Arts & Society

Robert Devaney • January 30, 2014

With “céad míle fáilte,” an extended Irish family celebrated the grand opening of Ri Ra, the
newly opened Irish pub and restaurant on M Street, with staff members, happy locals, ample drinks
and tastes of lamb, fried macaroni and cheese and other goodies. Amid the food and original wall
posters and art, the band American Diddly Idols entertained the party-goers. [gallery ids="101613,146773,146780,146777,146767" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The In Series had another successful collaboration
with the Washington Ballet Studio
Company in performances of La Vie en Rose
at the GALA Theatre Jan. 17 – 19. In Series
Artistic Director and Founder Carla Hu?bner
and Frank Conlon provided piano accompaniment
for the singers and dancers in pieces
choreographed by Septime Webre and David
Palmer. The program interpreted works ranging
from Claude Debussy’s Claire de Lune to the
haunting lyrics of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf.
Soprano Fleta Hylton brought the sold-out audience
to its feet with her rendition of Piaf’s Je ne
regrette rien. [gallery ids="101614,146764,146766" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post • January 27, 2014

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake devastated the Sichuan province of central China, and more than 5,000 children lost their lives when the region’s shoddily constructed schoolhouses collapsed. After the catastrophe the state-controlled media tried to scuttle the incidents, detaining and threatening parents and volunteers who questioned the authorities and unfit building codes. Officials ordered the Chinese news media to stop reporting on school collapses, and parents were urged to accept money in exchange for their silence. Many of the schools were quickly reconstructed.

When Chinese artist Ai Weiwei visited the stricken region shortly after the earthquake, he saw the devastated schoolhouses, mounds of backpacks and twisted brambles of steel rebar scattered about the wreckage. The first thing he did was write about it in his blog (which had an extensive readership until Chinese authorities shut it down in 2009).

The next thing he did was to recruit volunteers through the Internet for his Citizens’ Investigation project, which compiled a list of the children who died in the earthquake. He gathered their names, birth years, genders and class, and displayed them along the walls of his Shanghai studio (now demolished) like a war memorial. At the Hirshhorn Museum, a replication of this wall faces the entrance to “Ai Weiwei: According To What?” a retrospective of the artist’s work, through February 24.

This wall is at once a statement of remembrance and protest, asking us with each name to confront the significance of an individual life and to weigh its loss, while defying his government’s mishandling and disregard of the situation. In all his work, Weiwei goes to great lengths to organize and document, to find a harmony in structure that reveals a feeling of truth in personal identity.

Weiwei’s work also has a way of confronting us with environments, filtering them through prismatic lenses and binding us all—his self, included—to the state of our modern times. Another piece in the exhibit brought about by the Sichuan earthquake events is a meticulously neat display of thousands of corroded steel rebar lengths laid out across the entire floor of a large gallery; the rebar was recovered in twisted heaps from the rubble of the schoolhouses, and the artist hired craftsmen to straighten them back out.

Consumed with the appropriating and rearranging of historical backgrounds and life experiences, Weiwei strives through his work to maintain a sincere, deeply rooted relationship with his surroundings, which is difficult when born into an upended society. Raised amidst the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, Weiwei’s family was among the many antisocialists exiled to northwest China. Eventually returning to Beijing, Weiwei entered film school before moving to the US in 1981, where he studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York and documented his daily experiences with photographs, hundreds of which are woven through “According To What?”

This personal visual record traces his early search for identity, which would soon consume him in an altogether different way. After his return to China in 1993, all remnants of his past had been wiped out by development, and a sense of excavating has emerged in his work as he uncovers and readapts lost artifacts of his cultural heritage.

