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undefined : Book Eight : Sept--Oct 2010

features:

6 10 18 22 26 34 38 42 46 50

Cary Ann Hearst is not ready to die

The Fifty-Nine

Tyrone Jeter: An artist’s journey Morihiko Nakahara: Sushi, samurai & the symphony

Columbia theatre laid bare Russell Biles: The contrarian

Woodie Wentworth walk with Dylan New movements in dance?

No second acts? In memory of Lou Kaplan

Poetry

contributors

Cynthia Boiter … Associate Editor Jeffrey Day … Associate Editor Mark Pointer … Associate Editor Ed Madden … Poetry Editor Kyle Petersen … Writer Thorne Compton … Writer

Scott Bilby … Photographer Mallane Stanbury … Photographer Sarah Kobos … Photographer Mark Green … Photographer Sidney Palmer … Photographer

Subscribe now at: www.undefinedmagazine.com These pages are the labor of many talented hands, from writing, design and editing, to sales and marketing. We encourage you to contact us with any feedback or story ideas at our website. Please support the artists, your community leaders and advertisers. For advertising information please contact us at: 803.386.9031 or ads@undefinedmagazine.com undefined magazine is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner, in whole or in part, without the publisher's written permission.

Write us at: undefined Magazine 709 Woodrow Street : 321 : Columbia, SC 29205 803.386.9031 ©2010 All Rights Reserved undefined : book eight

4

A message from the editors.

Glossy paper and staples When Associate Editor Jeffrey Day worked for The State newspaper, he started an annual fall guide to the coming arts season.

“Arts Ahead” was filled with listing of nearly all the plays, concerts, art shows, and dance performances taking place in the Midlands during the coming nine months and many coming up at many museums, orchestras and other arts organizations around the state. Substantial stories in the section focused on arts trends, emerging artists, new works, and people in the arts, from patrons to artists.

Photo: Sarah Kobos

He knew most copies of “Arts Ahead” – about 200,000 when it was started – would get tossed into the recycling bin with the rest of the paper, but also knew some people would hang on to it and use it until it was tattered. His dream was to lessen the chance of it getting tossed the Sunday out came out by printing it on slick paper with staples holding it together.

If you know anything at all about the newspaper business, you know that this did not happen. Not only did this not happen, the special section went away.

Jeffrey Day

But that’s not the end, because what you have in your hands now is the thing he dreamed about doing for a long time.

For this fall arts issue we take you inside the Columbia theater community through the eyes of participants, feature several artists who have exhibitions coming up, and visit an artist who giving the Big Apple a shot. We bid farewell to Lou Kaplan in a piece written by Thorne Compton, former chairman of the University of South Carolina theater department.

We don’t have space to run everyone’s full calendars, but we’re providing a sampling of some things you shouldn’t miss this fall – from an artists’ studio tour in Greenville, a new work by a Columbia composer that will be premiered by the S.C. Philharmonic, and some of the unusual offerings in Columbia’s contemporary music scene.

We know you won’t throw this away.

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11 questions

story: Kyle Petersen

photography: Scott Bilby

Cary Ann Hearst is not ready to die Cary Ann Hearst comes across as a redheaded fireball whose diminutive size belies her larger-than-life personality and voice.

Frequently backed by her husband, Michael Trent of The Films, the two musicians can be seen in various locales around Charleston, and around the country actually, playing a primeval brand of roots music that takes its cues from blues, rock and roll, vintage country, and old-timey gospel. Along with a small collection of similarly-inclined local musicians, Hearst is also one of the founders of the Charlestonbased record label, Shrimp Records. One of the label’s first releases was Hearst’s new recording, “Are You Ready to Die.” Featuring the talents of veteran producer, engineer, and songwriter Butch Walker and a startlingly eclectic array of original songs, the EP caught the attention of Grammy-nominated music supervisor Gary Calamar, who chose one of its tracks to close out an episode of the wildly popular HBO vampire series, True Blood.

We thought it would be a fine time to check in with Ms. Hearst and ask a few questions. um: You mentioned at a recent show that you are not the most prolific songwriter in the world. What sort of songwriting process do you go through?

CAH: It happens when I wash dishes or the first thing when I’m coming out of a dream; when I'm not awake really. It’s a very passive, very subconscious process.

The songs come pretty frequently; I just need to have sense enough to write them down as they come to me. um: What makes a good song?

interview: kyle petersen

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CAH: It’s a secret.

um: Are you ready to die?

um: I think most people would try to pigeonhole you as a sort of country-folk rebel, but you really branch out on the new EP. You play 1960s Ronettes-style pop (“Are You Ready To Die”), zydeco (“The Thread”), and saloon-style jazz (“American Made Machine”) without missing a beat. How would you describe your music?

CAH: Am I ready to die? No, I am afraid to die most of the time.

I saw someone die up close once. It was the scariest and the most natural thing I have ever seen. Death is not welcome to me and I am too well acquainted with it as it is. um: What do you think happens after you die?

CAH: You pretty much nailed it, and if there is a pigeonhole for me, that’s the one I want! When describing my music to people I try to think of bands out there to compare myself to based on the t-shirts they’re wearing. If somebody likes metal, then we are the Black Sabbath of folk country blues. If they have on a YES tshirt, I say that we are pretty progressive for a folk band and recommend that they dig our counter melodies. But I never recommend our band to bluegrass enthusiasts. They are consistently dissatisfied with us and I don't know why.

CAH: I hope there is a heaven, but I believe in reincarnation too.

I’m not reconciled. It’s complicated. um: You and Michael recently played at the Cannes Film Festival. How was that? Did you get any good autographs?

CAH: Cannes was incredible. It was my coolest where-am-I moment so far because it came out of left field. One minute I’m cooking at the farmer’s market, two days later I’m on my way to Cannes, with literally nothing but a raggedy dress and 100 euro to my name. We played in an ancient castle on the Cote d'Azure, and then we were off to somewhere else. I saw a lot of famous people, but I didn’t ask for any autographs.

um: I’ve noticed you often play under a variety of band names like Shovels & Rope, The Butterbeans, and others. Why? CAH: Music has to be my job. It has to be Mike’s job too. We have to be in multiple bands to make it work, so lots of bands happen.

Having so many names helps people know what they are gonna see, too. If it’s the Butterbeans, they know that my home-girls are playing with Mike on drums; or if its Shovels and Rope, that’s me and Mike, and maybe Bill Carson. Of course that could be Los Federales, too, if you add Jack. Wait, I’m getting dizzy.

um: One of the songs from the EP, “Hell’s Bells,” was recently featured on the closing credits of the HBO vampire saga “True Blood” and was heard by millions of people. How did it feel hearing it played?

CAH: I was so excited for weeks and weeks about whether it would actually play or if it would be a big hype-up ending in humiliation. I wasn’t sure it was really going to happen. So, Sookie gets bit and then the song comes on and my reaction was, "That’s awesome! Why is my master so quiet? The master is really quiet, isn’t it? Was it me? I think I messed up the master..."

um: What songwriter would you steal from if you could get away with it?

CAH: Right now my favorite song is a Cowboy Jack Clement song that Waylon Jennings cut called “Dreaming my Dreams.” I also wish I had written “Frankie’s Gun” by the Felice Brothers or “I was Born On This Mountain” by Steve Earle. But you know what I really love? The Inlaws’ “I Am the Black Woman.” I wish I had written that.

um: My editor wants to know if it was "fangtastic.”

CAH: It was a pretty fangtastic moment in my life. I’m bloody grateful.

um: Your new EP is called “Are You Ready to Die” and one of the more persistent themes in your writing is death and mortality. What’s going on with that?

CAH: I just found out last year that everybody dies, so it’s a little fresh in my brain is all. I’m kidding. But I do think about death a lot, so I write about it a lot. Many people walk around on automatic pilot their whole lives and completely take their lives for granted. Then, when they find out that there is a limited amount of time, part of their mortal frustration is that they haven’t lived their lives to the fullest. On the other hand, some people do everything in their power to kill themselves nice and slow, and when they pass away, everyone pretends not to know how it could have happened. These songs are a reminder to myself to live, live, and live some more.

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the list

THE FIFTY-NINE artistic endeavors that you cannot miss this season

We’ve searched high and low, Upstate, Lowcountry, and Midlands, to find artistic endeavors to steer you toward in the coming arts season. We wanted a mix of the tried and true, some attractions that haven’t gotten enough attention, and some people, places, and events you may never have heard of at all. If you’re looking for a reason behind the number of choices we made – you can search high and low too, but there isn’t one.

one

For something so darn good the Columbia Blues Festival has a pretty low profile. Word of Mouth Productions runs the nearly flawless festival where music is always the most important thing.

This year’s day of gut-grinding, foot stomping music comes by way of the Holmes Brothers, the Alexis B. Suter Band and Reverend Marvin Ward and Congaree. The festival takes place in Martin Luther King Jr. Park in October and it’s free. {www.wordofmouthproductions.org}

2

4

THREE

Early each year Ballet Stars of New York, hosted by the University of South Carolina, brings big-name talent to the Columbia stage. In the past, New York City Ballet dancers Wendy Whelan, Albert Evens, Jared Angle, and Columbia native Sara Mearns have been part of the event and this year promises to be just as stellar. So how does the university do this – and charge a top ticket price of $35? USC dance instructor Stacey Calvert, also a Columbia native, is a former soloist with the New York City Ballet. {www.cas.sc.edu/dance} The Columbia City Ballet is golden – this year it is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Don’t miss the gala party and performance with home town girl, former Columbia City Ballet dancer, and American Ballet Theatre principal, Gillian Murphy on stage next spring. {www.columbiacityballet.com}

“Personal Grounds: Art by Susan Lenz” is part of the 2010 MOJA Arts Festival in Charleston. Lenz’s collection entitled “Decision Portraits” may be familiar to Midlands area patrons, if not because they have seen some of the pieces before, then because they have seen many of the subjects. The show runs through October 10 at City Gallery at Waterfront Park. (843) 958-6484

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5-6

The last time cellist Matt Haimovitz performed in Columbia it was at the New Brooklyn Tavern, usually the home of indie, punk, folk, and metal bands. The young musician toured nightclubs for several years, doing missionary work for classical music. This time he’ll be playing at the University of South Carolina as part of the Southern Exposure contemporary music series November concert.

