Sharon Cumberland

Men in Dance 2019 Adjudicated Choreographers Showcase

Velocity Founders Theater
October 4, 2019
See review in Seattle Gay News

Men In Dance is an organization that encourages men and boys to dance without fear of ridicule or discouragement. They’ve been so successful—and the prospects for men in professional dance have improved so much—that Against the Grain/Men in Dance actually removed the words “Against the Grain” from the name of their organization. As they say on their website: “When this organization was founded (in 1994) we sincerely felt that pursuing a career in dance was a major uphill battle for a man. That is not true in the same way today, though there are still far fewer men in the dance field as a whole.”

But whoa, back! Maybe MID spoke too soon. On August 26, 2019, Lara Spencer, a host on Good Morning America, openly ridiculed six-year-old Prince George of England for loving his ballet class. She encouraged the audience to laugh along as she reported that “Prince William says George absolutely loves ballet. I have news for you, Prince William—we’ll see how long that lasts!” The reaction from the dance world to this insult was swift and sharp—numerous messages from famous dancers and choreographers appeared on social media scolding her for being so backward, and reminding her of the great male dancers who defied attitudes like hers to have careers in dance. George Balanchine, Arthur Mitchell, Mark Morris, Alvin Ailey, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse, Justin Peck, Paul Taylor, Gregory Hines, Michael Bennett, Ulysses Dove, Tommy Tune—the list goes on and on. Even Gene Kelly’s widow chimed in, saying “Gene would be devastated to know that 61 years after his ground-breaking work, the issue of boys and men dancing is still the subject of ridicule—and on a national network.” Male dancers and their female supporters from all over the city gathered in front of Good Morning America’s studios in Times Square to protest Spencer’s ignorant comments by conducting a free dance class for boys and girls

Despite Spencer’s apologies and efforts to backtrack on her foolish and harmful comments, the pushback against this prejudice against men and boys dancing—and against all gendered categories of work—continues to grow. Speaking as a girl who was told in the 4^th grade that I couldn’t be an engineer because, in spite of high test scores in mechanical ability, I was a girl (this was in 1960), I despise the casual, withering attitudes that condemn children to gender stereotypes, and bully them if they don’t conform. Sorry, Lara Spencer—apologies may save your career, but you will be forever remembered as the troglodyte who made fun of a young boy for loving his dance class.

All the more reason to be grateful to Men In Dance (apparently still against the grain) for their brilliant encouragement of men and boys who want to enter the creative field of dance and choreography. For the third year in a row Men In Dance have offered young choreographers an opportunity to produce new dances and to hear experienced choreographers and dance professors evaluate their work in front of the audience. It’s a triple-win situation for everyone. The choreographers get to show their work, the dancers get to have a dances made on their bodies, and the audience gets to hear how professionals critique and encourage new dance makers.

I was only able to attend the first showcase, but the quality of dance was such that I wish I could have gone to them all. This year’s opening showcase consisted of five works by two women and three men, and was performed, of course, by an all-male-identifying troupe of excellent dancers. In the order of performance, here’s what happened at Velocity Founder’s Theater—a wonderfully intimate venue where dance lovers can see works “up close and personal”:

“This Is the Reactability of the Appetizer”
Choreographer: Beth Terwilliger
Dancers: Corbin Hall, Maeve Haselton, Robert Moore, Thomas Phelan
Music: Bryce Dessner + Kronos Quartet

Four dancers appear in white pants, red socks and bare chests except for black tape that encircles their breasts. One dancer with long hair stands upstage left and executes robot movements to the percussive, aggressive sounds of mechanical music, while two other dancers enter and to more lyrical music, perform a soft, elegant dance, followed by a man who dances to a cello solo and seems to humanize the robot in the background. The dance moves are highly contrasted between the mechanical and the humane, as is the narrative, which seems to be about being human in an atmosphere that militates against the full expression of higher life and feelings.

All of which seems to have little to do with the program notes, in which Terwilliger explains her dance as inspired by early motherhood, and her desire to support her children for “who they are and not who society expects them to be.” I wish the title of the dance helped us out a bit, but so what? It was a fascinating dance, full of interesting duets (a smaller person supporting a much larger partner on their shoulders), solos (one dancer jogging up and down while another performs an impressive string of pirouettes across the back of the stage), and a very exciting unison dance at the end, involving a wide range of ballet, modern, and karate moves. I thought the soundscape was very compelling.

“…But My Soul Drew Back”
Choreographer: Joel Hathaway
Dancers: Joel Hathaway, Chauncey Parsons
Music: Partita for Eight Singers: No. 3 Courante by Roomful of Teeth

Music: Partita for Eight Singers: No. 3 Courante by Roomful of Teeth

Hathaway is an experienced dancer and choreographer who originated this work for the men of the Milwaukee Ballet II—six dancers—and pared it down to two dancers for MID. I would have like to see the six-man group, because what we saw in Seattle was so perfectly calibrated for two men who moved through a wide range of emotional expressions that it’s hard to imagine it for a larger corps. (There is a video on FB but it wouldn’t open for me). The music was closely harmonized and hymn-like as the pair danced in mirror images. Was it one person studying himself, or a pair studying each other? The dancing was very impressive, varied, and skilled as the two personas moved through images of joy, anguish, rejection, and reconciliation. The soundscape turns harsh at the end, though, as one figure mimes the theft of the heart (or soul) of the other—an ambiguous and unexpected note that left this viewer curious. I guess it was the soul drawing back—but the one thing you don’t want to do with an abstract form like dance is to impose a too literal story on it. The left brain is always seeking a narrative, but the right brain is OK with images—and this dance ended on a very powerful image.

