Theatre Without Borders

Photo by Elke Wetzig — Some Rights Reserved

Under the “grass is always greener” category, what is more important to you: to keep working, contributing and creating; or to win a prize, even the ultimate prize?

According to the ever-perceptive Doris Lessing, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 2007, has been a “bloody disaster.”

In an interview with UK Radio 4’s Front Row, Lessing laments all the obstacles that come with being a prize winner: “All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.” As for her talent and vocation, “It has stopped, I don’t have any energy any more.”

No more novels because she has become too celebrated? (Do you think the fact that she has also become eighty-eight years of age has anything to do with the level of her energy?)

This is certainly a turn from the woman who declared on winning on the award: “Oh Christ! I couldn’t care less” and that the prize “doesn’t mean anything artistically.”

Lessing has always been a master of altering our perceptions of our world. The author of The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, amongst so many other significant works, has never shied from critiquing with a smile.

In an appearance at one festival, Lessing asked, “What use are men?” At another festival, she defended men against “unthinking and automatic rubbishing” by feminists.

So from all sides, it is worth considering the words of the Nobel’s oldest prize winner. Then again, wouldn’t you rather have the phone ring and the email box ping with some regular frequency?

Be it wisdom, weariness, or just age, Lessing deserves her prize and her privacy to work, if not at least think.

Born in Iran, and raised in Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, Lessing’s voice also counts in politics: “Mugabe is a disaster.”

Through her work, and her interviews, Lessing has held fast to a core principle: “We are free… I can say what I think. We are lucky, privileged, so why not make use of it?”

Wouldn’t you, too, make good use of an award?

- Bill Reichblum

Twelve years have passed since the opening night of Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent at the New York Theater Workshop in 1996. After twelve years of success and awards, one of the longest running musicals on Broadway has now premiered in Buenos Aires. The venue couldn´t have been a better choice: Ciudad Cultural Konex, a former oil factory turned into a cultural center in the heart of the Abasto neighborhood, where famous tango singer Carlos Gardel spent part of his childhood.

Director James Murray and producer and executive director Andy Ovsejevich talked with KadmusArts about how and why they decided to produce the musical in Buenos Aires, what the creation process was like, and how they dealt with the translation and adaptation of the script and lyrics. In closing, they shared with us an upcoming production at Konex: Puccini’s opera, La Boheme.

Cast Photos from the Ciudad Cultural Konex Production of Rent:

Photo by Kenneth Lu — Some Rights Reserved

Wired magazine has created a twelve-step program that makes you smarter.

While the regular audience for Wired might approach this program from a techie point of view, we have a much better path towards intellectual enlightenment and accomplishment.

For this twelve step program, you don’t have to be shamed into action. Here’s the hook: If you go to festivals, you will have fun, and each of the twelve steps is made easy.

Here are Wired’s twelve steps to think about, and KadmusArts’ twelve steps to take:

1. Distract Yourself

Your ability to remember works better when you take your mind off the task.
What better way to distract yourself from your daily grind than to go to any festival in the world?

2. Caffeinate with Care

Java science shows that frequent small doses are better than a few large ones.
Did you know that there are festivals that boast coffee drinking as a perk? (Pun intended.)

3. Choose Impressive Information

The goal is to feed your mind.
A helpful step is the Pick of the Week, be it cool classical, dynamic dance, terrific theatre, or just outdoor wild rock ‘n roll.

4. Think Positive

If you approach new learning with a positive attitude you will learn better.
So, you must positively go to New Work.

5. Do the Right Drugs

How smart is this: don’t listen to anyone but a doctor.
Read about the art of stimulation.

6. Juice Your IQ Score

The more you test yourself, the better you do on tests.
Fortunately, there are festivals that test, too.

7. Know Your Brain

Amygdala, Cortex, Hippocampus, Hyphothalamus, and Thalamus…
…these are not just heavy metal bands.

8. Don’t Panic

The more relaxed you are, the better you think and react in tense situations.
Perfect opportunities to relax are produced by classical music fests.

