March 30, 2011
Suffragette Series No. 9 postcard
We don’t often make “official” announcements, but since we were asked nicely, we would like to take this moment to remind our readers who are SAA members to please vote in the online election.
Online voting in SAA’s 2011 Election closes April 11! If you are an eligible SAA member, please vote today: https://eballot4.votenet.com/saa.
March 24, 2011
Google Houdini Doodle
Another cute Google Doodle reminded me to remind you that time is running out to catch the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City.
Houdini's will poster, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, POS - MAG - .H37, no. 2 (C size)
Billed as “the first art exhibition in an American art museum,” Houdini: Art & Magic brings together archival documentation and the responses of contemporary artists to the legendary performer.
Materials have been drawn from both private and public collections, including the Library of Congress, which includes an interesting description of the dispersal of the Houdini collection in its online catalog record for this particular item. The LC note also relates the story of Harry Houdini’s brother, Theodore Hardeen (whose presence was notably absent from the exhibition if I recall correctly — but, then again, it was pretty crowded when I visited and I’m not sure I managed to read through all the captions).
Although the show closes in New York this Saturday, you will have a chance to catch up with it again throughout the year as it tours to two venues on the West Coast, before winding up in Wisconsin (where it all began).
Kudos to the Jewish Museum for organizing some of the most consistently innovative and engaging exhibitions on performing artists over the past few years!
March 4, 2011
West Fourth Street looking west
I don’t know about you, but Women’s History Month has gotten off to a rocky start for me.
For example, it was disheartening earlier this week to read the sad news that political activist and book artist, Suze Rotolo, had passed away. Although the full-length obituary by William Grimes that appeared in the New York Times was a wide-ranging and sensitive account of what sounds like a life well-lived, the title of the condensed version that appeared on the Arts Beat blog simply read, ” Suze Rotolo, Muse and Girlfriend to Bob Dylan, Dies at 67.”
February 13, 2011
A. Gardel postcard for Fête du Narcisse in Montreux, Switzerland (1928)
In what makes an interesting side note and a nice addendum to the article on the Diaghilev exhibition in the Winter issue of Performance!, history was made recently when the first known film of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company was identified by Victoria & Albert Museum Dance Curator, Jane Pritchard, after she was directed to it by Susan Eastwood of the London Ballet Circle. The 1928 festival footage, which had been posted on the British Pathé historical archive Web site, includes a brief rehearsal (one hopes) clip, which is believed to show Serge Lifar and the company in a sequence from Les Sylphides. Diaghilev, of course, was adamant about not allowing his company to be filmed, which makes this discovery all the more exciting.
Can spring really be far off now?
In the meantime, you can view the clip for yourselves here.
Image credit: Digital ID” Fel_018135_RE, ETH Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv
January 26, 2011
So much for my November promise of more frequent postings, but just a quick announcement to let you all know that the Winter issue of the newsletter of the SAA Performing Arts Roundtable is now available online:
http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/performart/newsletter/PArtsNews2010win.pdf
The issue features an article about the Diaghilev exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, as well as interviews with New York City Ballet dancer Ellen Bar (about her film adaptation of Jerome Robbins’ 1958 ballet, N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz) and Brooklyn Academy of Music archivist Sharon Lerner.
December 27, 2010
“A great performer feels this sharing,” This line, written by the choreographer and theater visionary, Alwin Nikolais, describes the ideal relationship between dancer and audience. Nikolais recorded this thought on a sheet of paper containing other observations and, wonderfully, this handwritten series of notes is one of the many extraordinary objects to be found in the current exhibition, “Alwin Nikolais’ Total Theater of Motion,” on display in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ Vincent Astor Gallery. The exhibition, curated by Claudia Gitelman, runs until January 15, 2011.
I have been a fan of Nikolais since seeing an utterly astounding performance of Noumenon in the late 1970s. Although I was not well schooled in dance history and in spite of my regrettable lack of exposure to dance at that stage, I recall feeling that I was witnessing something very special and was certainly inspired. The experience of Noumenon (along with an explosive solo piece by Murray Louis) made me want to dance. Moreso, it made me feel as though I could dance. Sharing, indeed.
It was, therefore, quite thrilling to encounter so much material in the NYPL exhibit that explores Nikolais’ educational endeavors, particularly his years with the Henry Street Settlement House on New York City’s Lower East Side. Nikolais, along with Hanya Holm, directed the dance program there for many years and the exhibition celebrates this period with delightful photographs, programs, and posters. Under the directorship of Nikolais and Holm, the profile of dance in the community was raised to fabulously high levels and great numbers of young people were engaged and turned on. There is a particularly memorable photograph in the exhibition (from either the 1940s or 1950s) that shows a huge line of neighborhood people outside the Henry Street Playhouse, waiting to gain entry to a dance performance. At another point in the Henry Street Settlement House section, a caption reads: “The first performing experiences of professional students at the Henry Street Playhouse were in dance dramas for neighborhood children. Nikolais invented whimsical plots, vivid characters and outlandish costumes.” Nikolais was bringing dance to the people in a major way.
And there is so much more. A striking photo of a beaming Alwin Nikolais with his idol and mentor, Mary Wigman, from 1958. A series of costume sketches and television storyboards, created by Nikolais. An LP record jacket for the Hanover Records release of the “Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais.” A copy of Nikolais’ Index to Puppetry, done for the WPA in 1936. A business card dispensed by Nikolais in the earliest part of his career, advertising his position as an organist for the Fine Arts Theatre in Westport, Connecticut. Costumes and props from such pieces as Gallery, Allegory, and Tent. Wonderful and sometimes miraculous video and film clips of many Nikolais works, illustrating with absolute clarity the nature and extent of his “total theater of motion.”
Some date omissions are problematic. However, the selected materials, the overall arrangement of the show, and the generally informative captions all get high marks. The highest mark, though, goes to the simple act of creating an extensive tribute to the life and work of Alwin Nikolais. It is a well-earned but long overdue tribute and I can say with great sincerity that it is a tribute very much appreciated. And well worth seeing before it is taken down on January 15.
And, speaking of long overdue tributes, I just want to take another moment to praise the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) for the current gem of an exhibition celebrating the work of Denys Wortman, cartoonist for the World Telegram and Sun from 1930-1953. I knew nothing at all of Wortman’s work prior to seeing the exhibition and now cannot fathom his absence from notoriety for all of the years following his death in 1958. What a wonderful observer of society and socioeconomic classes, and how important to bring such marvelous and significant work to the attention of the public once again. The exhibition, entitled “Denys Wortman Rediscovered,” will be on display at MCNY until March 20, 2011.
December 4, 2010
Autograph manuscript of Bob Dylan's lyrics for "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
Well, I must admit that it doesn’t excite me quite as much as Trigger, but Sotheby’s December 10, 2010 sale of “Books and Mauscripts” offers some very choice miscellany, including the above Dylan manuscript. With an estimate of $200,000-$300,000, will it wind up in a public collection?
Image credit: Sotheby’s