“he kept him”
Choreographer: Elise Meiners Schwicht
Dancers: Elijah Kirk, Robert Moore, Jordan Rohrs, Ben Swenson, Alex Ung
Music: Max Eastley, Steve Beresford, Paul Burwell, John Tavener, David Toop

This dance had the largest group of dancers to convey its meaning, inspired, as Schwicht wrote in her program notes, by the concept expressed in Deuteronomy 32 (“he kept him as the apple of his eye”) of being a reflection in the eye of the beloved, or the “little man of the eye”. How this plays out in the dance—which was more like pantomime—was varied and complex, with men crawling scratching, running in place, gesturing in large ambiguous motions, and finally coming together in a unison dance in which they link elbows and flow together like a bird’s wing or ripple of water. That was my favorite part and I wish it had lasted longer. This was a dance that any healthy person (who can count) could do—my note to myself is that there wasn’t much dance in it, even though Schwicht had the largest dance forces. Her ending sequence was so beautiful that I hope in the future she will use more of that aspect of her choreographic gift, to have dancers actually dance together.

“BOYDMGD”
Choreographer: Nashon Mardon
Dance/performance Artist, Dustin Durham
Composer/Producer: Max Rico

This dance was the hit of the evening because it contained a real show-stopper of a number. Two handsome fellows in stripped shorts and cut-off tee shirts have a vamping competition that takes various forms through out the sequences—bobbing up and down, shoving each other around, turning on each other, ignoring each other. But when they get together and put on a show—with sassy posing, splits, lifts, and gymnastics—the audience went wild, just as we were meant to do. Mardon has something interesting to say about cooperation, and he says it very clearly. The final sequence of this delightful dance has the two men moving side-by-side in unison—not really together, but in a unity— as if to demonstrate that what happens together happens to the group, whereas what happens solo just happens to me. It seems obvious, but this dance made me consider the distinction in a way I hadn’t considered before—or at least didn’t seem as relevant as it does now in our current political universe. You don’t have to like each other to get along. You can cooperate. Mardon should take this dance to the other Washington and do it for Congress.

“The Unnatural Pattern”
Choreographer: Daniel Ojeda
Dancers: Evan Stevens, Antonio CarnelEthan Schweitzer-Gaslin,
Music: Louis Cole, Johnny Greenwood, Ken Griffin

The final dance of the evening was by Daniel Ojeda, a very experienced choreographer who has worked with Ballet Idaho extensively, among other companies. He explains in the program notes that an unnatural pattern in mathematics is a statistical distribution that indicates “the presence of outside disturbances affecting a process.” What this looks like in dance is men who are blinded by light, whose tee shirts are pulled over their heads, who are regimented like machines, and whose relationships are uprooted by the third person—the unnatural pattern. Though this fragmented description makes it sound like a fragmented dance, it wasn’t. It was a real dance rather than a pantomime—the dancers were very skilled, the dance vocabulary was complex, the movement was powerful. Ojeda is clearly a choreographer to watch, and I’m very glad he had this opportunity to make a dance in Seattle.

All together, the first evening of the 2019 Adjudicated Choreographers Showcase was a huge success, as the full house audience demonstrated with their cheers of approval. I stayed for the adjudications, and was fascinated to hear the technical comments of the professional dance teachers who offered advice. Their focus was on the micro level (distance between dancers that describe the spaces; duration of poses and clarity of gestures; relationship of music to narrative, etc.) My focus is on the macro level—why are there so many dances to soundscapes and so few dances to composed music (there were none in this showcase); why is there so much gestural pantomime and less use of dancers to form larger patterns; why so much narrative and so little lyric dancing? These seem to be generational questions—I know I’m an older viewer coming from more traditional dance scenes. Even my favorite choreographers—Balanchine, Mark Morris, Crystal Pite—must seem older to these young choreographers.

What a privilege to see young dance-makers emerge, and what a service to art Men in Dance provides by encouraging men and boys to follow their bliss and engage in dancing. Boo on Lara Spencer and all her ilk whose inclination is to make fun of people who defy gender stereotypes in order to do what their spirits tell them. Yay for Prince William who told some young street dancers that “If it’s something you love, do what you love—don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.” Those are wise words for all young people, and especially for boys who want to dance (and girls who want to be engineers).

Womxn’s March on Seattle 2017

By Sharon Cumberland

Womxn’s March on Seattle

Judkins Park, Central District to Seattle Center

January 21, 2017

Essay by Sharon Cumberland

See essay on Seattle Gay News

Sharon Cumberland at the Womxn March on Seattle 2017

There are at least 130,000 women and men who will tell the story of their Womxn’s March on Seattle this past Saturday, and I’d love to hear them all. Here’s mine:

I’m a woman in her 60s whose pussy (and boobs and butt) have been grabbed more times than I want to recall, whose unwilling body has been pinned on sofas, in the backseats of cars, and at parties on coat piles in back bedrooms, whose mouth has been invaded by alien tongues, and whose right to say NO has been repeatedly disregarded by people with bigger muscles. You might think that at my age these indignities would have subsided, but I was felt up a couple of Sundays ago in the narthex of my church by a homeless man who asked for the hug of peace.