“Kippe” is a perfect brick of tightly stacked scrap wood, nearly six feet tall, made out of dismantled pieces of Qing Dynasty temples and framed within a set of gymnast’s parallel bars, a ubiquitous schoolyard amusement from Weiwei’s childhood. “Colored Vases” is a collection of 16 Han Dynasty vessels, ranging in age between 206 BCE – 220 CE, which Weiwei dipped in neon hues of industrial paint; the only remnants of their original ornate patterns gasp through streaks of Kermit-the-frog green and frosted periwinkle.

All of Weiwei’s physical artworks—which exclude his trail of viral and online photojournalism, conceptual projects, architecture, writings and his prolific Twitter account—have the gravity and permanence of monuments. They defy China’s cultural patterns of paving over pasts and intentional forgetting, as with the Sichuan earthquake. Weiwei decries his country’s push toward cultural uniformity with the grit and snarl of egoistic proclamations, dealing directly and often abrasively with the values of free speech and expression (as evidenced by photographs documenting his unique employment of a certain four-letter word at the site of various Chinese and US landmarks).

Weiwei was initially acclaimed by his government and awarded the opportunity to work on significant projects in his country (including designing the Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium from the 2008 Chinese Olympics). But since 2009, as a result of his heated political activism, the Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, detained him, kept him under house arrest, beaten him, confiscated his passport and demolished his studio.

There really is no clean end to this story. Weiwei is currently embroiled in murky charges of tax evasion by the Chinese authorities, and he is forbidden to leave the country for alleged suspicion of this and other crimes, from pornography to money laundering. He is currently working to prove his innocence.

But even ignoring all of this, Ai Weiwei is still a landmark contemporary artist. He distills monumental issues of our era by engaging the perspective of the individual, without losing focus on larger, more challenging implications. He stays aware of an ever-broadening network of global affairs, and uses an extensive web of media to empower his audience to understand and question their surroundings. And in an age where a government can all but cover up the deaths of 5,000 children, that means something.

Ari Post • January 26, 2014

Occasionally, a work of art comes along that cuts right through the static noise of the modern scene. It reflects the burden and balance of history and unveils for a moment the tragic beauty of human nature. Time falls by its side, as the past and present collide before it with startling immediacy, free from distortions, interferences and distractions. It is transcendent without need of religion, it is celestial while inextricably bound to the dirt of this earth. “The Dying Gaul” is one of these rare and consummate masterworks.

An ancient Roman marble sculpture created during the first or second century A.D., “The Dying Gaul” is a Gallic warrior, shown in his final moments of life, fallen from a mortal wound to his chest with his weapons and armor by his side. Long recognized as one of the renowned works from antiquity, it has not left Rome since 1797, when Napoleonic forces took the sculpture to Paris and had it displayed in the Louvre until 1816. Now on display in the rotunda of the National Gallery in coordination with the Embassy of Italy, this brief but historic exhibit is a gesture of cultural connectivity, in celebration of the ties that bind the United States and Italy, as well as the considerable influence that Italy’s history has had in shaping this country’s identity.

There is so much history with a work like this, from its discovery in the gardens of an Italian villa in the 1620s to the early misconceptions that it was a Roman gladiator or a Greek herald. It is, in fact, a Roman copy of a Greek bronze, originally created in the third century B.C. in Asia Minor to commemorate the victory of the king of Pergamon over the invading Gauls. They were evidently brought to Rome, where they would have reminded Romans of their own conquest of Gaul.

Not that this is really that important when standing before the dying soldier. Experiencing the force of this work makes the whole of Western art history feel at once totally dismissible and densely concentrated into a single, present moment.
The warrior hunches over with his head down, legs fallen out underneath him. The cut of the marble informs the figure, as the striated veins and mineral impurities of the stone are like kicked-up dust caking the soldier’s bare back. Slight cracks in the sculpture mimic battle scars.

The musculature is almost devastating. Visible are the seizures and contractions of a body broken, the forearms bulging, biceps in spasm, legs heavy, ribs constricting, chest sliced open and heaving, the warrior growing more faint with each breath. The body, held up by the wide back and shoulders, is full of vitality and life that it will never again experience. The Gaul is exhausted but determinedly strong, living in the prime of his life until the moment death takes him.

