Arts & Society

Ari Post • April 4, 2012

Canal Square and Beyond

Nestled in a brick courtyard at M and 31st Streets, walking into Canal Square on the evening of a “First Friday” feels like stumbling into the best social club you never knew existed. The four galleries clustered in the space are teeming with admirers, friends, patrons and chance roamers, peering about the galleries or lounging in the benches just outside, smiling and chatting. And what’s more—they’re chatting about art! The galleries are also local institutions—Parish Gallery, Moca DC and Alla Rogers Gallery have all recently celebrated their twenty-year anniversaries. Just north of Canal Square, The Old Print Gallery and the Ralls Collection have also made their mark on the city’s artistic community (the Ralls Collection even used to reside in Canal Square). Among the most longstanding and respected galleries in the city, this cluster of art venues embodies what’s best about Georgetown: history, community, style and beauty, with an eye for the contemporary.

Parish Gallery

Internationally recognized African painter, Bethel Aniaku, will be at Parish Gallery through April 17, in an exhibit titled “Instinct of Desire.” The cultural explored in these paintings include a blend of historical, literal, and artistic elements, which aim to reunite the viewer with their own culture and origins. Aniaku, by comparison, honors the trade of his own carpenter ancestors by using wood as the base for his paintings. His compositions play with color, light, space and mixed media, relying on instinct more than any direct intention, as if the painting was not being made but found as an artifact that has always existed.

Opening April 20, Parish Gallery will open its next exhibit, showcasing the artworks of husband and wife Christine and Richmond Jones, in a show titled “Two Views/One Vision.” Starting out as an illustrator and designer, Christine’s oil paint and pastel works represent the textures and colors, people and places in which she finds inspiration. Richmond, who also began his career as a graphic designer, found a new creative direction as a “transparent watercolor painter.” Since then, both artists have been exhibited in numerous juried exhibitions around the country and received many awards for their individual and collective work.

www.ParishGallery.com

The Ralls Collection

The Ralls Collection is in the midst of a powerful group exhibition of gallery artists, which runs through June 15. It is difficult to encapsulate the significance of The Ralls Collection to Washington’s artistic community, much in the same way it is hard to grasp the broad archive of substantial artwork that has passed through the gallery since its opening over 20 years ago. The work present in the gallery’s current exhibit showcases a remarkable collection of beautiful contemporary artwork with a clear vision and impeccable taste. Many of the artists Ralls chose for the exhibition have been with the gallery since it’s beginning, and some are welcome additions. David Richardson, a personal favorite of this author whose show at Ralls last year garnered tremendous national attention (including a feature in the New York Times), uses planes of bold colors and textures, recalling landscape both foreign and familiar, contained yet effusive.

www.RallsCollection.com

Moca DC

Moca DC stands up for the little guy, in more ways than one. A nonprofit, part of the gallery’s mission is to be “Open to all artists all the time,” offering opportunities to artists at every stage of their careers. Moca gives more exhibits to emerging, first-time and beginning artists than almost any in the city. The gallery is also devoted to the tradition of figurative art, including three annual exhibits dedicated to the nude human form (this July, keep an eye out for the exhibit, “A Celebration of the Figure”). This April, the gallery will mark its twenty-year anniversary by expanding its scope to include three juried exhibits of figurative works a year, the first of which will focus on the interpretation of the figure within contemporary art practice. Moca’s 20th Anniversary Show, which will hold an opening reception on April 6, is also on display.

www.MocaDC.org

The Old Print Gallery

“Blossom DC,” the latest exhibit at The Old Print Gallery, is inspired by the 100 year anniversary of the gift of the cherry blossoms from Japan to Washington. The exhibit celebrates the beauty and youthful energy of spring’s blossoms, featuring a large number of prints by local D.C. artists coupled with a selection of works by contemporary New York City artists and several early 20th century printmakers. Established in 1971, The Old Print Gallery has long been known for its wide selection of antique prints and maps, and has expanded recently into the world of contemporary printmaking. The gallery also hosts printmaking workshops and demonstrations, establishing itself as a source of inspiration and information for print artists, enthusiasts and new admirers alike.

www.OldPrintGallery.com

Alla Rogers Gallery

The Alla Rogers Gallery, founded in 1990, focuses on the accessible contemporary art from Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The Gallery has curated hundreds of exhibitions and led artist exchanges between American and Eastern European artists. Currently on display is the artwork of Alla Rogers herself, who recently exhibited 42 of her own paintings in Kiev at the National Fine Art Museum of Ukraine. Her works on canvas plays out like the geography of memories, folding and falling into one another. These are not works you want to miss. [gallery ids="100714,120510,120468,120502,120496,120477,120490,120484" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet • March 22, 2012