So I was fully prepared to wear a pink Pussy hat and “grab back” on Saturday. I spent all week thinking of slogans to write on my sign—and I saw some great ones in Judkins Park: “Real Men Don’t Grab” “You Can’t Grab Our Rights” “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights” “You Can’t Comb Over Sexism” “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance” “I [heart] My Cuntry” “When Women Rise the Nation Rises”.

But it occurred to me that I already have a hat worth wearing to an anti-abuser and protest rally—my mortarboard. We all have one of those, especially since they give them out for graduations from kindergarten to college—a flat or floppy hat with a tassel that sends a message: “I earned this by achieving a level of learning that makes me smarter than I was before.” Becoming educated is one of the great freedoms this country offers its citizens—nothing to be scorned in a world where women are routinely barred from going to school, either because of their sex or their economic limitations, and therefore confined to home or to low-level jobs.

Yet the Republicans have scorned educated people for decades, calling them eggheads or elites, and making them out to be living in ivory towers and out of touch with the world. Many Republicans are committed to ignorance: they deny science, climate change, racism, and the danger of guns in our culture. Trump and his minions deny all evidence that Muslim Americans are solid citizens, or that immigrants of all colors bring the same benefits to America as our Irish and English and European ancestors.

I think Trump made it into the White House because our education system failed the voters. All through the election campaign Trump made absurd assertions without offering evidence that anything he said was true. Gullible voters believed him because they didn’t know enough to say “Prove it!” Of course, many didn’t care—they voted with their emotions instead of their brains. So I decided to march in my academic robes, to stand up for my students and colleagues at Seattle University and to make a pitch for universal education and educators everywhere. On one side of my sign I wrote: “Knowledge is Power—Not Elitism” and on the other I wrote “Demand Evidence”.

My mortarboard is the floppy variety, from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where I earned a Ph.D. in English. I’ve got a nifty medieval-style gown that goes with it, with velvet trim and poufy sleeves, and a gold-lined hood that goes over my shoulders and hangs down the back. Some of my colleagues warned me that it was going to rain and I’d be dragging my lovely gown in the mud. But I thought, so what? I DON’T live in an ivory tower! Let my robes get some honorable mud on them!

So on Saturday—which turned out to be dry and sunny, against all predictions— my nephew, Paul, dropped me and my niece, Laura, and an SU colleague, Eli, as close to the action as he could. All along the way we saw streetcars trundling by, packed to the windows with people and signs. The bus stops were crowded with marchers ready to go, and the sidewalks clogged with patient, Pussy-hatted people headed for the park. Not since the Seahawks’ Super Bowl parade have I seen such a river of people filling the streets—and while this crowd seemed optimistic and excited, it had an edge to it—a sense of determination that bucked me up and gave me courage.

We piled out of the car at 10:15 and made our way into the park, but we didn’t make it out again until 12:30 because the crowds were so vast that it took an extra hour just to trickle over to Jackson and then down to 4^th Avenue. We could hear the speeches but couldn’t see the podium past the ocean of signs and Pussy hats of every color, variety, and ingenious construction. The only speech I remember is the Muslim woman’s, who spoke movingly about the hate crimes being committed against mosques and girls in hijabs here in Seattle. (What? Here? I was ashamed.) She encouraged everyone to visit mosques and make an effort to get to know Muslims in the area. Education, I thought—we need to educate ourselves.

Being dressed in an outrageously fabulous outfit meant that lots of folks came up to me and talked to me. I met half the English Department from British Columbia University in Vancouver; a woman whose lawyer sister was a Republican but who so honored evidence that she thought my “Demand Evidence” sign would get her to be a Democrat; teachers of every level, K through college, carrying signs like “Nothing is More Dangerous Than Ignorance” and “Make America Think Again.” I ran into SU’s Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences in a pink Pussy hat, and the chair of my department with her wife and their wonderful daughter in matching home-made Pussy hats. I found one of my own students, Molly, at a church that had generously opened it’s facilities for marchers. The church carillon played folk songs, and as we marched along singing “Oh, Susanna” a little girl cried out “That’s my name!”

As we stood at the top of South Jackson, waiting to move down the hill, a distant roar seemed to build somewhere below and move toward us. At first we couldn’t figure out what it was, but as it approached us we realized it was a massive sound wave of marchers yelling, passing the shout along the line. When it reached us we started yelling, too—nothing coherent, just cathartic hollering at the top of our lungs. Then many arms suddenly pointed upwards—there had been helicopters hovering all day—but instead what we saw was a pair of eagles circling over head. Round and round they soared as thousands called up to them in gratitude—a blessing, from any standpoint.

As the walk progressed, I ran into friends from all areas of my life—school, church, the poetry world, the LGBT community. I even ran into Tom Douglas, who was handing out water and tea in front of the Dahlia Lounge. I was so weary by that time that I didn’t recognize him. I just thought it was cool to get some water from a guy in a Pussy hat who looked like Santa Clause. When people called out “Thanks, Tom!” he called back, “This is the home team!”

