The Scene - September 2014

the E A S T S I D E

scene

Arts and entertainment

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

DANCE

September 2014

ALSO...

OF THE

VALKYRIES

Ballet Bellevue searches for a new studio, new life and a renewed mission as it prepares to transform into a ballet-opera company PAGE 4

FALL FASHIONS

PAGE 5

COMEDIAN

SAM

MORRIL

PAGE 6

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The Don’t-Miss List

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PLAY | PAX Prime

Badges for PAX Prime sold out within hours of going on sale earlier this summer, but gamers stout of heart can camp outside in hopes of claiming no-show admission to video gaming’s greatest fan convention. Check out unreleased games and hardware, panels offering insight from creatives in the industry, freeplay rooms, the Omegathon competition and a nerdaphonic concert. Be sure to see the Make-a-Strip panel with Eastsiders Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the creators of the Penny Arcade webcomic.

Where: Washington State Convention Center, 800 Convention Place, Seattle, WA 98101 When: Aug. 29 - Sept. 1

E A S T S I D E

scene

Dear Reader,

Credit: Darwin Yamamoto, Flickr.com; under Creative Commons license

WATCH | In The Heights

Village Theatre opens its 2014-2015 season with In The Heights, the hip-hop musical that won four Tony Awards — including Best Musical — in 2008.

The story follows residents of the heavily Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights, Manhattan as, during the hottest days of the year, they sort through their issues with love, sex and money.

Where: Village Theatre, 303 Front St. Issaquah, WA 98027 Credit: Copyright Mark Kitaoka, photo property of Village Theatre

the

When: Sept. 18 - Oct. 26

LAUGH | Oddball Comedy Festival 2014

Did you notice The Eastside Scene has a brand new look? Like Ballet Bellevue — the subject of this month’s cover story, on the next page — we’re going in new directions, with a renewed focus on the stories that make the Eastside unique. We like it. We think you’ll like it too. And we’re certain, whether you’re a regular reader or just coming on board, that you’ll be in for an interesting ride.

Daniel Nash Editor

Publisher William Shaw

Contributing Writers Rose Dennis

Editor Daniel Nash

Design Tek Chai

For Advertising, call Jim Gatens 425-440-0437

On the cover:

Photography and editing: Daniel Nash | Model: Mireya Mascarello Costume: Viking helmet from A Masquerade Costume Rental in Bel-Red.

The Scene is a publication of Sound Publishing, Inc. 2700 Richards Rd. Suite 201, Bellevue WA, 98005 425.453.4270 | BellevueReporter.com

According to Louis C.K. in his 2010 special Hilarious: “Hilarious means ‘so funny you almost went insane.’ So funny that it almost ruined your life.”

If so, Funny or Die has dark plans for its audience.

The comedy website’s Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival features a lineup including comedy powerhouses C.K., Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, Hannibal Buress, Whitney Cummings and more.

Where: White River Amphitheater, 40601 Auburn Enumclaw Rd. S.E., Auburn, WA 98092 When: Sept. 5

DO | The Washington State Fair

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September 13-14 Sustainable Living & Farming Tour

September 18-20 Salmon Festival

October 3-4, 10-11, 17-18 Oktoberfest

September 13 Leavenworth Wine Walk

Everyday I’m Yodelin’ You’ll come for a taste of Oktoberfest.

You’ll leave with so much more. From the Bavarian festivities to the outdoor adventures, it’s the perfect place for an escape from the everyday.

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September 26-28 Autumn Leaf Festival

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September 20 Fall “Framed”

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September 3-7 Quilt Show

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When: Sept. 5-21

Upcoming 2014 Events

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Admit it: You’ve been drooling for a fair scone all year. Check out rides, music and all the wonders of agriculture at the biggest state fair in the Pacific Northwest.

Where: Washington State Fair Events Center, 110 9th Ave. S.W., Puyallup, WA 98371

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It’s Not Over (until the ballerina sings) Between the imminent demolition of the Ballet Arts Center and the difficult search for new dance space, Ballet Bellevue faces a tough year ahead. But the performance company and school is taking on new challenges — not just by putting on an opera, but by putting on one of the most challenging operas around: Story and photo by Daniel Nash Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet.

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Normally a towering and intense figure — a disciplined kind of man who seems to stand ramrod straight at all times, eeven ven when he’s relaxed and unimpeded byy his cummerbund — conductor b Philip Tschopp is ascendant as he stalks the hallway outside the Meydenbauer Center’s theater. He’s spent the last 90 minutes in the auditorium’s diminutive orchestral pit leading more than 30 musicians through Act One of Giselle.