The circus was in town. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus presents “Fully Charged” at the Verizon Center in Washington DC with shows on March 15-18. After the DC run, the show moves on to Baltimore, Md., and then Fairfax, Va., in April. View our photos of “The Greatest Show on Earth” by clicking on the icons below. (Photography by Jeff Malet)

View additional photos of this performance plus additional dances by the company by clicking here. [gallery ids="100538,100551,100552,100553,100554,100555,100556,100557,100558,100559,100560,100550,100549,100539,100540,100541,100542,100543,100544,100545,100546,100547,100548,100561" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

Flamenco is a unique art form that combines dancing, guitar playing, singing, and a stocatto handclapping. It is native to the Andalusian region of southern Spain and may have been influenced by the Gypsies, and in part from Spain’s early Morrish culture. Seville’s Rafaela Carrasco is a breathtaking dancer and one of the most important flamenco choreographers of the younger generation. She and her troupe performed at GWU’s Lisner Auditorium in Washinton DC on March 7 during Flemenco Festival 2012. View our photos of her classic performance by clicking on the photo icons below. (Photography by Jeff Malet) [gallery ids="100534,120037,120029,120021,120013,120006,119997,119989,120053,119980,120060,120067,119970,120073,120045" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

1776. How 236 years ago.

“1776,” the musical. How 42 years ago.

The latest production of “1776,” now at Ford’s Theatre, is playing right during the longest-running reality show in the nation, the Republican Party race for the presidential nomination. How 36 seconds ago.

It is a familiar musical — about how a group of divided, discordant and discomfited bunch of men representing the 13 colonies would eventually come up with the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and thus declare themselves a nation of free peoples. It always resonates mightily when performed in the Washington area, even as a high school or dinner theatre production. (We were mindful that it is being staged in the theater where President Abraham Lincoln was shot and performed on the night we attended that the Prime Minister of Britain was being cheered at the White House.)

What’s amazing about “1776,” with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone, is that it works at all. The music and songs are to be sure witty, but they’re not in the exalted Broadway musical stratosphere that includes Rodgers and Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim. It does not strive for anything resembling contemporary pop music styles. The score, songs and lyrics are what they are: they fit perfectly to the needs of the book, a soaring ballad here, a sarcastic, rousing number there, a funny one around the corner, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And maybe that’s what makes things work, because this has always been a show about the characters in it — by the people, for the people and about the people.

The main purpose of “1776” has always been to give audiences a human look at the men who ended up producing and signing the Declaration of Independence, the visionary heart and soul of American democracy as created then and living through the years and today. Here are the defiant, grimly determined John Adams (“They find me annoying, nobody likes me”), the stolid John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson missing his wife to the point of total distraction (“It’s been six months”), the icily charismatic John Dickinson, defender of property and loyal to the British Crown, the scathing and charming Edward Rutledge, cynical defender of slavery, elderly rock star of the American Revolution Benjamin Franklin and the rum-addled Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, to name a few.

In 1776, the Continental Army was short on almost everything — morale, men, organization, weapons and salt peter, awaiting a British assault in New York. The Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia where it was a choice between flies and oppressive heat and separation from or reconciliation with Great Britain. That something as historically astounding and resounding as the Declaration emerged from the band of hardly brothers seems in the very least remarkable and in the end inspiring.

Edwards and Stone won Tonys for “1776” but never again matched anything remotely in the way of success of this oddly old-fashioned but also revolutionary show. It’s not a debunking of the legendary names on the declaration, but it surely humanizes the process. We always knew that Adams was an indispensable man here, that Jefferson was young then, in love with his wife, and an all-around genius and that Benjamin Franklin was a genial lech, disliked his royalist son and embraced fame with fervor.

Songs range from show opener “For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down!” to the rousing and funny “The Lees of Old Virginia,” sung with flood-like gusto by Stephen S. Schmidt as Richard Henry Lee, and “He Plays the Violin,” a hymn of praise and prowess in which Erin Kruse, as Martha Jefferson, suggests something more than musical gifts for her husband. “Cool, Cool Considerate Men,” John Dickinson’s praise of pragmatism (“always to the right, never to the left”) presages our battling political parties of 2012, and “Molasses to Rum,” in which Gregory Maheu as Edward Rutledge blasts out an angry, chilling defense of slavery by way of hypocrisy, bring us to the present in one way or another. Everyone gets a say, or a song as it were.

