Recent Stories in the last month in A&E

Back in November, I attended a wonderful short film festival called Couch Fest. Tomorrow, they will be holding a 90-minute screening of their best films at Northwest Film Forum.

The premise of Couch Fest is pretty simple: a few brave souls open up their homes to a slew of random strangers and show a series of short films. They vote for their favorites and sit next to each other in awkward silence or sharing timid conversations. Every hour, the strangers leave and a new batch strolls in.

For socially chilly Seattle, the festival is quite a departure from the stereotypical norm. Even this native Washingtonian found himself chatting with strangers about the short animation that just blew our minds or the awesome one-minute film of a lion roaring. For some reason, sharing a couch in a stranger's house (or garage) with a bunch of other strangers makes us a little less estranged.

To get a taste of how awesome this festival is (minus the couches), stop by the Northwest Film Forum at 1515 12th Ave, this Sunday at 3 p.m. Admission is free.

Classical ballet doesn't get more classical than The Sleeping Beauty, this production especially, which, as PNB's Doug Fullington explains it, has a lineage that extends right back to its original choreographer, Marius Petipa. When Kaori Nakamura, as Princess Aurora, balancing en pointe on a single foot, has each of her suitors turn her, hold, then release, four successive times, it's such an apotheosis of style that it's hard to believe a human ankle is involved. (PNB's production, running through February 14 at McCaw Hall, employs rotating casts, so your Princess Aurora may vary. Tickets are $25-$160.)

One of the humanizing qualities of such an idealized art form is that, even with notation, there's no better way to be sure of a choreographer's intent than seeing his work yourself. Ronald Hynd's wonderful version is just two choreographic generations from a 1921 Diaghilev production that toured to London, which gets you right back to St. Petersburg and Petipa.

Yet you don't think of The Sleeping Beauty as, narrative aside, slumbering unchanged for a hundred years. It exists, in Mircea Eliade's formulation, in illo tempore, in a once upon a time adjacent to the present. (On the other hand, this is a three-hour ballet with substantial action in pantomime, not a sing-along fairy tale, so while I can vouch for its immediacy, I can also vouch for the adorable little moppet behind me talking throughout, kicking seat backs, doing an impromptu dance break, beating time on an arm rest, and guzzling her way through a juice box.)

The Prologue presents the baby's christening, in a kingdom with access to yards of gold lamé--Peter Docherty's costumes start out storybook and trend towards Bedazzler--with seven fairies bearing gifts of beauty, temperament, beauty, and so on, each having a little solo. Sadly, Carabosse the wicked fairy was left off the invitations, and shows up enraged, promising deadly spindles on sixteenth birthdays, before the Lilac Fairy of Wisdom (Carla Körbes, last night) steps in to water down a death sentence into a coma....

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This picket fence was around in 2007 when ozmafan snapped a picture of it; wonder if it's still around or if it lives on only in memory and The Sunbreak's Flickr pool. 

It goes without saying that if you liked it, then you should've put a ring on it.  With Valentine's Day right around the corner, those wise words are double-plus true.

With that in mind, the good people at Baronella have offered up some gift certificates for SunBreak readers to use on their jewelry. (Fellas, if you are thinking about giving your lady a cellphone for V-Day, please think again.) The SunBreak has three gift certificates, each worth $50 to give away.  Enter below for your chance to win.  We'll be drawing three winners' names Friday at noon....

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Last week, I was too caught up in the Sundance bubble to pay attention to what was coming out on DVD (answer: nothing), so let's just focus on this week's releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video. (And check out their take on Tuesday's Oscar noms for all your Academy Award-preparation needs.)

Woody Harrelson may have just received an Oscar nomination for The Messenger--as far as I'm concerned, he should've gotten one for No Country for Old Men--but his work in Zombieland is strong, too. Sure, it's a light-hearted action-horror-comedy, but Harrelson is so, so right as a hick who loves killing zombies. The flick as a whole is downright fun, and there's even a celebrity cameo in the latter half that delightfully has not yet been ruined for everyone by spoiler-happy critics (looking at you, Anthony Lane). 

