When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

June 30th, 2011

By Keith Clarke

If the blog sounds a bit louder this week it is probably because it has moved 400 miles in your direction, leaving London for the verdant pastures of the Emerald Isle. The draw is the wonderful West Cork Chamber Music Festival – a full report will appear at the front end of this site in due course.

Ireland has always been a place that likes to put a smile on everyone’s face, largely through its inhabitants’ propensity for lateral thinking. Ask an Irishman how to get to Ballylicky and, in legend, he will always reply: “Well, to be sure, if it was me, I wouldn’t be starting from here now.”

This different way of viewing things has become a marketable commodity. You can buy a postcard showing a rustic door bearing the advice: “This is the back door. The front door is round the back.”

The jokes have been a bit thin on the ground since the Shamrock Economy took a serious dive, but one wonderfully enlivening constant has been the chamber festival. Only in Ireland, you may think, could a dairy farmer start a chamber music festival in a remote rural town and expect an audience to beat a path to his door. Full respect to Francis Humphrys for doing just that, and despite a perilously hand-to-mouth existence, managing to turn the event into something that has become one of the country’s most glittering cultural assets.

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 Another music festival, an event known as the BBC Proms, was out on the promo trail last week, playing a free concert in Europe’s largest urban retail mall, conveniently situated just up the road from the BBC . The event set out to attract new audiences, in the hope that they might be tempted into the Royal Albert Hall during the summer.

It is not the first time the Westfield mall has played host to the concert, but this year there was a new idea to make the BBC Symphony more user-friendly: the players were identified by blue tees, declaring “Sam – Tuba,” “Donald – Double bass,” “Dan – Trombone,” etc. The promo team had managed to round up the entire orchestra with the exception of one young man in the percussion section who clearly didn’t know who he was.

Seeing the happy smiling faces of the children watching Sam, Donald and Dan etc go through their paces, I couldn’t help thinking that this was an idea that could be applied to advantage elsewhere. Think how it could take the sting out of international talks if the US team turned up in natty tees labeled “Barack – President,” “Hillary – Sec of State,” “Bob – Defense Chief,” etc. It has to be worth a try.

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Time Out for Time Management

June 30th, 2011

By Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

Dear Edna:

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog. The wealth of information you have to offer is inspiring, encouraging and exciting.

While studying at USC, days, weeks and terms were structured around the immediate demands and deadlines of academic and musical requirements. Preparations for outside competitions and performances, trips home for family time, and summer music festivals filled out the time. As I worked within this structure, I also put a lot of effort into things like developing a contact list, learning how to use a website for publicity, creating programs that sell and teaching myself how to prepare a press packet. Mostly, though, my focus was on my product: making music. Now, out of school and without an agent, I’m faced with an overwhelming amount of logistical and technical tasks that devour my time and energy. I know I’m not as efficient as I could be. Taking time to post updates and keep in touch with my fans often means I don’t practice enough. Do you have any suggestions on how to manage the artistic vs. the logistical parts of one’s career without an agent? –Hunter Noack

Dear Hunter:

Thank you for your lovely comments on my blog. Your question is an excellent one and is probably shared by many more of our readers.

It seems to me that time management is a universal challenge, especially in these fast-paced times when it is easy to be engulfed by e-mails and an array of social media. Most people are up against some type of deadlines in their daily life but creative artists, who make their living in the public arena and who are expected to maintain the very high level of performance to which their public has become accustomed, find themselves subject to even greater pressure. From all I have read, and from my own experience, the answer seems to lie in breaking down masses of looming tasks into manageable bits and once they have been prioritized, employing rigorous self-discipline in monitoring one’s progress with dispatching them on a daily basis.