Top acting kudos: Brooks Ashmankis as John Adams, singing with confidence, a man who acts with no limitations but knows his own very well; D.C.’s Shakespearean comic great Floyd King as the semi-sober Stephen Hopkins; Kruse and Kates Fisher as Abigail Adams on the ladies’ side. In particular, one should single out Robert Cuccioli as Dickerson — dressed in dandified black, grey and white, an actor who commands the stages and the audience in every scene. With charisma to spare as well is Maheu, the even more dandified but also shark-like representative from South Carolina, whose embrace of slavery sound like the whispers of the snake in the garden. “They are property,” he sneers, as if that were that.

This great debate in Philadelphia echoes loudly among us, all across the land, by ways of communication these founding signers had never anticipated. When the group agonizes over its deadlock and inability to do anything (“Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve”), they sound like nothing less than today’s Republican and Democratic members of Congress. And with so many presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices and politicians of today claiming intimate personal knowledge of our Founding Fathers, they might be well off checking out this show.

“1776” runs a solid three hours with intermission, but the time and the show passes swiftly. It’s an engrossing production, hugely entertaining and engaging. It plays like a big echo from 236 years ago and from 36 seconds ago.

(“1776” plays through May 19 at Ford’s Theatre.)
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Robert Devaney • March 15, 2012

“Civic Pride: Dutch Group Portraits from Amsterdam” is now on view at the National Gallery of Art. The special installation involves two large-scale group portraits, rarely seen outside the Netherlands.

Two of Amsterdam’s most important portraitists from the mid-17th century, Govert Flinck (1615–1660) and Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670), captured the confidence of the men who governed the Kloveniersdoelen, the building where one of Amsterdam’s three militia companies held its meetings. The painting were created during the years the Dutch controlled New Amsterdam, which was to become New York City.

“These group portraits offer a remarkable visual record of the inner workings of the Dutch Republic at the height of its presence on the global stage in the 17th century,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “It was through the efforts of the citizens depicted, and the civic organizations they represented, that the young republic achieved its economic, political and artistic golden age. We are not only grateful to the Rijksmuseum and Amsterdam Museum for lending these masterpieces to the Gallery for a period of five years, but also to the city of Amsterdam, which owns the works, for agreeing to this generous loan.”

Also, at the March 9 reception for the exhibit was Renee Jones-Bos, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States. Arthur Wheelock, Jr., is the curator for Northern Baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art. One of the paintings depicts an ancestor of the exhibit’s research assistant Henriette de Bruyn Kops.

The two works, both titled “Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen,” were painted 13 years apart. Flinck (in 1642) and Van der Helst (in 1655) created comparable yet distinct interpretations of the shared sense of duty and personal interactions of two different generations of governors. The attire and demeanor of the governors varies from painting to painting, reflecting the different decades in which the men were portrayed. The two canvases are on long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum and the Amsterdam Museum, respectively. A new type of portraiture appeared in the northern Netherlands in the 17th century: large group portraits depicting the leadership of professional and civic organizations. Guild administrators, government officials, board members of charitable institutions and officers of militia companies commissioned distinguished artists to create these large-scale group portraits, destined for the walls of the organizations’ headquarters. The portraits often depict the sitters in the midst of a meeting or a meal, emphasizing the members’ shared responsibilities, personal interactions and civic-mindedness.

Flinck and Van der Helst were two of the most renowned portraitists of their time. Flinck had trained under Rembrandt, and like his famous teacher, specialized in both history paintings and fashionable portraiture. Van der Helst was famous for the elegant realism of his portraits and was a favorite artist of the Amsterdam militia companies. His version of “Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen” (1655) has just undergone a complete restoration for the occasion of the exhibition. The results are dramatic, as the painting now has a brilliance of color that was obscured by old varnish for many years. Although hundreds of group portraits were painted during the 17th century, they are rarely seen outside the Netherlands; many still remain with the organizations that originally commissioned them.

The exhibit runs through March 11, 2017.
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Gary Tischler •

Packs a wallop. Packs a punch. A one-round, one-act knockout. Like a punch in the mouth.

The temptation is to slide and jab and slip right into a whole bunch of boxing metaphors when describing “Sucker Punch,” the new play from Britain by Roy Williams at the Studio Theater. But while it squarely puts itself into the realm of cinematic — “Rocky,” “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” “Raging Bull” and even theatrical (Clifford Odet’s “Golden Boy” which was also a film) — ring sagas, “Sucker Punch” is a little more complicated than that.

It’s an odd mish-mash of a play. While it hews to some of the clichés and metaphors of boxing as a way out of poverty and rough upbringing, it’s also a kinetic production with imaginatively and powerfully potent staged fights, so vivid that you might expect to hear a bell starting the next round to wake you up in the morning.

