Dancing the Myth: From Isis to Isadora
By Robert Burke Warren
This Mother’s Day weekend, two deeply devoted dance organizations combine their resources, offering audiences a chance to celebrate life, love, beauty, and the feminine energy that brought us all here. Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli hosts the Isadora Duncan International Institute Dancers’ From Isis to Isadora on Saturday, May 11 and Sunday, May 12, honoring the vision of the “matriarch of modern dance,” Isadora Duncan. (Photo montage and rare video here, picture of her above.) With the estimable Jeanne Bresciani at the helm, the IDII carries on the work, in Duncan’s own words, of creating a “luminous manifestation of the soul,” and Kaatsbaan, a 153-acre historic site nestled on verdant farmland formerly owned by the Roosevelts, is a thriving dance mecca, with a Metropolitan Opera-sized stage, yet only 180 seats.
Doyenne of dance Bresciani is directly linked to Isadora Duncan, and overflows with enthusiasm when discussing her art, and the upcoming performance, which will include 23 dancers. “I was taught by Isadora’s adopted daughter (and IDII co-founder) Maria Theresa Duncan herself,” she says. “She was passionate, radiant; she danced ‘til she was 90 years old. She was called the last dancing “Isadorable.” She’s a woman who, in a particular year, danced a Carnegie Hall solo concert, had a baby that summer, then another baby that December. A real woman.”
The fearless, revolutionary Duncan could not have chosen a more fitting apostle than Bresciani to carry her vision into the 21st century. Duncan’s style was — and is — rooted not only in movement, but also in philosophy, particularly the philosophy of the Greeks. True to that, Dr. Bresciani (she’s a Ph.D and an MA), who cataloged the self-taught Duncan’s extensive library, infuses performances (and conversation) with allusions to Rilke, Sappho, Rumi, Jung, Plato, and Da Vinci, among others, all of whom sought, like Duncan, to illuminate the soul.
“From Isis to Isadora,” Bresciani says, “draws inspiration from myth. Everything I do comes from myth. Mythos is the glue that holds the culture together.” The Isis myth, one of the great “mother goddess” myths of the ages, particularly inspires Bresciani as a potent, timeless story for modern-day audiences, who come to performances from an increasingly fractured world. In the Isis myth, the goddess restores her husband/brother Osiris, who has been dismembered by the jealous god Set and strewn about Egypt, so that they may produce Horus, the “last god,” the god of the sky. “We’re such a fragmented people,” Bresciani says. “We need the myth of Isis, where she’s gathering the parts of the beloved Isis and Osiris together, creating, forging the last god, without whom there would be no progeny, no divine race of beings. We must gather the fragments of the great creation of the eternal material that never dies, never goes away. That’s why I do the work I do, and why I do it the way I do it, rather than just teaching steps. You add Shakespeare to it, you add Ovid and Dante, and we have a world that never dies.”
The program “also includes a waltz of someone who is getting the energy of the ancient world and doesn’t know where it’s coming from, and drops out of the ballet and finds something freer and looser; then we have the Olympian, a depiction of twelve tiny little sketches of the ancient Olympic events; we have In Her Garden, a paean to nature and beauty and freedom, then Roses From the South, an Isadora dance set to a famous Strauss waltz.” The barefoot dances include all the trademark Duncan elements: fluid movement, skipping, flowing scarves (of course), and exuberant, faun-like leaps.
How do audience members new to Isadora Duncan’s style react after an IDII performance? Says Bresciani: “People say, ‘It’s what I always dreamed dance was but never saw before on a stage.’ It’s the dance ‘the people’ love. It’s not necessarily the dance of the intellectual, it’s not edgy, it doesn’t break things apart, it doesn’t deconstruct things, it doesn’t leave you hanging. Isadora was always about the triumph of the human spirit. Something is resolved in beauty… you’re never left thwarted or undone. I may die onstage, but it’s a triumphant, ecstatic death. It is for a purpose, for a reason, everything is endowed with a passionate cause; there is nothing gratuitous. There is no movement that doesn’t have a meaning.”
For anyone tired of chaos — and who isn’t? — From Isis to Isadora, at idyllic, rustic-yet-state-of-the-art Kaatsbaan, offers a reprieve like a mother’s warm embrace, the enduring vision of a modern-day goddess.
