art curator who is 36 years old, and all it says about that — seven paragraphs from the bottom — is, “The couple, who married in 2008, work very much as a team.” It leaves out the public record of the First Wife (with whom he had two children) and the Second Wife (who was the first curator of the private/public museum).

The article also omits what is important to business reporters, like how Mitchell Rales’ father was raised in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and that he and his older brother Steven made their fortune in junk bonds. It’s all in the public record.

That sounds very much like a publicist saying “you get to write this story only if you omit x y and z.” I’ve had similar requests, some I honored, some I didn’t.

Rales was “weaned on the the family real estate business,” according to an article written on him in his younger days,  and rightfully averse to publicity. But like the Barnes Collection of yore, he has this mammoth collection of art and is trying to share it with the public. To do that well, he needed the “right” article in the “right” paper, i.e. the New York Times.

OK, I’ll admit that the bio has nothing to do with the focus of this article, entitled “Like Half a National Gallery in Your Backyard.” The curtailed bio includes the brothers founding Danaher corporation as a science and technology firm that grew into a publicly traded company valued at $40 Billion. It tells of his life changing experience in 1998 when he almost died. After that he began to found a museum that is open to the public by appointment (so as to give everyone plenty of room, does this sound like Barnes?) and pays for area schoolkids to visit on field trips (Barnes again).

So leaving important parts of the biography out of this story could have been the reporter’s independent decision.

illustration by Heather Lovett
from P.U. Communications

But I would have wanted to include how Mitchell’s father — when one of his sons got a paper route — required the boy to give 10 percent of his earnings to the housekeeper. Maybe that didn’t fit the story, but how could I leave that out?

You can see the Song of the Vowels in the plaza between Firestone Library and Princeton University Chapel. As you view it, you can see that the skill of the artist is represented by — what’s left out.

Dance Review: 4-19-2013

Dance and the other arts
 This is a draft of a review of the concert I saw on Friday, April 19, 2013.
The choreographers were “mature” 10 years ago, but on the 10th anniversary of “I’ll Have What She’s Having,” this program has come of age. Each had something to say, and some dances were memorable.
Claire Porter has spent a lifetime wittily syncing words and ideas with movement. In Frame,  to a score by Guy Klucevsek, four dancers (Marie Alonso-Snyder, Christine Colosimo, Linda Mannheim, and – on Friday – Debra Keller) take picture frames to peer through, truck around, pile up, eventally making clear how valuable new and different perspectives can be. “So many ways to look at things.” It was subtle, deft, a winner on many levels.
The other new group dance, Pink Ribbons, by Fara Lindsay, to music by Flack, had blunt impact on an emotional level. Five women in a waiting room are summoned, one by one, behind a lit screen for the ritual. First the mammogram. One by one, the suction biopsy needle goes down the line. All this you see in shadow. One by one the cleaver goes down the line. The women emerge clutching their pink robes, their heads covered with scarves. They are broken. One falls, is helped up. Two reach out to help a third. Each gathers strength from the next. Part B is a poignant solo by Lindsay, followed by the re-entry of all the patients, recovered and swinging their way back into the world. The cast of 11 included Christine Colosimo, Louise Bolge, Erickson, Meiying Huang, Keller, Linda Mannheim, Eri Millrod, Nancy Musco, Shari Nyce, and Marie Alonso Snyder. It should be a fundraiser for the Y’s pink ribbon benefit. 
Mannheim spent most of Porter’s piece locomoting on the floor so it was a revelation to see her long-limbed Graham-and-Pilates trained body stretch out in joyfully beautiful ways – on a pole, no less. With her yearning extensions, in Axis Mundi (to the music of Ennio Morricone) she took pole dancing to a new level. I imagined it to be her love song to life.
In A Pas de Deux Linda Erickson simply walked and walked some more, never stopping, while her partner efficiently tricked her out in the frippery of cheap feminity – bosoms, butts, wig and all. All this to Bobby McFerrin singing Psalm 23, the version that makes God a she. 
In the trio Sylvie, with Milrod and Lindsay, Nyce revealed an enriched emotional palette, moving from serenity (“Bring me little water Sylvie” to a chain gang chant. Nyce repurposed her signature limber lifts to the stark impact of struggle. Nyce’s co-choreographers were Terri Best and Deborah Brokus. 
A duet by Dawn Berman and Susan Brady Pinto had similar intensity without the emotional focus.
I’ve seen Colosimo do some inventive pieces using props, but here she went for savvy showbiz with a deft tap dance. She’s a showman in the best sense of the word.
Also on the program: Flamenco artist Lisa Botalico (with Valerie Aguilar, Jan Bhaskar, Sharron Bollen, and Cathy Carr) presented the colorful El Café de la Union, Marie Alonzo danced to poems read by Tatyana Petrovicheva, and three dancers performed to live music (well, almost live, the bagpipes were recorded but the accordion and sax were live). On Saturday, Debra Orenstein will present two Isadora Duncan works.
The program repeats Saturday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. The community room at the Princeton YWCA has effectively been turned into a black box theater for the occasion. 