His head hangs wearily, as exquisitely carved as the rest of him. However, even hoisted above us on a pedestal the face is obscured by shadow. And though photographed in proper lighting on the surrounding panels for all to see, it feels inappropriate to hunch over and steal a look into the soldier’s eyes, as if to do so is a public exploitation of human suffering.
I think it is meant to be this way. In much the same way that we cannot stare coolly into the face of a crying friend, we see here the glimpse that the Gaul offers us—not the full brunt of his pain, but a sorrow that he obscures in search for solace and privacy amidst the chaos of his final moments. It is frankly a suggestion of something eternal that we can only ever realize in our hearts and minds. It is important to recognize that not everything can be shown, and it is often just as important to understand those things that can never be fully expressed to round out the sensation of being human.

To exhibit the Gaul in the rotunda of the National Gallery is a strangely Roman affectation, reminiscent of the political ethos of the ancient empire that originally put him on display. As an image of a vanquished enemy, the sculpture embodies courage in defeat, self-possession in the face of death and the recognition of nobility even in opposition. In the context of Washington, it fits in the gallery’s vaulted dome with its black marble columns like a brutalized political dissident on display, meant to impress and influence rather than inspire or enlighten. It distracts slightly from the ability to admire this as a work of art and shifts focus instead on its cultural and political poignancy. It would have been nice to view it in a more intimate gallery setting, unencumbered by the noise and distractions of gathering tour groups and the flow of visitors through the museum entrance. This, however, is probably how the Gaul felt on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, as the year comes to an end and the robes of winter wrap heavily around us, it is a beautiful experience to stand before a single work of art that lets us consider all that has passed by us, all that is yet to come, all that we are and all that we will never have the chance to be. Time and life are fickle and finite, but there is no discernable limit to the human spirit. ?

“The Dying Gaul” is on view at the National Gallery of Art through March 16. For more information, visit www.nga.gov.

Gary Tischler • January 23, 2014

It used to be that Hollywood trolled Broadway for often terrific movie versions of hit musicals: the whole Rodgers & Hammerstein canon from “Oklahoma” to “The Sound of Music,” Lerner & Lowe’s “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot” or “Anything Goes” and “Kiss Me Kate” from Cole Porter.

These days—with some exceptions—it’s Broadway producers who are culling movies for their musicals, with mixed results. Remember “The Addams Family” (first, a TV series) or “The Producers”? Just recently three such road versions of the Broadway originals have hit the Kennedy Center: “Sister Act” (from the Whoopee Goldberg movie), “Elf” and now “Flashdance,” which runs in the Eisenhower Theater through Jan. 19.

At least “Flashdance” has some musical cache to it. The movie was a surprise hit in the 1980s for Jennifer Beals in a tale about a gorgeous young woman, who is a factory worker by day, a strip club dancer by night, and dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. The movie overrode its improbable Cinderella story with a stripped-down plot, some hot numbers by a body double and a several anthem-like rock numbers. Like “Dirty Dancing” from the same period, it became a hit.

“Flashdance, The Musical” has the same improbable plot, with the heroine, Alex Owens now a true working class gal who falls in love with the company heir to the business, stands up for her fellow workers hard hatters on the steel mill line, still works in an odd strip club where they don’t actually strip and is generally a tough cookie who still wants to be a ballet dancer.

The musical also appears to be about an hour longer than the original film, with songs from the movie like “Gloria” (a hit for the late Laura Brannigan), “What a Feeling,” “Maniac” and the title song as well as “I Love Rock and Roll.” It also has another 16 songs, with music by Robbie Roth and lyrics by Robert Cary and Robbie Roth, which are serviceable if not the kind of songs that make you want to try them at a karaoke bar 20 years from now.