Speaking of the New Yorker, the mag makes a cameo of its own in Cold Souls, a metariffic existential comedy by director Sophie Barthes, starring America's Schlubheart™ Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. Burdened by the emotional toll doing Ibsen has had on his psyche, Giamatti has his soul removed and put into storage for the duration of Uncle Vanya's run. Of course, things aren't as simple as that, especially when a Russian soul smuggling ring gets into the mix....

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Friday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m., SAM begins a three-part retrospective of the films of Richard Pryor with Silver Streak, a 1976 Hitchcockian spoof starring Gene Wilder as a publisher trying to relax by taking a train across the country, only to get caught up in a murder mystery. On Feb. 12, the series continues with Blue Collar, and closes up on Feb. 19 with the legendary Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip. Tickets for the series are $20 ($17 for members) or $7 per film.

The various contributors to "Break a Heart" at On the Boards. Photo by Tim Summers.

Not that plenty of interesting plays aren't opening this month (Glengarry Glen Ross at the Rep, Not a Genuine Black Man at Theatre off Jackson, and The Woman in Black at Open Circle, to name a few), but February is shaping up to be a particularly incredible month for dance in Seattle. With offerings ranging from a noted staging of a ballet classic at PNB to a world premiere by one of Seattle's up-and-coming performance groups, and a couple festival line-ups thrown in, this month presents a veritable cross-section of the best of what Seattle and the region has to offer.

Sleeping Beauty at Pacific Northwest Ballet (Feb. 4-14; tickets $25-$160). A masterpiece of Romantic ballet, with a score by Tchaikovsky, PNB's production of Sleeping Beauty is based on British choreographer Ronald Hynd's painstaking 1993 reconstruction of Marius Petipa's 1890 original. I sat in on the dress rehearsal last night, and was wowed (along with a dozen or so starry-eyed little girls) by the sumptuous production and Princess Aurora's glorious movement.

Break a Heart at On the Boards (Feb. 11-14; tickets $18). A host of Seattle choreographic talent joins forces to present an evening of movement exploring love, which is of course set opposite Valentine's Day. Break a Heart features work by Wade Madsen, Crispin Spaeth, Diana Cardiff, Kristina Dillard, ilvs strauss/Jody Kuehner, Sara Jinks and Juliet Waller Pruzan/Stephen Hando....

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Courtesy of Paul Swortz and The Sunbreak's Flickr Pool: a posse of boots parked outside of No Parking, a newish shop of vintage clothing,  classic curiosities, and other assorted wonders on Pike.

Opening night of "Project 3" (two more shows, February 5 and 6) from the Seattle Dance Project was a leggy affair, onstage and off, as dance compatriots from Pacific Northwest Ballet stood in their sculpted way and chatted while waiting for the show to begin.

It was intimate and social, until the lights went down, and then it was all business, but still very intimate. In the small theatre at ACT, the dancers' frictive slides and spins joined a soundtrack of pressured breaths, and it seemed a good bet that those in the front rows were close enough to be hit with beads of sweat.

With a program as varied as "Project 3," at least one work is bound to win your heart, though it may not be the one you expect. I went on the strength of the world premiere of "To Converse Too" from Edwaard Liang, but it was Betsy Cooper's "In Another Land" that surprised me. Michael Upchurch was fond of Mark Haim's "No more sweet hours of rapture." Sandra Kurtz highlights Kent Stowell's "b6."

Bach's Cello Suites and bold backlighting by Peter Bracilano were co-stars in Liang's work, featuring six dancers, four men and two women. Liang's hint that it's about conversation shows you more of his finger than the moon, but it's still a mesmerizing feat of interlocking balletic motion, and deeply personal glimpses of relationship and control....

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Back in the 1970s, low-budget filmmakers pushed the envelope 'til it ripped asunder, parlaying extreme sex, violence, political incorrectness, and mountains of Just Plain Strange before the disbelieving eyes of theater and drive-in audiences the world over.