Apart from attending to one’s physical and mental health and family responsibilities, a musician’s first priority must be to lock in enough practice time. If you are a morning person and can start your day that way, you run less of a risk of being distracted by electronic messages that might quickly swallow up hours of your time. You will also benefit from a sense of accomplishment that will enhance your efficiency in tackling the remaining tasks of the day. Those tasks will have ideally been itemized by you in advance in whatever form of calendar system works best for you. Mark McCormack, the legendary chairman of my long time employer, IMG, had a lined yellow pad with his “To Do” list on his desk every time I met with him.  A surprising number of people I know, young and older (myself included), still prefer such a lined yellow pad or notebook. We are never “listless” and we enjoy the satisfaction that comes with crossing out items on the pad. We start each day reviewing our intended plan and at the end of each day, whatever didn’t get done goes on the next day’s list. Many of us also keep a separate list for longer-term goals which we review once or twice a week. Angela Myles Beeching, in her valuable book Beyond Talent which devotes a substantial section to time and financial management, writes about “backward planning” for larger projects. She suggests starting with the date of an upcoming event, such as a performance, and working backwards to establish “benchmark deadlines”. This entails breaking down the overall work that needs to be done into manageable pieces with their own deadlines. So, for example, you establish deadlines for memorizing the works, running the program through in advance, sending invitations to your contacts, etc. I use a Week-at-a-Glance calendar and find it helpful to assign my longer-term goals to specific days so that they pop up when that day rolls around and when I know they can no longer be postponed. A colleague of mine told me that she separates out such objectives by keeping memos with different titles in her Blackberry and updating and adding to them as needed. These types of systems help greatly to reduce stress and make the overall volume of tasks requiring attention seem less overwhelming.

In my opinion, the most important aspect of effective time management is maintaining control of each and every day. Just because someone sent you an e-mail or Facebook message doesn’t mean you have to answer them right away. Try to set aside a consistent time each day to attend to these communications or, if necessary, every other day. You can certainly glance quickly at your messages once or twice a day to make sure you aren’t missing something important but otherwise, don’t allow them to distract you. I find it helpful to mark as “unread” e-mail messages that I know require time and attention that I don’t currently have. I make sure to return to them within a day or two. It is also helpful to print or file attachments that you know you will find informative but that don’t need to be read immediately. They make for great airplane reading! Try to set aside a specific block of time each week for tasks such as website maintenance, Facebook postings (that aren’t time sensitive), updating your contact list, sending out event invitations and uploading videos on YouTube. Of course, we haven’t mentioned phone calls. (Does anyone make them any more?!). Phone calls that you might initiate in an attempt to secure new opportunities for yourself could be added to this weekly block of time, as long as it occurs during business hours. Responding to business-related calls initiated by others should obviously happen in as timely a fashion as possible. If you are unsuccessful in reaching someone, put reminders to try again on your daily “To Do” list.

Clearly, there is no single time management system that works for everyone. I encourage you to speak with your friends and fellow musicians to see what works for them. I also hope that our readers will write in with specific tips and approaches that they have found effective. We can all benefit from that as I have yet to meet a person who is overly well-organized!

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2011

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Afterthoughts

June 28th, 2011

By Alan Gilbert

I have been thinking generally about how orchestras define themselves and, specifically, about what the New York Philharmonic means to the public we serve.

Last week’s Philharmonic production of The Cunning Little Vixen was a joy to work on, and I am hugely proud of what we achieved as an institution. For the last month or so, our various departments banded together and effectively functioned as a top-notch opera company. Hallways became costume and prop storage areas, people could be heard discussing the story and meaning of Janáček’s masterpiece, and the buzz of activity with its unifying force was truly gratifying.

The experience we had last year with Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre was helpful — we certainly learned a lot that came in handy this second time around. But, at the same time, the bar had been set so high by the enormous triumph of the Ligeti that I think we all felt real pressure to have a great success. Many of the previews in the press openly wondered, ”Can they do it again?” and ”Will lightning strike twice?” On a personal level, I was hoping to provoke a response that would justify the unusual commitment that presenting a staged opera demands of the Philharmonic.

It worked. Reactions were overwhelmingly positive, and many opera buffs even said that they felt that we achieved a greater-than-usual emotional power with Doug Fitch’s enchanting production of Vixen. I am sure that the unexpected and non-traditional setting was largely responsible for this — as soon as one entered Avery Fisher Hall one felt a fresh sense of possibility that naturally comes along with the unexpected. Who had ever seen a huge grove of sunflowers sprouting among the musicians of the New York Philharmonic?

