Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get down to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.
Too many shy guys try to look cool behind shades, the girls resort to hair-tossing all the time and some people don’t really commit to the lip-synching. But still, this is pretty impressive for a dancing mash-up: 49 kids, most of a high school facility – and just one take.
Dancers from Danza Abierto. Photo: Mara Isaacs
Lisa Taylor and David Lozano of Cara Mia Theatre Co., traveled to Cuba as guests of Theater Communications Group. This week, the International Theatre Institute celebrated World Theater Day. Seems an appropriate time to share this guest blog on the trip. Lisa’s account is first, followed by David’s summary.
The Theater Communications Group organized a group of theater professionals to visit Cuba for a cultural exchange with its theater and dance companies March 15-22. Three of us attended from Dallas. David Lozano, Frida Espinosa-Müller, and I represented Cara Mia Theatre Co. The other 15 delegates were from around the U. S., with the majority from the East Coast.
Coincidentally, before I left, I was asked to publicize the upcoming reading by Andrei Codrescu tonight at the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff. I remembered I had purchased his book Ay, Cuba! when my husband and I were planning a trip to Cuba a few years ago. So I took that on the airplane as my source for my 8 day trek in Cuba. In Ay, Cuba! Codrescu foreshadowed what I would witness and hear, that to the artists in Cuba: “Culture wasn’t a luxury, but food for creative survival.”
Lisa Taylor.
National Public Radio sent Codrescu to Cuba in advance of Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1998. Codrescu’s background growing up in socialist Romania until the age of 19 gave him a special perspective about this complicated country. The book was just the introduction I needed. It’s a journal of his trip to Cuba, and it gave me a taste of the hypocrisies and confusions that you can feel when you’re there.
I felt these issues most poignantly when we attended a performance by students of the National Circus School in Havana. When we (about 10 of us) arrived at the Big Top, our host asked a group of adults to move from their front-row seats to give them to us. One of those adults, gave our host what for…deservedly I believed.
Student working in studio at famous National School of Fine Arts in Havana. Photo: Mara Isaacs
We had the great fortune of meeting with two to three dance and theater groups a day whose leaders spent time after their performances/rehearsals/classes talking with us. They explained their good fortune in not having to determine their programming based on whether it would bring in revenue or not. But, it was very obvious that even though they had stipends from the government, their resources were very slim and that they did not have the benefit of the ability to raise money as theater companies do in the States. There are only six foundations in Cuba, which were founded during the “special period” of the ’90s. We met with one of them, the Ludwig Foundation, which was created to protect and promote contemporary Cuban artists, along with other high minded ideals. The Director told us that Cuba is “facing the strong challenge of a cultural tsunami.” The Ludwig has created partnerships for Cuba with Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and The Joyce Theater, among other important cultural institutions around the world.
In April, Dallas residents are invited to put down their smartphones, turn off their televisions and return to a form of entertainment that predates those gadgets – reading.
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The idea of the Big Read is to help books wrestle back some of the leisure space they’ve lost. The book everyone’s being asked to read even predicted the need for such an event.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is set in a disturbing future. Instead of putting out fires, firemen spend their time burning books. Everyday people gather to watch entertainment projected on the parlor wall. It was written in 1953, but the story gets more relevant by the day.
“Even now, as we get more involved in technology, and more removed from the printed word, I think there are things Ray Bradbury wrote about that I think we are seeing come to fruition in our day today,” says Peter Coyl, the manager of the Audelia Road branch of the Dallas Public Library.
BIG MONEY FOR OLD MASTERS – The DMA now has a $17 million endowment for buying only pre-1700 paintings and sculptures by Europeans. A tad ‘old dead white male-ish,’ you say? Well, actually, when you’re a ‘universal museum,’ as the DMA is — meaning its collection tries to cover all historical periods, all cultures — Old Masters are a weak spot. They’re not making any more of them, they’re trop couteux (too costly) and the bigger, more established universal museums, like the Met or the Art Institute of Chicago, got there first. And then there are the newer joints, like the Kimbell or the Getty, that simply have far bigger endowments. Don’t buy this argument? Well, neither did the DMA — buy, that is, the ‘newly attributed,’ $200 million da Vinci that hung around the DMA for several months last year. So now major patron Margueritte Hoffman has come up with some serious cash for a fund named for her and her late husband Robert, a fund dedicated to buying Renaissance and Baroque artworks:
The gift creates a $13,600,000 restricted acquisitions endowment and a $3,400,000 operating endowment in support of pre-1700 European acquisitions, exhibitions, and programs. This new fund more than doubles the DMA’s acquisition endowment and brings total funds in support of the Museum’s acquisitions to 50,000,000.