One of my favorite encounters was with a guy named Otts who was posing with a gold Whiting and Davis evening bag and a sign that said “Purse First.” What does that mean? I asked, thinking it was cute but a little off message. Boy, was I wrong. He flipped his sign over and showed me a black and white photo taken at a pro-Nazi rally in Germany, of an elderly Holocaust survivor rushing up to a skinhead and bashing him with her purse—a fearless woman using the best weapon at hand to fight a dangerous, vicious man. What could be more on message?

Then I saw two beautiful boys arm-in-arm with a sign that said “Pro-Choice IS Pro-life!” and then two beautiful girls sitting arm-in-arm on top of newspaper dispensers with a sign that said “Stronger Together.” It still makes my heart ache to see shades of Hillary, but she is the President-elected-by-the-people and my hope and prayer is that she will somehow help us keep rallying and fighting the dangers ahead. Several of the college professors I met said “I wish I had worn my regalia!” Wear it next time, I said, because I know there will be a next time.

My niece started to count how many people asked me to pose for a picture and show both sides of my sign, but she gave up at around 30, and that was just the first hour before we left the park. By the time we made it to Seattle Center, after five hours of marching, I had been stopped for photos at least 100 times. Some fellow marchers were New Yorkers who recognized the CUNY insignia on my gown and reminisced with me about NYC. Others were taking photos of interestingly dressed people or the wonderful variety of placards. But most encounters were like the one I had at the end of the march when we were headed home, wearily wondering where to sit down and get food and drink. A woman came running after me calling “There she is! There she is!” She said she saw me get out of the car on 23^rd and Charles St. six hours earlier and had been looking for me ever since. Why? I asked. But she didn’t say, just snapped away saying “thank you, thank you”. But by then I knew why—she wasn’t looking for me, of course, but for what I symbolized.

I was a walking symbol of higher education, of education in general, of being smart, of being female and smart, and of being proud to have good brain in my head. All along the route people called out “Thanks, Professor!” and “Beautiful!” and “Right On!” After all the Hillary-bashing and fear-mongering against smart women in the election, it was a relief for all of us to say “I’m educated, I’m smart, and I’m proud!” Obama was one of the smartest presidents we’ve ever had, and Hillary would have matched his smarts as well as his awareness of the issues that prevent women, children and immigrants the essential educational opportunities they need to become solid citizens. Now that we’re cursed with one of the least civilized, least well-read, and just plain stupidest men ever to be in the White House, we need to fight against the lie that educated people are unrealistic, pointy-headed dreamers. We are the brains of this operation and our country needs us more than ever before.

I hope the next time we march will be as peaceful as Seattle Womxn’s wonderful, serious, massive march was on Saturday. One sign I saw said “1968 is calling—don’t answer.” The young people around me didn’t know what it meant, but we oldsters, who marched against the Vietnam war, know very well what it means: Don’t succumb to violence. How well I remember the tear gas, the Billy clubs, and the electric fear of peace marching in those days—not to mention the sexist slogan “Chicks Up Front!” In case you’re too young to know what that means, threats of violence against marchers were so prevalent that the girls were lined up in front of the march in hopes that the police and pro-war counter-protesters would hesitate to beat up girls. Our corporate feminist consciousness was not yet fully raised—we still let ourselves be used as human shields. It was some sell job about women having nurturing natures and protecting their men. The flip side of that coin is how much we like having our pussies grabbed. Don’t worry, 1968—we’re not answering. We’ve got our Pussy hats on and our mortarboards on. 2017 is calling—and Trump had better watch out.

Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico

By Sharon Cumberland

Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico

Cirque du Soleil

Marymoor Park

March 31 and April 4, 2017

Review by Sharon Cumberland

See review on Seattle Gay News

Cirque du Soleil is justly famous for its spectacular, high-flying performers, its elaborate narratives, and its fabulous costumes, all seamlessly knitted together into two astonishing hours. I had only been once before—to last year’s “Kurios”— which was something of a steam-punky hodge-podge (what else can you expect from a cabinet of curiosities?) but memorable, nevertheless.

Yet I confess to feeling some skepticism about this year’s Mexican theme. I went on a social justice trip to Cuernavaca and Mexico City last year and came away with a new understanding of Mexican politics, corruption, drug cartels, and exploitation of the poor. How could Cirque du Soleil present anything cheerful about a nation in such dire straights? It would either recreate the tourist’s bubble of sunny indifference to Mexico’s dangers, or it would be another dark, scary world populated with acrobatic bad guys. I’m glad to report that it was neither, though on opening night there was an accident that brought the audience to a sudden awareness of the physical dangers involved in the Cirque du Soleil brand of heart-stopping gymnastics.

“Luzia”—“light” in English—has the double entendre of being bright and funny at the same time. Its light-hearted theme was less about Mexico than about what Mexico would be like in Paradise, where everyone loves and respects each other and everyone is young, strong, and good-looking. Mexico’s traditional arts—the bright turquoise, red, purple and white of the fabrics, the flower and bird motifs, the banderollas of cut-out paper, the music that makes you want to dance in the aisles—all of it offered up a guilt-free vision, a “waking dream” of Mexico as a place of beauty and culture. Who wouldn’t want to go that Mexico?

