Nighthawks have Landed!

Finally available after many delays and difficulties, neoNuma Arts is quite pleased to present to the world a trade paperback edition of the play, Nighthawks by Evan Guilford-Blake. Above is the front and back cover, the latter so you can see for yourself the type of reviews this fine play gets when it is produced. Below are two blurbs that were given to me but I ended up not using. They are longer recommendations from previous directors of the play. After you've read them, please consider adding Nighthawks to your drama library, either from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

Our theatre department produced Nighthawks by Evan Blake in 1999. Several factors influenced our selection of the script, but most important was the acting work it provided for our students. This one-act offers four fine roles, which are challenging, yet within the range of freshmen and sophomore actors. An added benefit was the cross-disciplinary connections our production made with art history and humanities students on campus, who had studied the works of Edward Hopper. Our set reproduced the buildings and the cafe in the Hopper's painting; the faculty had their students write about our three-dimensional version of the painting, how art (Hopper's) inspires art (Blake’s), and provided a springboard for diversity discussions.

Sheilah A. Philip
Professor of Theatre, Academic Coordinator for Theatre
Johnson County Community College
Overland Park, KS

I found this play to be a heartbreaking evocation of isolation and loneliness at the center of every human heart. Evan painstakingly delineates his wounded midnight characters reaching out to connect with one another, sometimes violently, sometimes yearningly. His ultimate lesson? Reach out, hold on; none of us can traverse this journey of life alone; our emptiness can only be filled by others of our kind through mutual caring. We must shoulder each others' burdens.

The action moves from the dark, stormy, early-morning hours of despair to a slow-breaking dawn of hope.

Glenn Meche
Theater Director
New Orleans, LA
(see more about Meche's production of the play here.)

Lament of a Dance Fan

My day job is in a bookstore. One phenomenon you can count on is that when a famous person dies, You'll be asked for books by or about that person. Not a lot, not enough to put a book on the best seller list, but a few. Even the books about Michael Jackson haven't done all that well. Better than most, perhaps, but not outrageously well (to the disappointment of the buyers who decided we all need mountains of some books). When E. Lynn Harris died, his books, especially his latest (last?) novel, Basketball Jones. Walter Conkrite's memoir picked up in sales. Again, these are small jumps in sales, but there is acknowledgment of someone passing. I think part of being American is mourning famous people through books and magazines. (Or, if not mourning, living vicariously the crazy media circus a celebrity death can be.)

This past summer, as I was at the American Dance Festival, it was impressed upon us how precarious is the existence (i.e., the funding) of the arts in general and of dance in particular. This left me in a funk for some weeks afterward.

A couple of months ago, I read a review of a new book of photography by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Merce My Way. Working in a bookstore, I ordered in two copies. It is a lovely book, really. The photos are of the Cunningham company in motion. These are not the photos of someone like Lois Greenfield, with her stunning, crisp moments captured in mid-air. Baryshnikov's clarity comes not in the focus but in the blur. He captures a path the dancers travel. So, you can't see every detail of the dancer's face or body. You do see every detail of how they're moving.

Over a month ago, when Merce died, I put those two copies on display, hoping that someone will see them, want to mourn Merce with these photos. A major, giant of a dancer and choreographer had just died and I thought surely someone would come in asking about books on him. Some one.

But it hasn't happened. And the books sit on a display. They'll probably be returned to the warehouse soon.

I'm not sure what I want to say about this. Maybe I just want to say it. Maybe I've said enough.

Merce

While I was in Durham, the world lost a dance innovator, Pina Bausch. I'd only seen one live performance of her company and various YouTube videos, but her death was sad in that she wasn't very old. She was not yet 60 years old and it happened suddenly, unexpectedly. I often say that I reserve my grieving for people I actually know, but it's hard not to feel sadness at her passing.

Of course, many people have been discussing the death of Michael Jackson. I might still have a Michael Jackson post in me somewhere. He was a part of my high school and college experience and there's some sadness at his untimely death, maybe even more sadness at his unfortunate life. But as far as his dancing is concerned, Joan Acocella has written much of what I thought about MJ and his dancing, so I needn't repeat it here. (I'm not entirely comfortable writing about MJ in the same post as Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham---these are entirely separate worlds.)

Today the dance world is taking in the news that Merce Cunningham has died. Some are mourning, yes. His company and the countless dancers who passed through it are doubtlessly more affected by his death than most. But I say "taking in the news" instead of "mourning" for a very particular reason.