From Isis to Isadora: The Ancient and Eternal Ideal in Art
Saturday, May 11, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 12, 2:30 p.m.
Adults, $30; children, $10
Kaatsbaan
120 Broadway, Tivoli, NY
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Posted by Scott Baldinger on 05/06/13 at 03:17 PM • Permalink
Siren Song: Arum Rae at Infinity Hall
Want your dreams to come true? Change your password. Last year, singer-songwriter-guitarist Arum Rae Valkonen — Arum Rae to her fans — changed all of hers (since changed again, hackers) to “DreamsComeTrue2012,” and enjoyed her most amazing year ever, with chart-topping national recognition, record deal, cash windfall, and a coveted spot opening for Willie Nelson at Austin City Limits’ prestigious Moody Theater. Still riding that life-changing wave, Arum Rae — whose current EP “Waving Wild” is available for free HERE — brings her blend of raucous blues, modern rock, and troubadour chops to Infinity Hall on Sunday, May 5, for a post-brunch set at 12:30 p.m. While her style incorporates multiple influences, folks will walk away stunned most of all by her voice, comparing her to Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse, PJ Harvey, “a female Jack White,” and a kind of punk rock siren with R&B flava. All will agree she’s a star.
Arum Rae’s been working the low side of the road for a decade, bouncing from her mother’s home in rural Virginia, to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, to Savannah, Georgia, and finally to Austin. Along the way, she’s self-released a 2004 eponymous debut (and several follow-ups, one under the moniker White Dress), sung backup on hip-hop recordings, driven ten hours to open mic nights, written several albums’ worth of material, and finally drawn the attention of pros — now peers — like the Civil Wars and Gary Clark, Jr., both of whom invited her to tour and, with the Civil Wars, to collaborate.
The tipping point of 2012, in fact, was her song “If I Didn’t Know Better” — co-written with the Civil Wars’ John Paul White. Hit ABC series Nashville used it in an episode — sung by stars Sam Palladio and Clare Bowen (Gunnar and Scarlett) — and this propelled Arum from debt-ridden, under-the-radar indie to buzz-worthy hitmaker, a shift that, while dreamed about for years, initially stunned her. Arum says, “I went to see the Civil Wars play at the Austin City Limits festival last year and (Civil Wars’ chanteuse) Joy (Williams) gives me a hug and she’s like, ‘Congratulations! Your song’s number 16 on Billboard!’ I was like ‘WHAT?’” She laughs down the line, a smoky, blues-belter’s chuckle. “I didn’t even know what that meant! I walked away and got on my iPhone, Googling.”
Of the song’s success, she says, “It definitely allowed me to move to the East Village and waste a bunch of money and find out I didn’t want to live there. I’m a country girl. But most important, it’s let me re-invest in myself financially and feel like a normal human being. When you work for your art all the time, you’re always behind on paying for everything. I got to pay off bills. And it made me feel a bit more official, something to stand on that was not just an idea in your bedroom of what you want to be and do. “
If a high school teacher hadn’t encouraged wayward teen Arum Rae to audition for Berklee, the fledgling singer’s own “bedroom idea” might never have materialized. To her surprise, she nabbed a voice scholarship at the esteemed music school. “Having to do jazz and classical theory,” she says, “and writing in the styles of Bach and Gershwin, gave me the tools to be a songwriter.” Interestingly, however, Arum Rae focused on business. “I just thought having an artist performance degree is a joke,” she says. “As a performer you have to gain your voice by performing. The business thing is very intriguing, and I really love people, and I love working with people, striking deals. It’s fun.”
One of the deals she recently struck was with superstar producer Mike Elizondo (Alanis Morrisette, Fiona Apple, Maroon 5, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent). The material they’ve recorded in L.A. awaits release in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, Arum Rae is keeping to the modus operandi that got her where she is: staying on the road, honing her material, writing, and performing with a hungry, skilled rhythm section who watch as their boss, like a mythical siren, slays with song. —Robert Burke Warren
Arum Rae
Infinity Music Hall
Sunday, May 5, 12:30 p.m.
