Art Scatter’s chief dance and decorum correspondent, Martha Ullman West, takes a look at Oregon Ballet Theatre’s upcoming season and discovers hope for artistic manners in the midst of a meltdown of civil rudeness.
The ballet just might be the last bastion of civility in what used to be a civil society.
Consider the evidence:
A certain Supreme [...]
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief international dance correspondent, took in “La Danse,” Frederick Wiseman’s documentary film about the legendary Paris Opera Ballet. How does it go wrong? Let her count the ways:
Last night I took a friend to Cinema 21 to see a benefit screening of La Danse, documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s take on [...]
An arts scene is a movable feast, a passing parade of people and ideas. Today’s Portland is vastly different from the big town of the 1950s to the 1980s, when the scene was small and sometimes rowdy but seemed somehow containable, as if you could experience all of it if you tried hard enough.
Impossible [...]
“How could they say ‘partial’ nudity?” Gentleman No. 1 asked wryly. “They were totally naked.”
Gentlewoman No. 1 nodded in agreement. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Well,” Gentleman No. 2 replied, “they were all the way naked, but not all of the time. So maybe it was ‘partial’ nudity in the sense that sometimes they had clothes [...]
Remember the old days, when Cadillac-sized opera singers planted their feet among the scenery and belted beautiful music with no thought to the dramatic possibilities of the opera? Art Scatter’s senior correspondent Martha Ullman West does, and she shudders at the memory. What’s more, she sees the old style’s residual effects in the staging of [...]
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s esteemed global correspondent for the terpsichorean arts, files this report from last night’s action in the balletic trenches of Mississippi — that is, North Mississippi Street in Portland. Sounds like a good place to move your feet tonight or tomorrow:
Last night at Mississippi Studios, where six of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s [...]
Art Scatter’s indefatigable chief dance correspondent Martha Ullman West, fresh from a sojourn in the Big Apple, hit the ground running on her return to Portland. In a week and a half she took in the Northwest Dance Project’s fall show, White Bird’s presentation of the Hofesh Shechter Company, Jim McGinn and Carla Mann’s “Exquisite [...]
For every now, there is a then. China, of course, has many thens, but two are on my mind right now: the then of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which might have outdone Stalin in its attempt to eradicate culture and replace it with ideology; and the then of the big melt, which began with Mao’s death [...]
Above and below: “Chi,” by Wen Wei Wang, Northwest Dance Project, summer 2009. The Project dances downtown Friday and Saturday. Photos: Blaine Covert
It’s not all about Oregon Ballet Theatre.
Sure, the OBT story’s fascinating. Scrappy little company grows into rising national star. Stumbles into economic abyss. Gets saved by outpouring of bucks and extravaganza featuring top [...]
Once again Art Scatter is pleased to have the considerations of dance critic Martha Ullman West appear in our august corner of virtual space. Martha, who also reviews ballet for The Oregonian, is working on a biography of dancer and choreographer Todd Bolender. Plus, she’s a charter member of Friends of Art Scatter and the [...]