Category: Uncategorized

I’m thrilled to announce that my short story “Pandora” was a finalist in Solstice literary magazine’s Summer contest and is now published in Solstice and is available online. The judge was Columbian-American writer Patricia Engel. “With a strong sense of place and humor, Jan Schmidt’s “Pandora,” explores a friendship sprinkled with tension, conflict, learning, and guilt as the narrator navigates recovery and confronts racism and privilege. “Queens David died just two months ago . . . Sandra and I’d gone to see him in ICU … we didn’t realize he was dying, but David knew … Till recovery I didn’t know how to have a friend. Or how to not hurt people. How to be a true friend still troubles me.”
https://solsticelitmag.org/content/pandora/

EX-TING-GWISH-ER, published on November 8, 2023 as Editor’s Pick in Litro Magazine online.
https://www.litromagazine.com/usa/2023/11/ex-ting-gwish-er/

Trump was indicted on 37 federal charges, the Ukrainian Dam collapsed after being exploded by a bomb, maybe; fighting and fires continued in Sudan; smoke from Canada’s wild fires amassed over New York City, giving us the distinction of, once again, being Number One, this time in having, on Wednesday June 7, the worst air quality in the world. With all this happening amid the thousands of arts and cultural events here, this past week I was privileged to see three of these inspiring performances, which have lingered in head and my heart and I’m grateful once again to be alive, even in the midst of global horrors.

Close Up: Three East Village Stories

At Metropolitan Playhouse on Fourth Street, my husband Arthur Rivers and I saw the final performance on June 4, 2023, of Close Up: Three East Village Stories, solo performances based on interviews with downtown folks. Three actors performed stories of three characters, who the actors had interviewed to create the monologues. For the first piece Marisol Carrere, in gender-bending fashion, played Nick Drakides, acting out his story of his crooning Frank Sinatra songs in front of his apartment building on 124 East Fourth Street while Laraine Goodman tap danced out front. East Villagers anassed around them to watch and even the cops got into it, creating a spotlight for them with their policing equipment.

Then Linda Kuriloff played Marcia A. Richard, now a crisis counselor, but formerly a woman who ended up in the women’s Third Street Shelter. From her interviews Linda related wild stories of traumatic events in Marcia Richard’s life, including that Marcia had been arrested many times—but, she said, getting arrested was good for her, like arrested meant she could finally get A Rest. Then her life turned around, she got sober and began writing. She is the author of the memoir of addiction and recovery, M!ss D!agnosed. Marcia Richard was in the audience and I kept one eye on her as she laughed and cried along with what looked and sounded like a perfect replication of her mannerisms, playful language, and compelling story.

The reason my husband and I came to see this play was for the last solo in which Michael Turner played Rafik Bouzgarrou, restaurateur and owner of Bin 141 on Avenue A, a place we dine at often. The minute Michael Turner came out and moved quickly about the stage as he “set up” for a day at work in the restaurant, shifting tables around, putting out expresso for passersby, and telling his story growing up in Tunisia on an olive farm, it was clear he nailed it. Rafik is a big guy, and Michael Turner not so much, but I was convinced I was watching Rafik himself, as he spoke with Rafik’s accent, told his story of coming the USA, finally to New York City and naming Bin 141 for his brother who passed. Turner had Rafik completely down, his accent, his rapid-fire movements, the way he pauses, and he’d only spent one morning interviewing Rafik as he worked setting up before opening. 

This was part of a wonderful series put on by The Metropolitan Playhouse, The Alphabet City Monologues. “Over nearly 20 years, we have asked actors to interview the theater’s East Village neighbors—residents, shop owners, denizens—and create verbatim monologues from those interviews, sharing our neighbors’ stories. Theatrical snapshots, in a sense, of the people who make up the world right around us, these oral history performances are detailed portraits, but much, much more.”

