Flynn Center Blog

by Pamela Polston

This article originally appeared in Seven Days.

An exhibition called “Engage” is a “dream I’ve had for six years,” says Judith Chalmer. The executive director of VSA Vermont is talking about a touring, juried art show featuring 39 works by 35 artists who have “various disabilities.” But more than just a display of artworks, the twofold project is also about bringing access awareness to venues and gallery-goers alike. To Chalmer, it’s nothing short of “a moment of transformation statewide in terms of accessibility in cultural venues.”

Consider the radical notion, for example, that a person with limited sight could enjoy an art show — not to mention make art. “It hasn’t been understood how people with visual impairment could be patrons of the arts,” Chalmer says. “It’s an underserved population.” That’s an understatement. Even for VSA Vermont, whose mission is to pair the arts and individuals with a variety of disabilities, a focus on visual impairment is “a new one,” she notes.

That focus has entailed seeking training from national experts in audio inscription, as well as in ways to make a gallery exhibit more visually accessible. Something as simple as large-print labels, Chalmer points out, is useful to all gallerygoers — people can read them from a distance instead of having to jockey for a close-up position. Larger letters are also easier for those learning to read, or who are new to the English language.

VSA Vermont, with the help of the Vermont Arts Council and its accessibility consultant, Renee Wells, will provide technical assistance to the cultural venues participating in “Engage” — three to five galleries “that have physical access at least,” says Chalmer. The organization will also offer accessibility training to others. “This is growth for us to become a resource for venues around the state,” Chalmer says. “The calls are already coming in from galleries — ‘How can we train our staff to work with audio?’ We’re looking to travel the exhibit and pass along those skills.”

The nonprofit also partnered with Burlington City Arts and the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts to bring about “Engage.” The Flynn’s executive director, John Killacky, was a member of the jury, and the show will open at that venue’s Amy E. Tarrant Gallery later this month. The other jurors were Mickey Myers, director of the Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville; artist Janet Van Fleet of Cabot; and Greensboro-based artist Paul Gruhler, who also curated the exhibit.

Chalmer says the jurors “did not discuss disability”; they just considered the merits of the art, which was presented in a range of two-dimensional mediums. “There are artists who have been working for a long time, and others are brand new,” she says. “All are thrilled at the opportunity.” The process, Chalmer adds, “has connected us with artists we didn’t know before.”

For his part, Gruhler says working on “Engage” has been “a wonderful learning experience, getting to know what the challenges are for the artists every day.” From its electronic call to artists through assistance in framing the artworks, the project has “given them an opportunity to be in an exhibition — in some cases for the first time — and also to be able to take themselves seriously as artists.”

For the art-viewing public, too, “Engage” is likely to offer a twofold experience: bringing the work of artists with disabilities “to the forefront of cultural life in Vermont,” says Chalmer, and increasing awareness of how individuals with physical, developmental, psychiatric or visual challenges negotiate a world the rest of us take for granted.

“Engage” opens with a reception at the Flynn Center’s Amy E. Tarrant Gallery in Burlington on Sunday, February 26, 4-6 p.m. The exhibit remains on view there through April 29, and then will travel to other venues around the state. vsavt.org

by John Killacky

This commentary originally appeared on Vermont Public Radio.

Recently I served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Forty-nine applicants wanted to be embedded in scientific research teams. They sought to explore the ethos, mythologies, and realities of this extraordinary continent.

Composers wanted to listen to the wind, water, animals, and shifting ice. Visuals artists hoped to delve into infinite striations of whiteness: the effects of transparency on ice, the glitter of ice crystals, and light and shadow patterns on the surface and internal features of the frozen landscape.

Photographers and documentarians were drawn to the heroics of transformative research under such harsh conditions. Poets and writers wanted to go with a blank page free of hypothesis. Choreographers aspired to locate themselves in the overwhelming immensity of endless horizons.

