Arts & Society

Mary Bird • November 6, 2012

From the moment guests were welcomed onto the red carpet at the residence of Ambassador of Japan Ichiro and Mrs. Fujisaki by a bevy of kimonoed young beauties, it was clear that this would a special, and delightedly nonpartisan, evening. Neil Bush is board chairman of the world’s leading volunteer service organization inspired by his father, President H. W. Bush. Chair of the American Red Cross and former Ambassador to Finland Bonnie McElveen-Hunter was among the honorees. The evening included a live auction with former First Lady Barbara Bush’s signature Kenneth Jay Lane pearls fetching an impressive $14,000 for the cause. [gallery ids="100990,131962,131954,131979,131946,131984,131938,131992,131929,131999,131971" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The wrath of the weather gods could not daunt Opera Camerata loyalists who ensured that Don Giovanni would be presented at the residence of Ambassador of Portugal and Mrs. Nuno Brito on Sept. 8. The Ambassador welcomed guests to a “nice soirée” as he thanked the volunteers. Executive Director Michael Reilly noted that “only mad dogs, Englishmen and opera lovers would come out on an evening like this.” They were well rewarded with a reception and a performance featuring “equal opportunity seducers.” Artistic Director Gregory Buchalter conducted the orchestra and an accomplished cast of young artists and seasoned professionals tented in the embassy gardens. [gallery ids="100991,132013,132028,132004,132033,131996,132039,131987,132046,132020" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

On Sept. 12, Café Milano hosted the ladies of Knock Out Abuse Against Women. Charrisse Jackson-Jordan and Michelle Schoenfeld will co-chair the 19th annual gala where over 750 of Washington D.C.’s most prominent women gather at the Ritz Carlton on Nov. 1 to support victims of domestic violence. In 19 years, co-founders Cheryl Masri and Jill Sorensen have raised over 6.5 million dollars to restore dignity and respect to thousands of victims of domestic violence in the National Capital Area. Leon Harris of ABC7 News said that Saks is a new sponsor this year and will feature “50 shades of red attire.” The evening is a true celebration of the power of women to effect change for the most vulnerable women and children in our community. [gallery ids="102481,120385,120362,120370,120353,120378,120390,120397,120404" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Suri’s Burn Book, the much-anticipated book version of the popular tumblr, was launched on Sept. 5 at A Bar, the spiffy lounge at Modus Hotel’s newest addition, Avenue Suites. Author Allie Hagan, who calls DC her home, met her ardent fans and signed copies of the book which narrates life from the “point of view” of Suri Cruise. The fashionable guests enjoyed custom Georgetown Cupcakes, a bar menu dedicated to Suri (the Suri Cocktail was made from champagne, St. Germain and edible pearls), and an in-person account of what the author’s lawyers deemed too risky for publication. [gallery ids="100992,132070,132035,132063,132042,132057,132050" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Erwin Gomez opened his latest beauty lounge, Karma on 24th Street in the West End, with an overflow reception on Sept. 12. Gomez’ celebrity clients have included Stevie Wonder, Barbra Streisand and Eva Longoria among others. He has partnered in this new venture with Vinoda Basnayake, Brook Rose, Kunal Shah and Charlie Paret. Guests enjoyed Belvedere Lemon Tea cocktails, Terrazas wine and hors d’oeuvres from RSVP Catering before departing with cosmetic laden goodie bags.

Robert Devaney •

The stage was set . . . for a ball, the 2012 Wolf Trap Ball that celebrated the “17 Years of Leadership, Innovation and Vision” of Terre Jones, Wolf Trap president and CEO, Sept. 15.
Jones will retire in December and move to Santa Fe with his wife Polly. We should be lucky to have such a retirement party that included sorrel jelly with caviar, lobster fricassee and California smoked bison tenderloin — and dancing and music and more dancing. After all, we were on the Filene Center stage at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. John Lee, Wolf Trap Foundation board chairman, greeted the guests and the honoree. Wolf Trap Associates board chairman Peter Lauria listed the embassies represented in the room as well as current and former government officials — and the corporate sponsors. In honor of Jones, Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary got the group singing to lyrics like “one love, many hearts.” And the song Jones aptly chose to lead this night’s song list? The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends.”
[gallery ids="100994,132134,132091,132127,132099,132120,132108,132114" nav="thumbs"]