But here’s what’s good about “Flashdance.” It has—like the movie—enormous energy driven by a high-spirited, attractive cast who sing and dance with gusto and deliver lines with the aplomb of stand-up comedians, especially David Gordon as Jimmy, who actually wants to be a standup comedian in New York, but settles for returning to the club and his girlfriend Gloria, the appealing Ginna Claire Mason, the two of them dueting on “Where I Belong”.

But truth to tell, it’s really Jillian Mueller, a fiery, dance-dervish performer with a big voice who carries the show. She sings, hoofs, performs and breathes life into the proceedings whenever she’s on stage, which is pretty much always. Small, high-driving and high-stepping, emotional and passionate, she’s got the makings of a Broadway star, she does everything as if it’s worth giving 110 percent and carries you with her. It’s amazing that her voice has held out for the course of the tour—she has a number of anthem-like songs to sings, the kind where you’re in the spotlight feet firmly planted, head out and up, defiant and moving forward and just sort of belt it out. She also gets splashed with water while dancing emoting on a chair, a signature scene from the movie and poster.

As far as “I Love Rock and Roll” goes, Joan Jett owns that one way long ago, lock, stock and rock and leather jacket.

Gary Tischler • January 17, 2014

From South Africa—“Mies Julie,”
an adaptation by Yael Farber for
the South African State Theatre of
Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” 14 years
after Apartheid makes its Washington
debut at the Shakespeare
Theatre Company’s Lansburgh
Theatre Nov. 9 to 24.

Lynn Redgrave by way of Kathleen
Chalfant—“Shakespeare For My Father,”
a one-woman play written by the
late actress Lynn Redgrave about her
Shakespearean actor father Michael, will
receive a staged reading at the Folger
Theatre Nov. 11, in conjunction with
the Davis Performing Arts Center at
Georgetown University.

A new and restless “Sleeping Beauty”—
Cutting edge and powerhouse British choreographer
Matthew Bourne returns to the
Kennedy Center with his company New
Adventures to the Opera House for his distinctive
and haunting version of “Sleeping
Beauty,” a gothic, supernatural love story
fitting for the times. Nov. 12 to 17.

A True Family Saga at Studio, “The Apple Family Plays”
by Richard Nelson consist of two plays, “That Hopey
Changing Thing” and “Sweet and Sad,” which will play
in repertory at the Studio Theater Nov. 13 to Dec.
29, directed by Serge Seiden and with a cast of stellar
Washington players, including Jeremy Webb, Kimberly
Schraf, Sarah Marshall, Ted van Grithuysen, Elizabeth
Pierotti and Rick Foucheux.

One of Our Favorite Things: Rodgers
and Hammerstein’s classic musical about
Anna and the King of Siam, “The King
and I” gets a staging fit for the holidays
at the Olney Theatre Center Nov. 14
to Dec. 29. Starring Paolo Montalban
as the King and Eileen Ward as Anna,
directed by Mark Waldrop.

Tappin’ Through Life—Legendary Broadway and
stage performer, jazz singer, dancer and actor
Maurice Hines will star in the jazzy, high-stepping
journey of his own life, featuring the Manzari
Brothers, running Nov. 15 to Dec. 29.

Christmas in Twelve Days—“The Twelve Days
of Christmas,” directed by Michael Dove, and
based on the traditional holiday song by Renee
Calarco will be the Christmas production
at Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo Park Nov. 15 to Dec. 30. [gallery ids="101535,150046,150054,150052" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Mr. and Mrs. Neil Bush and the Ambassador of Italy and Mrs. Bisogniero hosted this year’s Point of Lights Tribute Awards at the Embassy of Italy on Oct. 11 recognizing individuals and organizations whose contributions have bettered their communities. In honoring New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Neil Bush said “Governor Christie showed that when the chips are down, we are all family.” The Governor said that he accepted the award on behalf of the volunteers, “those people who helped rebuild my state.” American Idol star Pia Toscano sang “I’ll Stand by You” and legendary broadcaster Paul Berry auctioned off an American flag flown on 9/11, signed by and donated from the personal collection of Pres. George H. W. Bush, for a breathtaking $57,500. [gallery ids="101517,150854,150839,150844,150847,150852" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