The series starts September 25 with a performance by the Now Ensemble Quartet, a group made up of the rather odd instrumentation of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, double bass, and piano. Now will play works by several composers, including Judd Greenstein and Missy Mazzoli, who will be in town for the concert and give a talk the day before the concert. {www.music.sc.edu/ea/comp/southernexposure}

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seven : eight : nine Southern Exposure isn’t the only place for new music in Columbia, which has became a very friendly place for unusual music in unusual places. Guitarist and composer Michael Pisaro, who writes music to be performed over several days or weeks, will perform at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia September 20. All-female saxophone and drum ensemble, The Tiptons, play there October 19. {http://701cca.org} The World Jazz Trio blends North African, Middle-Eastern, Indian and electric jazz at the Columbia Museum of Art September 23 and the improvisational jazz group Vox Arcana with percussionist Tim Daisy plays there October 8. {www.columbiamuseum.org}

TEN

Artist Mike Lavine gathers up wood shavings – which like the trees from which they come – demonstrate a remarkable variety of colors and textures. He spreads and sweeps the chips and dust into landscape-like installations. The Rock Hill artist will be in residence at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia during October. During that time, he’ll be creating a new work for the gallery which visitors are invited to stop by and see as it takes shape. {http://701cca.org}

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You can climb mountains of verse when the South Carolina Poets Summit rises at the University of South Carolina in October. The summit will tap into poetry communities around the state with readings and roundtables. The featured writer is internationally-acclaimed poet and activist Carolyn Forché . Forché is author of Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award; The Country Between Us, which received awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Society of America; and The Angel of History, awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Award. She recently won the Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture in Stockholm. (803) 777-5492.

twelve

Charleston artist Colin Quashie likes to stir things up. His paintings use pop imagery - commercial products, comic books, celebrities – to address issues of race and class. He uses a balance of humor and anger in works such as "Black People Love Pork Because Africa is Shaped Like a Pork Chop," a stylized package of pork chops under plastic wrap; a box of "Aunt Jemima" pancake mix with Oprah Winfrey depicted on the front; and a “Civil Rights Coloring and Activity Book” which shows “nice” policemen “cooling off” black people by spraying them down with fire hoses. Quashie’s art hasn’t been shown in Columbia in about a decade. But he’s back with his first ever solo exhibition at Benedict College in Columbia starting in October. {www.benedict.edu/divisions/acadaf/sch-humanities/fine_arts/art}

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Emerging artist Stacy Lynn Waddell of North Carolina has fire in her work. She burns and brands paper and fabric to create pieces that explore the intersection between differing perceptions of American history and culture. This exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston includes recent paintings, works on paper, installation, and projections. Through December 5. {www.gibbesmuseum.org}

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14

The Columbia Classical Ballet has built a tradition of bringing some of the best dance local audiences will see each year with its “Life Chance International Gala of the Stars.” Dancers who got their starts here, like Brooklyn Mack and Joseph Phillips, often return to their home stage to dance with some of world’s greatest dancers in January. {www.columbiaclassicalballet.org}

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The S.C. Philharmonic premieres a new work written by a Columbia composer for two Columbia musicians. John Fitz Rogers was commissioned by the orchestra (with the help of a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant) to write a concerto for two pianos and orchestra. The concerto was written specifically for the husband and wife duo Marina Lomazov and Joseph Rackers, who, along with Rogers, are on the University of South Carolina School of Music faculty. You can hear it first in November. {www.scphilharmonic.com}

{sixteen and seventeen}

The King of Pop – Andy Warhol – has settled into Spartanburg. “Andy Warhol & Friends: 15 Minutes,” an exhibition of the artist’s Polaroid photographs, can be seen at the Spartanburg Museum of Art, while the University of South Carolina Upstate is showing a selection of the 150 Warhol photos donated to the college two years ago. The museum exhibition is on display through Nov. 20, the one at USC through Sept. 30 – Oct. 29. {www.spartanburgartmuseum.org}

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For many years, the museum at S.C. State University in Orangeburg offered a good lineup of arts shows.

That stopped a while back but has recently been revived through a new art gallery run by artist Jim Arendt. Coming up are exhibitions by Charleston artist Karen Ann Myers in September through October comprised of narrative paintings, prints and mixed media works, as well as Lauren Frances Adams of St. Louis, whose show will include paintings, drawing, prints and video during November. {scsufabgallery.blogspot.com}

twenty-one through twenty-five The distinguished-looking conductor Donald Portnoy, music director of the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra, has surrounded himself with women this year. Violinist Rachel Barton Pine opens the season playing Max Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy.” She also plays in a heavy metal band, but is leaving the leather at home for this concert. Soloists for the five remaining concerts are cellist Wendy Warner, soprano Janet Hopkins, violinist Kathrin Ten Hagen, flutist Jennifer ParkerHarley, and pianist Judit Gabors. {www.music.sc.edu/ea/orchestra}

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26and27

If you remember the old days of the Congaree Vista in Columbia – when it had two places to eat, one place to drink and a lot of artists – you’ll find the Pendleton Street Arts District in Greenville to your liking. About 30 artists have studios and galleries there with work ranging from quite exciting and edgy to very middle of the road. The old neighborhood with a few bars, a shoe repair shop, and a bright green and yellow diner keeps it real. Unlike the Congaree Vista, Pendleton Street manages to have a gallery crawl the first Friday night of every month. The district hosts the West Greenville Arts Festival September 18 and 19. Catch it before gentrification. {www.pendletonstreetartsdistrict.com}

twentyeight twentynine

Columbia has never been able to keep an art studio tour going either, but Greenville Open Studios is coming up on its ninth year. About 150 artists throughout Greenville open their doors November 6 and 7. {www.greenvillearts.com/programs/open_studios.aspx} If you’ve not checked out the new galleries of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, get busy. Even before moving into the new space, the “Halsey” has long been the outpost of cutting edge and sometimes wacky art shows in Charleston. On display now are the paintings of David Stern, who sees himself as an heir to the Abstract Expressionist painters, but is primarily a figurative painter. “The American Years: 1995 – 2008” is a nationally-traveling exhibition that traces the GermanAmerican artist’s output since his immigration to the U.S. Then comes “Running the Numbers” by Chris Jordan who uses his art as a commentary on how much stuff we use and how unwisely we use it. {halsey.cofc.edu}

31,32,33,34

After 20 years, Greenville’s Peace Center for the Performing Arts continues to keep it interesting: “Young Frankenstein,” Darius Rucker, Emmylou Harris, Patti LaBelle, and the Dance Theatre of Harlem. What’s not to like in this excellent hall on the Reedy River? {www.peacecenter.org}

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The Charleston Symphony Orchestra cut its season short last year because it ran out of money and is now fighting for its very survival. For now through, the orchestra has a fine looking season laid out and it starts out with a bang – the amazing pianist Jeremy Denk plays Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 for the opening concert September 25. This is the orchestra’s 75th year and the last one for long-time music director David Stahl. {www.charlestonsymphony.com}

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36-39

We’ll probably take a pass on the Three Redneck Tenors at the Newberry Opera House, but not on the French Chamber Orchestra, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Robert Earl Keen, and the Capitol Steps comedy troupe. {www.newberryoperahouse.com}

forty “I Heard a Voice: The Art of Lesley Dill” promises to be an eye and ear opening exhibition. Dill is one of the most respected contemporary American artists and this retrospective focuses on her large-scale pieces that explore language, the human form, and sensory experience through drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and performance. The exhibition runs October 1 through January 23 at the Columbia Museum of Art. {www.columbiamuseum.org}

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The Columbia Museum of Art and the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston get operatic this fall. Composer Richard Marriott collaborated with the visual artist Lesley Dill, who has a major show at the museum, to create the opera, “Divide Light.” The composer will give a lecture about the opera and show excerpts in November. The Gibbes is teaming up with Charleston Chamber Opera in conjunction with an exhibition of portraiture titled “Face Lift.” The opera company will perform Mollicone’s early 20th century opera, “The Face on the Barroom Floor,” inspired by a painting on the floor of a Western saloon, as well as several arias and duets about the human face. It’s in October. {www.gibbesmuseum.org}

forty-three through forty-six Clemson University’s Brooks center, unlike some university performing arts centers we know, has a rich lineup of musical theater, jazz, classical music and more. This fall the center hosts the musical version of “The Color Purple,” jazz trumpeter John Faddis, the Imani Winds – an AfricanAmerican classical music group that played at the Spoleto Festival USA a few years back – and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. {www.clemson.edu/brooks}

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The Greenville Light Opera Works adds some South Carolina spice to the Gilbert and Sullivan’s one-act comic opera “Trial by Jury.” This first of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Savoy Operas has been updated to take place in a modern South Carolina courtroom and should provide a hilarious evening of entertainment that you can feel snooty about attending. {www.greenvilleopera.org}

If you liked the production of “Rent” at Trustus Theatre in Columbia last winter (and we did), well it’s already back through October 2. November also looks promising, in a dark way, at Theatre South Carolina at USC. “Big Love,” a 2000 play based on the ancient Greek tragedy “The Suppliant Women,” will be on the main stage and “Bent,” a play about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany, will be performed in the lab theater. {www.trustusa.org} {www.cas.sc.edu/thea}

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Converse College just started a school for the arts, hiring Richard Higgs, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the Milwaukee Institute for Art & Design, as its first dean. Among the upcoming events at the newly-established school are the Tempest Trio, which includes Ilya Kaler, the only violinist to win the top prize at the Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and Paganini competitions; Rebel, a Baroque music ensemble; and writer Thomas E. Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet, and winner of the Pushcart Prize for Poetry and the O. Henry Prize for short stories. {www.converse.edu/arts}

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The Turtle Island Quartet sounds so young and vibrant it’s hard to believe they’ve been around 25 years. Maybe that’s because the group has done so many things – from chamber music to jazz to world music, collaborating with guitarist Leo Kottke, pianist Cyrus Chesnut and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, among others. Turtle Island’s latest recording is all Jimi Hendrix songs. You can sail to Turtle Island when the group comes to USC-Aiken in November. (803) 641-3305

{fifty-five to fifty-seven} Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, launches the Fall Festival of Authors at the University of South Carolina in October. Orlean has written several pioneering nonfiction books including Red Sox and Bluefish, and The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup. Others reading for the series are Colson Whitehead who is the author of Apex Hides the Hurt, John Henry Days, and Sag Harbor, and Robert Crawford, one of Scotland’s most esteemed poets and critics. The series will be held in the nice new Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library on the USC campus. (803) 777-4203

Everyone hates the parking meters that dominate Columbia, but a new project may change that. Well, probably not, but it’s worth a try. About 125 defunct parking meters have been retrofitted with new posts and bases, and donated to WACH TV - and will be turned into creative works of art by local artists. There will be an exhibition and silent auction benefiting Climate Protection Action Committee.