The show cleverly emphasized the inaccessibility of dream-Mexico by parachuting its narrator, a silent-but very-expressive clown, into its garden of birds and marigolds (watered by adorable little robots). The clown, played by the aptly-named Eric Fool Koller, is our surrogate, stumbling his way through one sweet or dangerous delight after another. And what delights they are! In addition to the musical transitions with gorgeous singing and dancing, there are a dozen acts that take your breath away, each in a different genre of grace, strength or daring.

The hallmark of Cirque performances is that each scene of daring-do is contextualized with a group of other performers strolling, dancing, wearing animal costumes, or otherwise enriching the environment so that you hardly know where to look. The huge revolving stage has what must be the world’s largest treadmill, supporting an array of hoop-jumping, air-tumbling acrobats and parading puppets. I was especially entranced by the “Running Woman”—a young lady dressed in a butterfly dress whose fabulous wings are manipulated on rods by other actors as she races in place on the treadmill. While this is happening, a silver stallion—a very realistic life-sized puppet inhabited by three puppeteers—begins galloping along with her to thrilling Mexican percussion and trumpets. If you could ever be made to believe in a dream, this would be the moment.

Another scene that captured my heart was a trapeze act in which a single orange-clad woman flyer described fantastic hieroglyphs in the air as two other young women in airy dresses revolved around the stage below in life-sized hula-hoops (called “cyr-wheels”—who knew?). A massive backdrop reminiscent of the Aztec calendar stone changed colors and projections throughout—for this scene it was covered with ants, and the three women had ants printed on their beautiful costumes. A theme of birds, insects and animals continued throughout the show, a strategy that keeps you situated in the sunny desert of dream-Mexico, along with a trio of life-sized saguaro cacti—one with a hilariously placed, upward-bending arm at crotch level—who remind you that we’re not in Seattle anymore.

There are lots of good-natured, jolly performances, like that of Ugo, the body-builder lifeguard who, surrounded by bathing beauties in sunglasses and mirrored bathing suits, stands on higher and higher swaying rods performing impossible feats of strength and balance, like a gymnast on rings but without the rings. Two soccer-ball Einsteins, Laura and Abou, play the fanciest game of keepie-uppie you can imagine, a juggler flings multiple silver bowling pins into the air to live marimba and tuba music, and a handsome fellow with long locks climbs, twirls, and falls through the air on straps while flinging his long hair into the water and creating designs in the air with water drops.

“Water?” you say—“what water?” Water, in this dream-desert, is the most spectacular part of the whole evening. At strategic moments a water wall falls from the two-story top of the tent to add drama and surprise to the show—to tease the clown, to drench performers who incorporate sparkling water into their arts, and to create a pallet of water-pictures so surprising and beautiful that it got me all choked up, as did many other moments in this beautiful, thrilling show.

I was lucky enough to go to “Luzia” twice, once as a reviewer for SGN on opening night (free sodas! free popcorn! free cactus-shaped cookies!) and once again on a family trip with a very generous niece and nephew. I’m glad, not only to have seen the show twice—it merits multiple viewings for those who can afford it—but because I got to see the show a second time without the real-world scary part. As widely reported in other media, on opening night there was a terrifying moment that caused the audience of more than 1,600 to sit in stunned and anxious silence. The grand finale of “Luzia” features the Russian swings, apparatus consisting of two gigantic curved platforms on metal frames, each of which is pumped by a strong man standing on the back of the swing so that lighter-weight acrobats can stand on the front and leap from one platform to another, turning multiple somersaults and twirls in the air as the big swings fling them toward the top of the tent. Not only do the guys pumping have to get the timing exactly right so that the jumpers have a platform to land on, but the jumpers have to time their air-born twirls so that they unfold and land on the opposite platform as it rises to meet them. It’s a hair-raising act that has your mouth gaping, your hands wringing, and your heart thumping—but in a good way.

Good, that is, until something bad happens, which happened on opening night. A young lady in the troupe was flung high into the air, performed a twirl, but then lost her footing on a backward-facing landing and fell flat on the platform, which was rising at such a rate that it whacked the entire back of her body. I was sitting three rows away as this happened and heard the sickening sound of the fall. Her fellow performers stopped the swing almost instantly, though the music continued on, weirdly, as the message that an accident had happened seeped through the system to the sound engineers. The injured girl lay flat on the platform, but her eyes were blinking and her chest was heaving. A manager, then a dozen medics, materialized as if by magic. It took fifteen minutes to immobilize the performer with inflatable stabilizers, to move her to a stretcher and to carry her out. During that time I’m sure some tears were shed and some prayers were sent up from the audience. As the performer was carried out to applause, there was a palpable concern that we had all witnessed a disaster. The show went on, of course, to the big Fiesta finale. I was impressed by the bravery of the cast, who were determined to smile and be cheerful so that the audience would not leave dream-Mexico in sorrow.