My panel duty did not ignite a travel-lust of my own for Antarctica; instead I’ve been inspired by these artists to pay more attention to my own home environment. Seeing anew, I observe how the longer days continually shift the light in the woods behind our town house to reveal an ever-evolving panorama. I never realized before just how many different kinds of birds live there even in winter.

Melting icicles are both prism and metronome. Falling snow showcases infinite variety; and tasting snowflakes is fun. Savoring the sweet smell of hay and grain at the barn is delightful; and I embrace late night sounds at home: the cat purring, the dog whimpering in her sleep, and Larry’s breathing.

At the gym, as I swim laps, I count: three strokes to a breath, forty seconds to a wall, twenty laps to the finish. The discipline is both mental and physical. I’m amazed at how time and effort can expand and contract. Some days my exercise is effortless and time flies by; other days my workout is arduous and endless. Focusing the mind seems harder than the swim.

At work, the sounds of music, dance, and theater classes seep through the walls of my office, and they’re enlivening, not distracting. Through my window I observe people in City Hall Park and realize that I hurry past most of them every day without acknowledgement or recognition. So now on my walks I try to make eye contact and practice a few more hellos.

It’s nice not to have to go all the way to Antarctica to find a deeper relationship with my surroundings and self. I’m so glad to be home and living more deeply right here in Vermont.

by Megan James

This article originally appeared in Seven Days

Suzanne Farrell is considered one of the most influential ballet dancers of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, the wisp-like teenager from Ohio joined the New York City Ballet and became the muse of George Balanchine, regarded as the greatest choreographer in contemporary ballet.

On stage, Farrell was known for her reckless, almost off-kilter dancing and the vulnerability she exuded. In a 2003 New Yorker essay, Joan Acocella writes, “Even when her dancing was slow, it was wild: pooling, flooding… In time, she affected every American company. If, today, American ballet dancers are notably headlong — feat-doers, ear-kickers — that is due in part to Farrell. And if, when they are also profound, they are profound in a cool, exalted, unactory way, that, too, in large measure is Farrell speaking, or Farrell and Balanchine.”

Just over a decade ago, Farrell took the helm of an educational program at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center that swiftly evolved into her own dance company, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Now 66, she has dedicated this phase of her life to presenting the works of her mentor, Balanchine, who died in 1983.

Farrell responded via email to questions Seven Days posed in advance of her company’s performance at the Flynn.

SEVEN DAYS: What’s it like to watch young dancers take on the roles you once danced?
SUZANNE FARRELL: I give my dancers all the tools they need to successfully dance a role, but I don’t want them to be carbon copies of me. [Dancers] are not machines where the volume can be turned up. We have to do it all visually and energetically. We are our own technology, our own instruments.

SD: How do you differ as a leader from Balanchine? How are you similar?
SF: Good theater should always send people away feeling changed. Everybody I met in the audience during that wonderful era when Balanchine was working, and everything seemed so right with the world, said how their lives had changed, no matter what walk of life they came from. I want to bring that same sense of urgency and importance to the time we’re living in.

SD: When did you realize you had truly made it as a ballet dancer?
SF: After studying ballet for many years, people forget what first attracted them. Many dancers begin to feel noble simply because they come to class at all. They should have this wonderful feeling unlike anything else in life: the state of balletic grace. I caution my dancers and students alike not to focus on being a star, but to remember the stars they had in their eyes that made them want to dance in the first place.

As you become experienced and perfect the technique, you have to remain vulnerable and not lose that wonderful innocence, that freshness.

I enjoyed all the opportunities to perform so many wonderful roles. Whenever people ask what my favorite ballet is, I say, “the one I am currently working on.” I was lucky to live in so many different “worlds” onstage.

SD: You’ve described the process of developing the dances Balanchine created for you as “whipping up this dust, and after hours and days, it becomes a ballet.” Were you aware, in those moments, that you were making history?
SF: When Mr. B started working on a ballet for me, there would be no one in the room except Gordon Boelzner at the piano, George and myself. He would show me a little something and I would try to imitate or shape or decode what he indicated.