That reckless maverick spirit's been largely neutered from modern cinema: Multiplexes of the 21st century brim with sanitized, corporate-endorsed product, and reality TV serves as the watered-down virgin cocktail substitute for the megawatt absinthe that was Bell-Bottom-Era Grindhouse Fare. But that spirit of yore's not totally dead as long as director Frank Henenlotter lives.

Henenlotter's been cooking up his own brand of bizarre, extreme, and often grotesquely-hilarious horror/exploitation for quite some time. A child of the epicenter of the Grindhouse (New York's pre-Disneyfied 42nd Street), Henenlotter channeled his own love for the base and the bizarre into cult classics like Basket Case (the story of a cannibalistic Siamese twin who resides in a wicker basket, and the brother who loves him) and Frankenhooker (now that's a title, friends)....

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Chris Blakeley spotted this delicious-looking orange unsuccessfully seeking shelter from a rainstorm on a vending machine and shared it with all of us through the Sunbreak's Flickr Pool.

The incredibly charming Julius Shulman is the subject of Visual Acoustics (through February 4 at the Northwest Film Forum). The documentary is narrated by Dustin Hoffman, and takes you on a tour of the great modernist landscape of Los Angeles, with the photographer who chronicled the architectural movement's rise.

It's a surprisingly poignant film, in that it also introduces you to Shulman near the very end of his life (he died in 2009 at the age of 98), as his photographic archives are being transported to the Getty. Sprinkled with L.A. celebrities (both people and homes), the film takes you inside masterpieces both monumental and--in contrast--miniature. If you are a photographer, an architect, or just want to pretend you were there, this is the film for you.

Here we are in February, and wouldn't you know it, Valentine's Day is right around the corner.  The holiday means many things to many people: a chance to celebrate lurve, a chance to have a blotto hookup, a chance to make a lot of money, or a chance to make a terrible movie. 

With that in mind, the good people at Baronella have offered up some gift certificates for SunBreak readers to use on their jewelry. (Fellas, if you are thinking about giving your lady a cellphone for V-Day, please think again.) The SunBreak has three gift certificates, each worth $50 to give away.  Enter below for your chance to win.  We'll be drawing three winners' names Friday at noon....

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Friend Rachael and I got all gussied up Sunday night to go find out why it was that two unabashed musical theater fans like ourselves didn't know diddly about South Pacific (at the 5th Avenue Theatre, Tuesday-Sunday through February 21; tickets $25-$103). By night's end, we knew the answer. This Rodgers & Hammerstein so-called classic about love in World War II hasn't aged well.

I don't regret spending three hours watching the outstanding sets and the tremendous vocal talent in this national touring production, and I wouldn't have regretted buying a ticket. If you are a fan of musicals, you should go. But if you're the type of person who's only going to see a musical once in a while, save your money for the 5th Avenue's productions of On the Town and Candide later this year. [For a contrary view, consider "11 Reasons Not to Miss South Pacific."]

Let me first absolve the director, cast, and crew of any responsibility. Bartlett Sher's staging is inventive and adds a little Heart of Darkness tinge to the story. Rod Gilfry has as powerful a baritone as I've ever heard. As "little hick" Nellie Forbush, Carmen Cusack is cute and charming and everything that role should be. The comic relievers--Matthew Salvidar as Luther Billis and especially Genson Blimline as Stewpot--throw strikes. The fault lies with Rodgers & Hammerstein themselves....

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City Arts has posted video of Macklemore's set from their monthly singer-songwriter event, The Song Show.  January's performance took place at the Triple Door, and also featured Damien Jurado (his video here), Jesse Sykes, and Tomo Nakayama of Grand Hallway.  As far as The Song Show goes, each performer talks about their artistic process and then plays some songs.  The SunBreak's Don was on hand and was impressed by the honesty that each songwriter displayed, but it was Macklemore's performance that seemed to really surprise him:

Macklemore reminded me that rap could be about something more than how big the rims are on your SUV. Rap, too, could be deeply honest. Macklemore's lyrics hold nothing back. From a questioning of blind consumerism to a rap about overcoming the spectre of addiction to drugs and alcohol, Macklemore backed up his interview with Todd Hamm, when he claimed he "would rather be as honest as possible."