And now, during his brief reprieve, he’s riding the high of accomplishment.

“That was a great first act,” he says, beaming as he locks my hand in a crushing handshake. “Great. I can’t wait for Act Two.” The ballet Giselle is one of the bestknown in the medium. Abroad, it’s as well-recognized in mainstream culture as The Nutcracker is in the States.

Composer Adolphe Adam’s score for the production was significant for being one of the first original compositions in ballet and a prime example of the employment of leitmotiv — callbacks to music that becomes representative of an emotion or character.

The story has the eponymous Giselle, a poor village girl pursued by the dashing young Albrecht. After a brief period of will-they-won’t-they flirtation, most of the first half is occupied by their flights of fancy throughout the Rhineland — as well as village-wide celebrations for a family of visiting nobles.

Prancing abounds.

But things take a dark turn when a romantic rival reveals Albrecht is actually a noble prince, promised to another woman. Born with a weak heart, Giselle dies from the shock.

After audience members file back in from intermission, Tschopp is the last person to enter. He’s still standing tall, a one-man parade quietly urging the audience, with his body language, to get excited for Act Two. Conductors like Tschopp, who so clearly have a passion for the music of ballet and the movement it inspires, are the closest thing the art has to hype men.

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It’s a role that’s important to the survival of old guard performing arts like ballet, and it’s an energy that will be especially be needed for keeping up his own momentum in Act Two, when things truly become dark.

It would be defeatist to suggest Ballet Bellevue’s production of Giselle parallels the many challenges it faces in the year ahead. However, the choice of show indirectly connects to the impending death of part of Ballet Bellevue: Downtown Park’s Ballet Arts Center, slated for demolition in 2015.

As Ballet Bellevue Executive Director Mary Hundley tells it, Giselle was the favorite show of Carolyn Gracey Greer, who operated her dance school out of the Ballet Arts Center for most of the latter half of the 20th Century.

Greer had become enamored with ballet as a child. She attended Cornish Preparatory Dance, but her parents had doubts about her aspirations to continue with dance after high school.

Nevertheless, she went on to study at Juilliard and, for many years, continued with dance while she lived out of state with her husband.

When they returned in the early ‘60s, she began teaching classes out of leased commercial space in the city. At this point C.B. Gracey — Greer’s father and the vice president of manufacturing for Boeing — decided to support his daughter’s career fully by investing in the construction of a full studio.

“Her father basically said ‘If this is what you’re going to do, you should have a proper studio,’” Hundley says.

The Ballet Arts Center opened in 1966 and Greer operated it until her death in 1994.

A decade prior, the City of Bellevue commissioned designs for Downtown Park from Beckley/Meyers Architects.

The firm didn’t envision a place for the Ballet Arts Center in its designs and city leadership at the time agreed. The City acquired the Center and leased it back to Greer with the understanding

that — one day — the time would come to give it up.

“She was still fairly young when she died,” Hundley says. “She smoked — as people did back then — and I think that and the stress of not knowing what would happen to her school contributed to her death.”

Ballet Bellevue — which had become a professional company in 1995 after years of operating as the children’s company Ballet Pettit — acquired the Ballet Arts Center in 1997 and incorporated children’s classes to its mission. With it, they acquired the facility’s curse — one day, when the City

needed the space, it would be gone.

After nearly 20 years, “one day” is nigh.

Ballet Bellevue is scheduled to evacuate the space in March before demolition begins the following summer.

At least outwardly, Hundley is placid in the face of the many changes coming down the pike for her company. She’s arranged for company dancers to practice in Crossfit Amped on 106th Avenue Northeast and for Saturday children’s classes to take place in the Northwest Arts Center.

CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE>>>

synchronicity of perfectly matched lovers. It’s the sheer strength of their love, and Giselle’s forgiveness, that destroys The Wilis — and Giselle herself.

Albrecht is left alone with his grief to ponder his mistakes.

With the close of Act Two and the show itself, I was taken in by this company’s ability to pull off high drama in a limited space.

Christopher Scruggs and Nadia Iozzo in Giselle.

Credit: Copyright WZ Images, photo provided courtesy of Ballet Bellevue

Space for weekday children’s classes is still to be determined.

In fact, Hundley, Tschopp and other Ballet Bellevue leaders are adding even more to their plates for the 2014-2015 season. Aside from their forced — but anticipated — search for space, the company will end the season in early 2015 with Charles Gounod’s operatic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.

Operas will thereafter become a regular part of Ballet Bellevue’s show rotation. The plan is inspired by the Paris Opera Ballet, the oldest national ballet company in the world.

