This morning in the roundup, we linked to a story about a potential development in the Arts District that would provide affordable housing to artists. So what would the project – the Flora Lofts – look like? Below are the artist renderings:
Congratulations to KT Shiue of Denton, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest! KT has been a force in our contest; he last won in June. He follows our previous week’s winner, Leigh Ann Field.
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.
And now, here’s more from KT:
The Texas Voices
Do you feel like you need to recharge yourself? Then step back, take a moment, and then sign up for this Big Deal.
Ten lucky winners will be able to take a guest to see one of The Texas Voices’ presentations of Salutation of the Dawn: A Celebration of the Day’s Journey into Night. The vocal chamber ensemble will offer a night of choral music from around the world. Participants are promised a musical journey that will take them from the first glimmer of sunrise into the quiet solemnity of night. This night’s performance will be on March 2 at Zion Lutheran Church.
You might also be interested in our other Big Deal for the week: passes to Bless Me, Ultima. Remember, winners are selected from Art&Seek e-newsletter subscribers. If you are not a subscriber yet you can take care of that here.
Sign up below for tickets to see The Texas Voices.
UPDATE: We have our winners. Thanks for playing.
For this Big Deal you bring the date, we bring the movie. Winners get a pass for the upcoming film Bless Me, Ultima. Pass will admit two and is good for the run of the engagement.
The film, which opens nationwide Friday, is based on the award-winning novel by Rudolfo Anaya. The protagonist in Bless Me, Ultima is Antonio Marez, a young boy growing up in New Mexico during World War II. When Ultima a curandera, or folk healer, comes to stay with Antonio and his family, she introduces him to a spiritual world that has him questioning his traditional beliefs. And when people start questioning tradition, you know some people aren’t going to take it well.
You might also want to check out our other offering this week: tickets to see The Texas Voices’ Salutation of the Dawn: A Celebration of the Day’s Journey into Night. Winners of the Big Deal are selected from our e-newsletter subscribers, so if you are not a subscriber yet you can take care of that here.
Sign up below for passes to see Bless Me, Ultima.
UPDATE: We have our winners. Thanks for playing.
ARTIST HOUSING IN ARTS DISTRICT: We’ve been following for almost a year now the local push to develop affordable housing specifically for artists. So far, the main player has been a nonprofit developer out of Minneapolis called Artspace. (You might remember the Artspace presentation at City Performance Hall in September.) But now La Reunion TX is spearheading an effort to build a similar complex right in the Arts District. The project, called the Flora Lofts, passed the first hurdle on Tuesday with an endorsement of its tax-credit application by the City Council’s Housing Committee. More details about how the development would operate are at dallasnews.com.
THE ROOTS OF DANCE: During Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s Cultural Awareness series, the company will explore the effect that African and African-American choreographers have had on modern dance. DBDT’s artistic director Ann Williams says this weekend’s program was a collaborative effort between the dancers and choreographers. “When I sat down a month ago to talk to them about the concept for our February show they were all enthused because there is something that is not in the history books of African American dance and that is improvisation,” she says in an interview with theaterjones.com. “So, when the dancers hear a poem that is symbolic or a beat of a Blues song they have the opportunity to improvise. I would then relate this too a worship scene in a church where men and women would get up and move which was not choreographed. Some of those very movements and feelings have remained and have become the ideas that African American choreographers now use to make new pieces.”
35 DENTON UPDATE: Planning to attend 35 Denton in a few weeks? The schedule is now up. Pay special attention to Sunday, when our little buddies over at KXT sponsor the showcase at Sweetwater Grill. And speaking of KXT…
David (1624) by Bernini and Orion (1971) by Kirby, left to right
Listen today, Wednesday, to THINK at 1 p.m., when Krys Boyd talks with Sarah McPhee, the author of the new biography, Bernini’s Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini, the model the great artist loved — and had slashed in retaliation for her affair with his brother.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini is the Jack Kirby of sculptors.
Just so we’re clear — all of us, that is, who are fans of the Baroque, either in Carrara marble or stapled newsprint: Bernini is the 17th-century Italian master, the subject of the Kimbell’s remarkable exhibition, Bernini: Sculpting in Clay. And Kirby is the ‘King of Comics,’ the man who, along with Stan Lee, pretty much created or re-invented the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain America — basically, much of the so-called ‘Silver Age of Comics’ in the ’60s and ’70s.
So. Consider both David and Orion (above). It’s plain the two artists do not just inject action into a motionless figure. It’s the propulsive energy that they spin out of a highly torqued human torso, the taut muscles and grim-set jaws conveying heroic determination. It’s the entire air of the urgent and the extreme.
And that’s true not just of the figures themselves, which threaten to lunge into the viewer’s own space. It’s true as well of the artists pushing an accepted set of conventions into new realms of expressiveness. For Kirby, those traditions were the comparatively staid limits of the original comic book hero. Kirby introduced or explored techniques like ‘Kirby dots’ (crackling energy balls), photo-collages and the op-art sunburst behind Orion in order to convey the hyper-drama of his four-color fantasies, the entire worlds-in-collision of the Kirby cosmos.
For Bernini, the precedent, in this case, was Michelangelo (in other cases, it was the Carraci clan).