Alonzo adds this explanatory note, which I’m glad to include:

Marie Alonzo’s work  “50 shades of fifty” part 2 was accompanied by poems written and read  by Tatyana Petrovicheva. “Because of time limitations for  solos ( 10 minutes) I could not perform the full solo of 42 minutes (part 1,2,3,4). The complete conceptual work of asking 50 dancers for 50 seconds of movement and stringing them in the order they were received, will be performed at an evening of my choreography and dance on June 22nd at the West Windsor Arts Council.”

On My Calendar: Paulette Sears and Daniel Rattner

Dance and the other arts
A long-time choreographer friend,
Paulette Sears (left), will present her work for the last time as a Rutgers Mason Gross faculty member in Dance Plus Spring, on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from April 26 to May 5. Her work is sometimes challenging, always discerning, and I am eager to find out what she will say, in movement, at this point in her life.
I also want to encourage the work of an artist at the beginning of his career. Daniel Rattner, who presents his Princeton University senior thesis production, Oh Where Are You Going, about two sisters (right), starting April 26. We happened to see Rattner’s wonderful riff on the Red Riding Hood legend for a summer children’s show at Theatre Intime. He has a big talent, and I’m eager to see where it goes.
Also coming up
I’ll Have What She’s Having, two more nights, April 19 and 20 at the Princeton YWCA, featuring the work of another choreographer I’ve watched for 30-plus years, Claire Porter, recent winner of a Guggenheim.
Janell Byrne‘s well of invention never dries up, and her Mercer Dance Ensemble performs on May 18 and 19.
Are there any guest reviewers out there? After so many years of watching and writing, I may not have the stamina to write them myself. 

A Dance Weekend

Dance and the other arts
 To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the YWCA Princeton’s
 acclaimed dance performances of “I’ll Have What She’s Having…” 
Dance Project,  performances are
 at the YWCA Princeton’s Black Box Theater
on Thursday, April 18 at 7:30 pm, 
Friday, April 19 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, 
April 20 at 7:30 pm.  All tickets are $25. 
Claire Porter will be a guest artist. 

Not Nutcracker: Thelonious Monk, Peter Martins

Dance and the other arts

Point One: Yes, Virginia, you can see dance without the sugarplum fairy in December. Here’s a chance to see a free, on-the-edge dance-jazz-performance event. Thomas de Frantz, a professor at Duke University, focuses in his academic life on  how African Americans use their bodies to perform various identities: gender, regional location, sexual identities, race and class, among others. 


On Sunday, December 2, 7 p.m., in Princeton University’s Hagan Dance Studio, he will perform ‘Monk’s Mood: a Performance Meditation on the Life and Music of Theolonious Monk,’  “as a wordless, danced, biography of the late jazz musician and composer,” quoting the press release. “Presented with Eto Oro, this multimedia performance is created with Miditron and Isadora technology, and utilizes random images and songs to create a spontaneous improvisation, or live choreography at its very best.” 

Please note that the Hagan studio is usually light on production values. Just the basics. That’s a drawback that the new Lewis Center will fix.

For a short example, click here 

 Point Two: When watching Leslie Stahl’s profile of Peter Martins on Sunday, I was awash in nostalgia. Who else remembers Peter Martins of 25 years ago, tall-blonde-and-gorgeous, presiding royally at Scanticon (now the Forrestal Marriott). Scanticon — owned and founded by a Dane — had just opened, and the then Danish Prince of Ballet had just finished a guest Nutcracker gig with the young company Princeton Ballet. If I remember correctly, he partnered the young Heather Watts. Everyone, including me, was agog. 