Choreography is not born as choreography; it grows out of a suggestion and then it gets shaped into choreography. Rarely would he say, “That’s not what I wanted.” Our collaboration was very special and filled with trust. He would put the ball in my court and allow me to run with it. Sometimes he would have a mistake become part of the choreography — not that every mistake can be put to music and become beautiful, but he made us see life differently.

This is all part of my personal history, and I knew these were significant ballets, but I was living in the moment (busy trying to improve) and never thinking of history.

SD: You are considered one of America’s greatest ballet dancers, but you’re best known for being Balanchine’s muse. What does it feel like to have your artistic legacy tied to someone else’s?
SF: Every time I stage one of Balanchine’s ballets, I see something different. I’m constantly discovering another facet of his genius. Though he was a brilliant man, Balanchine never acted like he knew everything about everything. He was also a very good listener. It was that kind of connection — with his dancers, with the music and with himself — that made working with him so extraordinary. At the same time, he would say to me, “It’s you on stage” — not him.

SD: Why does the world still need ballet?
SF: Ballet is unique because [its] true essence resides in the muscle memory and integrity of its creator. Before videos/DVDs, it was passed on by the people who first danced it. They had firsthand knowledge. Not just of the steps but of the history. That fragile essence gets lost and is not easily replaced. Essence has to be replaced by essence, not technique or something else. This is why I believe Mr. Balanchine’s ballets are important — they remind us of the importance of seeing life differently in the moment.

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet performs at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington on Friday, February 24, at 8 p.m. $25-50. Info, 863-5966. flynntix.org

by Angie Albeck, Vermont Artists’ Space Grant

Come to a Vermont Artists’ Space Grant work-in-progress showing of Marianne DiMascio and Angie Albeck’s Stealing From Work, this Sunday at 7 pm in FlynnSpace.

We’re one week away from the presentation of our work in progress. With this kind of deadline approaching we thought it wise to make a list of tasks to accomplish: chose a conclusion for one sketch, write in more conflict for the first sketch, clarify the motivations of the people in that other sketch. We have our priorities straight so we head to the All You Can Eat Pie Breakfast at the Waterbury Rotary Club. This outing was crucial to the writing process. Read on.

During the months of working on this project, we’ve discovered that sometimes we have to allow some of our ideas to “compost.” The sketches aren’t in our frontal lobes, but they’re back there in the brain somewhere, and even if that idea was pretty weak to begin with, if we can just let it be, it will enrich itself in the compost bin of the brain. This compost concept helps us in many situations. Sometimes we’d rather go to a pie breakfast than write. And sometimes one of us has written a sketch that has a really good Elizabethan dirty joke but the sketch itself isn’t very strong and that person has difficulty letting go. So, it remains in the compost bin, to help enrich another sketch.

Writing is hard. We knew that before starting this project, but it has been confirmed over and over again through this process. Even when it is fun, it is difficult. There is almost never a moment of magic, when everything comes together effortlessly and is perfect on our first pass. The one exception to the “don’t expect magic” rule has been when we have brought in actors to improvise or read. We also knew this before, but it has been confirmed over and over again: actors are brilliant, talented people who bring new life to anything they encounter.

Have you hugged an actor today? We recommend starting with the three in the picture. Geeda Searforce, Chris Caswell, and Kevin Christopher joined us last weekend for a read-through of about a dozen sketches. The moment the scripts were in their hands, they were turning the black and white words into colorful, nuanced, and funny stories that I barely recognized. Actors are magic. The three in the photo are also writers and have all written original pieces for the stage, so we had the added benefit of their expert feedback. Geeda, Chris, and Kevin will be joining Marianne on stage Sunday, but there are several other actors who have helped shape this work. Their names are in the program, but we’d like to take a moment to mention them now. G. Richard Ames, Seth Jarvis, Kim Jordan, Patricia Julien, and Sarah Mell have all shaped this project. It would be impossible to thank them enough for their brilliance, but we’ll try.

Thanks, guys. You light up our lives.

We hope to see you all on Sunday, February 19 at 7 pm so you can be a part of the collaboration.

