Two Deep Along the Bar!

Most diehard Beatles fan award goes to two British guests who attended the Charleston Ballet Theater’s Piccolo performances of The Magical Mystery Tour , this past weekend. Apparently, so enthused were they about the Beatles-themed ballet that they reportedly spoke seriously with choreographer Jill Eathorne Bahr about the possibility of bringing the CBT to a London stage. The answer, not surprisingly, was “hell yes!,” as long as there is a generous benefactor to back the entire production and travel expenses. (Hello people, we’re in a recession, remember.). 

 Beatlemania has definitely made a comeback to the Piccolo festival and their songs have been partly responsible for the significant buzz The Magical Mystery Tour has been receiving. The last-minute addition of a pre-show mini-piano concert in the lobby has also contributed to their success. Pianist,Jordan Alexander plays for 30 minutes solid from a huge Beatles songbook pre-Mystery Tour as well as some classic ragtime tunes before the much regaled CBT’s Great Gatsby.

 And besides the aforementioned Brits, Kyle Barnette, CBT’s administrative director, has heard first-hand the word on the street, and he says the word is good. First, snug in his seat at Spoleto theater favorite, Don John, Barnette (ears open, always) overheard the couple in front of him chatting about their upcoming theater plans and recommendations they’d received.

 Apparently, Magical Mystery Tour was number one on their list. Randall Goldman, managing partner of Patrick Properties (which includes Fish Restaurant, practically CBT’s neighbor), is sending Fish customers over to the CBT with nothing but positive word-of-mouth ratings. The Beatles show has been getting plenty of buzz in his restaurant since the festivals began, and always the neighborly neighbor, he keeps the CBT recommendations coming. “This is the time you really find out who your friends are,” says Goldman, alluding to the current economic depression and the business Barnette loyally reciprocates. Not surprisingly, he counts Charleston’s local ballet — which he describes as non-traditional, progressive, and appealing to a younger, hipper generation — as one of his strongest relations. Goldman says Saturday’s late-night business boom at Fish was a direct reflection of the Charleston Ballet Theater’s Piccolo success. “We were two-deep along the bar all night!” exclaims Goldman. With a CBT playbook beside the hostess stand inside Fish, it’s evident Goldman truly believes the critical importance of supporting locals first. It would seem that the CBT has a true ally in Goldman. The Great Gatsby opens June 4 at 7 p.m., and Charleston Ballet dancers have been hard at work on the new ballet with a rigorous rehearsal schedule.

Posted by Gervase Caycedo

Charleston City Paper

on Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:38 PM

Alive & Kicking!!!!!

 

Dear Friends and Patrons,

One day of Spoleto Festival is behind us, and the good reviews and crowds are solid.    We all know what sort of year it has been for the economy and its effects on the fine arts in Charleston and across the nation. Through your devoted support and deep affection you have displayed for the Charleston Ballet Theatre this past season, we have been blessed to produce some of our most acclaimed and artistically satisfying productions in years. From the unprecedented response of our rocking new Magical Mystery Tour to the stunning imagery of Marilyn Monroe in Jill Eathorne Bahr’s new interpretation of Afternoon With the Faun, it has been a season that has defied the darkness of the storm overhead. While we have made it through this season with a satisfying sense of great artistic accomplishment, we are far from being out from under that cloud of uncertainty regarding our future.

Our upcoming 2009 -2010 season is aptly titled Alive & Kicking, a tongue-in-cheek nod to our resilience over the past year as well as a promise to our multitude of fans and supporters that we are determined to move forward, continuing our reputation for producing only top quality live professional dance entertainment for the people of Charleston and beyond. In an effort to increase our own earned income for the next year, we will be premiering exciting new works by Jill Eathorne Bahr, returning with the second year with our new Children’s Series, adding a performance of The Nutcracker at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center. .