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LVIII

About 10 years ago, Stephen Chesley of Columbia made 107 drawings on 107 consecutive days. The drawings have been hidden away since. He brings them out of hiding – to see what they say about then and now – in October at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. {www.gallery80808vistastudios.com}

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“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”

– Henry Louis Gates ..

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artist

Tyrone Jeter An artist’s journey yrone Geter recently had hip replacement surgery and was getting around with a stick, good for, he noted, keeping away dogs and writers. He was sitting in the den in an easy chair before the fireplace which, this August morning, was not in use, since at 10 a.m. the temperature was already above 90. His sister Liz had come from Ohio to give him a hand since the July operation and he had one of her hearty breakfasts perched on his lap, a glass of carrot juice on the table beside him.

And his stick.

After eating and talking a bit, Geter gets ready for the trip upstairs to the two huge rooms that constitute his studio.

“You better not stand behind me in case I come back down,” he says. “This is only the second time I’ve been up here since July 15.”

His daughter Hafizah recently cleaned out the downstairs and brightened up the house with gold and blue and purple paint. She didn’t quite get upstairs and things are piled up. As usual Geter has a batch of works in progress, lots of finished older works in racks, various pieces of machinery (printers, a gadget that spiral binds books), but to hang a piece of art on the wall he has to pound in the tacks with a tape measure because the hammer has disappeared.

The dominant image in the room is a drawing of Barack Obama. Like much of Geter’s art this drawing is a fairly traditional realistic drawing that’s not very traditional at all. The drawing is in mostly white and black on black paper. It’s not on one piece of paper, but a bunch of torn sheets of paper. And the president is starting to disappear.

“I thought I was done with it,” Geter says. When he thought it was finished Obama looked strong and confident.

“Things had started to get complicated and there was like this fog rolling in.”

Now the president looks a little lost, his head in a murky gloom.

“We’ll have to wait and see what happens,” says Geter, an art professor and gallery director at Benedict College in Columbia.

Like most of his artworks this one has a mind of its own.

Geter considers each work a journey and he doesn’t have a map for the trip; the art making shows him the way.

“I never start something knowing where it’s going,” Geter says. “I let it lead me.”

If the individual works are segments of a trip his overall output and various approaches have also come about organically and often by lucky turns.

Recently he’s been concentrating on black on black drawings because someone asked him how to work with charcoal on black paper - and there are a lot of shades of black charcoal and black paper and he uses them all – and he got hooked.

The torn paper works began when he was doing a drawing and tore it. He liked the drawing so rather than tossing it he pieced it back together, adding more torn paper. It was a long learning process.

“I’d get one right and the next one wouldn’t be,” Geter says.

These torn paper pieces aren’t collages in strict sense; they’re more like relief sculptures made of paper.

Another time, frustrated with a drawing of a head he was doing, he took a walk that led him past a local nightclub where a cleaning crew was tossing out trash – including hundreds of bottle caps. He grabbed a couple pocketfuls, took them back to the studio and attached them to the drawing.

Starting to build up the images led him more toward sculpture. The big jump came when he bought a little frame that had a little shelf jutting out. He had a drawing of a baobab tree that fit into the frame perfectly. In Africa the solitary, elephant-like tree has spiritual significance. Although it can survive on little water in harsh climates, it is easily toppled by storms. That got him thinking about water and who controls water, which is always an issue in many parts of the world.

T

story and photography: Jeffrey Day

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Tyrone Geter in his upstairs studio, at this home in Elgin.

He took another walk, this one around a lake near his home in Elgin and found a rusty old water faucet handle. It fit perfectly on a hole in the shelf.

“I dropped it in and it was finished,” Geter says.

The pieces grew larger, incorporating drawings in elaborate framing devices, found objects, from rocks and sticks and bottles to small pieces of furniture. They become true sculptures and at times installation art pieces.

“If you trace where I come from every next thing I do is completely logical,” Geter says.

(Some of these works are on display in a solo exhibition at the Sumter Gallery of Art through Oct. 29. He also has a show scheduled for Gallery 80808 in Columbia for October.)

Along with making his art and teaching, Geter also had a parallel career illustrating children’s books, among them “Sunday Week,” “White Socks Only” and “The Little Tree Growing in the Shade.”

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“I never painted like an illustrator – I did the book the same way I would have painted anything,” he says. “They let me do whatever I wanted.”

Nearly all the books he did were put out by major publishers and sold well. But the books were taking him away from his art and he was only asked to do works with an African-American subject matter.

“I was just drawing and painting the same little girl over and over again,” Geter says. “I wanted to branch out.”

During the past few years, Geter has also done several large murals. The first was for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. Tom Feelings, a Columbia artist who taught at USC, started the mural, but became too ill to finish it and asked Geter to complete the work.

Geter was also commissioned by the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center to do a mural celebrating the dance craze “The Big Apple” that was created at a Columbia nightclub in the

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1930s. He recently did another large piece, “Look Beneath the Surface” for the Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

A native of Alabama, Geter’s family moved to Ohio when he was 15. He studied art at Ohio University and taught at the University of Akron. In 1979 he and his wife Hauwa moved to Nigeria, her home country.

“We’d been married for seven years before we got a chance,” he says. “We packed up the house and went.”

They stayed for eight years which surprised Hauwa.

“She didn’t think I could handle it,” says Geter, who taught at Ahmadu Bello University while they lived there.

They returned to the U.S. in 1987 because their children, daughers Hafizah and Jamila, were getting to be school age and it became almost impossible to get hard currency in Nigeria. The family moved to Columbia in 1999.

His first few years in Columbia went well. He took an active part in the arts community and provided the Benedict College art gallery with a much higher profile.

Then came 2003. Feelings, who had befriended Geter when he came to Columbia, died. His wife Hauwa died suddenly of a stroke in 2003. A few weeks after her death, Geter had emergency open heart surgery.

As he slowly worked his way back from all these things, his hips began troubling him. He had the first replaced about two years ago, but the other has nagged him incessantly since.

“This last year or so I’ve really slacked off,” he says. “That’s not like me. “But this leg was causing so much pain.”

He had been considering retiring next year. Now that he has two good hips, he probably won’t.

“I feel better than I have in a long time,” he says. “I’m looking forward to getting back into the classroom. I like teaching foundation – drawing, painting. I think that’s where I’m supposed to be. And I’ll stay until I think it’s time to go.”

“Umbilical”

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artist

Morihiko Nakahara Sushi, samurai and the symphony orihiko Nakahara is at Inakaya, a Japanese restaurant on Two Notch Road.

Leading the orchestra concerts and rehearsals – the actual music making – is hardly half of the job. Talking to him, he sounds like the superintendent of the Japanese bullet train system, but with twice the routes and half the budget. What musicians are available? What soloist do we want? Who can we afford? What pieces of music will work well together, but won’t be redundant? What’s the theme of each concert and what should we call it? Who does he have to charm to get some money? Do any of the concert dates conflict with football games, Jewish holidays or concerts being played by the Augusta and Greenville orchestras with which the Philharmonic shares some players?

The 2010 – 2011 season hasn’t started and he’s working on 11 – 12. The orchestra doesn’t perform in the summer, but this is planning time so he’s as busy as he is the rest of the year.

Inakaya is his time off and it’s only a few hours long.

“All my vacation time last year I spent being sick,” he says between bites and his conversation with chef Satoshi “Maru” Maruyama. “I could be sick as a dog and do the rehearsal or concert and then go home and crash.”

Nakahara is entering his third year as music director. Right before the last season ended in the spring, he signed a contract to continue for another four years.

“I’ll be like 40 – that’s sick,” says Nakahara, who turns 35 in November.

M

He doesn’t order, the food just starts coming. Some white flounder, tuna, horse mackerel in which the carcass of the fish has been skewered and wrapped around the chunks of raw fish.

There’s Japanese vodka served in small glasses over ice and beer.

He shares the drinks with the guys behind the fish counter and keeps up a nearly non-stop conversation with them in Japanese.

Eating sushi, and one of his companions this night is eating it for the first time, is a lot like programming a concert or a season.

“It’s like going to a concert for the first time – you need a guide,” says Nakahara, music director of the South Carolina Philharmonic. Like serving up that Beethoven before bringing out the Dan Visconti. You start with the tuna and move toward the cuttlefish and eel.

The chef removes the carcass of the horse mackerel. A few minutes later he returns with it – deep fried. You can eat it from head to tail and the fine bones between the two. Some people do, others don’t. Where this falls on the musical metaphor scale is hard to say – John Cage maybe?