So fast-forward to April 4^th, when I got to see the show a second time. Imagine my delight, at the grand finale, when I saw this same young lady on the Russian swings again, flying through the air, turning summersaults, and landing backward on the platform as lightly as a bird. What I hadn’t realized was how much of the show had been cut short on opening night—a good ten minutes of additional aerial acrobatics performed by the men in the troupe, who were performing such feats of tumbling in the air and flying high that they were snapping their suspenders (literally) with pride instead of struggling to hold up their heads and hold back their tears as they did at the finale on opening night.

Though several reviewers who witnessed the accident on opening night reflected on the morality of audiences demanding ever more dangerous acts to satisfy their thirst for danger, I doubt that this is the motivation for these performers. I would have been as thrilled to see the girl jump forwards instead of backwards, or the men to do one summersault instead of three. What do I know about their standards? I think these people are real competitors, recruited from the ranks of elite and Olympic gymnasts. They will always want to go bigger, higher, more dramatic, more dangerous, no matter what the audience thinks. They know the risks and they know how to perform safely. Accidents happen to all of us. It’s as likely (even more likely) that I could get killed in an accident going home from Cirque du Soleil as that a acrobat could get killed doing their highly perfected performance. So it was a rare, sad moment on opening night that ended happily, and hopefully, for the rest of the run, which continues through May 21^st.

I highly recommend this “waking dream of Mexico” because it honors all that is beautiful, musical, and traditional about a wonderful country whose people deserve better than they’re getting. It’s an image of hopefulness that we might all bear in mind, like a light—a “Luzia”—at the end of the tunnel.

Samson, an oratorio

By Sharon Cumberland

Pacific MusicWorks

Samson, an oratorio by George Frederick Handel

Libretto by Newburgh Hamilton, based on John Milton’s Samson Agonistes

First Baptist Church, Seattle

May 4, 2019

Review by Sharon Cumberland

We’re living in difficult times. Tweets and insults triumph over the kind of thought that matches the complexity of our problems. A disturbing number of leaders in Washington are sly, vicious, or both. Beloved institutions meant to protect the people are undermined by those meant to “support and defend” the Constitution. Collectively we are forced to commit crimes that appall us: we force Mexican children from their parents and incarcerate them in soulless desert buildings; we open floodgates of opportunity to foreign governments who mean us harm; we dismantle laws forged over time to defend our fragile earth and beloved public spaces. We allow the proliferation of guns and tolerate school shootings. Education, medical care, and opportunity are increasingly restricted to a wealthy white minority. And that’s the short summary—the pages of this newspaper have documented at length the threats and violence to our readership, including women, LGBTQ communities, and people of color.

Into this desperate moment steps none other than John Milton (1608-1674) the great English poet who used his brilliant gifts to defend human freedom and to fight a form of government—inherited monarchy—that he believed to be as corrupt as the one we are struggling with now. He didn’t carry placards or chain himself to the fence of Buckingham Palace. He wrote poems in an age when poetry was the Internet of its day. He also wrote polemics for freedom of the press, divorce, and free expression when the King and then Cromwell’s parliament attempted to control liberal forces among the populace.

Now, as in Milton’s time, “the pen is mightier than the sword” and valiant writers—journalists, poets, lyricists, novelists, dramatists, film writers and performers of all kinds—are raising their voices to protest the erosion of civility and justice in this dangerous era. But in addition to new works, this is the right time for us to turn to masters of the past who remind us how to fight the good fight for human rights. The human race has been here before—we know how to combat powers that would throw us backward into darker times. PacificMusicWorks, by bringing to the stage G.F. Handel’s oratorio Samson— based on Milton’s great poem Samson Agonistes—has used its brilliant musical forces to present a work that, in addition to being a sublime musical experience, speaks directly to our condition.

It is the biblical story of the Israelite warrior Samson, blinded and enslaved by his enemies, the Philistines, because he foolishly, destructively, revealed to the spy Delilah that the secret of his dominating power was his hair—which she then cut. As Samson struggles with his own stupidity and loss of vision—literally blinded, but also duped, discouraged, and helpless—a chorus of family, friends, and enemies come to condole or ridicule Samson’s reduced condition. As he exchanges arguments with these various voices, we see Samson reevaluate his position and slowly regain hope and power. He doesn’t reveal his regained strength when led to the temple where the pagan god Dagon is being celebrated, and so pulls the whole temple down on the heads of the Philistines, sacrificing himself in the process. He conquers despair, fear, and blindness so that he can save his people.

What seems so timely about this story, and its lively, compelling presentation in Handel’s oratorio, is how Samson moves from paralyzing anguish to enlightened agency. In an Act I aria, “Total eclipse!” Samson bemoans his loss of “glorious light” and asks (in the poem—in the oratorio the friend Micah is given the question) why light is confined to the “tender eyes,” a site so vulnerable that it would have made more sense if the Creator had enabled the perception of light “through all parts diffus’d, that we might look at will through every pore.” Since light is the extended metaphor for wisdom, the loss of it is a double tragedy. In a careless, boastful moment Samson screwed himself and got his fellow Israelites into a devastating mess, giving primacy to the pleasure-loving worshipers of Dagon. The question of the poem and the oratorio is “How do you get yourself and your people out of a mess so great it seems almost impossible to overcome? How do you forgive yourself and move forward?” Good question for 2020.