Treat yourself to a wonderful dinner on Wednesday, February 15 and help raise money for the Flynn! If Valentine’s Day is too busy for you, consider bringing your friends to Three Tomatoes Trattoria for a delicious meal the next evening.

One night each month, Three Tomatoes Trattoria hosts a Sustainable Communities Night and donates $1 from every entree sold at all four Three Tomatoes locations (Burlington, Williston, Rutland, Lebanon) to a local cause. Stop by, enjoy a wonderful entrée, and know that you’ll also be helping the Flynn.

www.threetomatoestrattoria.com

Hugh Maskela is best known for the jazz standard Grazin’ in the Grass and for playing on Paul Simon’s Graceland tour.

But there’s a lot more to the guy who plays on the MainStage on February 22.

• He formed the Jazz Epistles in 1959, the first African jazz group to record an album.

“District Six was a hell of a place.  It was comparable with the old Harlem of the Harlem Renaissance. It was a wonderful place with a lot of clubs and it was very cosmopolitan. It was right next to downtown Cape Town. It was jumping!” –Masekela on South Africa in the ’50s

• In New York in the 1960s he jived with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, met Malcolm X, and befriended Marvin Gaye.

• He jammed with Bob Marley in Jamaica, hung out with Jimi Hendrix and funk superstar Sly Stone in Los Angeles.

• He played with Fela Kuti and rocked the high life with the Hedzoleh Sounds in Lagos.

• He co-conceived the Rumble in the Jungle concert that accompanied the legendary 1974 Ali-Foreman fight. The concert is documented in the movie Soul Power.

• He married Miriam Makeba, who popularized African music with Pata Pata.

• In 1987, he had a hit with Bring Him Back Home which became an anthem for the movement to free Nelson Mandela.

print by John Anderson

by Amy Rahn

This article appears in this week’s Seven Days.

Two of Burlington’s most celebrated arts institutions, Burlington City Arts and the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, turn 30 this year. Fittingly, they’re celebrating three decades of culture together with a visual-art project that draws on a stellar lineup of more than 30 Vermont artists. Their works are currently on view at the Flynn’s Amy E. Tarrant Gallery.

The “30/30 Anniversary Print Project” engaged artists and a handful of nonartist notables — including ice-cream magnates Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, former governor Madeleine Kunin and Flynn executive director John Killacky — who worked with printmakers Sumru Tekin, Jennifer Koch and Gregg Blasdel to create limited-edition prints in the BCA Print Studio and Koch’s studio. All the prints in the exhibition are available for sale via silent auction, both online and at the Tarrant Gallery, with proceeds benefitting the youth education scholarship programs of the Flynn and BCA.

Since the prints were made especially for the exhibition by artists who were not necessarily versed in the materials and procedures of printmaking, the works exude a unique experimental quality, even as they reflect the often-familiar styles of the artists who made them. Katharine Montstream’s Intervale landscape print translates her normally colorful work into a subtle, crumbly world of shifting grays. In his piece, Hal Mayforth’s signature scratchy pen lines widen with the graphic blockiness of a wood cut. Harry Bliss, better known as a cartoonist, created a wood-block illustration of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The show is mostly lighthearted and almost a celebration of process itself — that is, of the way an artist can transcend the limitations of a given medium to create work that mingles concept, material and the joy of creation.

In Grace Weaver’s monocolor print, a semiabstract figure gazes at herself in a hand mirror. One foot lunges forward in a dancelike step, while the other bends in a rubbery curve. The body seems to twist at the torso as the woman draws a comb through her long hair. Weaver writes in her commentary: “For this print, I thought of the tubular bodies of Hindu bronze sculpture, women primping in front of mirrors in Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and the bendy bodies of Popeye’s Olive Oyl and contemporary Barbie dolls. I loved learning this print process, which felt more like building a sculpture than making a drawing or painting.”