As we move forward with our heads held high, determined to overcome our still sizable deficit gap, we ask that you do your part to help keep us “alive & kicking” into the next year, so our ambitious and responsible 2009 -2010 season can reach its fullest potential. As stated before, we are still a far cry from even the funds needed to push the company ‘into the black’ by the end of this fiscal year, projecting a deficit of $70,000. We desperately need these funds to assure we  can begin the 2009 -2010 anew, confident in the knowledge our company is able to complete the sensational Alive & Kicking season we have planned.

As a patron of the arts, it is not necessary to expound to you the importance of the survival of the ballet in Charleston and its obvious cultural significance. We only hope you feel it is meaningful enough that you will consider a contribution to Charleston Ballet Theatre, one that will propel us forward into the new season while allowing us to meet our immediate financial goals of our current fiscal year ending in June. We ask that you take a moment to consider a generous contribution to the ballet, one that will keep us alive and kicking and able to  provide you the top quality entertainment you have come to expect   and certainly deserve.

Contributions can be made online at www.charlestonballet.org .   

With Gratitude,

Charles W Patrick

Chairman of the Board, Charleston Ballet Theatre

A Little Help from Friends: CBT, One Flew South deliver a double dose

 

CBT’s The Magical Mystery Tour

A Little Help from Friends: CBT, One Flew South deliver a double dose

by Jason A. Zwiker

Charleston City Paper

 

The discography of the Beatles is like a literary anthology.

With just a few lyrical brush strokes, Lennon, McCartney, and their mates made us mourn the lonely death of Eleanor Rigby, taste the strange bittersweet kiss of the girl who came in through the bathroom window, and wonder what life would feel like were we living in a yellow submarine.

The lyrics presented the images that went straight to our hearts: shot us into the sky, dropped us to our knees, danced us dizzy, and brought us back.

The Magical Mystery Tour, choreographed by Jill Eathorne Bahr and performed by Charleston Ballet Theatre, is exhilarating for that Fab Four storytelling and for the symbolic motion that flows naturally from it.

The North Charleston Performing Arts Center, a venue much larger than CBT’s Black Box Theatre on King Street, lent the show a fresh look and sound. A few songs had been swapped out and the dancing tweaked and polished in spots since Mystery Tour’s debut last year, but the classic bits were preserved, as they should be.

Stephen Gabriel danced “Rocky Raccoon” spot on — cowboy burlesque from the opening note to the close — and the bluesy twang of Memphis musician Matt Tutor’s cover of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” made the sassy strut of Andrea DeVries ever so much more tantalizing.

The dance interpretations of the classic Beatles songs were only part of the treat, however. Those who dipped out early missed out on the second half of the ticket: an intimate mini-concert of Beatles covers and country rock by Nashville-based One Flew South.

The trademark harmonies of One Flew South inspired impromptu dance from more than one member of the audience and kept the crowd grooving. The band, featuring Lowcountry favorite Eddie Bush and boasting the band’s early gems like “My Kind of Beautiful” and “Last of the Good Guys,” is an act to keep an eye on in years to come. There’s a bit of the classic Eagles sound in the way their voices mesh, as well as some full hearted country grit.

While the back-to-back performances of Charleston Ballet and One Flew South definitely made for an entertaining evening, it also left at least this reviewer wondering how cool it would be to see both acts on stage together.

Like the proverbial chocolate slipping into the peanut butter, they might just be two great tastes that taste even better when taken together in one bite.

 

Food for thought.   Plenty of times to see it during Piccolo!

Round One: Ballerina VS Ballerina.

 AKA : Why Ballerinas continue to try to steal  

the magical tiara from the kingdom . 

How ironic it is that the May 9. 2009 The NY Times article talks of women in all types of work forces that are facing  exactly the same predicament the dance profession faces.

Backlash Women Bullying Woman at Work

By Mickey Meece

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

Just the mention of women treating other women badly on the job seemingly shakes the women’s movement to its core. It is what Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif., has called “the pink elephant” in the room. How can women break through the glass ceiling if they are ducking verbal blows from other women in cubicles, hallways and conference rooms?