Merce was 90 years old. He found his path and followed it with great success. He had a partner in life and collaboration in John Cage. He was innovating, using computers to help choreograph when he could no longer stand on arthritic feet. From what has been said of him, I would expect he went to sleep last night with some new idea floating in his head, some new dance that we'll never see.

And there is the sadness, I suppose. The flow of creativity and curiousity is stopped.

But for finite people, Merce had an incredibly good run (full, no doubt, of hardship and sadness of his own---one does not create the body of work he leaves without hardship and sadness).

So, for someone like me, who never met the man, who experienced him mostly through books and video, I merely take in the news that he has died. Merce Cunningham is canon, pantheon, legend. He is as alive to me today as he was yesterday.

Blessings on his memory.

3 weeks out of 2,378

2,378 weeks. That's roughly what I've lived so far.

So 3 weeks shouldn't have too much influence, right? It's only 3 weeks out of 2,378 weeks.

Of course, when the 3 weeks in question ended just last Friday and were an intensive, stamina-testing 3 weeks of watching dance, talking about dance, and writing about dance . . .

Here's the thing. The arts are grossly under appreciated in the world. People sacrifice their entire lives in pursuit of some artistic expression and too often it is swept aside as the work of crazy people. Meanwhile, truly crazy, power-mad people are running around, claiming to be too big to fail, too important to go bankrupt, and other truly crazy, power-mad people listen to them and we're left with money being spent to keep some of these people in their penthouse apartments. Money for making beauty, for making mirrors to the society, for waking up the sleepers . . . it gets cut and what's left to spend is called waste.

All of which to say, my 3 weeks as an NEA Fellow at the American Dance Festival as part of the Institute for Dance Criticism has put me in a funk.

I don't think this was the expected outcome.

Is this fatigue or depression? Is there a difference? I find myself roller-coastering between re-dedicating myself to my sacrificing life of artistic pursuits and wondering if it's too late to learn engineering or accounting or something practical, something this culture respects.

I'm not as angry as I might sound.

I'm not as depressed as I might sound.

But I am angry and a bit depressed. And I feel a bit derailed.

Of course, 3 weeks is plenty time to influence a life. Lives are altered in much less time. Lives change in seconds.

Perhaps my greatest worry is the weight of helplessness I feel in the wake of these 3 weeks. My greatest worry is that these 3 weeks won't change a thing.

But perhaps that's up to me, eh?

A few more full nights of rest. Let's see what that will do for me . . .

Duham Blogging

Here I am in Durham, NC, attending multiple performances at the American Dance Festival and I'm not sure what to tell you. It's been nearly nonstop talk with fellow critics-in-training, with choreographers, dancers, technicians. I've now sat in the same room as 3 former dancers who were there at the beginning of Paul Taylor's career (oh, how I'd love to spend more time with them! Delightful doesn't even begin to cover how much fun these women are!) and I've heard a lighting designer talk about his years putting illumination on Merce Cunningham's company. I've been able to ask questions of two Israeli choreographers and one Japanese choreographer, the latter through an interpreter since she doesn't speak English. I've met and been critiqued by leading dance critics in the nation. I'm colleagues with a 11 other dance writers from around the nation, most of whom have incredible careers in journalism.

It makes me wonder how a farm boy from Paige got here.

It's all too much to process as it's happening. Maybe when I'm back in Houston, I'll post the reviews I wrote for the critique sessions. Maybe I'll have time to think about what has happened here and how to frame it all, what it means for me as a writer and dance lover.

But here, on the first day of the last week here, I'm nearly fried. Really. I don't know where to begin.

It just seemed appropriate that I blog Something from this place. Pretty content free, isn't it? Well, that's a bit how I feel. Content free and full, all at the same time.

KDH Dance - 10!

This is not unbiased reporting. This is not a fair and even review. This is a mash note to a company I love enough to drive 6 hours round trip to see a 2 hour performance.

The Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company (these days more often seen advertised as the more abbreviated [initialized?] KDH Dance Company). I used to take a modern class with Kathy and yoga with associate Kate Warren. Of all the things I miss about Austin, these two women are pretty darn near the center of them.

So I'm flying out of Houston to the American Dance Festival tomorrow morning. I'd sort of assumed I'd just have to miss this KDH concert. So much not getting done here. Then I was looking at the program. They revived two of my favorite pieces: Brief Histories in Three Acts and Framed. I knew it would hurt---and I'll be up late tonight packing the final things I need for my trip---but I became determined to make this performance.