This is one of the few places Nakahara doesn’t have to make a million decisions even though that’s normally what one does in a sushi restaurant.

story: Jeffrey Day

photography: Sarah Kobos

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If you haven’t guessed, he’s a funny guy and recently performed a hilarious routine at a fake-funeral fundraiser for the independent movie house the Nickelodeon Theater in Columbia. The philharmonic holds a surprise mini-concert series called “Where in the World is Morihiko?” On Facebook, he called it the “WTF Happened to Baton Boy?” series. Other than the fact that he’s Japanese, Nakahara is an unassuming looking guy. His hair is cropped short on the sides and back in an almost military manner. About 5-feet-7, his broad chest and shoulders give him an athletic silhouette. He’s not a flashy dresser, but he’s not a khakis and button down shirt guy either. On the podium he invariably wears an updated formal outfit with a modified Nehru collar and collarless shirt. No white tie or tails.

“To these guys,” he says nodding toward the sushi chefs, “I’m very American. To my girlfriend, I’m very Japanese.” (She’s a

and, while there, he also became associate conductor of the Spokane Symphony.

He is still with Spokane leading several concerts each year, but the S.C. Philharmonic is his primary job. He’s a finalist for the music director posts at the Chattanooga, Tenn., and Green Bay, Wisc., orchestras and will conduct at both places in the coming season. It’s typical for the music director of small to midsized orchestras to hold more than one position.

Nakahara was one of seven finalists for the music director in Columbia. Many finalists had more experience, had worked with bigger orchestras, or had gone to more prestigious schools than Nakahara. But when the end of the season came, it took the orchestra all of a day to offer him the job.

For his first two seasons, the Philharmonic played many well known works, but also played music by a lot of composers most audience members didn’t know a thing about - Akira Kifukube, Missy Mazzoli, Margaret Brouwer, Tan Dun. It played Philip Glass for the first time ever and Gustav Mahler for the first time in memory. It brought in a soloist who played the pipa, a Chinese lute.

“Being music director is like someone giving you a key to a nice car,” he says. “You take it out and see what you can do with it.”

He doesn’t say it outright, but Nakahara wonders if it was maybe too much for an audience that was accustomed to a conservative repertoire.

Still, since he arrived, subscriptions have hit an all-time high. If some people complained about the orchestra playing unfamiliar music, none of them complained about how much better the orchestra sounds with Nakahara on the podium.

“It’s a process,” he says of introducing unfamiliar music.

“How much, how soon? And you don’t have a lot of room for error. Why don’t you just do the Top 40? It’s a challenge – especially now.”

By “now” he means in a horrible economic climate where every penny has to be pinched until it sings a high C that breaks into a scream.

Some orchestras and music directors flog the old works; for others it’s all new, new, new. Nakahara is neither – he’s a realist and sensible and he knows what his job is.

“We’re not a niche orchestra,” he says. “We want to serve all our constituents.”

When talking about the upcoming season when it was

The conductor washing up before digging in at Inakaya.

musician he met in Columbia who is away at graduate school studying Russian.)

Nakahara grew up in a small city in Japan with his mother and grandmother. As a child Nakahara was more interested in history, sports, and literature than music. When he was about 12 he heard Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 and became captivated by all things Mozart. This eventually led him to the composer’s Clarinet Quintet so he began playing clarinet. At 15 he was sent to a private school in Michigan and has been in the U.S. since.

At Andrews University in Michigan, Nakahara got a degree in music education and earned his master’s degree in conducting from the Cincinnati Conservatory. His first job took him back to Michigan as Holland Symphony Orchestra music director

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announced earlier this year, he sounded a little downbeat noting “I underestimated how much work it would take,” he says. “It it is conservative: the “Eroica Symphony,” by Ludwig van was not at the level I hoped it would be.”

Beethoven, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, “Appalachian While he thinks he has a good feel for the Columbia audiSpring,” by Aaron Copland and “A Young Person’s Guide to the ence, it throws him surprises, such as when pianist Martina Symphony,” by Benjamin Britten.

Filjik played Bela Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto for the final But the orchestra has also comconcert of the last season. missioned a concerto for two pianos “On stage it felt awesome,” he says, written by University of South “and I was perplexed by the lack of Carolina School of Music associate response.” professor John Fitz Rogers for his Toward the end of the night, at music school colleagues Marina Inakaya, Nakahra expresses frustraLomazov and Joseph Rackers, and will tion, not so much with his job in play a brand-new piece by Osvaldo Columbia, as with the classical music Golijov, one of the most acclaimed business. and respected living composers.

“Does it matter what we do as clasThe conductor has made himself sical musicians?” he wonders. “Is it part of Columbia within the musical relevant playing 200-year-old music?’’ world and outside it. When he goes He has finished the beer he didn’t out, usually to unprepossessing places order, but when the chef wants to like Hunter-Gatherer or Flying serve him a giant noodle bowl, he Saucer, people know him and he declines. knows them. He lives in a Main Street Nakahara and the chefs keep up a apartment with his cat. He can talk running conversation in Japanese about sports as well as music and he occasionally translating for the others. does this quite a bit, although he says The chefs have never seen him in conhe quit watching the world cup as cert – they work nights. soon as Japan was eliminated.

Maru indicates, waving his very Although outgoing and friendly and sharp knife, that what Nakahara does funny, Nakahara is not an easy person Nakahara taks with Ken May, Director of the S.C. Arts with his baton is like what the chef to read. He admits he mainly keeps Commission, at the Hunter-Gatherer. does with the knife, creating beautihis own counsel. ful, delectable artworks with a variety Of his two seasons, Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony in early of flavors, textures, colors. The baton is like a knife, Maru says, 2009 stands out as a high point for him. He was least happy with or better yet, a sword. Nakahara, he says, has “Samurai spirit.”

Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella Suite” early this year.

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feature

Columbia theatre laid bare “I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.”

– Sir Lawrence Olivier hether one deems the city of Columbia great or not, there is no denying that it is home to an active and enthusiastic theatre community. With three long-standing theatre companies, two and sometimes more smaller ensembles, a troupe devoted to Shakespeare, an impressive university theatre department, and a number of community theatres in our suburbs and neighboring towns, there are few weeks when live theatre is not available in the Midlands for those who seek it out.

With such an abundance of theatre arts, we took a look at the prevailing strengths and weaknesses in our theatre scene by gathering a select group of artist representatives from the community into a forum for discussion. Kevin Bush, Giulia Dalbec, Chad Henderson, Darion McCloud, and Dewey Scott Wiley met with us at the Cellar on Greene on a Thursday afternoon and, over several bottles of Russian River Chardonnay, picked apart the pieces that make up Columbia’s theatre arts, did their best to put it back together, and ultimately, laid it bare for all to see.

W

story: Cynthia Boiter

photography: James Quantz

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Let’s get all the fawning and flattery out of the way. Pick someone here and tell us, from a theatre arts perspective, why they matter.

Chad Henderson: I’ll start – this is easy. Darion McCloud runs the NiA Company – it constantly executes exciting things and I’m impressed that it gets better and better every year. So, cheers.

Darion McCloud: Thanks, man. Well, I’m going to reciprocate. And this is kind of cool because I think I’ve told you this before – I’ve watched Chad since he came to Trustus and Chad can be hit or miss, but when he hits it, it is beautiful – compelling and mature. Dewey was part of my introduction to Columbia theatre – I don’t know if she remembers, but I was in the African American Acting workshop – she was one of my instructors and watching her teach was a seminal experience for me. Giulia, I know her from being a Southern tadpole – I’ve known her since she was maybe 5.

Giulia Dalbec: Was I that old? I thought I was 3.

Darion: The first time I ever saw you on stage was “The Great Gilly Hopkins.” And this dude right here, Kevin, man, the first time I ever saw him on stage was in “Bat Boy,” and I said, who is this dude right here? Somebody said he’d been away and come back and I’m one of these people who like it when new and talented people come to town, and I was glad that Kevin was here. I’m happy this roundtable is happening and that these cool people are here. There are other cool people who aren’t here, too, but I’m glad that these people are.

Chad Henderson

able to work with him.

Giulia: It’s different for me because I grew up here in Columbia and in the theatre – and all these people have helped to me to grow in so many different ways. They’ve all been a part of it as long as I can remember.

Kevin Bush: What I think is interesting about this particular table is that each one of these people is dedicated to the art and, in my mind, this is a collaborative art and no matter what level you’re at, you’re always learning from someone else – and each of these people is so dedicated to what they’re doing – weather its starting their own company or directing or performing or teaching – all these people are teachers in that they know the art well enough to share it.

Along the same lines, I’m wondering about radicalizing moments you may have experienced, either on stage or in rehearsal or in the audience – sometime when you felt a sudden epiphany; a realization that things had changed for you in that moment.

Dewey: When I first came on staff at Trustus the theatre was still very edgy; it was 1993 and it was hip. We constantly dressed in black and people called us the Munsters.

But one of the coolest things I ever experienced was in 1995 when we did “Angels in America Part I” and we sold out before we even opened. This was at the same time that people in Charlotte were picketing the play, because of the nudity supposedly – but we all knew it was because of the homosexual content. We didn’t get a single picketer – maybe two hate calls. There we were doing “Angels in America” in Columbia, S.C. and I said to myself that this is a cool town to do theater in because just an hour and a half up the road they had to get a court injunction just to open it.

Dewey Scott Wiley: I’ve known all these guys for a long time. I’ve directed all of them so it’s been fun for me to see their journeys as artists. When Jocelyn Sanders and I started the African American Acting Workshop, we were frustrated by the lack of African Americans in the theater so we thought that if we built it, they would come. And that has so been the case with NiA. Also, I want to say that Chad’s enthusiasm for theatre is like a cattle prod up my butt.