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at BAM

My husband and I see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at least once a year at City Center, our Christmas present for each other. On Saturday, our friend Eli called, said she had an extra ticket and—bam, I was at BAM to see the Ailey Company. I’d never seen them at this venue before and I was thrilled to spend an evening with Eli. This was Ailey’s modern masters program with my all my favorite choreographers, Ronald K. Brown, Robert Battle, Paul Taylor, and Kyle Abraham.

The first piece, a tribute iconic Judith Jamsion. by Ronald K. Brown was his 2009 work Dancing Spirit, which began with stylized movement and loosened into the more modern African based funky Ronald K. Brown choreography. The dancers demonstrated just how complex and alive their dancing spirt can be. I glanced at my friend Eli, more of a hip hop person, to see their thoughts. When I saw the glow on their face, I knew the Ailey company and Ronald K. Brown brought the goods. Eli said the costumes by Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya created a whole choreography of their own. Made me think of Deborah Jowitt’s article in the Village Voice from 1972, “You Can’t Choreograph a Penis.”

Next up was Robert Battle’s work For Four from 2021—a short, fast tour de force. The quick turns and movements made the audience erupt in joy. This was followed by Duet, a 1964 work choreographed by Paul Taylor that was also beautifully danced with exquisite lines in their form-fitting costumes.

The final work was the 2022 Are You in Your Feelings by Kyle Abraham with music by various artists including Erykah Badu and Jazmine Sullivan, which my companion Eli grooved along with in the seat next to me. The fun and tension of relationships between and among couples of various arrangements of genders, held us and the rest of the audience in rapture.

Yoshiko Chuma’s shockwave delay at La Mama

Writer Michael (Mickey) Hawley came with me for the final performance on June 11, 2023, of shockwave delay at the Ellen Stewart Theatre of La Mama. In this program, conceptual artist, Yoshiko Chuma, whom I’ve followed since the 1980’s, remixed and sampled forty years of work in her anniversary program for her company School of Hard Knocks. As it began, the host said it would be 180 minutes long. I gulped. No way. I went over and over the math. 180 minutes. Could Yoshiko really expect us to sit through three hours of this performance? Sit we did, enthralled the whole time.

She says her work has been called “organized chaos,” but in watching this final performance, I was once again struck by her brilliance and very tight composing skills. Her design and direction, including stunning array of constantly manipulated props, with music, films, and dance, all combined to create an overall experience that kept me/us involved in the moment. One element of Yoshiko Chuma’s genius is her ability to gather and use superb musicians, dancers, wordsmiths, designers, and filmmakers. This show highlighted the clever, fun, moving work of pianist Dane Terry. Just the right touch of power and lightness.

The program started with the utterly horrifying footage from Bruce Conner film Crossroads from 1976 that utilizes in slow-motion footage of the July 25, 1946 nuclear test by the United States destroying Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. With that opening, where could she go? But shift she did. She described it this way, “Musicians, dancers and designers interact, but not directly—a parallel to incidents of sound, text and action, a metaphor for endless continuous circles of life, fluctuating between utopia and war.”

For her work, Yoshiko travels to many war-torn parts of the world and uses people from those places to amplify the political and personal elements of her work. She wrote, “I seek the place where a crossover can happen, where we can share. For 40 years, I have worked with young artists all over the world; and formed relationships across huge gaps of time, space and age, including Japan, Albania, New York, Romania, Macedonia, Afghan, Venezuela and Amman in Jordan.” She uses people she met on her travels and their private histories in often dire circumstances to create a world the opposite of war, a work of miracles. At one point she used large swaths of fabric that filled the stage and that dancers manipulated to create glorious flowing tents and waving water-like movement with the rippling sound of an ocean of fabric. Then for the ending, Dane Terry came out alone, sat at the piano and sang a plaintiff version of We’ll Meet Again from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove. A perfect ending for both the movie and performance.

After we left, Mickey said her work was so bold and inventive that it revived his faith in art and New York City too. Indeed. With all the banning and hatred going around, we do need our faith in the arts renewed. Besides, we are now all graduates of the School of Hard Knocks, going on, as Yoskiko says, to the University of Adversity.

