Anna Fahr Video

Some of you will recall, I'm sure, how thrilled I was to announce back in June the art video collaboration I had embarked on with painter Meera Thompson and filmmaker Anna Fahr. Well, Anna has done it again with another short video about painter Phyllis Chillingworth. Whereas I think the video collaboration we did was quite thought-provoking and placed Meera's paintings in a larger artistic, educational, and historical framework, this video about Phyllis's work is more personal and Romantic with its references to nature and her childhood. You'll love it, I'm sure. To see more work by the very talented Anna Fahr, go to her Vimeo site here.

Capriccio: The Video

A few weeks ago, I showcased Meera Thompson's work on bklynbiblio, coinciding with the opening of her new show at the Atlantic Gallery. I hinted in that post about a project in the works, and I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that project now has happened. I have participated in a collaborative venture with Meera Thompson and filmmaker Anna Fahr to create a video about Meera's work. I provide art commentary, positioning Meera's work in the longer trajectory of art history, while Anna did the videography and editing. We're quite proud of the end result, as I hope you'll agree. To see more of Anna's documentary work, click here or click here. If you cannot see the video below, you can see it on YouTube by going to http://youtu.be/2k24lxeZfcg?hd=1.

Review: Religulous

I watched Religulous on DVD tonight. Bill Maher is insane. I've always found his television programs and specials funny and thought-provoking, and (because I lean left) I often agreed with many of his views. That said, I also think Maher is an egomaniac who takes pride in expressing his own ideas over those of others because he's convinced he's right. In other words, he's not much different from the people he criticizes. The thing about Maher, however, that I always have appreciated was that he is willing to challenge and he invites a response. He doesn't want you just to agree with him (then you're a sycophant). He wants you to have your own position on things and stand up for what you believe in. Religion is THE most touchy subject for everyone, including atheists or agnostics (remember: not believing in God is still a belief!). Thus, I applaud him and director Larry Craig for taking the bold step of confronting this important issue. Let's face it: regardless of what our personal religious beliefs are, the religions of the world are in battle with one another and have been for millennia. It has to stop. Now.

On a light-hearted note, there are parts of this documentary that are hysterical. The pop-up quotes, the interjected clips from films, Maher's own sarcastic remarks on things, all of these things make for a very funny take on what is a serious topic. Of course, everyone who has a serious religious affiliation becomes the object of ridicule, whether it's the ex-Jew for Jesus or the Born-Again woman waiting to ride the rapture on a white horse (I'm not making this up). After all, isn't that Maher's point, to make fun of religion and its hold on people? He repeatedly brings up myths from all of the faiths and questions people about them. I admit, it's shocking to see that so many people believe Biblical stories are real. They actually believe in Adam and Eve and the talking snake! I'm comforted at least that the two Roman Catholic priests he interviewed at least had a sense of humor and emphasized the importance of science and interpreting religious teachings symbolically, not literally. Perhaps there's hope for Catholics after all!

In the end, though, Maher does make a critical point. The more governments and political leaders ally themselves to religious texts written thousands of years ago, the more they continue to battle one another in the name of God. They all talk about Armageddon, the end of the world. Ironically, though, if the world does end, it's not because God made it happen, but because humans made it happen. That said, Maher's own determination to encourage people to give up faith completely worries me as well. It's equally idealistic to assume that an atheistic utopia is the answer to the world's problems. In fact, that will create a whole new set of problems, including challenges to things which we now assume to be basic principles of right and wrong (i.e. murder is wrong and deserves serious punishment). Ultimately, faith does play an important part in determining issues of ethics and morality. Faith doesn't have to be worshipping in a temple or mosque or church, praying to a godhead one never sees, speaking in tongues or reenacting the Crucifixion. Faith can simply be a way of comforting oneself, resting in the idea that there is an order to this universe, and that somewhere in that infinite unknowable cosmos there is some energy that links all of us living creatures to one another. And if saying a prayer to that energy--call him/her/it God!--in order to find solace during difficult times makes you feel better, then so be it. There's nothing wrong with a little bit of faith. It's the extremism of anything--including faith and the lack of it--that will destroy us all.

Review: Jerome Robbins

Of all the performing arts, ballet is one of the few that I don't seem to engage with as much as, say, symphonic performances, operas, and musical theater. It isn't that I'm not interested in it, because I am. The more I've observed dance, though, I've wondered if my hesitation has been from a lack of understanding about dance as an art form. Its abstraction and temporality on stage make it seem so fleeting and thus difficult to understand. I also believe that when it comes to dance, I prefer to be one of the dancers rather than an observer. Dance for me is more of a participatory act, and not one of interest simply to watch. I'm not suddenly planning to take ballet lessons, but I think this in part explains my ongoing desire to go dancing in clubs, as well as my earlier dance experiences doing Italian folk dancing (yes, in costume!) and being a Shark in my high school production of West Side Story (which, alas, I had to give up halfway through rehearsals). My aunt in Italy also was a successful ballerina after World War II, so there is no doubt that dance courses through my family's blood. Of course, the reality of dance is that it is not mere abstraction. Choreography is an intricate art form that involves harmonics, balance, scoring, and lots of practice. Its association with music ties it intricately to another art form, and that in some ways both complicates it and enhances its beauty.