Women don’t like to talk about it because it is “so antithetical to the way that we are supposed to behave to other women,” Ms. Klaus said. “We are supposed to be the nurturers and the supporters.” Ask women about run-ins with other women at work and some will point out that people of both sexes can misbehave. Others will nod in instant recognition and recount examples of how women — more so than men — have mistreated them.

Same story… different setting

The Dance Studio

Artistic Directors have always experienced the “shadow side” of sisterhood: women treating each other badly. From Bette Davis, the modern century Mommie Dearest, to Shirley MacLaine contentiousness with Anne Bancroft in The Turning Pointe, -  The 1977 movie with the most Oscar nominations (11 without a win) is the story of two women whose lives are dedicated to ballet. Deedee left her promising dance career to become a wife and mother and now runs a ballet school in Oklahoma. Emma stayed with a company and became a star though her time is nearly past. Both want what the other has and reflects back on missed chances as they are brought together again through Deedee’s daughter who joins the company.  Turning Pointe exploited those human frailties than by a modern tale of two close friends bond together for life in the face of roads torn apart.

It was a movie… but it is also a day to day reality sometimes.

Secret conversations in the dancers lounge, conniving and indirectly sabotaging alliances over martinis: all are the betraying secret language of an intimidator at work. They noiselessly manipulate traps for other dancer victims at every pass. Each May I ask myself why this has to happen.   Why is female friendship so important to women, despite the prevalence of female betrayals? Women depend upon each other for emotional intimacy and bonding, but their power to form cliques, gossip about, and shun one another enforces conformity and discourages self-confidence and psychological clarity from girlhood on.  And this season is like so many others, though probably much more devastating, surfing this current glib economic slump. As the end of a season approaches, stress levels rise, it never fails workmates are likely to narrow their stare and ratchet up their attacks.

I recently asked the question to three ballerina victims ….

“ Over the last 12 months, have you regularly: been glared at in a hostile manner, been given the silent treatment, been treated in a rude or disrespectful manner, or had others fail to deny false rumors about you? All three answered

Yes ….with tears in their eyes. 

And now pushing 25+ years in the business I have to say. .. I continue to experience year after year, this phenomenon while watching from afar as many ballerinas who are still in the work force are hesitant to speak out publicly for fear of making matters worse or of jeopardizing their careers.

“Man’s inhumanity to man”–the phrase is all too familiar. But until Phyllis Chesler’s Woman’s “Inhumanity to Woman “, now a classic book, a profound silence prevailed about woman’s inhumanity to woman. Women’s aggression may not take the same form as men’s, but girls and women are indeed aggressive, often indirectly and mainly toward one another. They judge harshly, hold grudges, gossip, exclude, and disconnect from other women.

Like men, women are exposed to the messages of misogyny and sexism that permeate cultures worldwide. Like men, women unconsciously buy into negative images that can trigger abuse and mistreatment of other women. But like other social victims, many do not realize stereotyping affects members within the victimized group as well as those outside the group. They do not realize their behavior reflects society’s biases.

My ballerinas  feel a  bit exasperated when I have cohobated their experienced back to The Feminine Mystique by Betty  Friedan’s suburban wives, their low-level depression and seething dissatisfactions, their “problem that had no name.” If they were so unhappy, why didn’t they, you know, do something about it? I know none of my ballerina planned to spend their days waxing the kitchen floor; even their mothers hadn’t done that. But if they did, it would be–the magic word–their choice.

Now I have to say personally,   The Feminine Mystique didn’t change my life; I was only 6 when it came out . The book I loved was Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, which was about literature. Still, whenever I open Friedan’s manifesto I’m carried away by its directness and pungency, its moral seriousness, its Emersonian call to women to use their best energies and be true to their best selves. It is so contrary to the caricature of feminism put forward in today media down to this day-. – Friedan doesn’t disparage love or motherhood (in fact, for women’s liberationists, she was far too devoted to conventional domestic arrangements); she doesn’t insist you get up from the delivery table and go straight back to your desk; she doesn’t, like Hirshman, belittle majoring in English or art history as a ticket to nowhere. On the contrary.  all she every wanted was for each female to be true their self.