9. Embrace Chaos

A good mind — and life — comes from a willingness to mix it up.
There are music festivals that give you a mix of all kinds of sounds and styles.

10. Get Visual

Use your imagination to see a problem, or situation, in parts.
New ways of seeing are part and parcel of theatre festivals.

11. Exercise Wisely

No surprise here: a fit mind is helped by a fit body.
Get inspired by some of the fittest bodies, and best minds, at dance festivals.

12. Slow Down

When you slow down, you see, read, and perceive better. You also won’t take life too seriously.
Make the time to travel, see live entertainment, and be part of the culture of your community and our world.

Don’t you feel smarter already? So, where are you going to go now?

- Bill Reichblum

Photo by Timo Arnall — Some Rights Reserved

Manuel Bagorro’s work answers his own question: How can an international arts festival benefit people who are struggling with so many everyday necessities?

Bagorro is the founder and artistic director of the Harare International Festival of the Arts, or HIFA.

As posted this week in KArts Culture News from the BBC coverage of Zimbabwe, Bagorro has been writing a diary while keeping the upcoming festival alive in Zimbabwe. (The festival begins April 29.)

Producing an international festival in the midst of the surreal elections, where eight of ten are unemployed, and the inflation rate is 100,000% (officially), is more than challenging. For Bagorro and his colleagues in Zimbabwe, it has become necessary.

His diary posts run through the daily obstacles: budgeting in an economy where the cost of paper changes drastically from 10 am to 2 pm in the same day; water and electricity are never a given; the box office’s computers are stolen at customs; and, the ever-present fear of violence coupled with the constant hope of national resolution.

Still, HIFA’s platform for Zimbabwean artists and artists from twenty other countries opens a space for the “power of the arts to unify” and “to nurture the creative aspect of national identity.”

It is easy for philosophers and politicians to spout such noble phrases.

For Bagorro and HIFA, the nobility is in the doing, the acts of creating of art and community.

The theme of this year’s festival? The Art of Determination.

- Bill Reichblum

Photo by Márcio Cabral de Moura — Some Rights Reserved

Tuesday, April 29 is International Dance Day. To celebrate, why not listen to what dancers and choreographers have to say about their art?

From the KadmusArts archives, here are sixteen podcasts featuring voices from the dance stage:

• Pablo Pugliese and Noel Strazza
• Lucy Guerin
• Ronald K. Brown
• Judith Smith
• Lára Stefánsdóttir
• Carolina Pizzo
  • Spanish
  • English Translation
• Carolina Simón
  • Spanish
  • English Translation
• Cathy Weis
• Jennifer McLachlan
• Helen Herbertson
• Harri Kuorelahti
• Dulcinea Langfelder
• Gabriela Zuarez
• Silvina Szperling
• Lane Alexander
• Ulrike Becker
  • Part 1
  • Part 2

Photo by Romain H. — Some Rights Reserved

Thirty years after giving the world disco, France has given us a new dance culture, albeit one where the brand is as important as the moves.

Can anyone be nostalgic for disco? The music, those clothes, the attitude: all can found at the international disco museum — yes, the Disco Museum.

Watch the best video Disco Dance instruction: How to Disco

In those innocent days before instantaneous worldwide video distribution, Marc Cerrone created his seventeen minute Love in C Minor, and Henri Belolo helped ignite the sound of the Village People. Now, who owns all those mirrored balls?

As posted in KArts Culture News this week, there is now a new dance craze that is a combination of techno and hip-hop styles, with moves like “Le Brushing” and “Le Pot de Gel.”

Tecktonik, though, is as much a dance as it is a brand.

Alexandre Barouzdin and his partner Cyril Blanc have put in a trademark for any use of the Tecktonik name. Seven years ago, Barouzdin and Blanc hosted parties called “Tecktonik Killer” at the Metropolis club in Paris. Barouzdin takes credit for naming Tecktonik for his impression of the different dance styles colliding on the dance floor like tectonic plates. From the club’s wild scene to the open space outside of Centre Pompidou, the style became a rage, and a movement was born.