Three for Three Plus One

Yesterday, June 15, 2023, I attended a new salon produced by Alyce Dissette, AMT TALKS! These gatherings at American Mime Theatre take place monthly, are free, 90 minutes from 6:00 – 7:30PM, and are on the 3rd Thursday each month (except August). Last evening, Tanisha Jones and I heard Evan Neiden talk about his program Monsters in the Wires: Theatre Anywhere for an Audience of One.  He described a number of Candle House Collective’s innovative immersive theater personalized for one participant at a time by phone. Crazy and wild post-covid theater imaginings. If a participant in the phone/theater conversation got triggered, they’d created a safe word to end the way the conversation was going. A safe word. Damn, I could use a safe word for some of my conversations and meetings. A person starts yattering on, I get to say the safe word and, hallelujah, we move on. Brilliant.

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At The Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on April 3, 2023, a program from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division honored renowned dancer, choreographer, writer, and lecturer Agnes de Mille on the 30th Anniversary of her passing. With live performances, video clips, and a panel as moderated by Linda Murray, curator of the Dance Division, the program was educational, inspirational, and fun. With her receptive, generous manner Linda Murray allowed the panelists to enjoy a comradery that energized each other as well as those of us in the packed house at the Bruno Walter Auditorium. Not only is Linda Murray, with her expertise, humor, and intelligent observations, a walking Wikipedia of dance information, but she speaks with a charming Irish lilt.

First, Linda Murray introduced the distinguished panel in the order they sat next to her on the stage:

• Diana Gonzalez-Duclert, former rehearsal assistant to de Mille, professor, and associate director and répétiteur of the De Mille Working Group
• Virginia Johnson, founding member, former Principal Ballerina, and Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem
• Kathleen Moore, Former Principal Ballerina, American Ballet Theatre, teacher at Princeton Ballet School and American Repertory Ballet
• Diana Byer, Artistic Director Emerita of New York Theatre Ballet and stager of de Mille works and cultural
• Elena Zahlmann, Associate Artistic Director and Principal Ballerina, New York Theatre Ballet, repetiteur, and dancer

After the introductions came the first live performance of the evening with Elena Zahlmann. dancing De Mille’s solo from Debut at the Opera from 1927. A humorous piece, the dancer fell, rubbed her sore feet, collapsed in fatigue. Then, with one hand using a chair for a barre, she practiced leg elevations, front, side, back and arms front, side, up. However, the dancer, in an outrageous, taboo, balletic expression of exertion, opened her mouth, very wide, and closed it in concert with raising and lowering her limbs. Then, as she mimed getting tired, the dancer stopped raising her leg. Almost like a puppet with the leg string cut, she continued doing the arm movement with her mouth still opening and closing with her arm. Amazing, I thought, although facial expressions were often used in ballet, this was the first time I’d seen actual choreography for a mouth. From my spot in the audience, my own mouth split into a grin.   

After performing, Elena Zahlmann joined the panelists in conversation about working with de Mille. In talking about the deep psychological ground that de Mille excavated, they screened a clip from “Civil War Ballet” from Bloomer Girl, filmed in 1956, an emotional, wrenching occasion of women waiting for their men to return from the Civil War. The cast of anxious wives and returning union army men consisted of all white people. This wasn’t surprising as this dance was part of the 1944 Broadway play, Bloomer Girl, but I wondered how Agnes de Mille’s choreography would translate with an all-Black cast. I didn’t have to wait long.