Last night, Washington VIPs and style-setters were treated to an exclusive glimpse of the United Colors of Benetton Autumn/Winter 2013 collection at the Georgetown flagship store. A recognizable cast of Washington’s most fashionable and their families – attired head-to-toe in fresh Benetton looks – mingled with Benetton USA President & CEO Ari Hoffman, who flew in from New York for the occasion. Benetton-clad honorees included Washington Redskin Reed Doughty, Top Chef’s Spike Mendelsohn, BET Network EVP & CFO Michael Pickrum, Washingtonian’s Kate Bennett, Washington personality Susanna Quinn, author Helena Andrews, and Gilt City’s Marissa Schneider were among those honored at the event. [gallery ids="101527,150222,150220" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

The OSS Society honored Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations, the mastermind behind the raid to get Osama bin Laden, at its annual William J. Donovan Award Dinner Oct. 26 at the Ritz-Carlton in the West End.

The OSS gala is a unique Washington event, where old spies and young silent warriors gather to tell stories and recognize today’s achievers — and where national intelligence and covert actions are seen as high service to the nation.

The OSS Society is dedicated to those who served during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Operations, and honors the memory of legendary Gen. “Wild Bill” Donovan, OSS founder.

Where else do you have nine toasts at the beginning of dinner? To the commander-in-chief, our allies — and the last, being “to the ladies.” How about applause for Ernest Hemingway who drove into Paris with OSS forces in 1944 and his love of martinis? Or for Marlene Dietrich, whose recordings were broadcast by the OSS during World War II? Even closer to home, why not have a menu inspired by Julia Child who worked for the OSS and lived briefly in Georgetown?

Retired Maj. Gen. Victor J. Hugo, Jr., master of ceremonies for the dinner, told attendees at one point to sit down or they’d be shot — the program was long but full of gratitude and history. Among the awards, the 99-year-old Fisher Howe toasted Julia Child and her “genuineness.”

Marlene Dietrich was honored for our work during World War II, recording melancholic songs to demoralize German troops. It was fine for her international fame, she said, to be used “as a weapon against evil.” Her only child Maria Riva was on hand to salute her as did the entire ballroom and a swing band. In a heartfelt speech, Riva recalled preparing to leave France before the growing Nazi threat: “America’s freedom is never more apparent than when you flee and need her to house you.”

CIA Director John Brennan said that he was “humbled” to give the keynote speech. He noted that he and McRaven were both longhorns from the University of Texas. It is a time of “greater need for intelligence,” Brennan said, as he looked out at “the excellence and professionalism in this room.” Intelligence and special operations are back together “like the OSS.”

Brennan spoke of McRaven, whose dissertation was on special ops and who earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism, leaving pre-med and accounting behind — and then chose the “comfort and ease” of being a Navy SEAL. McRaven, Brennan said, called the Osama mission “sporty.” It was the integrity of McRaven — “We can get the job done.” — that convinced President Obama to proceed with the raid, he said. McRaven is a decent as he seems, Brennan said, “not just a hero but a good guy.”

After video tributes by Leon Panetta, Robert Gates and Obama, the presentation of the Donovan Award by retired Major Gen. John Singlaub, McRaven launched into a well-prepared speech. “The OSS is back,” he said. Not since World War II have intelligence and special operations meshed so well, he said, especially since the attacks of September 11 and the aftermath. He gave a long list of the different talents required for special ops, the different devices and different languages involved. Harking back to previous threats, such as fascism and communism, McRaven said, “Today, we are fighting extremism of another type, a medieval mindset that doesn’t recognize any civility. It is international, and it is a threat to our global humanity.”
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