Archives for July 2003

“Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night; we wake up to it again for ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. We can welcome experience as it comes, and give it what it demands, in exchange for something which it is idle to pause to call much or little so long as it contributes to swell the volume of consciousness. In this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers a visible rule, that bids us learn to will and seek to understand.”

Henry James, “Ivan Turgenieff”

I’ve seen a whole lot of Pilobolus Dance Theatre over the years, but familiarity has yet to breed contempt, which is why I was sitting on the aisle at the Joyce Theater last night, watching with delight as they performed two new works, “Star-Cross’d” and “Wedlock,” and two old standbys, “Walklyndon” and “Day Two.”

As always, I was happy (but no longer surprised) to see that much of the crowd consisted of New Yorkers who don’t make a habit of going to dance concerts. Pilobolus’ light-hearted style, an unabashedly sexy combination of dance, gymnastics, and performance art, appeals not just to dance buffs but to audiences of all kinds. You don’t have to know anything about dance to revel in a piece like “Day Two,” in which the dancers take their curtain calls while spinning and sliding crazily across a water-covered stage. The setting is pure Pilobolus, a hot, steamy jungle of the mind inhabited by six all-but-naked people who enact a series of mysterious rituals apparently intended to propitiate the god of fertility. At the end, the stage floor seems to buckle and the dancers suddenly rip through it, an effect as exhilarating as the launch of a rocket.

But is it really dance? Even Arlene Croce, a longtime admirer of the troupe, insisted on calling Pilobolus “a company of acrobatic mimes rather than dancers,” and the distinction is more than mere hair-splitting. What Pilobolus does is not ballet (though its members frequently fly through the air) and not quite modern dance (though they usually perform barefoot). The group’s movement vocabulary is designed not to show off the body in motion but to exploit its sculptural properties in order to create theatrical illusion–hence the trompe l’oeil effects that are Pilobolus’ trademark.

Arguments about the definition of dance are about as productive as arguments about the meaning of life. Yet this ambiguity is part of what makes Pilobolus’ work so interesting. The elusive beauty of the company’s sleight-of-torso tricks, combined with a consistently imaginative use of music (much of it popular) and a generous touch of slapstick (if cream pies were cheaper, Pilobolus would throw them), also has much to do with its accessibility. When the curtain goes up and a half-dozen handsome dancers come running on stage and start tying themselves into exotic knots and strange, almost-familiar shapes, only a hopeless prig would worry about whether the results are really, truly dance.

Alison Chase’s “Star-Cross’d,” announced as a “premiere-in-progress,” turned out to be a lovely exercise in seemingly plotless lyricism with a show-stopping opening tableau: the lights come up on five dancers who appear to be floating high above the stage, upside down. (Presumably the Shakespearean angle will become clearer as the piece continues to take shape.) First viewings of unfinished works tend to be deceptive, but “Star-Cross’d” already looks like a keeper to me. Jonathan Wolken’s “Wedlock,” by contrast, is a suite of eight short vignettes about relationships, some jokey and others serious, fun to watch but not nearly as compelling as “Star-Cross’d.” As for the classics, “Walklyndon,” a zany bit of Ernie Kovacs-like pantomime danced (so to speak) in silence, is as infallibly funny as ever, while “Day Two,” the company’s signature piece de facto, continues to cast its inscrutable spell. Renee Jaworski, the company’s resident blonde, was slightly injured, so Rebecca Jung, my all-time favorite Pilobolus alumna, came back to dance her old part in “Day Two.” It was pure pleasure to see her striking face and strong, shapely legs and feet again after an absence of several years.

This is the last week of Pilobolus’ annual month-long run at the Joyce, and all three programs will be seen at least once more between now and Saturday night. I’ll be back on Saturday afternoon. When it comes to Pilobolus, once is never enough for me.

In between essays, articles, and reviews, Joseph Epstein writes short stories, 18 of which have been collected in Fabulous Small Jews (Houghton Mifflin). It’s an odd book–odd, that is, if your idea of what a short story should sound like is based solely on the output of those dewy-eyed authors who learned their craft in expensive creative-writing programs.

Epstein, by contrast, is homemade and middle-aged, and for all his undeniable highness of brow, he has taken as his subject matter the lives and loves of a class of people who rarely figure in contemporary American fiction. His stories are set in Chicago and inhabited almost exclusively by Jews–but not just any Jews. As one of his characters explains, “In our neighborhood, politics, modern art, and psychotherapy played no role whatsoever. Fathers were too busy with their work as salesmen, owners of small businesses, or one-man law practices. Their horizons ended with making a good living and being excellent providers. As for their sons, most of the boys I knew in grade school and high school went on to the University of Illinois, where they majored in business; the rest, a small minority, aimed at dental or medical school.” Such are the folk of whom he writes.