Scanticon did itself proud with such luxurious goodies as salmon flown in that day from Copenhagen. Nice memories — and they still echo when I walk in the door of the still-cozy Forrestal Marriott. And here is an extra-yummy look at New York City Ballet, a master class.  

Belpw,  some other Not Nutcracker opportunities. This list was cadged from http://www.princetoninfo.com, the website for U.S. 1 Newspaper.Just go to the site and it will cough up all the dance events.


(11/30/2012 – Dance), Dance Plus Fall, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Mastrobuono Theater, 85 George Street, New Brunswick, 732-932-7511
7:30 p.m., Works by Robert Battle, Julie Bour, Patrick Corbin, and faculty members. $25.,www.masongross.rutgers.edu

(12/01/2012 – Dance), Fleet, Princeton University, McCarter Theater (Berlind), 609-258-1500
2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Guest and student choreography. $15., www.princeton.edu

(12/01/2012 – Dance), Dance Plus Fall, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Mastrobuono Theater, 85 George Street, New Brunswick, 732-932-7511

7:30 p.m., Works by Robert Battle, Julie Bour, Patrick Corbin, and faculty members. $25.,www.masongross.rutgers.edu

Animals Do It: Stretch after Sleeping

Dance and the other arts

Trish Garland, who premiered the role of Judy, the “tall, gawky, and quirky dancer,” in Chorus Line, taught a workshop for Pilates instructors on how to work with aging clients at Anthony Rabara’s Pilates studio last weekend. Garland has a studio in California, and Rabara’s studio is in Research Park, but both are committed to teaching the authentic Pilates method as they learned it at the original New York studio from Romana Kryzanowski. 










Though Garland’s body looks like it hasn’t changed a bit — she’s still tall and skinny — she claims that, in her early ’60s, she is feeling the effects of aging, and so she is focusing on what to do about it. (In the group photo, she and Rabara are in front row center; she’s the blonde.) 

I was one of the “aging clients” in respectful attendance at the workshop and was reprimanded — yet again — for my habit of standing with hands behind my back, stomach out, not standing tall. (I know better. Anyone hereby has my permission to remind me about it. What’s that expression…it takes a village to change an aging person’s habits?)

The take-away from the Pilates workshop that we all can use is that, to protect your back and the rest of your aging bones, stretch like a cat before you get out of bed. We’re talking a serious stretch and here are some of the ways she suggested.

Knees up, roll back and forth to massage your back. Cross your ankles and hold your toes. Pull your feet to your  bottom. Shrug your shoulders to your ears. Turn your head from side to side (unless you have vertigo). Bend your forearms, hands up, open and close your hands and circle them. With knees up, flex and point your feet. Roll over to sit on the edge of your bed and pound your toes, rat a tat tat, against the floor. All this before you get out of bed. 

I won’t go into medical history about why I need this, but, trust me, this kind of wake-up stretching is good for all of us. As Joseph Pilates used to say — animals do it. So it must be good for us. 






 

Button-ing a Portrait

Around Town, Dance and the other arts, Uncategorized,

I’ve already encouraged everyone to attend the New Jersey State Button Show in Titusville on Saturday, and a new button project has come to light. Helene Plank has fashioned a self portrait of herself with buttons and beads, all of which were hand-sewed to the stretched artist canvass, all with donated items. No new buttons or beads!

The piece won the top awards at Lawrence Library’s annual “Trashed Art 2012” show, which required artwork be made of at least of 75% recycled items. It is still on view, through June 2, at the library, but now it is part of the Lawrence Arts Council show. The library is located on Darrah Lane, off Route 1 (2751 Route 1, Lawrence 08648.)


Perhaps I’ll see you on Saturday in Titusville?  

Buttons and Brews on the Delaware

Around Town, Dance and the other arts,

Buttons of all kinds attract me — new or old, fancy or plain. Each one has a story. For instance — slogans like Can’t Bust ’em, Bread Winner, and I Crow over all — do they sound like posters or flags? 