What was most gratifying, however, was the response to the Orchestra’s playing. Each night the ovations were the loudest when the musicians stood. Of course, my choice of this particular opera was largely influenced by the prominent role that the orchestra plays, but the combination of hearing the New York Philharmonic play this ravishing score, with its range of opulence and shimmering tenderness, and of actually seeing the musicians on stage had to have been extremely powerful in inspiring this reaction. It felt like a new paradigm not only for opera, but also for orchestras. Why shouldn’t we do away with the artificial boundaries that separate art forms?

Of course the New York Philharmonic’s primary mission remains that of performing great orchestral repertoire at the highest possible level. I will never forget this season’s many highlights, which include memorable performances of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, Bruckner’s 2nd, Mahler’s 5th, and Beethoven’s Eroica. I will equally remember Lindberg’s Kraft, and Vixen, both because they were artistically important and gratifying, but perhaps even more because they were accepted and received with an enthusiasm that is doing away with the lines that would have at one time caused them to be defined as ”out-of-the-box.”

Last week more than one audience member came backstage after a performance of Vixen to tell me that the applause for the Orchestra and for me was not only for that night’s performance: it was also for our vision, and for what this Orchestra is coming to mean for New York City. All of us on stage sense this as well. We feel the support and connection with the audience that is based on this identity — an identity that is, after all, at the very core of our aspiration to be, in the deepest, most meaningful way, New York’s own Orchestra.

(For more information on Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, visit nyphil.org.)

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Going, going, gone

June 23rd, 2011

by Keith Clarke

London’s auction rooms have been hitting the headlines this week. Hot on the pricey heels of the Lady Blunt Strad that raised a cool $15.9 million for the Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund, a more modest record was broken on Tuesday when an 17th-century fiddle by Giacinto Ruggieri of Cremona sold at Brompton’s for $201,400 to a California-based musician.

As it happened, I was sitting in the saleroom myself, partly for business and partly because there was a family viola in the catalog. Trying hard not to scratch my cheek or raise an eyebrow, I sat in the hopes that great fortunes would fall upon us. Truth to tell, our instrument was not at the stratospheric end of the scale, and we won’t be booking the world cruise just yet. We might dine out on the experience, but it’s more likely to be Big Mac than Lobster Thermidor at the Ritz.

It is certainly interesting to sit in an auction of fine instruments. While our stockbrokers and bankers have long since given up any pretense of being gentlemen, auctioneers still retain the old-world charm, the Savile Row suits and Oxbridge accents. It would be unfair to suggest that when it comes down to it, they are glorified pawnbrokers, one remove from costermongers.

Which prompts the old gag about the difference between a street trader and a daschund: the former bawls his wares on the pavement, while the latter…………

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The Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davis, wants people whose cell phones go off during concerts to face stiff fines. Naturally enough, the suggestion has played well in those sections of the press that align themselves with the ‘”Hanging’s not good enough for them” lobby.

There is little doubt that I get as irritated by Mad Max when audiences don’t play the game and sit still and shut up, but let’s face it, the game is lost. Go to a movie now and kids not only keep their cell phones switched on but use them enthusiastically throughout the show. West End theatre performances are frequently a battle between the long-suffering cast and some ignorant clods in the stalls. Why would music escape this sorry decline in manners and basic courtesy?

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Shenzhen Odyssey: A stroll through the 7th International Conference for the Promotion of Chinese Cultural Products

June 22nd, 2011

 by Cathy Barbash

Attendance at a Chinese performing arts trade fair-seminar hybrid is always a surreal affair, equal parts exhilaration, exasperation, unintentional hilarity and unexpected vignettes of our shared humanity. Further to my last post, here are highlights of my recent visit to the 7th International Conference for the Promotion of Chinese Cultural Products in Shenzhen.