“Romeo and Juliet is a big project,” Hundley says. “But my thinking is, if you’re only going to have one opera in a season, it’s important to have the right one.

“Our choice to put on Romeo and Juliet is not particularly about the opera. It’s more about Shakespeare. It’s the name recognition. People who don’t know opera will come in because they know the story and people who know opera will be pretty impressed because they expect a lot from it.”

As a person whose exposure to ballet began and ended with a half-remembered viewing of the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Nutcracker movie at the age of five, I wasn’t entirely convinced of ballet’s entertainment value by the end of Act One in Giselle. So far, it was just research for a story and a conveniently free birthday gift for my girlfriend. Act Two sold me.

Among its other accomplishments, Giselle is also perhaps a pioneer in the genre of undead romance. (Twilight before Twilight, anyone?)

No sooner is Giselle laid in the ground than she’s brought back by The Wilis, a supernatural hit squad of spurned lovers who roam the forests for unsuspecting men to slaughter.

The method of murder? They force their victims to dance to death. Of course.

The novice ghostling is sicced on Albrecht to take revenge for her death, but she can’t.

It is in this final act that dancers Nadia Iozzo and Christopher Scruggs showed the power of their partnership, moving in the

“I think Giselle went well,” Hundley says.

“I mean it was pretty good. The house was about half full both nights. Maybe from 130 the first night to 200 on Sunday.”

We’re sitting in the Ballet Arts Center, in a small and crowded corner used as makeshift office space, while dancer Mireya Mascarello (a woman who kindly humored me and sacrificed some of her dignity for the photo series with this article) teaches a one-on-one lesson on the dance floor.

While Mary and I speak, we’re unexpectedly visited by Maurice Cooper, from the company’s board of directors. Whereas Mary approaches Ballet Bellevue’s obstacles placidly, Cooper is more outwardly passionate about the company’s search for permanent space and the neverending quest for publicity that could bring people to shows.

Giselle played during Arts Fair Weekend, but it wasn’t directly associated with any of the three street fairs. Examining the audience on the first night of the show, it was apparent it was comprised of people who had planned to be there. The majority were dressed in their finest gowns or button downs; only a handful had wandered in from the street.

The difficulty of ballet in America is that, outside of traditional productions like The Nutcracker, it’s not an art form that has mainstream appeal for spectators. The dedicated audience is comprised of connoisseurs — people with years of firsthand familiarity with dance or music, and the small group of laymen who can appreciate both.

Ballet survives in large cities or cities where a company has entrenched itself as an institution, places where it can concentrate enough of its small subset of fans in one place to chug along.

The same could be said of opera, of course — Bellevue Opera shut down in 2011 — but Hundley and Cooper hope a European-style dual company will stand out.

“In all fairness, this community (Bellevue) is fairly new,” Cooper says. “You don’t have the old guard that might support the performing arts. You don’t have people thinking about those opportunities.”

The older and wealthier communities of Medina and Clyde Hill contain exactly the type of patrons who attend ballet performances, Hundley says, but they often look to the other side of Lake Washington.

“The few groups from Clyde Hill who came to Giselle, I think they were proud,” she says. “That’s the thing: they will support something of quality. Bellevue needs to have something that’s a ‘diamond’ here.” S Ballet Bellevue’s 2014-2015 season begins on Oct. 3 with Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird at the Meydenbauer Center.

Fall fashions from Dries Van Noten Credit: Photos courtesy of Team Photogenic and Nordstrom

HEY LADIES!

Rediscover and reinvent with this year’s fall fashions

T

Trends shown recently on the runway at the Nordstrom Designer Preview 2014 showcased both American and International Designers, many whom choose to rediscover and reinvent clothing that symbolized the look and silhouette of decades gone by. This fall celebrates the sweetness of the 60’s, the warmth and glamour of the 70’s, the power and strength of the 80’s, and the nostalgic blazer suit of the 90’s, all which are modernized for today’s woman.

Shape/Silhouette

Many options for knee lengths this season. Skirt, coat and dress lengths include the mini (3”to 4” above the knee), medium (mid-knee cap), moderate (1” below the knee) and midi (mid-calf). Coats and dresses are fitted, loose and over-sized; blazers have soft shaped shoulders, long dresses are fluid and loose fitting.

Key Accessories/Details

Flats, midis and high-heel shoes with pointed toes will work for all lengths of clothing; knee high boots and booties; envelope and box clutch handbags; backpacks; accents of fringe and tassels; feathers; and day sneakers with metallic and shiny paillettes.