Indeed, many of the contributing artists describe making the prints as an illuminating process that introduced them to new ways of working, and to new artists in the community. Painter Alice Murdoch’s commentary echoes many of the others: “The project was a lot of fun since I’ve only done one print in my life … Sumru was terrific and so patient. It was refreshing to step outside of my comfort zone and do something entirely different.”

That newfound enthusiasm for the medium of printmaking may be a positive side effect of the 30/30 Project that outlasts even the benevolent effect of its fundraising component. BCA executive director Doreen Kraft notes that the visibility of BCA’s printmaking facilities has increased. “It wasn’t an original goal but a beautiful outcome,” she writes in an email. Kraft points to the nearly concurrent appointment of Blasdel as this year’s BCA Artist-in-Residence as another reason for an upsurge in interest. “His energy, enthusiasm and talent in the [printmaking] studio inspired others,” she writes. “We have lots of new students and community renters as a result.”

Exposing an array of artists to new ways of working while fundraising for future efforts fits BCA’s mission “to make art accessible to all.” In form and function, the project reinforces the intentions of the institutions it celebrates — educating, community building, and facilitating the creation and exhibition of art in Vermont.

The “30/30 Anniversary Print Project” soulfully contributes to — and continues — the two institutions’ shared stewardship of the arts. Here’s to the first 30 years, and the promise of many more to come.

“30/30 Anniversary Print Project,” Amy E. Tarrant Gallery, Flynn Center, Burlington. Through February 18. Bidding will continue through the closing reception for the exhibition on Saturday, February 18, 5-8 p.m. burlingtoncityarts.org, biddingforgood.com

Click here to listen to a PBS interview with Paul Taylor in which he discusses his love of dance, his craft and his company. Text from the interview is below.

Paul Taylor Dance Company performs on the MainStage this Friday at 8 pm.

JEFFREY BROWN: In 1962, Paul Taylor choreographed and danced in “Aureole” to music by Handel. More than 40 years later, the Paul Taylor Dance Company continues to perform this signature piece around the world, here at Washington’s Kennedy Center recently.

PAUL TAYLOR, Dance Choreographer: And, again, look like you’re falling.

JEFFREY BROWN: Taylor himself, now 76 and long recognized as one of the great masters of modern dance, continues to create new works.

PAUL TAYLOR: Everybody has been stomping on that tape. Don’t…

JEFFREY BROWN: But while the world thinks of Paul Taylor as a great dancer and choreographer, he thinks of himself as, first and foremost, a watcher.

PAUL TAYLOR: Watching people has always been something that I’ve done, even as a kid. And, you know, I changed schools a lot, and I knew almost immediately who was going to be the class bully, who to watch out for. And you can tell sometimes by the way they move. And walking is the most revealing. A walk is like a fingerprint. No two people walk the same.

 

The earlier years

JEFFREY BROWN: In fact, the arts played little or no role in Taylor’s early life, part of it spent on a farm in Maryland. He was an athlete first, a swimmer at Syracuse University, and only discovered dance in his early 20s.

Where did it all come from?

PAUL TAYLOR: Oh, you got me.

JEFFREY BROWN: You really don’t know? I mean…

PAUL TAYLOR: Well, I fell in love with the idea of dance. It just hit me all of a sudden, and the idea of being a dancer was like the idea of being a flame, you know? And I love to move.

JEFFREY BROWN: Taylor made his name first as a virtuoso performer in the ’50s, with the Martha Graham Dance Company and with his own small group, which he first assembled in 1954.

Did you ever feel afraid onstage?

PAUL TAYLOR: Not onstage. Before the curtain opened, I was terrified. I suffered from stage fright. Not all performers do, but I did, always. I never got over it.

But the moment the curtain lifted, I was fine. I forgot anybody was there, and I only had to — I didn’t even have to think about my steps. You know, muscles have a memory, and they took over.

JEFFREY BROWN: Taylor had been making his own dances from early on, often using movements he saw in everyday life.

He was known, too, for his experimental works. In a 1957 minimalist dance called “Duet,” he stood next to a reclining woman for four minutes, neither one moving. A New York Times critic responded with a famous blank review.