Giulia: That was beautiful, Dewey. (Laughter) Dewey: Seriously, Chad has brought a youthful energy to the local theatre scene and I’m really grateful for being undefined : book eight

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Do you think Columbia has maintained that sense of edginess?

of that time period. The other part of the edge of theatre is how do you do theatre – not just what sort of scripts you bring, but what are you doing from a digital projection standpoint, for example, or with puppetry or style or whatever – that’s a totally different area that we could move into as a community. One of the things that drew me to Trustus was that it was addressing the issues I was interested in – it was like a Mapplethorpe kind of art for me – it was just in your face viewpoints – maybe in this day and age that’s not acceptable anymore?

Dewey: I don’t know – it’s tough economic times – the spirit of Trustus, for example, remains edgy, but people take our wide array of theatre in town for granted. People used to seem to appreciate it more, it seems. I don’t think the quality of theater has diminished at all – but when we do something that’s maybe a little bit more edgy, I don’t think there is the same kind of buzz. There’s more to do in town now, too.

Am I hearing you say that you as a theatre community are not doing edgy anymore because there’s not edgy work to do?

Darion: The market that we’re in now doesn’t really reward edgy. I long for those days. That’s what attracted me to the theatre. It feels like it’s a different time now. I like shows that challenge you and take you to dark places.

I’m a homeboy – I elected to stay here in this town —and I liked it that my city was doing that kind of stuff. It was a source of pride. It still is – even Workshop Theatre is stepping out and doing some risky things.

Chad: Theatres today are trying to keep their doors open, and when they are looking at scripts and they have 134 seats to fill a night, they want to try to fill them the best they can.

Dewey: Art gives the unvoiced a voice. But art and entertainment isn’t necessarily the same thing – art challenges us. In terms of theater history, anytime things are going great socially, you’re more likely to go see a tragedy. But when things are tough, people don’t want to be challenged; they want to escape. They want their values to be affirmed.

We are facing that now. We are having to pick shows that – and I’m not saying they’re not artistic – but they are going to sell tickets and go a little bit more toward entertainment. Musicals sell out.

Kevin: Part of the evolution of Trustus is the evolution of what is considered edgy in our society. I mean “Angels in America” was taboo in 1995. Trustus just did “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove” which, when it was written, was a taboo lesbian story. But when it was redone, it wasn’t considered taboo at all; it was actually a nice little jewel

Darion: Give the people what they want.

Giulia: But in terms of edginess, the plays and issues that were edgy 10 years ago just aren’t anymore. Society is starting to accept things that were once considered radical – shows that were written to be radical, just aren’t anymore – but those shows are still being done.

So what is your demographic?

Darion: Our mission at NiA is to attract people who don’t normally come to the theater – people who are economically challenged, for example. That’s the reason our tickets are ten bucks – if you can go see a movie, you can go see a play. And I’m not sure that everyone in Columbia is aware of how rich our theatre scene is here – there’s a lot of good theatre – there’s some bad theatre, too – but you think about how good USC Theatre is for example....

Kevin: Theatre South Carolina – please – it’s the new brand that’s 15 years old. (Laughter)

Who of you here has done Theatre South Carolina?

(Everyone raises their hand.)

Is it different doing university theatre?

Darion McCloud

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Chad: It’s different than anywhere else in town.

Darion: There’s not going to be a show for me at Town Theatre.

Dewey: It’s an academic environment Chad: More than anywhere I think USC – excuse me, Theatre South Carolina …

Giulia: I thought you were going to audition for “Gypsy” and I was worried. (Giulia is currently playing the role of Gypsy at Town Theatre.)

Kevin: Thank you.

Darion: I know, and you were really shaking, weren’t you?

Chad: … is trying to prepare people for a larger market – Chicago or New York or somewhere.

Why not, Darion?

Darion: They just aren’t going to do anything that has a place for me in it. It’s nothing against Town Theatre – I’m just a black man who doesn’t sing or dance.

Kevin: The emphasis is on technique for the actor, designer, director – it’s on challenges – it’s about the educational experience more than it is about ticket sales.

Dewey: There are a lot of good things to say about Town Theater. They are the longest running community theatre in the country – over a hundred years now. Financially, they’re in the black; they have probably the biggest subscriber list of any theatre in town, the most donors, very loyal patrons, and they do some really good work. The stuff they pick is very safe – it’s not going to offend anybody.

That’s sort of their niche in town.

Chad: It’s supposed to serve the students, I think, more so than the audiences – more so than the other three houses have to.

Dewey: Again, that’s the reality – the other houses have to depend on the patrons.

Show of hands, who has worked where?

What about Workshop?

(Everyone has worked at Trustus and Workshop Theatre and South Carolina Shakespeare Theatre, but only Kevin and Giulia have worked at Town Theatre.)

Dewey: Workshop is unique in that the dynamics have changed over the years. It was designed to be a director’s theatre. They do have some family plays and summer shows, but they also do some cool, edgier stuff. They try to get the best directors in town. And they still have a big season subscription base and a lot of loyalty – because they’ve been around for a while. Both Workshop and Town Theatres have strong education programs and they use their education programs to feed into their productions.

Trustus could stand to have a stronger educational aspect; that’s something that the other theatres really have on their sides.

Giulia: You know that in the summer, at Town and Workshop, there are going to be shows that kids can be in.

They look forward to it. Same thing with the Christmas shows – and it gives kids an opportunity to get their feet wet in theatre So when it’s time for them to spread their wings and move out of their parents’ houses into Rosewood, they go back to the same theatre they grew up in to either be in shows or to see them.

Kevin: On that front, it needs to be said that Columbia really supports arts education when it comes to theatre and drama – we have drama teachers in just about every school from middle school up.

It’s been said that, in Columbia, there is a dynamic often called the “tutu war” going on between some of the more traditional dance companies. I’m wondering if there is the equivalent going on between the theatre groups – is there a grease paint war in Columbia?

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Dewey: I don’t think there is as definitively as there is with the ballet companies. Town Theatre and Trustus have never been in competition with each other because they cater to completely different audiences. There are a lot of patrons that go to Workshop and Town, and then there are a lot that go to Workshop and Trustus. I think Workshop and Town have a little competition and maybe Workshop and Trustus have a little, too.

Kevin: I think the competition is for talent – not for patrons.

Darion: Well, let me ask you – do you perceive there to be a conflict?

I think there is the perception of conflict, whether there is conflict or not I once saw a friend from Trustus at a Workshop performance and he said to me that he hoped he wouldn’t see anyone he knew.

Dewey and Darion in unison: He felt like he was cheating!

(Laughter) Dewey: That’s so funny because we, as actors and directors, all go to Workshop and Trustus and Town – and we don’t think anything of it.

Kevin: There are plenty of actors who say, “I don’t go see theatre,” though.

Kevin Bush

Darion: This is a major beef with me. I don’t see visual artists at theatre and I don’t see theatre people at art shows. I don’t know whether dance people or writers come out or not. But for a city to be as rich as we are in the arts – and I think we are very rich – we don’t support each other as artists enough.

what the sensibility is. You can watch the audience – it’s educational.

Darion: If you are an artist, I think you are one amongst a legion. We need to be supportive of all art forms. One of the problems with Columbia is that there is a ton of us doing things, but we haven’t coalesced into a scene.

So am I hearing you say that our artists, whatever their areas of expertise, aren’t as active as patrons as they should or could be?

Chad: Right.

Dewey: We used to have the Columbia Theatre Festival back in the nineties – Thorne Compton was one of the people behind it – and we advertised all of our seasons in each others’ programs. We all worked together in the nineties for three or four years in a row and it was great.

Darion: I will say that, yes.

Why would it be better if artists were patrons of other arts as well as their own?

Chad: Well, it all goes together – it gives you a sense of community. You can get a lot of inspiration out of visual arts, dance, music. And the thing that kills me is not going to see shows – I try to do it as much as I can, but I don’t have the funds to do it.

Would you be interested in doing something like that again?

Kevin: It ain’t cheap!

Darion: I’d be interested in doing it with visual artists, dancers, whoever.

Dewey: Absolutely!

Chad: That’s true – but it inspires and informs you, and it lets you approach the next work that you do with more knowledge than you had before because you see what everyone else is doing, and you also understand

Really – how do you all feel about collaboration?

Chad: That’s how we can all survive – it’s what we have to do.

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Obviously no one is getting rich. So my question to you, Giulia and Chad, is why are you here? You’re 21 and 25 years old – what keeps you here?

Darion: It’s 21st century.

Kevin: But we all have the issue of money – nobody has the money to market something like that – so we all sort of grassroots-market to our circles of friends. If Free Times or Otis Taylor, and I say singularly Otis Taylor at The State because he is all there is – or now, we have undefined magazine – if all of you don’t write about it, nobody outside of our circles knows about it.

Chad: Right out of college I knew I wanted to do theatre, and this stage of my life is all about building my resume and getting experience. And I’ve had wonderful opportunities to do that here.

Kevin: And his home perms are amazing.

What have you always wanted to do, that you haven’t been able to – and why? I know that in all the arts money is the issue, so let’s talk about it and move it out of the way.

Chad: Finally! Someone recognizes my talent. But I love this place. I think there are a lot of things that nourish you as an artist here. So I’m trying to use some of the emerging artists. There are a lot of new artists coming up and they’re talented.

Dewey: Every theatre we’ve talked about here today – they’re all concerned about being able to keep their doors open. It’s a business no matter how supportive everyone is.

Fifty percent of running a theatre is a reliance on ticket sales, even if you’re non-profit. So money is a big part of it – and all of the places that used to give money – those funds have dried up a good bit too. It’s tough for any theatre company in this country to survive these days.