Samson, at first, blames God—not an unusual move when looking for relief. “Why does the God of Israel sleep?” he asks. “Arise with dreadful sound, and clouds encompassed round!” I can relate to this—I’ve fantasized about the Second Coming. Wouldn’t Trump and his gang of thieves be gob-smacked if the Sistine Chapel came to life and threw them all into the lower depths? “In whirlwinds them pursue,” Samson sings, “The tempest of Thy wrath now raise,/Full fraught with vengeance due, /Till shame and trouble all thy foes shall seize!” The problem with this solution is that Samson thinks God’s action is separate from his own. It’s someone else’s job to set things straight—not mine. Samson feels so guilty he thinks his only recourse is to die, “…to expiate my crime, why should I live?”

Death, of course, is not the solution. The narrative turns in Act II, when Samson is distracted from his doomsday thoughts by Delilah, who comes to seduce Samson all over again—to offer to take care of him in his distress since “Life is not lost, though lost your sight/Let other senses taste delight.” But Samson doesn’t fall for her “warbling charms” and gets so angry that he sends her away and offers to fight his next visitor, the tormenting giant Harapha. Samson feels that his strength is still in his body, “returning with my hair.” By rejecting the false love of Delilah and threatening the giant who mocks him, Samson recognizes that strength is a renewable commodity, like hair. He starts to see himself as the agent of change—still a warrior who can defend his people.

Milton’s poem, like Handel’s oratorio, observes the Aristotelian unities of time (action within 24 hours), place (one location), and action (one dramatic problem). Thus in Act III, when Samson exacts revenge on the Philistines by pulling down the temple, we hear chaos in the orchestra as messengers run in to describe what happened. By today’s narrative standards Milton left the exciting part out—but the beauty of the unities is that they avoid the showy drama for a laser-like focus on the real topic: how do you turn things around, redeem a terrible mistake, overcome wickedness and return the world to forward movement? No sooner is Samson’s body brought back in a funeral cortege, and tributes paid—“Samson like Samson fell/Both life and death heroic”—than the most famous aria of the work is sung by the soprano Israelite Woman, “Let the bright seraphim.” It calls upon the angels to “Let their celestial concerts all unite/Ever to sound his praise in endless blaze of light.” Blind no more, Samson has enlightened his world by taking his strength back and recovering light for his people.

PacificMusic Works’ renowned director, Stephen Stubbs, has once again marshaled a talented cast of singers, bringing back the gifted tenor Aaron Sheehan— who sang a memorable Orphée for PMW in 2015—to sing the demanding role of Samson. It’s such a baroque thing to have the brawny hero a tenor instead of a hearty baritone or bass—but in the 18^th century the heroic voices of opera were the high voices. Sheehan stood up to the demands of the role with stamina and verve. It is usually sung by a heroic tenor—I first saw this work performed by Jon Vickers at the Met in 1986—so it’s surprising that Sheehan can sing a high tenor role like Gluck’s Orphée, and yet bring the necessary power to the deeper, heavier tones of Samson. Bravo!

Equal bravos go to the expressive characters surrounding Samson, especially the counter-tenor Reginald L. Mobley whose flawless contralto never fails to amaze. Most male altos show some sign of a passagio, or have the piping tones of a choirboy, but Mobley has a round, powerfully smooth voice all up and down the range. Jonathan Woody’s Harapha was wonderfully dramatic, and Tess Altiveros was suitably cooing and seductive as Delilah, getting the only laugh of the evening when she stomped off stage with her nose in the air when Samson refused to fall for her seductions. The wonderful chorus—nineteen singers under the direction of Chorus Master Dr. Geoffrey Boers—navigated the lively Jehovah/Great Dagon choral fugue in a way that demonstrated the doubleness of Philistines vs Israelites with real excitement. They were terrific throughout.

As ever, the PacificMusicWorks Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Stubbs with concertmaster Tekla Cunningham, challenges the capacity of language to express its perfection and visual drama. It’s hard to believe anyone in the Seattle area can put down their money—the equivalent of six lattes—and see this brilliant orchestra embroider sound with a delicacy and excitement that rivals the finest orchestras in the world. Watching the orchestra create Handel’s full range of emotions, seeing the bows rise and fall, hearing the twice-looped, keyless trumpets blare out, and the harpsichord silver the air, the baroque guitar thrum—there’s nothing like it. I know I keep saying this, but you have to see baroque music to understand how wonderful it is.

I have just one little complaint. The librettist of this 1743 re-telling of Milton’s 1671 poem, Newburgh Hamilton, is given sole credit for the words, though his real gift was selecting key passages from Milton and distributing them into several voices. A comparison of the libretto to the poem shows how well this job was done, so I don’t begrudge Hamilton his credit—but the genius here is Milton, whose name should surely have been in the credits.

Milton is thought by many (myself included) to be the greatest poet in the English language—surely equal with Shakespeare but never yet exceeded. He and the Bard are equals in their mastery of the language—its music and rhythms, Shakespeare is more wide-ranging in his interests. But Milton—who thought of himself as a poet-priest because, in his blindness, he believed the Holy Spirit dictated his poems to him in his sleep—conveys a sense of the world beyond the world, a vast and fundamentally benign universe available to those who overcome despair and take agency in creation. That’s why this oratorio is a wonderful message to Americans in this dark political moment of aggressive cruelty and selfishness in high places. We can remain blind, depressed, despairing, waiting for some god or other force to do something, or we can notice the power renewing itself in us and take agency.