If you’re bored already, Fabulous Small Jews might not be for you, but I think you’ll be surprised by how quickly Epstein’s divorce lawyers, upper-middle-class businessmen, and high-school teachers cast their spell. A few bad eggs notwithstanding, most of them are basically decent men whose lives are much more than half over, playing against the clock and trying to make the best of their variously bad situations. Being Jewish, they view the world with a briny blend of humor and disillusion, and he sums them up skillfully and with unsentimental affection.

These tales are the opposite of trendy. Instead, they partake of what might be called the journalistic virtues. Epstein knows how to get a story moving right from the opening bell: “‘Apart from your brother,’ my father used to say, ‘money is your best friend.’ He said it to me early, and he said it more than once.” (Did you notice that the second sentence scans?) His eye for detail is just about infallible: “At the Wasserburgs’ house on the lake, on the North Shore in Glencoe, amid the Matisse, the Motherwells, the Fairfield Porter, and the large Frankenthaler, he approached her.”

Most of all, Joseph Epstein knows the territory, and the people who work it. If you don’t, now’s your chance to pay them a visit. Should you find yourself on or near the Upper West Side of New York tonight, you can do it in person: Epstein will be answering questions and reading from Fabulous Small Jews at 7:30 at the Barnes & Noble at 82nd and Broadway. You buy it, he’ll sign it.

(In case you’re wondering, the title comes from “Hospital,” a poem by the acutely underrated Karl Shapiro: This is the Oxford of all sicknesses./Kings have lain here and fabulous small Jews/And actresses whose legs were always news.)

Am I the only person to have spotted the social significance of Roz Chast’s Cremaster-bashing back-page cartoon in the June 9 issue of the New Yorker? (It’s not on line, alas, but it’s definitely worth looking up.) Back in the days of Harold Ross, the New Yorker wasn’t above publishing cartoons that made fun of abstract expressionism, but ever since Jackson Pollock became God, they’ve been careful not to make that kind of mistake again–until now. Chast chronicled a visit to the Guggenheim Museum by a frazzled-looking lady who made no bones about being utterly befuddled by Matthew Barney’s much-ballyhooed Cremaster Cycle: “I do not understand this at all…I must be a complete idiot…I’ll reread the brochure…No help there…I’ll just stare at the art until something comes through.”

To her infinite credit, Chast didn’t play both sides of the street, which would have been all too easy to do. Instead, she suggested what I take to be her own jaundiced opinion of the fawning critical reaction to the Cremaster Cycle, for the funniest panel in the cartoon showed our frazzled lady gazing at a jumbo wall label whose text reads as follows: “Matthew Barney blah blah blah blah blah Cremaster blah blah blah blah blah blah referencing blah blah metaphor blah blah narrator blah blah blah differentiate blah.” (Over her head floated a puzzled thought balloon: “Maybe I should reread this explanation.”)

I loathe the modish usage of the word “subversive,” which more often than not is code for “PC,” but I do think there is something quite genuinely subversive about the fact that Roz Chast, of all people, felt free to make fun of Matthew Barney in the New Yorker, of all places. Or could it be that I didn’t get it? Maybe I should reread this cartoon….

“Al Shriver was one of those many people who have no distinguishing talents or abilities. They are faces in group shots of Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve. In trying to climb above the others, they go from little self-inflicted irregularities to the extreme of placing bombs in public places.”

Ernie Kovacs, Zoomar

Here I am, finally. I’ve been talking about starting an arts blog for the past couple of years, but I never got up the nerve to do the dirty work (i.e., the computer-geek stuff). So when artsjournal.com kindly offered to do it for me, it took me about three seconds to say yes.

If you already know my stuff, “About Last Night” will be familiar to you. It’s a daily offshoot of “Second City,” the monthly column I write for the Washington Post about the arts in New York City. (To read my last Post column, go here.) I’ll report on out-of-town events from time to time–I see a lot of things in Washington–but I plan to concentrate on New York City, the place where I live and where I spend most of my spare time going to theaters, concert halls, art galleries, and nightclubs. I can’t think of a better place in the world from which to write a blog like this, though I do get arted out every once in a while. (You’ll hear about that, too.)

“Second City” deals only with the performing and visual arts, whereas “About Last Night” will also cover books, film, and television, as well as offering commentary on what other people write about the arts. But the premise is still pretty much the same: this is the diary of a working critic who happens to cover all the arts, not just one or two.

Why a blog? I take intense pleasure from every kind of art there is–music, dance, literature, theater, paintings and sculpture, movies and TV. So can you. That’s why I’m writing “About Last Night.” I want to encourage you to follow your curiosity wherever it leads you, the same way I do. I believe deeply that all art is one, and that all the arts are accessible to everyone. I hope you’ll treat this blog as a daily opportunity to widen your horizons.

You can access this blog two ways, by going directly to my URL or visiting my host, artsjournal.com. If you came here the first way, click on the artsjournal logo at the top of the page and look at the rest of the site–I read it every morning, and so should you.

One last thing: please tell your friends about “About Last Night.” While you’re at it, tell me what you think of it. I long for your e-mail, and plan to post it regularly.

Welcome aboard.