Giulia: I was going to leave this wonderful city of heat, but decided to stay for family reasons. I’ve been to New York and I’ve gotten called back so that it was down to me and another girl dancing our hearts out for the lead in the national tour of Chicago. I’ve gotten to do those things, and it’s been a blast. If I can do that again, great, but if I don’t, and I stay here in Columbia performing for the rest of my life – I’m good with that, too. I just want to perform. That’s what it’s about –it’s not about being somewhere else just for the sake of being there. I have a lot of friends who are in New York now and all they’re doing is auditioning, when they can even do that. They’re upset because they feel like there is a void in their lives because they aren’t getting to perform. So how lucky am I that I get to be here and I get to perform?

Giulia: I think, too, that people who aren’t involved in theatre don’t realize how much money it takes. They think that if they pay $20 for a ticket that somebody is just putting that money into their pocket. They don’t realize that the actors aren’t getting paid.

Can we talk about that? How much money do you get paid for acting in theatre around town?

Kevin: Columbia is a really good incubator for theatre artists – through the community theatres that we have, the university, whatever. We are a great breeding ground.

(Laughter all around) Dewey: As far as I know, Trustus is the only place in town that gives actors a stipend. No one else pays anything at all.

Darion: Too many people devalue how good our talent and our opportunities are here. People will say, if you’re good, why the hell are you still here? We don’t celebrate our strengths like we should.

Can you give us a range of what that stipend might be?

Dewey: Right now, I would say the going rate is about $125 for the entire run, no matter what your part. A run is essentially a month, and rehearsals are one and a half to two months before opening – sometimes more.

Dewey: I agree. I think Columbia is a fantastic city – I love my life here.

Darion: And that’s an average of at least three hours a night.

Giulia: We don’t give ourselves enough credit.

How do we fix that?

Dewey: Even when you’re getting paid a little, you still lose money. Actors don’t even break even what with gas money and taking time off work.

Kevin: For some reason we think we have to leave our homes to be successful, which is sad. And it’s not just in Columbia. If you grow up in New York you feel like you have to move to Chicago or LA.

Kevin: And a lot of time you have to put your own money into the show.

Darion: The difference is that Chicago respects itself. I’ve said this before – we have everything in this town that we need to succeed, but it begins with us. Don’t apologize for shit. Don’t apologize for being from Columbia or from South Carolina. Fuck that.

Darion: Ninety-nine percent of the actors in this town are working day gigs. You work all day in your real job and then you work all night in the theatre.

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Kevin: I did my time in Los Angeles – it was me and a gazillion other people. There was no room to grow. They have more stuff, but I never saw anything out there close to the cultural identity and accessibility that Columbia has.

Columbia needs to see itself as bigger and better than we do now.

Chad: I would wish for audiences that challenge and push us and demand more. And I guess I would also wish that as an arts community, that the artists would come together. I would love it if at cast parties, for example, you would see all the artists in the community there supporting one another.

So, if you had a magic wand or a genie in a bottle, what would you wish for that would make it easier for Columbia theatre artists to serve their audiences?

Kevin: This all sounds so cheery like rose-colored glasses – like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But, for the benefit of Bedford Falls … (Laughter)

Kevin: I wish more patrons would start to think of theatre as a viable and worthy economic investment and realize that they can get more out of a theatre experience than almost any movie – and theatre is always in 3-D!

Kevin: For real, for the benefit of the city we live in, no matter where you work or where your allegiance lies, working together to take care of our arts community is for the benefit of everyone – not just actors and directors.

People Actor, director and storyteller, Darion McCloud, a native of Columbia has been in theatre for 13 years. He is a founding father and the artistic director of NiA Company. His most recent work was in NiA's production of “Jesus Hopped the A Train” at the University of South Carolina Lab Theatre and as the bouncer Randy B. O. Samples at “Larry’s Last Laugh.”

Chad Henderson hails from Spartanburg, S.C. and has been a Trustus Company member since 2005. He has directed several critically acclaimed shows including "Dog Sees God," voted 'Best Local Production' by readers of the Free Times. He will be directing "Reasons To Be Pretty" in October and "Assassins" in March at Trustus. A recent graduate of the University of South Carolina where he majored in directing, Chad is also starting a new theatre company in Columbia, called THE POP THEATRE. He is 25 years old.

Dewey Scott-Wiley is a New Jersey native who has been acting and directing for over 25 years. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre at USC-Aiken where she heads up the theatre performance program. Dewey is the Associate Artistic Director of Trustus Theatre, and is embarking on her 18th season as a Trustus Company Member. She is currently remounting “Rent” at Trustus. Dewey is also the Chair of the Professional Division for the Southeastern Theatre Conference.

Giulia Marie Dalbec is a native of Columbia where she has been performing in theatre her entire young life. She teaches dance through Workshop Theatre's Broadway Bound program and various dance studios in Columbia. Her most recent artistic endeavor was "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and this September she can be seen onstage in "Gypsy" at Town Theatre.

Kevin Bush is a native of Charleston and has been on stage in one way or another since high school. He is the marketing director of the USC Department of Theatre and Dance. His next role is that of Mark in “Rent” at Trustus Theatre in September, and he can also be seen performing a cabaret at the Columbia Museum of Art on November 9.

Places Town Theatre, founded in 1919, is the oldest continuously-operating community theater in the country. Town is best known for mainstream, family-friend fare, but has become a bit more adventuresome in recent years.

Workshop Theater was founded in the late 1960s by a group of young actors and directors who broke away from Town after the resident director they liked was fired. Workshop Theater has a history of strong dramatic work, but in recent years has made a mark with musicals.

Trustus Theater was started 26 years ago and immediately made a mark by doing controversial shows no one else would touch. Becoming more mainstream in recent years, Trustus has both a main stage season as well as offerings in a smaller black box theater that is attached to the same building on Lady Street.

Theatre South Carolina is the name under which the University of South Carolina Department of Theatre and Dance puts on plays. The theater does shows in Drayton Hall Theatre, Longstreet Theatre and a lab theater, all on the university campus. The department began offering master of fine arts degrees in acting during the 1980s and advanced degrees in theater design. Many of the MFA students who come to the university from throughout the country already have professional credits.

NiA, which translates from the Swahili as “purpose,” is a small multi-cultural theater performing everything from hard-hitting dramas to children’s shows at various locations throughout Columbia.

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artist

Russell Biles The contrarian ussell Biles’ brick bungalow just north of downtown Greenville has a wide front porch and a terraced backyard that falls away into dense woods. From that lush and sun-dabbled space you pass through a door into a dark and musty basement workshop. Crammed in are a couple of small work tables, an electric kiln in one corner, and a yellow fiberglass shower stall in another. In-process, old, and broken art works are scattered around.

It’s like two different worlds on one residential lot. The art Biles makes provides a similar contrast. He makes figurative ceramics, not unheard of but not the dominant form for the medium. Most have political and social messages. He mines old television shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Leave it To Beaver” to speak to serious issues and make serious art. Some of his work is made by slip casting – a lowbrow, mass production method. He’s also invented an inlay technique that amazes other artists who do ceramics. He can make beautiful objects doing ugly things.

Although Biles calls himself “contrary,” he’s more about contrasts, contradictions, and complexity. There’s nothing about his work that doesn’t stand the work itself on its head and turn it inside out.

Another artist once told him “I make things people want to hear” – meaning beautiful things.

“You,” he told Biles, “make things people don’t want to hear.”

One of his sculptures is a pure white stylized dog with sinuous curves. Its eyes are orbs of tightly-grained wood salvaged

from a 19th century building. From the other end of the porcelain dog pops another dark round ball.

“It’s really beautiful aesthetically,” Biles says, “but it’s a dog taking a crap.”

He thinks he makes ceramics pretty well – “I can stick clay together as good as anyone” - but he knows what sets his art apart is the stories his art tells. Those stories attract some and repel others.

“You like me or you don’t,” he says. “There’s not much in between.”

Biles is one of the few artists working in ceramics who attempts to keep to a news-cycle deadline. He makes art that comments on political and social situations and he wants to get the pieces built, fired, and into the art world when the news is actually new. Actually he’d like his commentary to be ahead of the news.

“If they get it a year later, it’s like I was ahead of things,” he says.

Not that everyone gets it – ever – but enough do to give him hope not just in art, but in the world.

Not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks he made a series of sculptures based on the ‘60s television show “The Beverly Hillbillies.” In Biles’ version, Ellie May has joined the Army and been killed; she appears perched on her own coffin. Jed cleans his brogan with an American flag and Granny polishes her shotgun the same way. He showed them at an arts and crafts fair in New York. Some of the audience found them offensive, but the

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From top left: “Fetch,” “Potentially Fatal,” “Gee Mom,” “Lesser Evil”

story: Jeffrey Day photography: Mark Green

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Rusty Biles with a line-up of Obamas at the Columbia Museum of Art.

firemen and cops providing security did not.

“They got it immediately,” he says.

African-Americans as a rule understand his works about race better than white people, who assume the art is offensive to black people.

“Someone came to a talk I was giving and told me, ‘I thought you were black,’” he says.

During the last year he’s been busy with sculptures of President Barack Obama that add several new layers to his social, political, and technical repertoire.

Half his pieces in “SC6: Six South Carolina Innovators in Clay” at the Columbia Museum of Art through Oct. 3 are Obamas. They’re like dolls with pudgy bodies and huge heads covered with mostly black and white patterns.

The first one he made depicts the President split – one side black, one white – that refers to Obama’s mixed racial heritage and how the presidential race split the country. One can also read into it that Obama’s policies aren’t as one-sided as those on the left or right thought they would be.

Another Obama is covered with elephants and donkeys, symbols of the Republican and Democratic parties; it’s titled ‘Screw Me, Screw You, Screwed.” One is blanketed in Confederate Flags and the X from Malcolm X – two widely misinterpreted and misundefined : book eight

used symbols. The pattern on another is pink triangles - a symbol the Nazis used to brand homosexuals; it’s a reference to the president’s unfulfilled promise to rescind the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Biles describes Obama’s problem succinctly: “He’s human and he’s a politician.”