Adra Williams •

Cocktails, moonbounce and haircuts, oh my! These are just a few elements that accompanied the food trucks, unicorns, DJs and more that made up the Yelp Fantasy Land. Businesses, beware! Yelp is showering love on those known as the Yelp Elite. The Elite are the ones who share the most experiences on yelp — which we all use to get the skinny on new and old businesses. This Fantasy Land, nuzzled in the Atlas District at Atlas Heights, was the ultimate adult playground to show appreciation to those who give us the low-down on Yelp.
[gallery ids="100979,131665,131673,131681,131689,131697,131705,131713,131722,131657,131648,131754,131613,131749,131744,131622,131738,131631,131640,131731" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Vlad the Impaler, the original real his- torical figure from which sprung Bram Stoker’s fictional , blood-sucking anti- hero and the emergence of ballet as a dance art form are separated by less than a century, give or take.

It seemed to many that Dracula’s story—the one Bram Stoker wrote in the era of Victoria’s buttoned-up, repressed England—and ballet might make for a dreamy narrative match on the stage. That’s exactly what happens in the Washington Ballet production of “Dracula,” choreographer Michael Pink’s gory, heated, very bloody and seductive version of the tale at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, now through Nov. 4.

Narrative ballet—from “Swan Lake”, to “Don Quixote,” to “Romeo and Julet”—as opposed to more abstract works of modern dance, have always seemed to me like the dream version of a story, it’s dreamt essence lying at the core of the tale, just as opera is fevered version of the same tale, with the emotions riding on the music, and drama and plays carry the narrative with character and words.

On those terms, “Dracula” surely feels like a dream, even if that dream resembles more often than not a nightmare. Actually, it begins with a nightmare, one dreamt by the much- put-upon Jonathan Harker. This “Dracula” is remarkably faithful to the Stoker tale, with its bedeviled, haunted Harker, the bug-eating, madhouse resident Renfield, who acts as a kind of portal for Dracula, the beguiling Lucy and her swains, Lord Arthur Godalming and the rifle-toting, buckskin-wearing American Quincy Morris, a very romantic-looking, Byronian Dr. Van Helsing, and Mina, Harker’s fiancé, the real object of Dracula’s sinister affections, as well as assorted couples, female vamps, gendarmes, and peasants, including a horde of infected victims of Dracula.

The production itself lets out all the stops with Lez Brotherson providing a set and costume design that encompasses Dracula hallmarks — the stark sanatorium, the imposing staircases, the castle, the graveyard, beds and cof- fins, all bathed in a score by Phillip Feeney full of bells and whistles and screeches and pounding heartbeats, the ominous sounds of a hungry heart accompanied by an impending feeding frenzy.

This production, (which was originally directed by Christopher Gable) has different casts in different productions, with Jared Nelson cast in the red-caped and ninja-black role of Dracula. This is about Dracula, no question, and his overpowering will to feast. The production – a nerve-wracking and haunting two hours plus event is wrapped, and stacked around the architecture of three seductions in which Dracula overpowers Harkin, visiting his castle on business, the flirtatious, enchanting Lucy at what appears to be a gala brunch of couples moving up and down a staircase, into chairs and out on to a dance floor, and Nina at night, alone in a bed, beckoning her to his bloody, bared chest.

These dances—and that’s what they are, almost classic manifestations of ballet, but also almost Olympic-style athletic feats—show us Dracula’s magnetic, physical powers, as well as his hypnotic powers and for Nelson—and also for the dynamic Jyum-Woong Kim—the require- ments for the parts are a display of emotions, strength and lean-muscled strength so that the effect on the audience is as hypnotic as those of his victims.
These three pa-de near-deaths are interjected like a stiletto into the production, which includes the desperate presence of Renfield, a kind of ritualized, loud, brazen and bloody peasant folk dance which ends with the sacrifice of a wolf.

In England, there’s a ball, and as much flirtatious, happy, stylized, fashionista and high energy style dancing to make you almost forget who’s coming to dinner. In this production, Nicole Haskins, makes for a heartbreaking Lucy, she’s so full of energy, such forgiveable flirtation that her submission to Dracula and her trans- formation into a bloody-tooth, virally hungry otherbeing is a tragedy.

The presence of Dracula—for the audi- ence—even when he’s not in plain sight provides the tension of a violin bow, it speeds up the nar- rative, no matter what’s happening. This way, it becomes an adventure tale which moves to a kind of action climax, one, by the way which is as graphically violent as a stage production can
manage.