20 Greenwoods Road West
Norfolk, CT
(866) 666-6306
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Posted by Scott Baldinger on 04/30/13 at 09:12 AM • Permalink
The Incredible, Flexible Tom Chapin
“It’s hard for people to know what to make of me,” singer-songwriter and stalwart folkie Tom Chapin says with a laugh, alluding to his remarkably varied five-decade career as a troubadour for adults, a multi-Grammy-winning children’s entertainer, Emmy and Peabody-winning television personality, and tireless activist. If Chapin confuses people, however, it’s only prior to captivating them with a charisma that is equal parts homey and intense. He commands whatever stage he alights upon, connecting with the room, employing a hard-won expertise any entertainer of any age would admire. Chapin brings that considerable bundle of talent to the Towne Crier on Saturday, April 27, returning to the Pawling club for the first time since 1996.
“The great thing about playing a folk club like the Towne Crier,” he says, “is I can do the whole canon. The show will be a ‘grown-up’ show, where I’ll play my songs and some of my brother’s, like ‘Cat’s In The Cradle,’ and ‘Taxi,’ but my ‘grown-up’ shows are kid-friendly, too. We’ll see who comes, and tune it from there.” In other words, for once, you can bring the kids. But be advised: they are just as likely to walk away singing “Go Away Sarah Palin,” or his dark, sexy folk chestnut “Once When I Was Young,” as Chapin’s irresistible — and adult-friendly — kids’ songs like “Puppy At the Pound,” and “Two Kinds of Seagulls.” “A great song,” Chapin says, “if it really works, it works across the board.”
Chapin comes from a remarkable musical family. His father Jim was a renowned jazz drummer whose seminal Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer Vol. 1 — simply called “The Chapin Book” by the cognoscenti — is still in print. While Pop Chapin was out touring, his sons Tom, Harry, and Steve heard the Weavers’ seismic 1958 album “The Weavers at Carnegie Hall,” which inspired what Chapin only half-jokingly calls “the folk scare of the 60s.” Emboldened by acts like Peter, Paul & Mary, The Kingston Trio, and the Weavers’ own Pete Seeger (who quit the Weavers after the group licensed a song to a cigarette ad) the Chapins formed the Chapin Brothers. This act launched Harry’s tragically short-lived career as one of the pre-eminent singer-songwriters of the 1970s, and set Tom on the twisting, turning ribbon of highway he still travels. His daughters Lily and Abigail (below) have followed in his footsteps.
Tom Chapin began touring when TV was still a three-channel affair. With infinitely more distractions available nowadays, has the quality of the audience attention span changed? “No,” Chapin says. “For those who come, no. The hardest thing is to get bodies there. There’s so much on the tube, so much streaming. But with kids or anybody else, when you get ‘em in a room, it’s a very magical thing. As I get older I realize more how rare it is to perform live. Your job is to tell stories, and to lead. Your weapons are the words and music, and the real weapon is the music with words, which touches people in a way nothing else quite does. We’re pretty inured to words, to people talking at us, but there’s a power in song that never ceases to amaze me. People walk away feeling like they’ve connected with something. It’s a remarkable gig.”
If it’s a Tom Chapin gig, yes, it is remarkable. If you go, be sure to check out the merch table. Two of Chapin’s more recent CDs are characteristically diverse and excellent. Broadsides, his sharp-witted 2008 collaboration with cabaret writer John Forster, includes the viral anti-No Child Left Behind anthem “Not On The Test,” while brand new The Incredible Flexible You, written with hit maker Phil Galdston (1990s totem “Save The Best For Last” is partially his), focuses on helping kids with social skills, kids who, Chapin says, are “more apt to be playing with an iPad than playing with their friends.”
In the unlikely event an iPad is in the house at the Towne Crier, it’ll probably be taking a picture or a video of a man with an old machine called a guitar, a device dependent not on batteries, but on human energy, and thus, much, much more powerful. —Robert Burke Warren
Tom Chapin
The Towne Crier Cafe
Saturday, April 27, 7:30 p.m.