International delegations pose in front of the gargantuan Shenzhen exhibition center. Inflatable arches and huge tethered hot-air balloons inscribed with exhortatory messages are all the rage.  The fair covered cultural products in the broadest sense. The more generic provincial exhibits, the furniture, jewelry, crafts and video/new media were housed in this building: the performing arts were exiled to the lobby of the Shenzhen Poly Theatre and an adjacent building.

After the official opening, the inevitable TV commentators discuss the importance of the fair. Though a few foreign officials from Guangzhou consular offices attended, I did not see any foreign press.

Window dressing, surplus labor: seen everywhere at meetings, restaurants, etc. The young Chinese have labeled them “vases”: i.e. they look pretty but don’t do anything.

Looking down onto the exhibition hall floor.

A woman of the Miao minority. China’s minority cultural products were widely showcased. Some displays were tasteful, others felt much more fetishized.

Dance and music showcases sprouted on pocket-sized stages throughout the exhibit hall, often in front of video backdrops of relevant provincial scenery or yet other performances. Domestic media swarmed the most colorful and emotive performances, as well as the important officials as they inspected the exhibits. An ear-splitting cacophony. Unfortunately no separate showcases.

Actors “bronzed” for a revolutionary tableau-vivant. No irony here.

Making the old new. Chinese designers have excelled at adapting the traditional into the arresting modern. Though we rarely see the best of this onstage, occasionally a gifted designer such as Tim Yip will take a break from the movies for a stage production.

Old plus new: The Chinese long ago embraced Western pop and rock. Note the background wallpaper of traditional Chinese drums, and the Thomas the Tank Engine T-shirt on the toddler.

Next generation photo-journalist captures aspiring Chinese hipsters. This could be happening in Brooklyn…..

The mission of the “Hong Kong Newly Chinese Music Association” was not clear, and alas, like many of the booths, this one was unattended, with no English-language materials.

Back at the hotel, recent conservatory graduates provide an afternoon serenade. Such live music is common at the best Chinese hotels. I’d love to see more that in the U.S.

As seen in a bookstore window in a Soho-like Shenzhen neighborhood, “Chutzpah!” is a bilingual cultural journal.

Invited foreign guests=jam-packed itineraries+endless banquets=exhaustion

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Shen Wei at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

June 21st, 2011

By Rachel Straus

Shen Wei makes dances that read like landscape paintings. So it made perfect sense when Shen Wei Dance Arts installed itself for two nights (June 6 and 13) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Chinese-born choreographer designs costumes and paints backdrops that fuse with his serene movement style. But rather than making a backdrop for three dances (seen June 13), Shen Wei used a space where marble and bronze statues dwell: the Charles Engelhard Court of the American Wing. It’s a theatrical setting bar none. To live and recorded music for a sold-out crowd, Shen Wei’s 17 dancers initially possessed statue-like stillness. And like the statues in the Engelhard Court, the dancers were mostly naked.

The event marked the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first foray into hosting a site specific performance. Earlier this year Shen Wei toured the museum, looking for the ideal space to present his choreography, which is influenced by Chinese opera (of which he trained for a decade), calligraphy, and modern dance (of which he performed in his native China). The fact that Shen Wei chose the American wing may say something about his chosen affiliations. In 2000, Shen Wei adopted the U.S. as his home and incorporated ideas from Abstract expressionism, particularly the notion that art need not be representational.

At the Engelhard Court’s western end, a floor to ceiling sheet of glass creates the impression that Central Park is part of the space. The glass roof, where the setting sun’s rays passed through, gave Shen Wei’s evening an added sense of natural beauty. At the court’s northern end, the facade of a neo-classical bank (once located on Wall Street) was used as an entranceway for the dancers. When a naked Joan Wadopian exited via the façade’s grand staircase, she trailed a red swath of fabric. This vision reminded me of a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.”