Taylor has always been eager to reach dance and non-dance audiences alike with works of great variety. At the Kennedy Center, some of that range was on display: the classical movement in “Airs”; some delightful slapstick in a new dance, “Troilus and Cressida (Reduced)”; and dark political commentary in another new dance, “Banquet of Vultures,” which takes direct aim at the Iraq war.

But for all the artistry and ideas in a dance, Taylor insists that’s not the way it begins.

 

The creative process

PAUL TAYLOR: The way I work is I start with the practical restrictions, like, what’s the budget? How long is the rehearsal period? Which dancer needs something special? Which dancer maybe needs a rest?

JEFFREY BROWN: Very practical things. So it’s not about art at that point? It’s…

PAUL TAYLOR: No, all practical, and it’s problem solving. And then I form some loose plan for the dance, for the choreography, but not in detail. The real work happens in the studio, directly with the performers.

Get as tight and hunched over as you can. You can exaggerate…

JEFFREY BROWN: At the rehearsal for the Kennedy Center performances, Taylor was still refining moves.

What about your interaction with the dancers? When you’re making a dance, when you’re making these steps, how much freedom do they have?

PAUL TAYLOR: Well, there are times, but basically it’s a dictatorship.

JEFFREY BROWN: You’re clear, it’s a dictatorship?

PAUL TAYLOR: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Benign?

PAUL TAYLOR: I hope so. My crew, I don’t have to yell at very often. And it probably wouldn’t work if I did. I don’t have to give pep talks. The morale is high. And I sometimes think that a company’s morale is more important than the choreography.

 

Holding auditions

JEFFREY BROWN: You must have many, many dancers who would love to be in your company. When there is an opening, how do you pick?

PAUL TAYLOR: Open auditions. A lot of time I ask the kids to walk.

JEFFREY BROWN: Just to walk?

PAUL TAYLOR: You know, walk across there. And I know whether they’re a prima donna or have a lot of self-assurance, a healthy self-assurance, or maybe sort of chicken. And that’s how the auditions start. And then we get to steps and stuff. And then it gets harder and harder. And then people, you know, there are fewer and fewer left.

JEFFREY BROWN: Michael Trusnovec must have walked well enough to impress Taylor. He joined the company in 1998. These days, he dances the part Paul Taylor once danced in “Aureole.”

MICHAEL TRUSNOVEC, Dancer: As soon as I saw his work, I knew that that’s where I wanted to be, mostly because of the variety of the work. You know, the range is so huge, and it’s so rare to find a choreographer that does that in the work, that it leaves you without ever wanting to do anything else, totally satisfied because each dance is so different.

It’s amazing. So many people come to me and say, you know, “Are all the dances choreographed by Paul Taylor?” Yes, they are.

 

The role of dance

PAUL TAYLOR: That one, yes, that’s right. Even just the head does it.

JEFFREY BROWN: To date, Taylor has choreographed some 125 dances, and he and his staff have kept alive a company for more than 50 years.

PAUL TAYLOR: I think there will always be a need for dance, for dancers to dance and for watchers to watch. I believe that. I have to believe that, come on.

JEFFREY BROWN: What need does it fill?

PAUL TAYLOR: Well, you see, dance, I think, consciously or unconsciously symbolizes life. And it reflects the human condition, or it can. It tells us the joys, the sorrows, the fallacies, the idiocies, the brilliance, anything human.

JEFFREY BROWN: I don’t know how hard it is to do what you do, to make dances, but does there come a time when you see no longer doing it?

PAUL TAYLOR: No, I’m going to do it as long as they let me.

JEFFREY BROWN: As long as they let you?

PAUL TAYLOR: It’s all I know how to do, really, and it’s what I’m good at, as it turns out, and so I feel very fortunate.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Paul Taylor, nice to talk to you.

PAUL TAYLOR: Thank you, Jeff.

This interview originally appeared at www.pbs.org.

Here’s an inside look at what the Paul Taylor Dance Company will be performing on Friday, February 3 at 8 pm on the MainStage.