Pink’s “Dracula” is like a loud, almost unbearably and frightening dream, the tale remembered at some primal level, becoming real. In this season, that’s not a bad fright night.?

Gary Tischler •

Cab drivers ask about these things. “Long, yes?” he asked. “Very long?” “Yes, it was long,” I replied. It clocked in at just under three-and-a-half hours. But maybe not long enough.

When you are talking about Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” time, quite often, but not always, flies. Ideally, you forget where you are, forget all your troubles, and become immersed, like going under, knowing you don’t have to worry about holding your breath.

“I saw ‘Amadeus’ when I was young. Mozart, yes, and the ending was about that, yes?” asked the cab driver. I saw “Amadeus,” too, when I was young, or not so young. Ever since I’ve wanted to see the opera, considered by many to be the best opera ever by anyone, no comfort to Salieri there. Well, here we were at last, better late than never.

This may be a shameful thing to admit, seeing—and hearing—“Don Giovanni” for the first time at my age, and I am a little bit ashamed. But not so much. On the other hand, it makes you feel chipper and young, knowing that there may yet be other great things to experience for the first time—winning the Powerball lottery, finding a signed Dickens book, meeting the Dalai Lama or Angelina Jolie, whichever.

Right now, there’s still time to see the Washington National Opera Company’s superb, bracing production of “Don Giovanni” (Sept. 29, Oct. 1, 4, 7 , 9 and 13), and it’s really, really worth it, whether you’ve seen it 100 times or never, whether you’ve got all the time in the world or the clock is running out.

You get a real sense of what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was all about during the course of this production and it’s not actor Tom Hulce’s giggling man-child, but a deft, facile, include-the-whole-experience, bona fide ahead-of-his-time, modernist genius of a composer, raising every form and bit he touched to another level. That’s why “Don Giovanni” is considered the best—it lacks nothing except brevity. Wagner may have thought he was in the running, but Richard Wagner lacked a capacity for humor of any sort, at least in his operas. “Don Giovanni,” disconcertingly unclassifiable, is rich in humor—low and high, sly and naughty, earthy and witty, acting as a kind of sneezing pepper for an opera that wears and discards the mantle of a dark, philosophical tragedy until the end. In short, this is serious stuff that’s also funny, sensual and sexy, uncommonly deep and grandiose. And it flits from serenades to dances, to arias, to soaring symphonic orchestral music, sometimes all at the same time with such ease that you barely take breath between transitions. The music—the real, meaningful content—is a joy.

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I was going to see “Don Quixote” that night. I, of course, corrected him, but afterwards, thought that’s not so far off. “Giovanni” or Don Juan is not that far removed from the Spanish knight tilting at windmills and seeing saints in sinners and his trusty sidekick Sancho Panza are not that far apart. They’re exact opposites of extremes: Quixote has banished thoughts of sex and seduction totally from his mind—Giovanni thinks of nothing else. Quixote rides to the rescue, Giovanni is the man people—women—need rescuing from. Giovanni is all about his id, his world view and in that sense he is Quixote’s twin.

But life and operas and music and genius aren’t that simple. What we’re offered at the Opera House is a palette of complications paced close to perfection by director John Pascoe, who’s also provide the oversized sets and the odd costumes, apparently set in Franco’s Spain, but here and there mixing it up with Mozart’s time. He puts you right in the action—and there is a lot of action—with Giovanni, having attempted to seduce and then rape Donna Anna, killing her father and on the lam with his exasperated servant Leperello in the first 20 minutes or so.

And away we go, always sidetracked when Giovanni spies an available woman or unavailable (it matters not). He’s pursued by Donna Elvira whom he dumped and left with child, he spies a fetching young peasant girl Zerlina on the day of her wedding to Masetto and attempts to seduce her not once but any time he can, he’s hunted by Donna Anna and her fiancé Don Ottavio who want to avenge her father’s murder, and he’s chased by a mob before the statue of the man he murdered comes to his villa for dinner and takes him at last away to hell, unrepentant to the last.

And that’s not the half of it.