The most compelling work of the evening, which included the aforesaid exit, was Shen Wei’s restaging of “Near the Terrace.” The 2000 work to Arvo Pärt’s famously sacred, minimalist compositions, “fur Alina” and “Spiegel Im Spiegel,” began with the dancers arranged among the statues like statuary. Standing, sitting, and reclining, they did not move for a long time. Because their bodies and faces were coated in white powder, they resembled Butoh practitioners, renowned for their slow, hyper-controlled motions. Shen Wei’s dancers mesmerized, reminding this reviewer of sleepwalkers. Their faces expressed intense focus. They looked like they were performing a mysterious rite. They became statues that had come to life.

Pianist Avner Arad and violinist Aaron Boyd performed Pärt’s solemn music behind two immense wrestlers. The delicacy of their playing stood in stark contrast to the marble figures in the act of pummeling each other.

Whether intentional or not there were other moments of absurdity. At the near end of “Terrace,” a male dancer donned an enormous red crepe hat. When the colorfully clad man marched forward, it was funny—and a welcome change in a dance where seriousness of intent and slowness of walk reigned.

Two new works, “Transition” and “Internal External #1,” incorporated the screeching electronic sounds made by Daniel Burke. In “Transition” Burke’s music offered a sense of what it would be like to be inside a cyclone. Not so nice. Meanwhile Hunter Carter and Wadopian climbed a ramp and lowered themselves into black paint. The dancers emerged like huge birds that had fallen into an oil slick. Then they executed mechanized movements as though they were robots on an assembly line. Modernity can be killing, this dance seemed to say.

In “Internal External #1” 14 dancers’ sharp and smooth, slow and fast, balancing and falling, solo and group movements were juxtaposed. Burke’s repetitive clanging soundscape evoked an industrial hell. But at the end, there was bird chirping. The company, many of who are new, looked like they could have used more rehearsals; they occasionally looked unsure of themselves.

At these times, my eyes wandered across the crowd. The gala guests and special invitees sat on the first level while the rest stood, watching from the second and third-floor galleries above. This wasn’t just a dance lover’s crowd. What did they make of this evening? My hope is that they saw Shen Wei as a landscape choreographer, an artist whose work is wholly fitting for a museum.

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Go to the opera? Give me a break

June 16th, 2011

By Keith Clarke

Tenor Alfie Boe dropped a brick into the placid waters of the opera world on a recent radio show. Desert Island Discs is a show where celebrities get to choose the records they would take if they were stranded on a desert island, with a bit of chat in between choices. It was the chat rather than the choices that got Alfie into hot water. He blithely said that while he happily graces the operatic stage, wild horses wouldn’t get him into the audience – he finds it just too boring. “I go there and I feel very uncomfy,” he told listeners. “I just feel like it’s not my world.”

He said that during his training he was required to sit through performances at the Royal Opera House and armed himself with a pillow to snooze through endless hours of Wagner. This was all too much for the sensitive souls of Covent Garden. A spokesman indignantly told the Independent: “Our productions entertain thousands of people every year, in the auditorium, in cinemas and on DVDs.”  By the time the fuss dies down, Alfie probably wished the desert island was for real.

It’s not the first time Boe has been in the headlines. A former car mechanic, he is considered pretty fit, with a physique of particular interest to female operagoers. For a Welsh National Opera Traviata a few years ago, he was required to strip off, but during open rehearsals this attracted such fruity comments from women in the audience (they’re a feisty lot in Cardiff) that he was told to keep his pants on for the performances.

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Nothing new under the sun: “Opera to take place on surface of Lake Constance” screamed the Guardian this week, heading up a piece on the Bregenz Festival’s forthcoming Andre Chénier. True enough, but the floating stage was installed 62 years ago, which hardly makes it news.

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As recession tightens its grip and the music business prepares to go to hell in a hardcart, some cheery news from the BBC Proms. Clearly director Roger Wright is doing something right: when the box office opened for this year’s season (July 15 – September 10), it sold 376 tickets every minute, clocking up 86,000 sales within the first 12 hours. Two concerts – the Simón Bolivar Symphony with The Dude and the Verdi Requiem – sold out within three hours.