They adorn work clothes buttons, says Brad Upp, a button collector who speaks at the New Jersey State Button Society spring show on Saturday, May 12, at 1:30 p.m. The show goes from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Union Fire Company fire hall, 1396 River Road (Route 29) in Titusville. Door fee is $2, and coffee and lunch items will be available. 


Buttons are not the only activity on the Delaware River that day. On the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware is the second annual brewfest staged by the Friends of Washington Crossing Park, to be held rain or shine with live bands and food. Location: behind the Thompson Neely House. No one under 21 will be admitted. 


Button expert Upp says that the two-piece metal buttons (such as the one above) were made for men’s work clothes during the early part of the 20th Century. Makers displayed pride in their product with their slogans, which include Iron King, Strong as a Lion, Boss Mechanic, and Can’t Ripum. 


To get an idea about what the NJSBS show involves, see Sharon Schlegel’s Times of Trenton column from last year — but ignore the photo added to the online version, it’s of the pin-on political button. The buttons in this show are sew-on clothing buttons, such as the modern Czech glass (shown at left), or the antique enamel buttton, shown at right. Both are on the sale website of Annie Frazier of South Jersey. 


Frazier and more than a dozen other dealers will have sale tables for antique and modern buttons at the show. The show is held twice a year for New Jersey and tri-state button enthusiasts who enjoy the artwork and history of buttons, including their manufacture and design.Throughout the day there will be a variety of activities, including the judging of button trays entered into competition, and a button raffle. 


The show’s traditional location is the Union Fire Company, located at the intersection of Route 29 and Park Lake Avenue in Titusville, opposite the Delaware River and D and R Canal State Park (within easy access to the canal park), a half mile north of Washington Crossing State Park in Hopewell Township, and some five miles south of Lambertville and New Hope, PA. 

Tenney Takes It To New York

Dance and the other arts,

For the past several years I’ve been intrigued to watch the progress of Susan Tenney’s evening length dance, set to the music of Georges Delerue.  Delerue is well-known for such scores as Francois Truffaut’s Jules and  Jim, and he won an Oscar for “A Little Romance.” Enamored with his music, Tenney has based “Je me souviens…I remember” on his work. 

Every time I see “Je me souviens” it taps hidden emotions, in part because it focuses on a young girl, Cynthia Yank, who grows into a woman, Samantha Gullace. It’s hard to explain, but I have tried to write about it here, and here are the choreographer’s notes, and here is an article by Valerie Sudol.

Tenney has shown parts of this piece on various unprepossessing stages, including in the Princeton Ballet School studio (with dancers and watchers within arms reach of each other) and on the green at Palmer Square.   Now she is making the Big Leap to show it in New York, this Saturday (October 29) at 7:30 p.m.  

Try to get there if you can. It’s not often that a Princeton choreographer can gather the resources to present in Manhattan.  I’m looking forward to seeing the piece on a real stage at the Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison. The cast includes Gary Echternacht, Yoshie Driscoll, Alexandra Fredas, Anya Kalishnikova, Naoko Cojerian, Kelly Meir, Alexis Branagan, and Pam Pisani.

Tickets are $25 ($75 includes the patron reception), or $15 for students with an ID.  They are available on line or at the door. 

Tenney worked closely with the composer’s daughter, Claire Delerue, who offers an appreciation for the program notes. An excerpt: 

Great choreographers who use music from various sources other than the ballet repertoire  acknowledge the beauty and intensity of the emotions which such music conjures; creating dance around it, they give it renewed life and meaning. 

Therefore it is wonderful to know that Georges Delerue’s film music, which has made such a powerful impression on film lovers over the years, will also now create new emotional connections for audiences through it being danced to.
   
I thank Susan Tenney for having tapped into her superb creativity and found new, singular ways of making people vibrate to the sound of these beloved pieces of music.

Photo: Tenney, far left, with the company.
Post script: Another Princeton choreography takes her work to The City, but this time, Philadelphia. From Marie Snyder: I will be showing a new work  blending modern and Latin style dancing on Sunday at 9:30.  I think this is the first time a modern choreographer was invited to the Philly salsa fest…  so excited!!http://philadelphiasalsafest.com/cart/index.php?main_page=page&id;=13&chapter;=0