Its 2008 census found, only 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 officers and 15.2 percent of directors were women.  I sit in that 15% but I agonize over the way I see my fellow sisters, colleagues, dancers and friends continue on the devastating path that shows no future except that of hurting each other at work.

I think it goes back to the core issue that if you through the many levels of thinking goes into this eternal problem … The Feminine Mystique had a larger and deeper vision: Women, like men, have a duty to their minds and talents and selves that cannot be fulfilled by living vicariously through someone else.. An equal cannot live a happy subordinate life; an adult cannot thrive in a culture that infantilizes her.

At this point, do I have a solution? 

 I don’t .

All I know it is such a waste of energy that only holds down the growth of everyone who succumbs to the sin of bullying.

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Marilyn

I have been away from the blogging scene since January.  The part of me that likes to hound myself for not continuing the regime, would say I haven’t been blogging because I am lazy and have wasted my days with friends, sippin’ a lovely red, and going to movies. Those of you who know me well will know that I Twitter and Facebook alot.  When I see something that I really like and want to share, I post it in 140 characters to Twitter.  It’s not being anti social but on the contrary, it has been a rough and tough year, maneuvering the CBT ‘Air Force One Plane”   through the financial skies.

The economic downturn is hitting home for the region’s arts and cultural nonprofits. Groups across the spectrum have been cutting back, laying off or, in a few cases, closing up shop. Of course Charleston is not alone in this trend, reflecting the nationwide effects of the collapsing financial industry. The upside, if one could call it that, is more interest in shared services, new marketing techniques and a tighter focus on core mission. The three largest arts organizations have been working in tandem getting some bang from collaborative thought processing as well as hand holding and support.

 The down side is, well, everything else. However its Spoleto time!  I am happy to see we are here… Alive and Kicking!   I return to blogging this month because the hits can be BIG  in May and June due to the upcoming Spoleto and Piccolo Festival.   

So yes I am back in the saddle again!

Charleston Ballet Theatre is getting ready for its annual participation in the Piccolo Spoleto Festival USA, May 22-June 7. The city influenced tandem festival that presents arts all over the city works in conjunction with an internationally known Spoleto Festival USA.

This 2008-2009 season, Charleston Ballet Theatre produced ten ballet and dance programs; Our Main stage Series consisted of six productions at both our King Street Black Box Theatre and the Sottile Theatre at the College of Charleston; our new Children’s Series l produced three family friendly programs at our Black Box Theatre and CBT produced on Special Event Performance during the 2007-2008 as an addition to our regular series. 

Out of the glut of work, CBT will offer a variety of programs at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

Brown Bag and Ballet

SCHEDULE

5/23 12PM – 1PM, 5/24 1:30PM – 2:30PM, 5/28 12PM – 1PM,

6/5 12PM – 1PM, 6/6 12PM – 1PM 

Lindsey Koob of the Charleston City Paper talks of the world premiere of Afternoon with A Faun

The enchanting realization of Claude Debussy’s beloved Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. But here, we had an “Afternoon WITH the Faun,” who turned out to be the dance incarnation of Marilyn Monroe! We bore fortunate witness to the work’s world premiere performance.

The classic opening scene is forever seared into my memory bank … there she was, as the curtain rose: all pouty and simpering and blindingly blonde, at the top of a staircase – trying (not very hard) to resist the blast of air from below that blew her flimsy skirt around.