When it comes to February's edition of The Song Show, we got nothing. City Arts' webpage makes no mention of it, nor does the Triple Door's calendar, nor the Can Can (where previous months' shows were held).

Bruno Beltrao and Grupo de Rua's "H3". Photo by Anns V. Koiij.

The first thing my guest asked me upon leaving On the Boards last Thursday, after seeing Brazilian choreographer Bruno Beltrão's company Grupo de Rua, who are their first US tour with H3, was, "Did you respond to that more because you're a man?"

It's a fine question to ask. Not that women in the audience weren't responding—you could almost hear the panting at the end, as eight physically ripped, sweating (and most shirtless to boot) Brazilian dancers took their bow—but Beltrão's H3 is an almost Mametian (in terms of its masculinity, rather than its misogyny) exploration of men interacting with men, from the opening moments, where a pair of dancers stare down the audience, to the closing moments of chaos, the dancers each taking more and more expressive and athletic poses on an increasingly darkened stage. In between, H3 offers a detailed examination of the way men establish themselves among their peers, compete with one another, and ultimately turn to machismo as a means to exist in the world.

H3 unfolds in three distinct sections. The first is essentially narrative, centering on one dancer's character. As the show opens, he stands next to a far more self-assured counterpart, trying to follow his lead in staring down the audience. Then the weaker of the two begins to move, only to be shown up by his more assured and accomplished counterpart. Then, one by one, the other dancers move onto the stage, each in turn seeking to establish his own skills and ability. Ultimately, the original dancer finds a partner whose moves he carefully follows and thus is able to establish himself within the group....

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(via TBTL, who are in the midst of their TBTL-athon)

Author Sherman Alexie has parlayed his Colbert Report appearance into real fame, as he's booked on TBTL today. With Colbert he discussed his opposition to a digital media that doesn't protect authorial ownership. With Luke Burbank, today at noon, he gets into "the plan he's hatched for monetizing art in the digital age, and how (on a totally unrelated note) pickup basketball is the only way for grown men to express their love to each other." [UPDATE: Twitter just sent me this link to three new poems by Alexie.

Last month was the warmest January in Seattle's recorded history. Citywide, trees got the memo and foolishly embraced fake springtime. Thanks to MPG for sharing this sunny day vision through the Sunbreak's Flickr Pool.

Bart Sher (Photo: Team Photogenic)

Saturday night Bart Sher had the Tom Sawyer-esque experience, he said, of attending his own funeral. The occasion was "A Bash for Bart," a gala in celebration of his decade with Intiman--the title of which he confessed to some ambivalence about, as someone who'd had his skull fractured by a baseball bat as a child. The establishment of a Bartlett Sher Artistic Fund, funded by $2,500-per-couple plates at a Tom Douglas-hosted dinner, made it an august evening indeed.

Laurence Ballard was spirited up from Savannah, Georgia, to deliver an erudite envoi to Sher's 16-play stint: Namaste Man, The Skin of Our Teeth, Uncle Vanya, Prayer for my Enemy, Richard III, Three Sisters, Singing Forest, Our Town, Nora, Homebody/Kabul, Titus Andronicus, Arms and the Man, Nickel and Dimed, Cymbeline, The Dying Gaul, and Servant of Two Masters. (Misha Berson recaps the years here.)

"Woe," pronounced Ballard, to the actor who encounters Sher unprepared. And woe of a different sort to the actor who has prepared but has made stupid choices.