Or at least, all seats were sold. One of the glories of the Proms is that 1,000-plus standing places are available each day, for a mere $8. And come rain or shine, queues snake away from the Royal Albert Hall on a daily basis.

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Ascending the Orchestral Ladder

June 16th, 2011

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

In recent weeks, I received two excellent questions that concern advancing as an orchestral musician. In preparing my answers, I was aided immeasurably by feedback from leading orchestral principals, personnel managers and educators, to whom I am immensely grateful. They confirmed my instinct that neither question has a black and white answer and that a lot depends on the circumstances of the individual player and the identity of the particular orchestra. The answers to the questions below are a summary of our collective thinking.

Dear Edna:

In terms of advancing a career as an orchestral musician, is it better to take a job of leadership in a lesser orchestra or to take a position as a section player in a better orchestra? –grateful for your guidance

Dear grateful:

I regularly read that there are hundreds of applicants for many orchestra positions throughout the world and in light of that, I wonder how often any single musician is faced with simultaneous job offers from orchestras such as you describe that would necessitate making the choice you mention. Perhaps you are really asking whether a musician should focus on auditioning for one type of job versus the other. Anyone who auditions for principal positions should have a strong desire to assume a leadership role, as well as an indication from teachers and musical colleagues that they possess the necessary gifts and abilities. Having said that, there is some wisdom to the notion that any musician just beginning to embark on an orchestral career should cast their net a bit more widely, taking a variety of auditions that potentially interest them so as to get comfortable with the experience. (A former student of mine at the Colburn Conservatory, Rachel Childers, recently won the second horn position in the Boston Symphony in what was her 35th audition for orchestras of all types!)  If a musician feels that they ultimately wish to win a principal position, they should certainly include auditions for such a position in lesser orchestras. One doesn’t become an accomplished leader overnight. The experience of leading, even in a lesser orchestra, will undoubtedly prove valuable as one moves up the professional ladder. It will also reflect favorably on the musician if they make it into the final audition round of a larger orchestra.

For someone who aspires to a leadership position, there are certainly lessons to be learned from being a section player in a major orchestra, especially early in one’s career. These range from observing such an orchestra’s operations and politics to learning a broad amount of repertoire and availing oneself of the variety of opportunities (e.g. educational, chamber music) that present themselves to those who want their orchestra life to be as rich and varied as possible. Add to this the opportunity to work with leading conductors and to learn from experienced colleagues in principal positions, and there is clearly much to be said for this approach. However, there are those who caution that if a musician is strongly determined to one day win a principal position, it is best not to stay as a section player for too long, even in a very good orchestra. The soloistic edge that music directors are often looking for in final auditions may start to diminish after too many years as a section player. It is also not a given that even a valued and loyal section player will succeed in advancing to a principal position within the same orchestra.

Dear Edna:

If you are in a full-time orchestra and want to audition for another orchestra, should you take the entire week off? If other members of the orchestra find out, could it affect your chances of getting tenure?—Kathy P.

Dear Kathy:

The consensus among those with whom I spoke was that it is best to take a week off,  if at all possible, so as to give maximum attention to the impending audition and ensure that you will be sufficiently rested. Wind players, in particular, might need extra time to adjust to changes in climate. If other members of your orchestra find out that you are taking an audition, it is not likely to affect your chances of getting tenure, provided you abide by orchestra regulations and discuss your planned absence with the personnel manager. Still, it is wise to be discreet about your plans, if for no other reason than to minimize the pressure of having to let everyone know how things went upon your return. You might say to the personnel manager something like this: “I want to keep this pretty quiet. I appreciate my job here but I feel I have to try for this opportunity.”  I was very heartened to hear a veteran and highly respected personnel manager tell me: “I have always felt that it is ‘healthy’ to work with the musician to take an audition if the orchestra schedule allows. It gives the player an opportunity to excel and improve.” Even if news of your audition plans does get out, you generally need not be concerned about your future with your current orchestra and shouldn’t underestimate the mutual respect that musicians have for one another.