Textures/Fabrics

woven knits; leather; statement fur; denim; shearling fur; velvet; graphic prints; and soft silks.

Colors/Palettes

the richness of new colors include lavender, jewel tones; color blocking; digital prints; ice-cream shades; artistic florals; animal prints; Army green and grey becoming the new neutrals.

Fall 2014 promises to set a new mood in dress which will bring back memories of iconic eras of the past. - Rose Dennis

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Deeply Morril

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Conversations with Funny People

You probably haven’t heard of Sam Morril.

Tell him something he doesn’t know. But the native New Yorker has spent the past four years slowly gaining fame — and infamy — for his raunchy sense of humor.

by Daniel Nash

So I was just listening to an episode of your podcast (Moonlighting, with Sam Morril) this morning, and the conversation about Trayvon Martin and race in prosecution got really intense. You and Yaneika Saunders or Mike Recine and Yaneika were really laying into each other.

Sam Morril: Yeah, that was Dave Smith arguing with her.

It seems like every comic has a podcast now. What does podcasting do for you that standup doesn’t?

SM: You know, I hate to say it, but you can’t just be a comic anymore. You have to get your name out there in different ways and Moonlighting is a way to do that. But the podcast keeps me kind of sharp in a different way. It can be a different format for telling or talking through jokes and bouncing ideas off other comics that I wouldn’t get just sitting home and writing by myself.

Do you find that comics are more opinionated than your average person?

SM: Some of them are, but every comic’s different. Some people just write jokes and they don’t worry about anything else. Some people enjoy doing politics and social commentary in their acts. Comics are definitely more outspoken but I don’t know if they’re more opinionated.

They’re definitely more likely to think their opinions should be heard by everyone. (laughs) Being based out of NYC, on the one hand I think, “That’s the best comedy scene in the world, that must be great.

But on the other I think, “That’s the most competitive comedy scene in the world, you must be crazy.”

SM: It’s a lot of bombing. A lot of bombing. And as a joke writer, a lot of times there’s something funny about the joke and you know what it is but you can’t quite communicate it yet. For some reason I guess I’m provocative, which is something I discovered in early bad sets. Because I’d rather get a rise out of the audience than nothing at all — if you’re getting nothing at all, they don’t care. At least when they’re angry they care.

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Has that desire to provoke informed your sense of humor?

The joke that comes to my mind immediately is this one where you talk about how you’re sleeping with a black girl and you’re uncomfortable because she keeps using the “N-word” — which turns out to be “No.” SM: (Laughs) Yeah, that joke… that joke has gotten me into some trouble in the past couple years with some bloggers, mostly because what’s funny — what I think is funny about the joke, anyway — was misunderstood. In that case, it’s about the misdirect and the expectations of the audience, which I even point out in the punchline: “You guys were really uncomfortable when you thought I was going to say something racist but, thank God, it was just a rape joke.

Phew.”

But I think jokes in general should elicit some kind of reaction. I think it weeds out who wouldn’t be my fan

anyway. You didn’t like that joke? Fine, you wouldn’t like the rest of my stuff.

The only problem I have is with people who take it really seriously up-top. You know, people who say “this is never funny, you can never make that subject funny.” I take that as a challenge: I’m going to make it funny.

You remind me a bit of Mitch Hedburg, in the sense that you tell these jokes at a rapidfire clip, but in an almost sedate way.

SM: It is weirdly tiring to perform comedy, in a way you can’t understand until you experience it. You work sh***y hours, flights are early a lot of the time and you have to do the local morning radio shows on the same day you perform, which is going to be late at night. That style just lets me keep my energy. Some comics perform with high energy on stage all the time, and I just don’t know how they do it. I tell jokes in a way that I know I can do from show to show and, I guess, in a way that they work on their own without a lot of energy behind them.

You tell a few jokes about your girlfriend — or exgirlfriends. How do they feel about being included in your act?

SM: There’s none to worry about right now, but it’s usually not an issue. If it’s funny, it could be a joke about a girlfriend who I’m not seeing anymore, but I’ll still start with “So my girlfriend” — it could be anyone. But when I’m with a girl, I usually explain this is my outlet and I love it and this is what I do and I won’t say anything too embarrassing in the end.

The problem is, more than standup, the real problem is if I tweet something about one of them before talking about it. Stuff like Twitter and Facebook are right in the palm of your hand. It’s too tempting to send something funny out right away. But jokes are something you have to work on and polish, so if it was funny enough to make it into my act, I’ve probably already talked about it with everyone involved.

Sam Morril will perform at Kirkland’s Laughs Comedy Spot September 4-6.

Beth Billington

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