I hear there are places to live that are almost as much fun as New York City, but I wouldn’t know–I live here, and I’m not going anywhere.

One reason why I’m sticking is that last Thursday, Luciana Souza sang with the New York Philharmonic on the Great Lawn of Central Park, just a five-minute walk from my front door, before a crowd of…oh, I don’t know, maybe two or three million. It sure looked that big from where I was sitting, anyway. (Allan Kozinn guessed 50,000 in the New York Times, but who’s counting?) In any case, Souza ought to be singing in front of multitudes, because she’s the most exciting jazz singer I’ve run across in ages. The catch, if you want to call it that, is that she isn’t really a jazz singer, or at least not quite exactly one. Souza, who now lives in New York, comes from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and her style is a rich, volatile brew of Brazilian pop and American jazz, impossible to categorize and irresistible to hear.

So what in the world was she singing with the New York Philharmonic? Why, Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo, of course, a wonderfully subtle exercise in Spanish local color with a part for a mezzo-soprano with peasant blood in her veins. Most classically trained mezzos make it sound too formal, or–worse yet–like a caricature of flamenco. Not Souza. Her singing, at once coolly poised and earthy, with a chesty vibrato that grabs you by the heart and squeezes, is the voice Falla must have heard in his dreams. Yes, she uses a microphone, meaning that prissy purists will want nothing to do with her (though she couldn’t very well have sung in Central Park without one), but I’m the furthest thing from a purist, and I doubt there’s been a performance quite like this one since Argentinita recorded the piece with Antal Dorati and the Ballet Theatre Orchestra for Decca back in the Forties (and why, pray tell, has that performance never been reissued on CD?). Souza performed El amor brujo earlier this year with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony, and if somebody doesn’t haul the lot of them into a studio right away, somebody is dumb.

Should Falla strike you as excessively fancy fare for an outdoor pops concert, I can only say that the New York Philharmonic has been known to pull some fast ones in Central Park. A couple of years ago, for example, Audra McDonald sang the Brecht-Weill Seven Deadly Sins outdoors with the Philharmonic (in the W.H. Auden-Chester Kallman English-language version, thank you very much). I was there, agog and then some, which gives me an excuse to mention McDonald and Souza in the same breath. Even though they don’t sound a bit alike, they still have a lot in common, for neither one of them loses any sleep worrying about labels–instead, they sing whatever they want and make you like it. To call them “crossover” artists is to trivialize their boundless curiosity and resourcefulness. I think of them as citizens of the musical world, at home wherever they go, be it concert hall or cabaret or the great outdoors.

I had my fingers crossed all afternoon, checking the weather every couple of hours and wondering when the skies would fall. Instead, the temperature fell, and by the time I got to my seat it was preposterously balmy. The gnats were out in force, flying in funnel-cloud formation with orders to kill, but they picked a new target at intermission and left the rest of us to enjoy the sunset. Stretched out at the rear of the Great Lawn was the midtown skyline, bouncing light off the low-lying clouds, with the Chrysler Building peeping between the high-rises on Central Park South like a six-year-old boy trying to push his way through a crowd of six-foot-tall grownups in order to see the passing parade a little better. The surrounding sky was grayish-purple, and the effect was so exquisite that I would have been perfectly happy to turn my folding chair around and face the wrong way all night long, except that I wouldn’t have been able to see Souza’s spectacular rust-red-to-die-for dress.

Did I mention that the Gruccis were kind enough to set off fireworks as an encore, accompanied by a parkful of oohs and aahs? I felt as if I were looking at the biggest painting in the universe. (This one, to be exact.) And all for free!

Yes, it was disgustingly humid all week long, the orchestra needed another rehearsal, and I won’t be surprised if I have a nightmare or two about those gnats…and none of it mattered one tiny bit. Nights like this are why you live in a preshrunk apartment and pay outrageous rent and grope around to make sure your wallet’s still there every time you get off a crowded subway car. Feel free to remind me the next time you catch me griping about New York.

Gerald Nachman’s Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (Pantheon) is a narrative history of the post-Catskills standup comedians of the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras, starting with Mort Sahl and ending with Bill Cosby. It’s a surprisingly thick book, and surprisingly serious, too, though I’m surprised that Bob Gottlieb, the normally sharp-eyed editor, didn’t give it a few more nips and tucks. The chapters on Sahl, Tom Lehrer, Shelley Berman (I’d wondered what happened to him), Woody Allen, and Mike Nichols and Elaine May are especially good. No footnotes, and Nachman sometimes lapses into uncritical enthusiasm, but it’s still a solid read, good enough to make you curious about ex-headliners you’ve never heard of, or can just barely recall from childhood memories of The Ed Sullivan Show.

I smiled to see so many of these Formerly Hip Comics complaining about the frequency with which young comedians make use of what now appears to be the most popular 12-letter word in the English language. (They don’t seem to think much of David Letterman, either.) I look forward to seeing what tasteless outrages Chris Rock is bitching about when he’s 64.