Now there is the logo, the gum, the energy drink, clothes, the mobile handset, hair salons, and, of course, the soon to be video game.

The best description so far: “Weird-looking teenagers seemingly trying to rip their own heads off.”

Wonder what they said about the first disco dancers?

- Bill Reichblum

Pablo Pugliese is a choreographer, dancer, and tango dance teacher, and lives in New York City. Noel Strazza is a contemporary dancer, choreographer, and tango teacher. She currently lives in Montreal. Pablo and Noel are tango dance partners, and during a visit to their native country, Argentina, they talked to KadmusArts after presenting the piece Madness Tango at the Cambalache Festival in December 2007.

In this interview, Pablo and Noel talk about Madness Tango, which premiered in New York and participated in the Basel Tango Festival in Switzerland. They also discuss their approach when teaching tango, as well as their independent projects in Canada and the United States. Finally, they share with us which songs and musicians they prefer to dance to, as well as why they think foreigners are so crazy about tango.

Steven Gove is a founder and director of the Prague Fringe Festival, based around the principles of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Now entering its seventh year, the Festival will host in 2008 around 40 productions from all over the world, including Australia, Canada, India, The Netherlands and the UK.

In this interview, conducted by Prague journalist Andy Markowitz, Steven talks about how and why he came to found a Fringe Festival in Prague, the challenges involved, and the potential for similar festivals to spring up in other cities.

Photo by Libby Rosof — Some Rights Reserved

When you go to a museum, do you ever feel as though you don’t quite “get it”?

Now, don’t worry — the Whitney Museum of American Art explains it all for you. After all, the goal is to encourage new audiences to access art. Right?

Their Biennial 2008, which runs through June 1, is one of the most prestigious gatherings of new art. The exhibit is so new and so bold that it is a good thing the Whitney helps entice the potential audience with clear and concise summaries of the artists’ works.

Or is it? Carol Diehl found her own favorite Whitney exhibition descriptions, some of which we reprint here along with a couple of choice additions.

Sure, it might be easier to write a description of an episode of Gilligan’s Island (“Gilligan finds a crate full of magician’s props, but his attempts to use them backfire.”)

Still, you might want to get the Professor off the island to help you with the Whitney’s invitation to art:

It is the problematizing of expectations and formalisms through destruction and transformations that is the heart of the continuing project.

Todd Alden on Mika Tajima/New Humans

Baldessari’s juxtapositions, displacements, and spatial interventions resonated with Magritte’s uncanny aesthetics but also with the disjunctive poetics very much at the dyslexic heart of his own work. This was further achieved through the deployment of elective amenities, primarily by displacing the familiar—and familiar narratives—with the unexpected or with other elements of disruption, including surprising spacing or gaps.

Todd Alden on John Baldessari

Thomson’s inherently conversational practice both gamely Pop-ifies its often antiaesthetic historical precedents and resituates that generation’s thought experiments in the social realm.

Suzanne Hudson on Mungo Thomson

Bove’s “settings” draw on the style, and substance, of certain time-specific materials to resuscitate their referential possibilities, to pull them out of historical stasis and return them to active symbolic duty, where new adjacencies might reactivate latent meanings.

Jeffrey Kastner on Carol Bove

As political actions, Haeg’s initiatives subvert the idea that humans are the earth’s apex species by alleviating our alienation from our environment, our food, and each other. Artistically, they challenge viewers and participants to diversify their own daily routines in favor of poeticism and positive interaction in all regards.

Trinie Dalton on Fritz Haeg

Ultimately, Lawler’s self-reflexive photographs about the endless parades of artistic display point toward the regeneration of surplus meanings produced in the spaces between artworks and exhibition frames. Marking the apparatus of the art system, Lawler’s knowing work is at once critical and in on the game.

Todd Alden on Louise Lawler

As McMillian continues to explicate present moments, his work comments on the lugubrious underbellies implicit to each cultural progression and movement.