It’s also English, set during the prime ministership of Meryl Streep — that is, Margaret Thatcher — a time in which the law-and-order prone leader and her police force frequently clashed with the poorer immigrant and working-class population of the country. This was a backdrop to “Billy Elliott,” the musical in which a working class youngster took up ballet instead of boxing as a way out in a setting of the rough nation-wide miner’s strike. Thatcher had a lot in common with her great admirer and co-leader of the Free World, President Ronald Reagan, and today’s union-busting American governors.

In the time of “Sucker Punch,” there were riots and demonstrations in the streets of South London with police clashing with younger denizens of the ghettos, many of them immigrants from the British Empire’s old colonies, such as Jamaica.

Leon and Troy, who have odd-job jobs at a local gymn where a tough, retired white boxer named Charlie is running the place into the ground, while trying to train boxers up to the national level of competition, including an embittered, racist punk named Tommy. One day, Charlie spies Leon in a clash with Tommy and notices his speed and power, and the rest is, if not history, the rest of the play.

Leon and his closest friend, the angry, suspicious, belligerent and charismatic Troy, clash over Leon’s budding friendship with Charlie, who has offered to train him, and over his budding romance with Becky, Charlie’s daughter. The friends part with Leon getting (and mostly winning) fights under the backing and tutelage of Charlie.

The 1980s were times when Britain had not seen its own black professional champions at almost any weight class Leon is the target of racist taunts during each of his fights. An agile, powerful Leon — who seems a bit like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard — prevails. Everyone’s past catches up with them, as they rise to the top. The success story becomes a kind of Greek tragedy.

Regardless, the most immediate appeal of “Sucker Punch” is its astonishingly spectacular fight scenes, including a violent, virulent brawl with Tommy and a climactic super-battle with Troy who has become a title contender after going to the U.S.

These scenes — staged by fight coordinator Rick Sordelet with help from consultant Gary “Kid” Stark, Jr. — are thrilling and engrossing. They are so cinematically convincing and vivid that you are tricked to believe all those punches are landing.

That’s entertainment — but the acting of Sheldon Best as the sweet-hearted, constantly conflicted Leon and Emmanuel Brown as the electric, tortured and swift Troy, well, that’s high art, as far as I’m concerned. They give the play its real punch, its emotional punch, sporting-movie star charisma and energy.

Director Leah C. Gardner keeps the hour-and-a-half production moving at a speed that allows you to overlook the fact that this isn’t particularly cutting-edge stuff but high dudgeon drama and, given its 30-year-old historical setting, drama with immediacy.

Go see “Sucker Punch.” You’ll be — one more time — floored.

It’s at the Studio’s Theatre’s Mead Theatre through April 8.

Robert Devaney • March 10, 2012

Set the scene at a local bank, plan a heist and throw a party a la movie, “The Thomas Crown Affair,” whose investigators say things like “I love this neighborhood,” “Some of these broads are wearing my salary” and “This is an elegant crime, done by an elegant person. It’s not about the money.” Sounds like a perfect fit for our town.

It was like that March 3 at the TD Bank on Wisconsin Avenue, where teller counters became the bar, during a benefit for the Citizens Association of Georgetown’s free music series, Summer Concerts in the Park, now in its 10th year

Suspects included Jennifer Altemus, Nancy Taylor Bubes, Jack and Michele Evans, Carol Joynt, John and Kristen Lever and Topher Mathews. What were they hiding? Joynt was carrying a kid’s pink backpack, Bubes lugged around a guitar case, Lever was rolling some luggage, and holding a vintage case was Altemus, who was caught trying to abscond with a Katherine Sable print. Whodunit? She did. The CAG president, no less. Mystery solved. What a town. [gallery ids="102437,121424,121401,121409,121417,121429,121435,121442" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird • March 8, 2012

Ambassador of Luxembourg Jean-Paul Senninger and Mrs. Louise Akerblom hosted Arts for the Aging’s 23rd Annual Benefit Gala at their residence on Nov. 1. The black tie evening featured a VIP champagne reception and an elegant buffet. Following the Ambassador’s opening remarks, violinist and AFTA teaching artist Anthony Hyatt played the national anthem of Luxembourg. Gala co-chairs Susanne Eisinger and Joyce Hagel-Silverman presented the 4th Annual Lolo Sarnoff Award for Outstanding Vision and Creativity to Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, Director of The Phillips Collection. Board Chair Susan Rosenbaum, AFTA’s first successor to founder Lolo Sarnoff on the newly established National Honorary Advisory Council, said what so many were thinking, “Our hearts and love are with Lolo tonight. For the first time in decades, she could not be here with us for the gala. She asked me to thank each and every one of you for helping to keep her dream alive.” Monique Summers-Mally and Eva Lamb co-chaired live and silent auctions. AFTA delivers arts experiences designed to enhance the quality of life of older adults, especially the vulnerable and frail. [gallery ids="100386,111249,111242,111246" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