From there, things unfolded as if in a dream: Marilyn – achingly realized by Jessica Roan – dripped raw sex appeal as she drifted down the stairs to dance in turn with three of her legendary lovers. Alexander Collen nailed Joe DiMaggio’s athletic swagger, with only slightly less stylized machismo (but more menace) from Stephen Gabriel, as Howard Hughes. Jonathan Tabbert radiated a more subtle, but equally potent brand of power and authority in his portrayal of JFK. If this had been a movie, their utterly mesmerizing, erotically-charged dancing would’ve earned them an “R” rating (and maybe even an Academy Award)! Bahr told me afterward that she had a BALL putting this one together.

The Lullaby of Broadway

Broadway is the street in New York that has come to symbolize live theater entertainment throughout the world. And because of the magnificent illumination of the Avenue, Broadway had been christened “The Great White Way”. CBT revisits the Golden Age of the Broadway musical with a collection of show stopping numbers from some of the most cherished musicals of all time including 42nd Street, Cabaret, South Pacific, The King and I and many more. A non-stop heart-pounding extravaganza comes to life! 

SCHEDULE

5/29 7PM – 8PM

6/6 7PM – 8PM 

 

Magical Mystery Tour

The Beatles continue to evolve with the passing of time and how wonderful that The Beatles’ legacy will find its natural progression into the 21st century through the computerized world we live in.  It was time for Charleston Ballet Theatre to take its own take on The Beatles.  I created Magical Mystery Tour. “The thing about Beatles music is that everybody knows it. If you play Beatles music, the audience is already there, and they’re waiting to be entertained by you. All of a sudden, they’re transformed to another place.

SCHEDULE

5/23 7PM – 8PM 5/24 7PM – 8PM 5/25 12PM – 1PM 5/28 7PM – 8PM

5/29 12PM – 1PM 5/29 9PM – 10PM 5/30 7PM – 8PM5/31 7PM – 8PM

6/4 12PM – 1PM 6/5 9PM – 10PM 6/6 9PM – 10PM 

The Fab Four got the royal treatment in the world premiere of CBT Resident Choreographer Jill Eathorne Bahr’s latest masterful creation The Magical Mystery Tour opens Jan. 23rd at the Black Box Theatre. Inspired by the Masterworks of The Beatles, this innovative interpretation of the lyrics and settings of the legendary band’s catalogue features a celebration in dance of rock n’ roll classics from the tribal energy of “Lady Madonna” to the haunting beauty of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, the simplicity of “Penny Lane” and the dreamy escape of “Yellow Submarine”. 

As Jason Zwicker from Charleston City Paper reported on Magical Mystery Tour in Jan. 2008:

After so much time has passed and the world has changed so much, how do you paint the picture of those early days, now almost the stuff of legend, when America first met The Beatles?  The first few years of the 1960s were a simmering mix of hope and anxiety: international confrontations threatening to turn a Cold War hot, charismatic leaders rising to inspire us only to die by the hands of cowards, and a growing discontent with stifling social status. 

We went to school, went to work, lived, and loved like good little boys and girls, but deep inside, we were ready to scream. Then, all at once, four lads from Liverpool were right in front of us, guitars ringing out, telling us to let it out, twist and shout.

Years of pent up tension burst free all at once, and nothing was the same again. No wonder it was called a musical revolution. That’s the mood Charleston Ballet resident choreographer Jill Eathorne Bahr hopes to evoke with The Magical Mystery Tour, an interpretation of not only the vast catalog of rock ‘n’ roll classics that the Beatles produced, but also the unparalleled social phenomenon of Beatle mania itself.

“This is not a chronological story. It’s a visualization of the lyrics,” says Bahr, a self-described Beatles fanatic. “Listening to the lyrics of these songs can take you in so many different directions, and that’s what I wanted to create for the audience: the feeling of being on a journey.” Everything from “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to “Yellow Submarine” is fair game, according to Bahr, who promises surprises aplenty during the show. “It isn’t just the Beatles themselves, but also songs they inspired,” she says. “There’s this bluesy version of ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’ by a Memphis band called The Glass Onions that I put in there. I’ve also woven in documentaries. It’s going to be all over the board.”