A couple of technical aspects of creating the Obamas are important because the medium is part of the message.

The pieces are made by slip casting, in which watery clay or “slip” is poured into a mold. This is the kind of production method used to make decorative objects carried by places with names like “Ye Olde Ceramics Shoppe.”

(Biles has used slip casting for years to make his four-inchtall “Wee Pee” figures. The body is based on a peeing boy toy and he’s made them with the heads of Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Queen Elizabeth, and Andy Warhol. Those who join his “Wee Pee” club receive several a year. The Obamas are the first time he has taken the figure to a larger size.)

Oh and that surface decoration on the Obamas - it’s not surface. After the figure comes out of the mold he cuts shapes into the body then layers in black clay slip. The patterns aren’t on the clay, they are the clay.

Even those with a basic understanding of ceramics can see it’s not just surface treatment. Serious ceramicists – the gear

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heads of the art world – go nuts over it.

“Craft people eat you up with technical questions when they see these,” Biles says.

Biles grew up in Concord, N.C., just outside Charlotte where his parents still live. They were solid Goldwater Republicans.

“I have a picture of my father shaking Nixon’s hand,” he says. “We went to the conventions, my parents worked at the polls.”

He got into a lot of minor trouble as a kid and after high school joined the Navy where he was trained as a weapons expert. He attended Piedmont Community College and then went on the Winthrop University. Not long after college he got married. His wife was an accountant who worked for several big corporations.

They have three children – two in college and one in high school.

He and his wife split up seven years ago, although it took two years to finalize the difficult divorce. During the divorce Biles made a series about the “Leave it to Beaver” family disintegrating.

From the start, Biles made art with a sharp edge.

When he was at Winthrop University in the 1980s, the televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were riding high tide and ran the Christian theme park Heritage USA just down the road in Fort Mill. Long before scandal drowned the couple, Biles made a big sculpture of the couple dressed in outfits constructed of greenbacks, waving up a giant cross with a dollar sign on it. Fat blue tears roll down their chubby cheeks.

“I tried to sell it for $200,” he says. It’s still on a table in his dining room.

That brings up another issue – selling art that’s “Potentially Fatal” being made. tough, especially in hard economic times. How’s he selling?

If he’s not getting rich with his art, he is respected. He’s been “Shitty like everybody else,” he says with a wry smile. “Even in group shows at Baltimore Clay Works, Westchester Arts the blue chip people aren’t selling.”

Exchange outside New York, the Garth Clark Gallery in New Biles may protest a bit too much because he has sold pretty York, the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, The well over the years. He’s been represented by good galleries, Mint Museum of Art and Design in Charlotte, the John Michael been included in group exhibitions around the country, and his Kohler Arts and others. His art has been included in many work has been published in books. When the Center of the Earth books, most recently Masters: Earthenware, published this year, Gallery opened in the North Davidson Street area of Charlotte and Confrontational Clay from 2008.

20 years ago, Biles was one of the first artists. (The gallery closed The biggest publication exposure came when an image of in June, but the owners will still sell his art.) For a decade he was one of his pieces of murdered baby beauty queen Jonbenet also represented by Leslie Ferrin, one of the top ceramics dealRamsey was published in the National Enquirer with the headers in the country. Recently, the new Mindy Soloman gallery in line “How Tacky Can you Get?” St. Petersburg, Fla., picked up his work.

Biles doesn’t think his art is tacky, but he knows it can be His work sells for between $1,500 and $15,000. tough to take. Other artists, though, seem to be able to develop “I’m a hell of a deal,” he says. an audience for art with a serious message.

Recently if Art Gallery in Columbia began carrying his art.

Recently, Biles attended a concert by the folk singer James Biles expresses puzzlement about it.

McMurtry who never smiles and sings about bad love, bad lives, “I don’t really have a market there,” he says. bad politics, bad people stealing money from good people, and Still the gallery has sold a few small pieces. Although Biles’ getting their votes as well. art has been in exhibitions in South Carolina and is in public and “He’s selling pain,” Biles says, private collections here, he has never before had a commercial Biles figures that’s what he’s selling as well. gallery in the state carry his art.

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artist

Woodie Wentworth walks with Dylan hen Woodie Wentworth strolls down historydrenched MacDougal Street in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, walking the same path of dissension as such luminaries as Pollock, Ginsberg, and Dylan – both Thomas and Bob – she doesn’t look necessarily out of place.

Her t-shirt and jeans are respectably unassuming; her hair, decidedly undone. If anything, she looks hungry, and she readily admits a desire to eat as she positions herself in one of Caffé Reggio’s coveted, yet uncomfortably warped, wire bistro chairs along the sidewalk. “I think about food almost incessantly,” she says, scooting her bantam-sized body toward the table. New to New York City, having arrived barely a week before, she is either unimpressed with her environs or savvy enough to keep her enthusiasm in check.

A Columbia native and 2004 graduate of Winthrop University, Wentworth is one of thousands of young people who face off against The Big City every year, hoping for, at minimum, their 15 minutes of fame and, at most, the right to call themselves the moniker that too many people throw imprudently around – “artist.”

But Wentworth, a schooled graphics designer with a gift for doodling and a penchant for the peculiar, has no delusions of grandeur. “People ask me what I do, and it’s difficult to say,” she admits. “I’m still hesitant to call myself an artist, although I know I need to get into the habit of doing so.”

The reality is that Wentworth has been working at her art for years, both for herself – the most recent of her gallery showings was a group exhibit in July at Devine Eyes; and for The Man – Wentworth has designed for a number of screen printers and graphics studios in Columbia.

“Everything is so planned for you when you’re in school,” she says. “I was burned out after graduation so I went home, sat on my couch, ate ice cream sundaes, and watched too much Judge Joe Brown on TV. Finally, I said to myself, ‘I have to get a job.’

But I didn’t think it was possible to truly be an artist for a living, even though that was what I wanted to do.”

Lunch arrives and Wentworth tucks into her vegetarian tramezzini like a champ.

Taking a break from a bite, she goes on. “The thing that pushed me into pursuing the life of an artist was seeing how bad some people’s work is, and yet, they have no qualms calling themselves artists. That helped me look at my work and say, ‘I know I’m better than that.’”

While most art patrons will agree with her decision, most will also have to admit that Wentworth’s work is something of an acquired taste. A blend of innovative sketching and avant-garde cartooning with the occasional bit of verbiage thrown in, her creations are dernier cri among both hipsters and those who walk the walk but deny the label. Think textured paintings of breakfast foods and quirky creatures accompanied by seemingly

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story: Cindi Boiter

photography: Mallane Stanbury

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nonsensical captions. Her philosophical influences include Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson and comedy writer and actor Tina Fey, but her artistic inspirations come from Gary Boseman, who coined the term “pervasive art,” and Charleston artist, Tim Hussey.

While not quite yet eccentric, Wentworth can easily be described as unconventional, particularly in where she finds her muses. One of her fondest tales is of dumpsterdiving in South Carolina where she once found two boxes containing 100 tiny toy dinosaurs each. “I spray painted them silver and placed them all over town,” she smirks. “I called them my ‘trash toy installation.’”

Currently she is working on a character and single sentence series of drawings in which personality-laden animals and created figures are depicted with statements that may or may not be randomly assigned. It is an expansion on one of her favorite pieces, Cowboy Carl; a small pink creature with seriously bowed legs wearing an over-sized cowboy hat. Cowboy Carl’s defining statement reads, “At that moment, Carl knew that he was meant to ride horses.”

One wonders what Woodie Moon, Wentworth’s maternal great-great grandmother would think of her petite but certainly bad-ass namesake, who oft goes by the name Girl Woodie lest she be confused with a male band mate named Woodie with whom she played bass guitar in the Columbia band, The Open Fires. “My family supports me and my move to New York,” she decides. “I think she would be okay with it.”

The wind picks up billowing down from Washington Square Park all the way to the corner of Bleeker Street and, with all the food consumed, lunch appears to be said and done. Offered another coffee, the South in the Girl rises and she politely declines. For the time being, that is.

But New York shouldn’t trust her not to take a sizeable bite out of anything it has to offer. Even as she stands to leave, you can still see the hunger in her eyes.

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One of the “Cowboy Carl” artworks

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arts commentary

New movements in dance?

For dance aficionados, scrutinizing your local company’s upcoming season brochure is something akin to opening your stocking on Christmas morning. You approach both full of hope and expectation, thrilled at what may wait inside.

For the dance lover, you wonder what delights you will witness this season. What new choreographic works will you add to your collection of dance arts experiences? As with that special holiday morning, you recall seasons past and the excitement of being introduced to new things – new movement, new intentions, new art. In a city fortunate enough to host several dance companies – both classical and contemporary – as Columbia does, the possibilities seem endless.

How sad it is then when the season arrives and you realize forlornly that what you are getting this year is not very different, and in some cases exactly the same, as what you got last year. Nobody wants a stocking full of hand-me-down toys.

Certainly, a dance company depends upon the classics. “The Nutcracker” is almost every company’s cash cow and other classical ballets – “Coppelia,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Giselle,” for example – have stood the test of time for a reason. They are lovely, engaging works of art that both demonstrate the talent of the performers and transport audiences to places of empirical pleasure. Everyone should experience the glory that is “Swan Lake” once, twice, or even three times in their lives. But no one wants to watch the same swans dance year after year, and even the most dedicated balletomane should be expected to enjoy a rising curtain revealing a stage set as yet another quaint European village only so often.

This season’s offerings by Columbia’s major and minor dance companies proffer little in the way of expanding the repertoire

story: Cynthia Boiter

to which the Columbia dance audience has become accustomed.

Once again we are dipping from the same well of holiday traditions, age-old Russian, and reprised in-house choreography.