Bowen McCauley Dance performed the ambitious “Le Sacre du Printemps” (“Rite of Spring”) to glowing reviews on Thursday, March 1, 2012 at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The husband and wife team of Fabio and Gisele Witkowski provided the music with a lively four-hand piano arrangement of the famous Stravinsky score. Costumes were designed by Chelsey Schuller and Tony Cisek. (Photos by Jeff Malet.)
View our photos of the performance by clicking on the photo icons below.

View additional photos of this performance plus additional dances by the company by clicking here. [gallery ids="119135,119046,119038,119031,119022,119013,119005,118996,118986,119055,119063,119126,119117,119109,119101,119094,119086,119077,119070,118977,118968,118957,118858,118849,118841,119144,119150,119155,118830,119162,118868,118876,118948,118940,118930,118921,118911,118901,118893,118885,100516" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

In Jason Grote’s new play “Civilization (All You Can Eat),” now getting a sharp and haunting staging at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, everybody’s hungry all of the time. Hungry, not so much for food, as for the top-heavy buffet of life and stuff that’s out there like a sparkling city-as-a-mall, but now beyond the reach of our burdensome absurdly high-interest credit cards

The characters—the humans in any case—in “Civilization” are leading lives built on dreams that have morphed into settle-for-it-reality. A respected college professor and intellectual now travels the inspirational talk circuit, promoting corporate solutions in a time of chaos. A middle-class mom struggles to keep her home, the love of her addled daughter and her sad sanity. A wanna-be-filmmaker becomes somewhat famous for making a Twix commercial that goes viral. Would-be actors strive to stay alive—one doing voice overs for Japanese sexual computer games, the other doing standup after getting fired from the commercial. A young girl tries to help her mom make the mortgage by doing a home-made porno video with her boyfriend.

And so on: all of these peoples are barely hanging on or seeing their lives alter inexorably in the time of our troubles, the beginning of the great recession and the squandered hopes of the Obama election.

Actually, there’s one character whose hunger and hopes are insatiable and undeniable—that would be Big Hog, a pig who escapes the food chain treadmill he is on by acquiring a greedy, fragmented human consciousness. What he wants is food and knowledge, and he wants to rise above himself to a state of man as striver. He gobbles up rabbits, pop culture tidbits, junk food and junk news and know-how. He’s the ominiverous beast in our midst.

Sarah Marshall, the gifted Washington actress who once played a dog in a play called “Sylvia” and played her with gusto and believability, channels Big Hog on his journey through mayhem, madness, murder and mud, until he scales the heights of becoming a mysterious business tycoon—could be a software genius, could be Trump, could be what he is which is big hog, sitting down to an expensive dinner with the film-maker and consuming the old-fashioned way.

Big Hog is frightening, but the plight of the characters as they stumble connected and disconnected, frayed and clueless is pretty scary, too. There’s nothing quite so uneasy as the dinner which features the film-maker, her husband and woman—an out-of-it drowning honorary member of the margilanized class.

Grote energizes his play like Robert Altman, the late film director of “Mash” and “Nashville” fame, a style in which the periphery noise and talk is both intrusive and instructive to what’s happening with the central characters. You can do that just by looking around when you’re experiencing Grote’s play: I saw people who had taken advantage of Woolly’s promotional materials (pig snouts you can wear) and so on, on their cellphones keep up with Big East basketball while snorting like Big Hog. That seems to be the point here—all of the characters are weighed down by their struggling, by their connections to each other, by their burdens, by the dilution of their dreams. Those dreams, like their bank accounts, have become thin and their voices tinny. They’re living under a sad, gloomy cloud of history which keeps right on raining and thundering, the wind blowing, the wolf at the door.

Woolly Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz has staged this fragmented play with style and energy, you never get bogged down although there are enough opportunities. A talented cast — especially Naomi Jacobson as the struggling mother, Jenna Sokolowski, looking for love and an acting part in all the wrong places, Daniel Escobar doing standup and especially the affecting Casie Platt as Jade, the young girl just trying to help — makes connections to us, which important to us.

But it is Big Hog who makes the biggest impression. It’s best perhaps not to think about him. He’s a feral “Babe,” who feels he has achieved a kind of communion with us. Maybe he has.

“Civilization” is at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre through March 11.