130 Route 22,
Pawling, NY
(845) 855-1300
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Posted by Scott Baldinger on 04/22/13 at 02:11 PM • Permalink
Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau: A Fine Bromance at the Mahaiwe
Perhaps it’s the macchiato. Singer/mandolinist and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Chris Thile (at left), a musician for whom adjectives “tireless” and “extraordinary” spring to mind, drinks at least one a day. Rural Intelligence catches the thirty-two-year old in his East Village apartment, fresh off a yearlong world tour with his genre-defying band Punch Brothers. Resting? No. Among other things, he’s prepping for a duo performance with acclaimed jazz pianist Brad Mehldau (at right) on April 13, at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. “Days are packed with all the stuff I’m dying to do, but haven’t had time to do,” he says, disarmingly affable. “I make myself a macchiato in the morning and get to work.” One imagines bedazzled neighbors catching mandolin strains of Bach, Bill Monroe, and… the Cars? Yes, the Cars. Wafting up the fire escape. Also Radiohead, the Beatles and the White Stripes, all coaxed from an absurdly limited instrument.
“I love to be a part of a completely non-segregated music community,” Thile says. Indeed, not long after debuting as a bluegrass wunderkind (first album at 13), Thile boldly took his humble mandolin where no mandolin had gone before. His pop-conscious, “progressive bluegrass” teen trio Nickel Creek brought him international attention, and before long, he was collaborating with Bela Fleck, Dolly Parton (reported to have deflowered him on tour), fellow MacArthur genius, bassist extraordinaire and mentor Edgar Meyer, and cello great Yo-Yo Ma.
Speaking of Yo-Yo Ma, RI asks for confirmation of a rumor: Does the celebrated cellist really possess a repertoire of truly filthy jokes? Thile laughs. “I don’t know that there’s a musician with a beautiful musical soul who doesn’t also have a repertoire of absolutely awful jokes. That’s all I’ll say.”
On Brad Mehldau, he is much more expansive, and, as when he speaks of music in general, effusive: “Brad came to an early Punch Brothers show at Bowery Ballroom (in NYC). Thank God no one told me he was coming — I’m a huge fan. When we met, I almost started hyperventilating. In my teens, I’d freaked out at his Art of the Trio Volume 4; I didn’t know improvisation could be that explosive, and yet with that kind of structural integrity. He was essentially composing beautifully at breakneck speed. After I heard that record, he became my gold standard for improvisational prowess.”
In addition to gaining inspiration from Mehldau’s improv skills, Thile also used the pianist’s genre-busting approach as a career-building template. (Mehldau’s recordings span Beatles chestnuts to Monk tunes to Soundgarden power ballad “Black Hole Sun.”) Now, both are accomplished composers and avid interpreters of multiple canons, confounding purists with impish glee. And, like adrenaline junkies, Thile and Mehldau share a compulsion to create on the spot, catching lightning in a bottle before a live audience. True, their wildly dissimilar instruments almost never share performance space, but Thile, ever ripe for a challenge, finds this emboldening. He laughs (again) when explaining the disparity between piano and mandolin: “The piano is one of the most brilliantly designed instruments in the world,” he says, “and the mandolin is one of the least. But for all the mandolin’s faults, it’s a very clear and precise instrument. It’s all about precision and clarity. Brad’s playing is also very clear and precise. That’s a fun thing. Brad, with his sensitivity, understands the mandolin’s limitations, and we both fill in the blanks, but also give it some space. I’m amazed at how he solves the problems of collaborating with a mandolinist.”
The duo’s first performance was unrehearsed and, as befits each musician’s penchant for border crossing, consisted of a Punch Brothers song and variations on tunes by Radiohead and Elliot Smith. Someone captured it all on YouTube, which is fine with Thile. “It was electrifying for me,” he says.
“I don’t think of Brad as a jazz musician,” he continues. “I think of him as a great musician. He and I share a similar approach to music; the various good musics of the world are a helluva lot more similar than they are different. The differences that matter are differences in approach, a nuts and bolts approach — how are you gonna put the material that’s available to all of us together? Those are the differences that we’re interested in.”
Thile and Mehldau excel at figuring out how to navigate those differences in such a way that jazz aficionados discover pop, while popsters discover bluegrass, and rockers discover classical, and no pleasure gets labeled “guilty.” If ever there was a time to shamelessly bridge arbitrarily placed gaps, this is it. —Robert Burke Warren
Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau
Saturday, April 13, at 8 p.m.