With non-professional companies, like Carolina Ballet and the University of South Carolina Dance Company, one might expect to see a repeat performance of past favorites; the purpose of these companies is, first and foremost, to educate their dancers precisely in the lessons these classics have to offer, rather than to entertain and stimulate their audiences. How surprising it is then to realize that, of the dance organizations in town, it is the educational companies who are venturing into the field of new choreography the most.

Carolina Ballet, a community-based civic company founded in 1988, opens its season in September with “Four Seasons”

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danced to the classic Vivaldi score. Rather than performing the traditional Jerome Robbins choreography, the company, made up of students and pre-professionals, will perform a quartet with each movement designed by a different local choreographer, including the young Columbia native McCree O’Kelley who performed as Mr. Mistoffelees in the national touring company of “Cats,” and the equally youthful Keith Mearns formerly of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company.

But it is the University of South Carolina’s dance company that delivers the greatest jolt to the mundane in the area. While certainly giving a needed nod to the classics in its September season opener “From Russia with Love” – a compilation of excerpts from the works of mainstay Russian choreographer Marius Petipa – the company moves forward in November by offering a staging of contemporary dancer and choreographer Lynn Taylor-Corbett’s “The Great Galloping Gottschalk.” In a move that should satisfy everyone’s taste Gottschalk will be performed alongside Petipa’s “La Bayadere.” Following this trend, February brings three company premieres in one performance – a yet-to-be-named piece created by award-winning dance artist, Helen Pickett; another by USC resident professional company directors Thaddeus Davis and Tanya Wideman-Davis; and finally, David Parsons’ four-minute-long exploration of dance styles, “Etude.”

Also of interest are the offerings by some of the newer and smaller dance companies in the area who sometimes seem to fly under the radar. While not everyone’s cup of chai, the two-yearold Columbia-based theatrical ballet company, Dancewordz, also offers a departure from the ordinary in its performances which combine ballet with the spoken word. The modest but resolute troupe, orchestrated by dancer Wayland Anderson and writer and spoken word artist H. G. Robert, keeps a vigilant eye toward social justice in their performances and will tour its “Emotional Spectrum” program in October with dates scheduled in Conway and Sumter, S.C. and Marietta and Savannah, Ga. The most exciting events on the calendar for both Columbia City Ballet and Columbia Classical Ballet are the auxiliary season performances they have planned – Columbia City Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Celebration in March, and Columbia Classical Ballet’s annual presentation of “Life Chance Gala of the Stars” in January. These performances are exciting precisely because the events are off the grid and one can only hope that audiences won’t be expected to pony up big bucks to see the same costumes, choreography, and sets they saw last season or, at best, three to four seasons ago. We should be getting something fresh and new from both companies and the guest artists they bring in. Past Life Chance programs have offered stellar artists from New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and more, and word on the street is that City Ballet will bring in world class ballerina and former Columbia City Ballet company member Gillian Murphy as the company’s anniversary special guest.

While this season may not bring as much shiny new choreography to Columbia as it should, it does offer a variety of styles from which to choose as well as the opportunity to see some shows you might have missed last year or the year before. The

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reality is that times are tough and dance companies are as hard hit as every other arts organization when it comes to spending cuts and stretching the dwindling dollar. Purchasing new choreography is an expensive endeavor, not to mention procuring the costuming and sets that complete a new production. When Radenko Pavlovich staged “Oz” for Columbia Classical Ballet’s 2009 season he had to forego bringing in fresh choreography from an outside source – something he has consistently done in seasons past – in order to pay for the new ballet. “Oz” is also offered again as part of this season’s calendar. Some of the local companies who might offer stimulating new works, or perhaps rummage through the attic of their repertoires to find works that haven’t been offered locally in the past five years – think Vibrations and Unbound Dance Companies for example – had not announced their calendars as late as September 1st.

But as tight as the dollar is for our dance artists, our dance patrons are not immune to economic hardships themselves.

Columbia City Ballet had that in mind when they cut their ticket prices by forty percent this season. Still, will dance lovers come out and fill the seats to see a show they have recently seen by the same or a different local company? Or will they take a pass on the performance and keep the ten to forty dollars they would spend on a ticket in their pockets? The season itself will tell. In the meantime, performing artists, dance companies included, are challenged to make cost-efficient efforts to provide for their patrons in ways that will keep them stimulated, keep them interested, and keep them looking forward to the wonders of a new dance season like they have for years on end – just like a kid on Christmas morning.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are no second acts in American lives.â&#x20AC;?

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

artist

No second acts?

In memory of Lou Kaplan hen Lou Kaplan died on July 6 at the age of 95, Columbia lost more than a gifted actor; it lost a legendary wit, an intellectual presence, and a maker of art and history to whom attention must be paid.

Lou Kaplan was born in Philadelphia in 1914, grew up during the Depression, and went to work in the garment industry in New York as a sweeper, cutter, and finally, a designer of children’s clothes before he left the city and came south in 1956 to start a new life at 42 years of age. He and a partner set out to buy a fabric store in Charlotte with very little knowledge of the South – and when he and his partner went their separate ways Lou moved even farther south – to Columbia. When he arrived in 1957, Columbia was still a relatively small and a very Southern town with all the traditions and biases that implied. The influx of people moving to the South after World War II had begun to change cities across the South and, in Columbia, a wave of ambitious small business people, primarily from the Northeast – many of them second generation immigrants from Greece, the Middle East and Eastern Europe – knitted themselves into the fabric of life in Columbia and slowly began to change it.

In 1957 there was one theatre in Columbia. The Columbia Stage Society, founded in 1919 by a group of well-to-do Columbians who were interested in reading plays, opened Town Theatre in 1924. Columbia’s Jewish community had its own stage society, the Hadassah Players, that functioned as an unofficial center for the arts and intellectual life, and a place where New York met the 1950’s South.

Lou’s interest in theatre dated back to his earliest days in New York and soon after he opened his store, House of Fabrics, he agreed to help Town Theatre with costumes for a production.

Then he was approached by Frank Harris from Hadassah Players about acting in a reading of “A View from the Bridge,” Arthur Miller’s urban tragedy of immigrant life, which had opened on Broadway two years before. This marked the beginning of a very long career for Lou as an actor, director, and artist in Columbia, and across the South, that touched generations of actors, writers, and artists, as well as audiences. In the late 1960’s, Lou, and some others from Hadassah, along with a group of young actors and directors, began to plan a new theatre that would do contemporary and more experimental theatre. They founded Workshop Theatre as a place for directors to try more adventurous work and then, a decade later, Lou helped his daughter, Kay, and Jim Thigpen start Trustus Theatre as a small professional company dedicated to contemporary and experimental work.

Along the way he started two other theatre companies while acting in theatres across the southeast, appearing in films, being

a mentor, and running his business along with his beloved wife, Hazel. House of Fabrics became a place where theatre people in Columbia congregated and where actors and artists could find a sympathetic ear and sometimes a temporary job. Lou loved being downtown and kept House of Fabrics on Main Street until the end, long after most of the other stores moved to the suburbs.

It would be easier to list the important roles Lou didn’t play than all the ones he did. He was an encyclopedia of American drama playing in everything from “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and “Death of a Salesman”, to “Angels in America” and “Glengarry Glen Ross”. While many of Lou’s most memorable roles were in the classics of American realism, he loved Shaw and Shakespeare (and did a memorable “Merchant of Venice”) as well as the experimental and the absurd. The last role I saw him in was a reading of a short comedy in which he played a vulture. He was a voracious reader of everything and a believer in the power of finding exactly the right word. While comedy delighted him, he loved real wit even more. He appreciated something that was made exactly right – whether it was a suit, a set, a role, or a line. Making it right was one of the thousand of things young actors learned from him.

I admired Lou as an actor, but more as an endlessly generous mentor and friend. For all his wit and boisterous laughter, he took theatre, art, literature, and friendship seriously. He had an uncanny sense of the phony and fraudulent in performances and people – but he was unfailingly generous to those who stumbled around until they discovered the truth and told it. As a teacher of theatre history and literature, I was constantly learning from him – not just because he was so well read on a hundred subjects – but because he got to the essentials. How do we know what is true in a moment, in a poem, in a play, or a piece of art? Why is a group of words configured in one particular way wildly funny and illuminating, while changing one word makes them seem tired and lifeless? How can we make something eternal out of what exists only in a moment?

Lou believed in the power of words in the dark, whether it was in the theatre or reading for the blind, which he did for many years. His amazing energy, commitment to the people and things he loved, and his willingness to both make it new and make it right helped create a vibrant and diverse arts community in Columbia and in South Carolina. His wicked wit and generous laughter sustained and enriched us all.

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story: Thorne Compton photography: Sidney Palmer

He had a great second act.

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“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”

– Heinrich Heine....

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poetry

Appetite Backyard dogwoods seeking sun don’t stand a prayer. Today’s chance rain falls everywhere, splatting on leaves that shiver and dance when the cardinals arrive, that brightness descending on feeders, gleaming swipes of brilliant, feathered reds that quiver in the light. Birds twirl and eddy like a swirl of wind. They settle here and there, voracious for what they find.

Black Oil Sunflower. Songbird Mix. Wild for food, they thread the layered canopy, trees still green at summer’s end.

They dip and stitch their bright to shade, afternoon to night. Finch Mix. Suet. Peanut Delight.

Nothing is safe from such appetite.

Even those backyard dogwoods are starting to go. Red berried, scarlet leaved, hurrying by. The eye sees what it can. Slanting rain is lingering still. Cardinals flying—higher, high— that movement blurred against the sky.

Phebe Davidson is a poet/reviewer/editor who publishes in print and electronic venues. Current poetry collections include The Surface of Things (David Robert Books, 2009), and the chapbook Seven Mile (MSR, 2009). A staff writer for the Asheville Poetry Review and a contributing editor at Tar River Poetry, she lives in Westminster , S.C.

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Lesley Dill (b. 1950) Dress of Inwardness 2006 white painted bronze, unique Collection of Karen and Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE

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