In the discussion of how de Mille depicted empathy for complex characters, such as vulnerable misfits like Lizzie Borden, whom she showed as alternately a victim and a murderer, a clip was screened from a televised version of Fall River Legend performed by Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1989. Here’s Lizzy Borden, danced by stunning, inspired, cultural icon Virginia Johnson with an all-Black cast. The choreography, for either Black or white dancers, had a powerful emotional resonance and these DTH dancers, especially Virginia Johnson, killed it, knocked it out of the park. After the screening, we in the audience were so moved that we couldn’t stop clapping and Virginia Johnson had to quiet us down

In speaking about the work, Virginia Johnson noted that no matter where it was performed the audience would gasp when Lizzie pulled the ax out. She said in spite of the horror of Lizzie Borden’s life and this murderous act, that dancing it was “fun.” This audience “gasped” at this too and I could practically hear them wondering: if that’s “fun,” what’s a rough day for the Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem? Virginia Johnson laughed at the response and added that dancing in a wool dress was difficult because it was so hot and inflexible. Then Diana Byer, a wonderful story-teller and Artistic Director Emerita of New York Theatre Ballet, told us about a performance in which the ax that sits in a block of wood was too loose, so a stage hand or someone gave it a good heave-ho and stuck it in deeper. At the performance, when it was time for Lizzie to pull the ax out, it wouldn’t let go of the wood block, which rose as she lifted the ax. She tried to pry the ax out by pushing with her foot at the block of wood. No go. For that performance, she ended up having to strangle her parents to death.

The panelists discussed de Mille’s technique that incorporated not only balletic movements but natural movements, such as the dancers throwing their arms up in the air as they see their men come home alive from war. Kathleen Moore said that she herself was studying—some demanding scientific course which I don’t remember—and that de Mille use of this gesture showed her deep understanding of movement, as even blind people, who have never seen that gesture, spontaneously throw their arms up in excitement at a homecoming.

I don’t have the supersonic memory to offer more than a taste of this two-hour program, but panelists told more striking, affecting and often humorous anecdotes, dancers— who included, besides Elena Zahlmann, Emma Von Enck and Victor Abreu accompanied on the piano by Michael Scales, all of New York City Ballet—performed several startling pieces of de Mille works, and film clips showed how robust and dynamic her choreography still was. I wish I could remember in greater detail, but I can mainly only recall my enjoyment of the stories, dancing, and film clips

For the screening of the final clip, The Informer performed by American Ballet Theatre (1988), Linda Murray explained that people think because it is Irish that it is about the “troubles” but those came later. This dance is partly based on the novel The Informer by Irish writer Liam O’Flaherty published in 1925 about the Irish Civil War. Another panelist noted that de Mille’s choreography depicted highly emotional, personal accounts of events that spanned time from American West, to the United States Civil War, to the Irish Civil War.

The feeling of excitement was palpable as the audience left the theater. I spoke with Allen Greenberg, President of The Jerome Robbins Foundation and a Trustee of The Robbins Rights Trust. We agreed it was a wonderful program and I noted that Linda Murray was a terrific moderator. Very generously Allen said that, when I was curator, I put on some great programs too and that he’d never forget the African dancer summersaulting on stilts almost directly into the audience. Indeed, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division knows how to put on a program that sparks joy.

On a blustery evening, April 28, 2022, I struggled against the wind along First Street to City Lore Gallery for the sold-out event about the history of the African Djembe Drum in New York. When I entered, the room buzzed with the excitement of celebrating the djembe and Papa Ladji Camara, the man credited with bringing the djembe to New York, if not the entire Western world.

Born in Guinea in 1923, Papa Ladji Camara began drumming as a child and went on to become a world-renowned djembe drummer, performing with Les Ballets Africans de Keita Fodeba and the National Ballet de Republic of Guinea. Over the years, he also played with Babtunde Olatunji, Pearl Primus. Katherine Dunham, Art Blakey and many other notable artists. Papa Ladji Camara passed away in Senegal on October 24, 2004.

Before the program began, people gathered to hug and talk after our long period of Covid isolation. What a joy to see those faces: Sierra Leon poet, drummer, and documentarian Kewulay Kamara; jazz percussionist Chief Baba Neil Clarke; renowned dancer, drummer, professor Carolyn Webb; folklorist Tom Van Buren; videographer Penny Ward; master drummers Kofi Donkor, Mangue Sylla, M’Bembe Bangoura; and Fanyuma Camara, Papa Ladji’s son,.