Broadway's Kelli O'Hara (from Sher's Light in the Piazza and South Pacific) sang, and literally kicked off her shoes. (Who knew Harry Connick, Jr., had done an arrangement of Piazza's "Fable"?) Ida Cole--the philanthropist who saved the Paramount and its Mighty Wurlitzer Organ for us--wished the Shers well, and reminisced about her former neighbors, saying they'd become family.

It was sweet--you got the feeling Bart would not sit still for cloying--and respectful, a paying of tribute to an artistic director who, these days, cannot be hired enough in New York, whether it's for theatre (Odets at Lincoln Center), musical theatre (Broadway's South Pacific), or opera (he passed the Met audition handily with Barber of Seville).

"Somewhat eclipsed by his recent successes in New York...," says the 2008 New York Times Magazine profile, "is the fact that he remains artistic director of the Intiman Theater in Seattle, a job he has held since 2000 and has done sparklingly enough to help the Intiman earn the 2006 Tony for Outstanding Regional Theater." (Predictably, they get Intiman's full name wrong: it's Intiman Theatre.)...

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This modernly old-timey train arrived right on time in The Sunbreak's Flickr pool. It's the subject of Shawn McClung's 27th entry in a year-long series of posting one picture per day, all shot, edited, and uploaded from an iPhone.

Kirkus Reviews calls Matthew Flaming's debut novel, The Kingdom of Ohio, "impossible to resist," praising its "marrying poetic prose with hints of steampunk aesthetics." Closer to home, the Stranger's Paul Constant labels it "just deadly dull," adding that "There's nothing in the central mystery to entice the reader on."

So clearly it sparks differences of opinion. For me, this Booklicious review nails down the general outlines, and discontinuities, of the work: "Part historical fiction, part alternate reality, and wholly romantic, Flaming’s novel is a conglomerate of popular publishing trends and timeless storytelling elements."

The daily life of a turn-of-the-century New York subway construction worker is vividly evoked; the Kingdom of Toledo's founding by French pilgrims is carefully footnoted; the unlikely romance between young engineer Peter Force and math genius Cheri-Anne Toledo springs up amid their opposition to a powerful cabal starring J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison.

All is recounted by a peculiar old historian, closing up shop in Los Angeles, who is less convincingly elderly than reminiscent of that stodgy younger man you know who annoyingly litters his speech with literary archaisms. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, young men fond of archaisms, it's just not as significant of advanced age as it is of advanced bookwormery.)

There's an ambition to this agglomeration that isn't actually to write the ultra-selling novel, but to powerfully reimagine a splintering world as worlds of possibility colliding--this, sadly, is a task that exceeds Flaming's abilities, as yet, as a novelist. Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride....

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Okay, you donated $10 via text message. You called into the Hope for Haiti telethon and, thirty minutes later, gave a woman who wasn't Julia Roberts your debit card number. You're feeling pretty good about your efforts. As you should. So why not reward yourself by giving more—and enjoying some great tunes in the process? Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready, along with a host of local musicians, can help you with that.

For under a buck, you can score Vedder's beautiful rendition of The Boss' "My City of Ruins," performed last month for the latter's Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. (Proceeds benefit Artists for Peace and Justice Haiti Relief.) Springsteen's inspiring ode to Asbury Park, New Jersey ("Rise up!") has new, internationally apt meaning now. Vedder's take is faithful to the original while also a close sonic cousin to his Into the Wild work and the tear duct-punching "Just Breathe" from Pearl Jam's Backspacer. One dollar. One amazing song. One way to help your fellow human beings rise from tragedy.

Another way: buy tickets to next month's "Hootenanny for Haiti." The details:

Showbox and Seattle Theatre Group (STG) present “A Hootenanny For Haiti” at Showbox at the Market on Sunday, February 28th at 7:30pm.

Duff McKagan, Mike McCready, Kim Virant, Kristen Ward, Kim Warnick, Mark Pickerel, Star Anna, Chris Friel, Gary Westlake, Jeff Rouse, Justin Davis, Ty Bailie and friends perform together in an intimate setting to support the Haiti relief efforts of Partners in Health (www.pih.org).