A LITTLE MONEY, BUT NO THANKS- The idea of creating a PID — a public improvement district that taxes– to help fund the privately built and managed Klyde Warren Park did not make for happy campers after the park’s board suggested it last week, especially because the park supposedly said they’d never ask for help. Robert Wilonsky reports in the News (paywall) hat many of the Arts District honchos — even though their organizations near the park would be exempt from the small tax the PID would levy — wrote a letter objecting to it. They fear it would raise relatively little money for the park. Worse, it’d screw up any efforts to create a PID to help the Arts District in general. Jim Schutze is alarmed at the contretemps. Why’s a PID so attractive? As I explained two years ago when I suggested that a PID was precisely what ALL the city’s cultural centers need, a PID provides a regular funding source for things like facility maintenance. It’d be free from the political and economic machinations that go with the city’s general budget and that have caused drastic funding cuts in recent years, despite the city’s expressed commitments to support the center.
SPREADING IT AROUND – Philip Roth: Unmasked airs tomorrow night on KERA; Chris Vognar reviews it (” a lively 90 minutes spent with the greatest living American novelist”). … The Dallas Children’s Theatre’s production of A Wrinkle in Time has gotten good reviews here and here. … Star-Telegram reporter risks life to fly like Cathy Rigby in Peter Pan at Bass Hall. She lives.
“Track By Track” appears regularly on Art&Seek. During the podcast, Texas musicians play their new albums and discuss what went into making them with Paul Slavens, host of The Paul Slavens Show Sunday nights at 8 on KXT, 91.7 FM.
You can download and subscribe to the podcast right here.
Paul’s previous podcast featured husband-and-wife duo Seth and Shawn Magill of Dallas’ Home By Hovercraft talking about their new album, Are We Chameleons. This time, Paul talks with Nicholas Altobelli about Without a Home, his new Salim Nourallah-produced album.
Click the player below to listen to the podcast:
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Congratulations to Greg Westfall of Fort Worth, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest! Greg is now a five-time winner of our contest; his last victory came in April of 2011. He follows last week’s winner, Kasey Williams.
If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to our Flickr group page. It’s fine to submit a photo you took earlier than the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves a facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Monday to Sunday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Monday afternoon. We’ll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We’ll post the winners’ photo on Wednesday.
Title of photo: Hurry
Equipment used: Canon 1DsMkII converted to 720nm infrared
Tell us a little about the photo: This is a two-lane country road in Comanche County, Texas. I stood in the middle of it and took the picture with my converted camera. From there, I processed it into two separate images, one faux color and one black and white. I then sandwiched them and applied radial blur. I use two converted cameras – one is converted to 590nm (equivalent to the old “Goldie” filter). The 720nm is equivalent to the old R-72. You can still get both of these filters, but due to the technology of digital cameras, it is very difficult to do IR photography without a conversion.
Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get down to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.
Wanna make a movie, but your film crew consists of just you and a couple of buddies? Here are some tricks of the trade that will have you cranking out that viral video in no time.
Little Green Cars met up with the On The Road crew on the lawn at The Four Seasons in Austin, Texas during South by Southwest 2013. They play “Harper Lee” off of their debut album “Absolute Zero.”
This installment of the On the Road video series is produced and edited for Art&Seek and KXT 91.7 by Dane Walters, with an assist from Stanton J. Stephens and Lacey Dowden.
Check out two other On the Road videos from South by Southwest: Thao Nguyen of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down and Night Beds.
Photographer and researcher Tim Laman and Cornell University ornithologist Ed Scholes spent almost 10 years documenting the 39 species of birds of paradise, primarily in New Guinea. Amazing images of the rarest and most endangered birds that were featured in their book Birds of Paradise Revealed will be showcased in their visual presentation National Geographic Live! Tim Laman and Ed Scholes present Birds of Paradise at the Winspear Opera House. Listen and marvel as these two modern day explorers tell their stories of the extraordinary and wondrous sights they encountered in the rain forest of New Guinea. The winner of this Big Deal will receive a pair of tickets for the duo’s April 11 presentation.
You can also explore the possibility of winning tickets for our other two Big Deals this week – tickets for the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Eisemann Center and tickets to see Cory Morrow at the Granada Theater. As always, you must first be an Art&Seek subscriber to win the Big Deal.
Sign up below for a chance to hear Tim Laman and Ed Scholes present Birds of Paradise.
UPDATE: We have our winners. Thanks for playing!
Country singer-songwriter Cory Morrow returns to the Granada Theater in April. And as the winner of this Big Deal, you’ll be able to take your good buddy with you to see the Texas native when he performs on April 12.
After signing up for this Big Deal, two-step over and sign up for our other Big Deals. Go here for tickets to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Eisemann Center, and go here for tickets to see National Geographic Live! Tim Laman and Ed Scholes present Birds of Paradise show at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Again, here is our weekly disclaimer – we choose Big Deal winners from our newsletter subscribers. If you are not already a subscriber you can take care of that here.
Sign up below for a chance to see Cory Morrow at the Granada Theater.
UPDATE: We have our winners. Thanks for playing!