In the spirit of dance then, I had a pleasant surprise at 3am this morning (see, insomnia isn't always a bad thing) when I caught a new PBS special from the American Masters series entitled Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About. This was a 90-minute biographical tribute to Robbins, the supreme choreographer and director who has given us some of the greatest Broadway musicals of the 20th century. If that wasn't enough, he also choreographed and produced many exquisite ballets. I knew little about Robbins himself before watching this segment. Of course, I was more familiar with his work on Broadway, which I suspect is how most people know him. The special involves interviews with numerous people who knew and worked with Robbins, from the composer Stephen Sondheim to the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. Still photographs, video sequences, and movie excerpts are interwoven with the interviews to highlight aspects of his long career.

Robbins was born into a Jewish family on the Lower East Side of New York in 1918. He died in 1998 after nearly 60 years in the world of the performing arts. He never married and was bisexual. The greatest blight on his career came during the era of McCarthyism, when he succumbed to pressure out of fear of being outed and thus named names of friends and colleagues. The PBS special highlights at the end that this was one of the great guilts he carried with him until his death. According to critic Clive Barnes, Jerome Robbins "was an extremely demanding man, not always popular with his dancers, although always respected. He was a perfectionist who sometimes, very quietly, reached perfection." Looking at the segments for West Side Story, you realize in retrospect how shockingly modern and innovative Robbins' choreography was for the time, something I had not realized until watching this.

The picture you see here is by Jesse Gerstein and comes from the website for The Jerome Robbins Foundation and Robbins Rights Trust. The Foundation provides grants related to dance and the performing arts, and the Trust licenses Robbins' works. That website also has two essays on Robbins' life worth reading. For a gay/bisexual perspective, see this biographical account on glbtq.com, an online gay/lesbian encyclopedia of the arts (for which I have written a few articles). But without a doubt, check out the website for the PBS American Masters series on Robbins. There are links to videos from the special itself. I heartily recommend it for anyone interested in dance. Below, though, I found on YouTube an early video of "Cool" from a performance of West Side Story that I think really gives you a sense of the modernity of the choreography. It's fun to see it as part of a live performance too, even though the image quality isn't the greatest. As you watch it, notice the high level of athletic ballet steps integrated into what is essentially a pop tune musical. Fascinating stuff. (If you can't see the video, click here.)

Review: New York

Over the past year and a half, I have been watching on DVD one of the best documentary series ever: New York: A Documentary Film. Directed by Ric Burns, this documentary premiered on PBS in 1999, encompassing 14 hours of the history of this city, from its early days as a Dutch colony up to contemporary history. Filled with art work, archival photographs, and early film footage, the visuals of this documentary are supplemented by interviews with so many New York "experts," from former mayors and reporters at The New York Times, to historians and urban planners. The only reason why it has taken me so long to watch the series is because there is a lot to process in each episode as far as factual, social, economic, and political histories, that it really does make you want to think about how New York has evolved into one of the greatest cities in the world. Some of the highlights of the documentary for me included: the initial growth of the city above Wall Street (it was, quite literally, a wall at one time to keep the Indians away from the Dutch settlers); the city's early history as the nation's first capital; the construction of the Erie Canal and how it made the city the economic center of the United States; the story of Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge; the building of the first skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building; Robert Moses and the effect of urban planning with automobiles in mind (the result of which I can hear right now outside my window, as my apartment overlooks a section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway!); the Great Depression; immigration and racial tensions; the Harlem Renaissance.... As you can see, I could go on and on. But if I had to sum up the one lesson I've learned about this amazing documentary, it is that New York has always been a commercial city first, and in that mindset, it is a city that has always made a habit of tearing down and rebuilding. It is, in that sense, one of the most forward-thinking cities in the world. As a result, it has lost historic neighborhoods and beautiful buildings, but somehow it still manages to move forward and redefine itself over and over. The main documentary premiered in 1999 with seven episodes. One of the interesting things about it is that there is a sense of naivete in many of the interviews and in the perception of New York's centrality in the world. I don't think this innocence was obvious at the time, but seeing the documentary after 9/11, it is striking how New York (and the United States) lived such a very carefree existence. The events of 9/11 changed this city probably more so than any other. As a result, Ric Burns and his team got together and did a followup sequel of another two hours that discusses the World Trade Center from its inception in the 1960s all the way through the events of 9/11. This sequel acts as Part 8 of the documentary. I didn't think I would be as interested in the building's history, but as it turned out, it was an amazing coda to an already incredible story.