City Lore folklorist Ray Allen moderated. Chief Baba Neil Clarke offered the traditional libation, followed by a short drum session with master drummers Kofi Donkor, Mangue Sylla, and M’Bembe Bangoura. Even in this brief section of drumming, the energy erupted as the drummers performed their quick shifts from sudden loud explosions to delicate complicated rhythms. Following this introduction, Kewulay Kamara, Chief Baba Neil Clarke, Kofi Donkor, told stories about working with Papa Ladji and offered philosophical nuggets such as “to be a drummer is to be of service.”

I think it was Chief Baba Neil Clarke who said that he’d played many different drums, but was astounded to find the tonal range of djembes. When he was young, there were no djembes in New York City, “none,” he exclaimed. Then Papa Ladji arrived, showed everyone what a djembe could do, then taught people how to play the djembe, and, “now you can’t walk anywhere in the city without tripping over a djembe.”

The speakers talked about Papa Ladji’s gifts as a great teacher, and how he taught them to be disciplined and respect their elders. The moderator Ray Allen had his work cut out for him, as African drummers and story-tellers could go on all night, even so, the audience was eager to hear the panelist’s remembrances of Papa Ladji.

Photos and video clips were projected as well. One video excerpt showed Papa Ladji drumming in Dankarafule, An African Cultural Celebration: A Tribute to Papa Ladji Camara, presented by Kewulay Kamara at Symphony Space in 1995. Mamadou Niang recorded the performance for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Papa Ladji’s passionate playing, complicated rhythms, and fascinating theatricality nearly exploded off the screen. In the interest of full disclosure, I was the person at the Library who produced this recording for the Dance Division, so it could be available for all and preserved for posterity.

Before showing his videoclips, folklorist Tom Van Buren talked about working with the Ethnic Folk Arts Center, later named Center for Traditional Music and Dance. He showed a clip of Les Merveilles d’Afrique, choreography by Mohamed Kemoko Sano, from Niani Badenya, the Mandeng Heritage: Domba Concert of Dance, presented by Ethnic Folk Arts Center in collaboration with Kewulay Kamara at El Museo del Barrio, in 1997. In one piece, the women dancers also played drums. As in the earlier clip, Mamadou Niang recorded this event for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Kewulay Kamara invited Papa Ladji’s son to speak. Fanyuma faced the audience—his face an exquisite sculptural mask of serenity. After thanking the speakers and audience, he  said, “Being Ladji’s son was a little like being in the military.” His mask cracked with a delicate loving smile and he added that, as a child, his dad would give him a rhythm to practice and he’d do it for a half hour then quit to watch cartoons. When his dad found him, he made him go back in the room and do the same rhythm for eight hours. The audience laughed with Fanyuma at his picture of an artist’s discipline and a child’s resistance.

For the final portion of the evening, Kewulay told a story, with breaks provided by the drummers, about naming the skin of the drum. Cutting a long story short, he summarized by saying the point was that the skin of the drum was the heart and soul of the drum. In closing, the drummers took over. Their hands connected—skin to taut drum skin—and the hearts of the drums connected to our hearts. Carolyn Webb, who performed in Papa Ladji’s Les Ballets Africains among other companies, was invited to dance. Wearing her lovely lavender blouse, she was the embodiment of the music, dancing with bent legs and scarf flying and it was good to see a woman included in the presentation. I’d be interested to hear her speak about Papa Ladji since she worked with him for many years.

As she danced, the audience rose, clapped and swayed, completely energized by the music and dancing. The night was a huge success and I’m still smiling with the joy of the faces, hands, and drums.

I was clapping and dancing so ecstatically at the end of the performance that I forgot to get a picture of Carolyn Webb, so I asked her to give my a photo from another performance. This is Carolyn Webb dancing with Retumba, primarily a women’s percussion and dance ensemble..

All photos, except Carolyn Webb, by Jan Schmidt