 The Great Gatsby

The East Hamptons set the scene for this sweeping jazz age balletic interpretation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic novel. This true dance drama features colorful acting and narration set to the music of George Gershwin and a memorable trip back to a timeless era. 

SCHEDULE

6/4 7PM – 8:30PM, 6/5 7PM – 8:30PM 

As Dottie Ashley for the Charleston Post and Courier quotes:

“The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s portrait of the Jazz Age with all its idealism, excesses and decadence, will be transformed into an elaborate evening of dance by the Charleston Ballet Theatre on Saturday at the Gaillard Auditorium.

The famous novel was made into a film in 1974, and now Jill Eathorne Bahr, resident choreographer with the CBT, has set it to music. Bahr feels the story of the rise and fall of self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby and his love for beautiful socialite Daisy Buchanan touched a nerve in the American psyche.

“While ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a highly specific portrait of American society during the Roaring ’20s, its basic story has been told hundreds of times,” says Bahr. “It tells of a man who claws his way from rags to riches, only to learn that his wealth cannot afford him the privileges enjoyed by those born into the upper class. Gatsby becomes primarily known for the lavish parties he throws at his ostentatious Gothic mansion.”

Another character is the honest, mild-mannered Nick Carraway, who has moved from Chicago to Long Island to learn the bond trade and has a bungalow in West Egg, the nouveau riche area where the wealthy, mysterious, party-loving Gatsby lives. Carraway happens to be a cousin of Daisy’s and is drawn into Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship. Daisy’s husband, Tom, who has a married girlfriend on the side, causes two deaths in this high-rolling scenario, where the rich feel absolutely no guilt at destroying the lives of ordinary people.

“The lavish scenes of Gatsby’s parties contrast with the intricate web of the entangled relationships of the main characters,” says Bahr. “Their reckless actions turn an American dream into something akin to a Greek tragedy. The story has a number of plot lines and characters, and I felt it was important to engage a narration so that the work would almost have a movie like feeling. “Fitzgerald wrote the novel in dreamy scene overlaps and flashbacks. I wanted the audience to experience some of his words, and so I have the character of Nick narrate on stage.”CBT co-artistic director Patricia Cantwell adds, “The narration is taken directly from the book in most cases, and I think it helps the audience keep up with the drama of the story.”

Using the big band music of the ’20s, Bahr also has manipulated clips of the music of Billie Holiday, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jimmy Johnson, and Irving Aaronson and his Commanders.

Dancing the role of Gatsby will be Stephen Gabriel, who says, “Even when his wealth and stature are at their greatest, Gatsby will never be content unless he has Daisy. Although Gatsby seems very kind, he is not afraid to be unscrupulous to get what he wants. His drive is what makes him who he is, good and bad. It’s this drive that ends up ruining his life.”Taking the role of Carraway will be Jonathan Tabbert. “Nick is the hardest character to understand because he is the narrator and will, therefore, only gives us an impression of himself that he would like to reveal. Nick comes from a well-to-do Minnesota family, and though he is honest, responsible and fair-minded, he, nevertheless, frequently neglects to take the emotions of others into account. But of all the novel’s characters, he is the only one to truly recognize Gatsby’s ‘greatness,’ thereby revealing himself as a young man of unusual sensitivity.”

Jessica Roan says of her role as Daisy: “She’s trapped in an unhappy marriage and is at the mercy of her husband. She was born into money and early in life had an endless assortment of men who, she imagined, would continue to spoil her.”

So NOW… you decide your dance card for Spoleto— is it the jazzy variations on the foxtrot, the jitterbug and the Charleston from the dance adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” or is it is a breathtaking, fun-loving  and euphoiric risk-taking production Beatles extravaganza Magical Mystery Tour ,  the familiar strains of South Pacific, King and I and Cabaret of the Lullaby of Broadway or  an Afternoon With A Faun.  During Brown Bag and Ballet at noon.