At any time that you might consider moving to a new orchestra, do not hesitate to seek counsel from those closest to you whom you know you can trust and who are in a position to guide you. It is prudent to weigh all the pluses and minuses of such a move, including the financial stability of the new orchestra you are considering. Be sure to take all necessary steps with the maximum degree of tact and sensitivity. People rarely falter when they take the time to be classy and they are remembered for that, as much as for their excellent playing.

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2011

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A Lustrous 25th Anniversary Season: Susan Marshall & Company

June 14th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

To understand the power of a good title, look no further than Susan Marshall’s “Adamantine.” In its New York premiere at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (June 9), the work’s six performers were bathed in an adamantine luster. That is, a brilliant non-metallic shade of gray. At times this adamantine became darkly diluvian, like a decrepit subway station. At others it looked heavenly, like the setting against a building’s glass façade—all is golden. Through this chameleon-like landscape, a central paradox of urban living emerged. Extremes states, whether on the streets or in the mind, are the norm.

Ildiko Toth by Rosalie O'Conner

Like this adamantine environment (created by lighting designer Mark Stanley and set designer Jeremy Lydic), Marshall’s choreography has two faces. At first glance it resembles many a downtown dance piece, drawing heavily on pedestrian movement and its ho hum world. But as this work progresses, the performers’ walking, pausing and limb flinging increasingly congeal to form rhythmic, visual sparks. Propulsive patterns coalesce in the mind like Rorschachs.

Marshall also contrasts abstract and romantic ideas. The dancers’ relationship to each other is rarely identifiable; their interactions are quasi abstract. But like romantic figures, the dancers seem to seethe; their bodies appear to imprison them. Joseph Poulson and Petra Van Noort were particularly riveting. Serene sinuousness as well as violent turbulence looks vastly different on each of their bodies.

To leaven the seriousness of “Adamantine,” composer-performer Peter Whitehead intermittently appeared, playing his guitar and singing folksy tunes, which bore traces of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger’s sound. In contrast, Whitehead’s commissioned electronic score was dark and moody. It sounded like thunder, when the dancer flung them selves to the floor. It hummed like a faraway train skirting on its rails as the cast gazed outwards.

Marshall’s other offering on her 25th anniversary program included “Frame Dances.” Unfortunately, this reviewer missed it.

From June 15-18, Marshall’s two dances will be presented at New Haven’s International Festival of the Arts. Catch this lustrous company there, if you can.

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Chinese whispers

June 9th, 2011

by Keith Clarke

When Graham Sheffield got on a plane to Hong Kong to become chief executive of the mulitimillion-dollar West Kowloon Cultural District, he blithely dubbed it “the job of a lifetime.” He had enjoyed a good innings as music director at London’s Southbank Center, formed a dream team with Sir John Tusa to revolutionize the Barbican Center, and was widely tipped for Tusa’s top job. When that went instead to Sir Nicholas Kenyon, he licked his wounds for a while, then along came Hong Kong. But within months, he was retracing his steps. The job of a lifetime was undoable, as it turned out. He was not the first to think so.

Now the Kowlooners have found another brave soul to take on the challenge. Step forward Michael Lynch, former chief executive at the Southbank Center. Poisoned chalice it might be, but if anyone knows how to grasp it, Lynch is the man. Before arriving in London, he had run the Sydney Opera House, bringing it through some difficult years. The Southbank Center, struggling with an on-off redevelopment program that had been dragging on for years, was also seen as a tricky job. At his first meet-the-press session, Lynch got some advice from a reporter from The Australian: “Blimey, mate – if you can pull this off they’ll have you running the railways!”

But pull it off he did, with a combination of gritty determination and easy charm. At the press session he was disarmingly direct. He acknowledged that there had been industrial unrest and job losses at Sydney Opera House, but said that staff relations had been left cordial. Then came the clever bit: he offered to give us the phone number of the union chief so we could check it out for ourselves.

How well the no-nonsense approach will go down in Hong Kong remains to be seen. Sparks may fly when Chinese Whispers meets Cut the Crap.

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