Trinie Dalton on Rodney McMillian

Perhaps plucked from a commercial or shareholder prospectus, each vignette denies specificity even as it is fetishized through its transmutation into luxurious materials at a grand scale, leaving the narrative ambiguously open—and ready to be consumed, repurposed, and discarded anew.

Suzanne Hudson on Seth Price

Don’t walk, run!

- Bill Reichblum

Steve Sapp is a Bronx-born playwright, poet and co-founder of Universes Poetic Theatre Ensemble. Universes incorporates poetry, narrative stories, jazz, blues and movement to craft complex performances about issues ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the misinformation super highway.

In this interview Steve talks about their recent North African tour, the process by which their performance pieces emerge, and where he goes to enjoy great art.

Lucy Guerin is a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Lucy Guerin Inc. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Guerin’s work has won numerous awards and rave reviews.

In this podcast Lucy talks about her transformation from a dancer to having her own company, the recent work Structure and Sadness, and an ongoing piece she is creating with fellow Aussies Chunky Move.

Mark Lawes is Artistic Director of the new Grand Theatre in Calgary, Canada. This multi-disciplinary culture house is bringing innovative and talented work to audiences, including Compagnie Marie Chouinard and Peter Brook.

In this interview Mark talks about how the Grand Theatre was converted from an indoor golf driving range into a center for the performing arts, and how Calgary’s young and educated population participates in the arts.

Photo by Chih Hau — Some Rights Reserved

Festivals can move David Bower’s “think globally, act locally” slogan for Friends of the Earth to all action: the better you act locally, the more opportunity there is to act globally.

Just take a look at some of this week’s KArts Culture News posted from around the world:

• German Shakespeare Festival leads with a Japanese production
• Cameroon connects theatre to a plan for economic development
• Hip-hop’s international innovators gather for their annual fest
• Tunisian music fest energizes a tradition
• Monterey hosts the next generation of jazz
• Palestinians use dance fest as a bridge through check-points
• Australia becomes a home for international fringe
• China creates a home for contemporary dance
• Edinburgh will bring local excellence to the global stage

Also on the site this week, a link to Juliana Rincón Parra on the great Global Voices site about three contests for global citizens to tell new stories.

El Pais hosts the Movil Film Fest, a contest of one minute videos that have been shot by cell phones or PDAs. The award will go to the work that represents the Best Citizen Journalist. (Check out last year’s submissions.)

MySpace is seeking work from fourteen to twenty-four olds to “Film Your Issue.” Entries can range from thirty seconds to two minutes.

Video News 24 is also hosting a contest for this new opportunity of citizen journalism.

A local story becomes a global cause. An individual’s art becomes a global inspiration. What a wonderful world.

- Bill Reichblum

Photo by Mick Orlosky — Some Rights Reserved

Who’s up? Who’s down? How do you know?

Billboard magazine has the answer. In a new feature, Billboard has created The Buzz 100, a weekly scoreboard that attempts to combine the pop music singles chart with the number of references in blogs across the web.

Aren’t you dying to know who’s on top? The Beatles or Britney? Bob Dylan or High School Musical?

On the edge of your seat? This week, Lennon has pulled ahead of McCartney; Lindsay Lohan has out blogged Justin Timberlake; and, for no apparent reason, Elvis Presley is more current than Paula Abdul.

Want to know more? Billboard also provides a chart of the “Buzz Level” for the top five performers noting the percentage change of posts throughout the whole week!

Is there something of value that’s revealed in the rankings?

More to the point, is there supposed to be a correlation between artistic success and the number of times one is mentioned in blogs? (Lennon fans take note: the week that McCartney’s divorce came through he was ahead of John Lennon.)

Maybe the best course is to follow the response to “What’s the Buzz?” that the star-man sang in the show:

Why should you want to know?
Don’t you mind about the future.
Don’t you try to think ahead.
Save tomorrow for tomorrow.
Think about today instead.