The message of Samson is hope—not just sacrificial hope, but analytical hope in the face of a wickedness that we somehow, through our own blindness, brought down on ourselves. (I know…I didn’t vote for him either…but somehow we didn’t work hard enough to prevent this disaster, and now we have to pull ourselves together and fix it). Each of us has a gift that can be used in defense of human rights and dignity. PacificMusicWorks has gifts in such abundance that you leave the concert knowing that light will always conquer darkness.

Roman Holiday: Young Handel’s Italian Adventures

By Sharon Cumberland

Pacific MusicWorks

Roman Holiday: Young Handel’s Italian Adventures

St. Stephens Episcopal Church

May 12, 2018

Review by Sharon Cumberland

See review in Seattle Gay News

An evening with Stephen Stubbs and the terrific performers of Pacific MusicWorks always gives you more than you could have expected or hoped for. This imaginative program—“Roman Holiday: Young Handel’s Italian Adventures”—not only gave the audience a wonderful evening of music, but it educated the listener in Handel’s early influences, his germinating ideas, the influence of the Roman Arcadian Academy on the development of baroque opera and oratorio, and, as always, a visual education on how baroque music looks as well as sounds. On this occasion, in addition to the always-fascinating sight of great performers playing their instruments, soprano Amanda Forsythe enacted Handel’s cantata heroines in all their tragic beauty.

It was a great way to spend mothers Mother’s Day, watching a small group of six virtuosi—two violins, a baroque harp, a baroque cello, a harpsichord and Conductor Stubb’s baroque guitar and lute—create a world of intense drama using George Frederick Handel’s earliest vocal works. The effects were thrilling to say the least. Ms. Forsythe sang four demanding cantatas based on ancient narratives of Roman queens and pastoral nymphs: Agrippina, condemned to death by her own son, Nero; a nameless pastoral figure mourning the departure of Clori, a lovely nymph; and two cantatas of a jilted lovers: Clori (perhaps the same character as in the earlier episode) who is jilted by her lover Fileno, and the lament of the forsaken Armida, who mourns the loss of her retreating warrior even as his footsteps fade in the background. Ms. Forsythe portrayed each of these voices with individualized characterizations, moving through despair, rage, confusion, mourning, and resignation with precise and touching fidelity to the dramatic narrative as well as to the music.

Ms. Forsythe was also very much in tune with the baroque aesthetic that calls on the singer to have a pleasing facial expression even while singing about anger or despair. According to this aesthetic, the mouth shouldn’t be opened too widely or the features distorted beyond the enactment of emotion. Baroque singing, with all its trills and melismas, is sometimes weird to watch if the singer has to contort his or her face to achieve the demands of this very complex music, so I was impressed that Ms. Forsythe maintained a countenance that was always composed, even during the longest and most challenging passages. And, it must be said, Ms. Forsythe is a beautiful woman who wore gorgeous gowns that perfectly evoked the dramatic moments she embodied. In the first half of the program she wore a kind of marbled silk that appeared at once ancient and modern, and in the second half of the program she wore a cascading chiffon gown that made her sparkling bodice appear as though she were emerging from the ocean. (I think her designer needs a program credit).

Each half of the program also featured a sonata—the first by Corelli, who was one of young Handel’s greatest influences, and the second by Handel in his playful Roman stage, showing how his early work was influenced by the masters, and how his own masterworks were anticipated by his youthful products. It’s a joy to watch Conductor Stubbs and his players—including the incomparable pair of violinists Tekla Cunningham and Ingrid Matthews—as they entwine, chase, and unfold their musical voices in the beautifully structured world of Handel and Corelli. It’s like watching choreography as one player after another constructs the waves of form that build up like filigree and then undo themselves like waves crashing on a beach. They even sway back and forth like sea creatures in waves of music.

It looks like so much fun—and gives a strong sense of people living happy and exciting lives, both the composers and the players, from the eighteenth century to the present. Pacific MusicWorks’ basso continuo—Henry Lebedinsky’s harpsichord, Elisabeth Reed’s cello, and Conductor Stubb’s lute and guitar—provided the solid foundation and varied texture of support that makes baroque music so interesting. You can go to a Beethoven or Brahms concert and hear different interpretations of musical text, but you’ll always hear the same text. Baroque music allows for so much improvisation and variation that a musical piece—no matter how familiar—is never the same text twice. Baroque ensembles are known for how well they manage this wide-open world of choices, and Pacific MusicWorks is justly famous for how inventively musical and how faithfully true to the eighteenth-century spirit they present their musical inventions. Stephen Stubbs is a famous baroque scholar who can transform a piece of music, as he does with one of the arias presented, “Col partir la bella Clori”, by composing additional parts for violins to accentuate the genre of music and the mood of the lyrics.

This was the final concert of the 2017-2018 season, but Pacific MusicWorks’ 2018-2019 season is on the way, starting in October with Monteverdi Masterworks and continuing through an exciting year of baroque orchestral and vocal music, offering Handel’s thrilling oratorio, Samson, for its operatic performance of the season. If you’ve never seen this fabulous group, take the time now to look over their offerings for next year. You’re in for an unusual and exciting treat.