… the man seemed pretty much un-hire-able, y’know? Had to cast himself in Theatre 3 shows, direct Theatre 3 shows, design Theatre 3 shows. You’d think he owned the place or something.
Oh? Really? Didn’t know that. Co-founder?
OK, so anyway, still. It’s not like other people were casting him, y’know what I mean?
Un. Hire. Able.
But now someone has.
The Bruce Wood Dance Project is opening its new season March 15 with a new, expanded version of last year’s moving, all-male My Brother’s Keeper. And it’ll feature Jac Alder — along with Chris Vo, a Booker T grad who went on to NBC-TV’s SMASH, and Domingo Estrada, a TCU grad who’s currently a member of the Mark Morris Dance Company.
Big things for Jac. First, studying to be an architect. Then running a theater for 150 years. And now, he’s got another career going, hanging out with these hotshots.
Things like this, they’re likely to encourage him.
Art&Seek Jr. is one mom‘s quest to find activities to end the seemingly endless chorus of the “I’m Bored Blues” while having fun herself. Impossible you say? Check back on Tuesdays for kid-friendly events that are fun for adults, too.
While I was having lunch with a friend in Fort Worth the other day, I was reminded of a call I received recently from an out-of-town producer looking for help with an upcoming shoot in Dallas. I’ve been in production for a whole lotta years (more than what I’m willing to reveal here), and I’ve gotten these types of calls before. But this one really took the cake in the Texas stereotypes department.
No cows, just kids, will be running at the Cook’s Children’s 5K as part of the Cowtown Marathon this weekend. Photo: Cowtown Marathon
Almost immediately it became clear to me that the New York producer on the line had never stepped foot in our fair city, because her idea of Dallas was based on images of Texas straight out of a circa 1950s Western. No joke.
She explained that she was planning a video shoot that involved elementary children from Dallas schools and she needed several locations of “typical” Dallas scenes. “You know,” she said, “just ordinary Texas stuff like oil wells and longhorn cows. And since we’re shooting at Neiman Marcus in the morning, it would be great if they were close to downtown.” When she added that she wanted to get shots of the kids roping the cows I was sure I was being punk’d by my co-workers.
As it turned out, she was serious as a heart attack, so I had the unfortunate task of dashing her production plan by bringing Dallas into the 21st century. I told her that, as far as I knew, there weren’t any oil wells within the city limits and the only longhorns, short of the metal ones at Pioneer Plaza, were the five at Fuel City on I-30. That being said, I’d be surprised if the owner would allow them to be roped by professionals, let alone school children. And while we’re on the subject, it’s doubtful any of the kids she’d lined up had ever even seen a longhorn, much less knew how to rope one. These are city kids, after all. She confessed that she just assumed all kids in Texas rode horses and knew how to rope. Really? I had to hold my tongue to keep from saying, “yeah, well, us folks down here in Texas decided a while back to stop teachin’ ropin’ and ridin’ in school and to just stick to the important stuff like readin’ and ’cifering.” But that would have been mean and sarcastic, so I gave her the names of the nice people at the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau and she became their problem.
I suppose she might have had better luck with the cow part in Fort Worth. Their daily longhorn cattle drive through the Stockyards is a huge draw for tourists and locals alike. But even in the Stockyards, the roping part still would have been left to professionals. Longhorns and city kids are generally a bad idea.
Fort Worth has embraced (and done a very good job of marketing) its Western heritage, but it is so much more than cows. If you want a day out of fun with a little culture thrown into the mix, Fort Worth is a sure bet.
Here some picks for fun in Cowtown this weekend with no roping required:
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.
Enjoy The Longest Daycare, starring Maggie Simpson, which is up for best animated short at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
BACK ON THE BOARDS: Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Anything Goes won three Tonys in 2011, including the award for Best Musical Revival. The tour, currently in residence at the AT&T Performing Arts Center, must be good, right? From reading the reviews, it certainly seems so. “Anything Goes delivers what seems like half of the Great American Songbook and some of the fiercest, sharpest and most invigorating high-stepping you’ll ever see,” Lawson Taitte writes on dallasnews.com. “Overall, the show is an amusing, hilarious diversion with a visual appeal and spunky kick to brighten anyone’s mood and get them dancing,” Cheryl Callon writes on theaterjones.com. “Though it’s technically been modernized, the show remains delightfully old-fashioned,” Lindsey Wilson writes on Front Row. Get thee to the Winspear by Sunday.
CHAGALL ON THE WALL: Did you make it over to the Dallas Museum of Art for the opening weekend of “Chagall: Beyond Color”? Jerome attended the press preview and filed a review on Monday. If you’re interested in the show and want a little more, take a look at the behind the scenes photos of its installation up on the DMA’s Uncrated blog.
QUOTABLE: “We consistently grow. I’ve been her mentor, and in a sense she’s my protégé, and that kind of relationship is a very comfortable and easy one. Like any actor/director relationship, it’s a give and take. It felt so unencumbered by anything because of our personal and artistic relationship keeps getting richer.
- Akin Babatunde, director of Jubilee Theatre’s Black Pearl Sings, on his long working relationship with the show’s star, Liz Mikel. Babatunde discusses the show further – including his stint directing it in Vienna – in an interview with theaterjones.com.