Now, amongst their other accomplishments, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice have provided advice to producers, artists, and even audiences.

Then again, neither of them is on this week’s Billboard Buzz 100.

- Bill Reichblum

The Trinity International Hip Hop Festival takes place on April 6-8 in Hartford, Connecticut. The festival brings together artists, activists, DJs, and fans who make a difference in the world through hip hop and associated arts.

It is our pleasure at KadmusArts to feature a video trailer for the festival, as well as two related podcasts. The first, a WNPR interview with the festival founders, Magee McIlvaine and Jason Azevedo, discusses the role of hip hop on the international stage, as well as the goals of the festival. The second, a profile of the festival and its performers, was recorded by BBC reporter Andrew Purcell, as part of the radio program The Beat.

Photo by Matt Redmond — Some Rights Reserved Green is Good. Fortunately, we are beginning to live by this twenty-first century maxim. Unfortunately, not everything is as simple as the choice is between a green valley and coal mining. What do you do when a product is labeled Green but you cant help wondering how green the product really is? As reported in Fast Company magazine, a recent review of 1,018 green products found that only one was legitimately and fully green. David Roberts article for Fast, uses the report to challenge companies approach to going Green. For example, A green business will not deploy teams of researchers to figure out which 20%-post-recycled-content copy paper to use; it will offer free bus or subway vouchers, start a carpooling program, and let workers telecommute one day a week. The review was conducted by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, a company that is in the business of helping green companies and products. TerraChoice provides a clear guide for revealing the six sins of green-washing: Sin of Hidden Trade-Off – How was the product made, transported? Sin of No Proof – How can you easily confirm their testing? Sin of Vagueness – Do you know what chemical free really means for that product? Sin of Irrelevance – Are any of the green claims directly relevant to the product? Sin of Fibbing – Who is behind some third party certificates? Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils – Quick, which is better: not smoking or organic cigarettes? The arts are working to not only help be the messenger, but also to get the message. If green is good, green competition is even better. - Bill Reichblum

Greg Sandow is a music critic and composer, whose interests encompass not only the creation and analysis of classical music, but also its future. After two decades of success as a classical and pop music critic for The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and The Wall Street Journal, he returned to the world of classical composition, while simultaneously teaching at the Juillard School and the Eastman School of Music. His thoughts on the future of classical music are published on his blog, and form the basis for an upcoming book. In this podcast, Greg Sandow talks with us about the makeup of the classical music audience, intelligence and complexity as a way of attracting a younger audience, and the rich evolution of the world of contemporary art.

Margaret Lawrence is the Director of Programming at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College. The “Hop” presents each year 100 or more live performances in music, theater and dance, plus well over 200 film screenings and other events. Most recently, Class Divide, a three-year programming initiative, seeks to examine the issue of class through the arts. In this interview, Margaret talks about the multiple roles that the Hopkins Center plays within the local community, how to forge relationships with artists, and the whys and hows of commissioning new works.

Steven Tepper is Associate Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. He co-edited the volume Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. In this podcast Steven Tepper talks about how we arrived at this new era, who the winners and losers are, and what widely held beliefs about participation in cultural life need to be jettisoned.

Photo by Tzatziki — Some Rights Reserved As reported in our Festival News, Nine Inch Nails has announced that they are launching a Ghosts Film Festival, where everyone is encouraged to freely use the music of Ghosts, the band’s latest album, to create new music videos. The best videos will be showcased in the festival, hosted by YouTube. So, let’s recap: while record label execs are busy weeping over the demise of the traditional CD sales model, creative bands like Radiohead and NIN are creating new sales models, as well as new audience participation venues that invite everyone onstage. NIN has been particularly innovative in this regard: in 2007, the band partnered with 42 Entertainment to create an Alternate Reality Game around the Year Zero album. Can new, lesser-known performers use the same mechanisms pioneered by NIN to make a living? This is certainly an open question at this time, but one thing is clear: the future of the music industry will be defined by the intersection of Web 2.0 with creative and playful music audiences. - Ruben Puentedura