It pays to have a great “Don Giovanni” in this part. He must have the chops, the voice and the looks and Russian bass Ildar Abrazakov has all three, because you have to, if not be sympathetic to Giovanni, at least feel his powers. Otherwise, we’re just dealing with a rapist, a boor and a killer. For a bass, Abrazakov sings with great power, sure, but also with surprising range. Consider for a moment when he’s decides to seduce yet another woman with a street-level balcony serenade (the famous “deh, vieni alla finestra”). He’s on his knees, the voice lowers, pleading, sweet, an ode to beauty and desire, it’s pitched to passion and wanting, it’s so moving you can imagine someone’s really smart and pretty sister falling for it. It caused at least one man in the audience to elicit a loud “Bravo!” and loud clapping.

The cast is more than supportive: American soprano Meagan Miller, supple, strong and working with throat trouble and triumphing as Donna Anna; Italian soprano Barbara Frittoli, singing freely and with great passion as the conflicted and in-love Donna Elvira; Argentine soprano Veronica Cangemi as the bewildered peasant girl Zerlina, injecting continual fresh energy into the proceedings.

In the program, a writer refers to Mozart’s “Shakespearean Diversity,” and that’s exactly so. The richness of content in “Don Giovanni”—and Mozart had considerable help with his favorite librettist Lorenzo da Ponte—contains, like “Hamlet,” the world. And it’s a big world, after all.

Gary Tischler •

The voice on the phone didn’t give many clues. I expected to hear Janis Joplin’s growly, smoky voice, but,
after all, I was talking to Mary Bridget Davies. Davies stars in the current run of “One Night With Janis Joplin” at Arena Stage. She takes the stage performing, being, acting the part of Joplin, who for a time in the 1960s was the queen of rock and blues in America before she died of a heroin overdose in 1970.

Davies talks smartly, movingly about Joplin, the person and the music, the blues. She’s had plenty of experience herself singing the blues, and, well, being Janis. If you catch any of the videos on YouTube, the Joplin persona and voice and way of singing rises easily to the surface, and catches you full force.

“One way or another I’ve been singing her songs for a while,” Davies, a thirty-some- thing woman who hails from Lakewood near Cleveland, Ohio, says. “Even when I was little, people tell me I was jumping up and down on the couch singing ‘Piece of My Heart.’ ” That would be Joplin’s signature heartbreak song from her initial hit album “Cheap Thrills” back in 1968, when she bowled the rock world over with her emotional blues style and let-it-all-hang-out persona.

“I’m not her, in that sense,” she said. “But you know, when I get on stage in this show, there are times when I just sort of let her take over, I’m singing a song, and there she is and I just step aside.”

“One Night With Janis Joplin,” staged in partnership with the Cleveland Play House and written and directed by Randy Johnson, is a show on the order of a concert, but also a trip through the sources of Joplin’s particular bluesy style, by way of Sabrina Elayne Carten as the blues singer paying homage to African American blues singers like Etta James, Bessie Smith and Aretha Franklin.

Davies got the role after the original actress backed out, but she was more than ready. She had already performed in “Love, Janis,” had already the affinity for Janis’s music, had parents who were genuine members of the rock and roll, blues and country rock world, played and fronted with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin’s original band, and has her own blues band and record her own albums.

“Yeah, you could say she was a big part of my life all along,” she said. “This is something special. It’s like being her on stage at least, and that’s okay, more than okay. She lived quite a life. She had this unique gift she didn’t even know she had. One day, she sang and she knew she could do it and that was that. The first kind of music she heard was “Summertime”, which she sang herself.” When she got the role, she played it in Cleveland and it was like a homecoming for her. One critic wrote that “While there never has been and never will be another Janis Joplin, Mary Bridget Davies is awfully damn close.”

“I think audiences really get it into it—and you get all kinds of people, people of that gen- eration, people my age, maybe even young, not teens so much unless their folks bring them,” she said. “I think they have the same reaction as people did back then. It’s the raw emotions. The songs are so out front, they get to you.

That was Joplin’s stock in trade—she laid herself out there, just about without any let up through songs like “Piece of My Heart”, “Me and Bobby McGee”, “Cry” and the difficult, wrenching “Ball and Chain”, a regular mountain for singers to climb.

“People said, well, she doesn’t exactly look like Janis, but then they get into it, and it’s some- thing different,” she said. “You have to wonder what she would have been like if she had lived.”

She’d be in her late sixties, or a little more, like her “Big Brother” band mates, and, Davies thinks “could have been like the soul or god- mother of country rock and the blues, because in truth, nobody sings like that anymore.”

Nobody, except maybe Mary Bridget Davies.