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
14 Castle St.
Great Barrington, MA 01230
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Posted by Scott Baldinger on 04/01/13 at 08:11 PM • Permalink
Todd Snider: Not So Little Rascal
Onstage and in conversation, acclaimed singer-songwriter-raconteur Todd Snider talks freely about potentially depressing subject matter like past incarcerations, poverty, and his ongoing struggles with addiction. Nevertheless, audiences tend to walk away from his shows feeling better than when they arrived. Because Snider, who hits the Helsinki Hudson stage for a solo acoustic set on Saturday, March 30, is funny, likely the funniest troubadour you will ever witness. Whether it’s his singalong waltz “Conservative Christian Right-Wing Republican, Straight, White American Males,” or his acerbic anti-war anthem “Bring ‘Em Home,” he infuses his material with a hot toddy of warm humor. A kind of profane, libertine, hippie Will Rogers, Snider conveys, above all else, tenderness, even in hopelessness.
If you don’t go for the songs, you’ll get your money’s worth with the patter alone. The wolfishly handsome Snider is as renowned for his between-song hijinks as his acclaimed, genre-busting albums, which regularly end up on Rolling Stone’s year-end “Best Of” lists. All in all, after nearly two decades of making music and incessant touring, his show is the epitome of charming, barely controlled chaos, and his admirers are many.
Not that he cares about those admirers. When asked how longtime fans have received his brazenly drunken, electric 2012 masterwork Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, he says, “I wouldn’t know. I really only have random access to people and their opinions of the art I do, and as a whole, in my experience, the opinions of others are so different, there’s nothing really to be gained by listening to them. There just isn’t a scoreboard. I should also add that I don’t give any thought to gaining or losing fans. From the outside, this job looks like a popularity contest, but from the inside it’s anything but that.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, his sexy indifference to praise, the man is a songwriter’s songwriter, the onetime acolyte of John Prine, who mentored Snider back in the nineties. Over the years, Snider’s received accolades from Jimmy Buffett, Kris Kristofferson, and Jerry Jeff “Mr. Bojangles” Walker, for whom Snider crafted a ragged-but-right tribute album, Time As We Know It. It was Walker who inspired a barely-out-of-his-teens Snider to put aside his rocker dreams and go folkie, at least until the soul-broken romp Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables.
One of the highlights of Agnostic Hymns, which Snider will almost certainly perform in Hudson (especially if you holler a request), is “New Yorker Banker.” This raw, rocking first-person narrative sprang from a conversation with his admirer Rahm Emmanuel (yes, that Rahm Emmanuel) about a group of Arkansas teachers hoodwinked by infamous hedge fund manager John Paulson. Paulson placed their retirement funds in a bond designed to fail, which he bet against. The refrain: “Good thing happen to bad people.”
Although “New York Banker” and best-revenge-song-ever “Too Soon To Tell” (“Wish I could show you how you hurt me in a way that wouldn’t hurt you, too”) convey righteous anger, Snider says he doesn’t believe there is such a thing.
“It’s my opinion that anger is just a mask or the makeup we use to cover sadness and fear,” he says. “Our culture considers sadness and fear to be signs of weakness, and anger to be a sign of strength. I think this is why when people feel sad or afraid, they act angry. To me, the courageous thing is to embrace and complete and release the feelings of fear and sadness, thus creating no need for anger, which isn’t even real.”
Have any victims of “New York Banker”-style malfeasance approached him with appreciation? “No,” he says. “Mike Tyson reached out to me, though. I wrote a song about him being taken advantage of, too.”
Snider’s not all revenge and loss, though. Another gem from Agnostic Hymns is “Brenda,” on which he breaks new ground in the realm of the love song by penning a tribute to the lasting relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. (“Brenda” is Richards’ nickname for Jagger.) “Not long ago she almost lost him, a lesser man might’ve been dead, “ Snider sings, alluding to Richards’ 2006 fall from a coconut tree, “But just when she thought he might be giving up, he was back up in business instead.”
Todd Snider’s back in business, too. See him while he continues to beat the odds. —Robert Burke Warren
Todd Snider
Helsinki Hudson
405 Columbia Street
Hudson, NY
Saturday, March 30, 2013, 9 p.m.
(518) 828-4800
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Posted by Scott Baldinger on 03/25/13 at 07:28 PM • Permalink