It was well worth the trip. Both of these pieces were tweaked. The company has changed a lot since they were first performed and Kathy naturally enough recasts the piece according to personalities and strengths of the current company. The feelings generated with the pieces remain intact, however. The longing and nostalgia in Framed is made more tender by Kate's taking over the central role of the piece, a woman sitting immobile, staring off into space. The role was originated by Lisa Nicks, who is still with the company (and a fine dancer---a master of the solo dance), but for whatever reason Kate took on the role, Kate brought a vulnerability that I hadn't seen before. When Kate made her first movement, it was so tender and full of memory and loss, well, a my eyes teared up. Then she gets up and dances with the other women (who, if I read the dance correctly, are younger versions of the character), you see that not everything that immobile woman is remembering is sad or wistful. There is joy and excitement, as well as loss and pain.

I never saw the full lenght Brief Histories when it was created. I was living in Chicago at the time, but saw an excerpt of it when I brought the company up to Chicago to perform. It is the KDH company at it's most introspective. I should note that this company is more known for it's humor and athleticism, but being something of a contemplative myself, I especially respond to their quieter pieces. Brief Histories has a haunting quality, as if our pasts are always there directing our futures, like a ghost who keeps rearranging the funiture, blocking certain paths. Again, it's not all wistful---there are moments of happiness and excitement, not to mention anger and frustration---but the images that stay with me are the wistful moments. (This may say more about me than the actual dance. Maybe I say too much!)

The other two pieces in the evening---The Loop, another revived piece, and Green Piece, the only new piece of the evening---are a bit more abstract dance, although there's clearly something of a narrative behind them (Kathy is a storyteller as much as a dancer). The Loop explores the repetive or cyclical nature of our lives, Green Piece seems to have a number of themes running through it---from "living green" to being new, or not quite ripe---and there are more than a few apples abused throughout. (I predict apple sauce in someone's future.) I heard in the audience that someone "didn't like the apples," but I found them cleverly used in some places. I suppose it depends upon what "apple" means for you, which is, after all, a symbol full of cultural information---from the Eden debacle to keeping the doctor away. There are times I'm not always certain what's going on in an dance, I just like the movement. The apples were a prop that, for me, were simply something the dancers were using. Any associations I had in passing were simply layers along the way. It's otherwise a lovely piece.

I don't have any more time this morning. I'll have to leave my KDH report at that. If you are in Austin---or within a 3 hour drive!---make the effort to see the last two performances tonight and Saturday. I admit, I love this company and the women behind it, but I'll also defend that bias by saying: If they made crap work, I wouldn't be writing this now, on too little sleep after too much driving.

Okay, that's all for today. Next blot spot (so to speak): Durham, NC, and the American Dance Festival!

Got Met

Just got in a bit ago from the Summer Sampler of Dance with the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company. It was at Houston's outdoor venue, the Miller Outdoor Theater and the hillside was loaded with people. Really impressive turnout! Events at Miller are free, but that doesn't always mean people take advantage of it. (I know I don't, to my shame!)

Just some quick impressions. jhon stronks, one of the better choreographers in Houston, gave a nice piece in the first act. It looked highly improvisational, and it wouldn't surprise me, knowing jhon. The soundtrack he put together was quite fun. He used some poems from mutual friend, Margo Toombs, mixed in with the music and other sounds. I was sitting next to Margo and it was fun watching her react to her own voice, especially when it turned out jhon used a piece she wasn't expecting. Even more fun was when some kids near us started to repeat one repeated line of Margo's: Everyone has a cape. I leaned over and told Margo, "Listen, you're being quoted!"

In the second act, the youth/student company, Houston Met Too, tore up the stage with some extraordinary dancing, every bit as good as the parent company. Very, very impressive.

The piece I went to see, really, was the piece I blogged about last time, Salim Gauwloos' Elevated. Salim is the choreographer I interviewed for OutSmart this month (scroll down to last entry for more info). I'm happy to report that it's a lovely piece. The middle section, with two pairs of dancers, is especially moving and tender. (After the show, I'd mentioned how tender this section was, and Margo said "and bendy!" I said, "Yes, tender and bendy!" She said, "You'll have to use that in your review." I said, "I try not to use too many technical terms in my review.")

I'd write more, but it's late and I need to cut this short. Just wanted to give some very brief, quick impressions (and expose myself and my friends for how silly we are). All in all, a fine night on the hillside.