“A Hootenanny For Haiti” is possible by the generous donations of the artists and venue with 100% of the ticket price going to Partners in Health.

That's right, this is a night with members of PJ; McKagan's Loaded; McCready's first band, Shadow; UFO tribute band Flight to Mars; the Fastbacks; etc. It's an eclectic and insanely talented mix of artists—and I wouldn't be surprised if "and friends" included the likes of Stone Gossard and Tim DiJulio. All for $15 donated bucks.

There are other local music-related outlets for Haiti support. They deserve your patronage, too. But will they rock you like these?

On Thursday, my last half-day at Sundance, I was able to catch two more films before heading back to Seattle.  First up was Zeina Durra's The Imperialists are Still Alive!, the most glamorous film about terrorism ever made. Asya is a successful visual artist living in a loft on the Upper East Side. She goes to underground venues, Bungalow 8, and art parties, but is also concerned for her safety and civil rights as an Arab woman in post-9/11 America.

In the midst of all the great clothes and stretch limos, she must also deal with the rumored rendition of an ex-lover, missing from his flight to Houston, and Israeli airstrikes on Beirut, where her brother lives. The film is great by way of atmospherics (Manhattan, both high and low--immigrants, dives, jazz bars, Chinatown, diners--all are nicely displayed), but the story is kinda ramshackle, and as with most films, some editing is warranted.

My final film at Sundance this year was Lovers of Hate, which was a nice and nasty surprise from Austin director Bryan Poyser.  Chris Doubek is great as bitter loser Rudy, who can't keep a job and just got dumped by his wife Diana (Heather Kafka).  When Rudy's younger brother Paul (Alex Karpovsky, from Beeswax), a writer of Harry Potter-like books, comes to town, Rudy is insanely jealous--of Paul's successful career, of the thought that there might be something going on between him and Diana--and so he follows him to his writing enclave, a huge house in Park City. 

Paul doesn't walk right in and introduce himself; instead he hides in the spacious house--and when Diana shows up, it's even more important for him to stay hidden, while also trying to sabotage anything that may exist between his estranged brother and his ex-wife.  And so the cat-and-mouse game between the brothers begins.  This is squirm-inducing black comedy that keeps on your toes.  It's disturbing, claustrophobic, and the characters are quite unlikeable, but that's exactly what I enjoyed about Lovers of Hate.  It's wicked stuff, friends. ...

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Seattle Dance Project's "Project 3" opens tonight, January 29, and will have seven performances this weekend and next at ACT. Tickets are $25. Here is a conversation with choreographer Edwaard Liang, whose work is having its premiere.

Pacific Northwest Ballet was bustling with bunheads when I met up with Seattle Dance Project co-founder Julie Tobiason in a conference room there, before rehearsal started on Edwaard Liang's new work. It's their third season performing as part of ACT's Central Heating Lab, but they gather their rehearsal studio time while--and where--they may. Julie had her third baby with her--she's part of a maternity explosion that's hit the group, and is sitting this set of performances out.

Tell me about starting the group.

SDP founders Tim Lynch and Julie Tobiason (Photo: Angela Sterling)

For us, it was like now or never. We had this great group of dancers around, and if you're going to say, "I'm going to fundraise for the next three years..." You don't know who'll be around. You just don't know. We were awarded two grants, and so that's why we started when we did. It just felt like if we wait, it's not going to happen. We're grassroots, if we realize our budget is going to be $5,000 off, we look to see what we can cut. It so bare bones anyway, but that's what we're all doing.

We started in 2007, rehearsing and getting pieces going. Our debut was with "Project 1" in January 2008. In our second year we did "Project Orpheus" in the fall, and then January 2009 was "Project 2." This season we did a collaboration with the chamber music group Simple Measures in November '09. Our idea in building repertory is to have a mix of collaborative productions and our own self-produced repertory productions.

Is everyone from PNB?

We're PNB heavy, that's part of the reason why we started. When I left I did some work with Donald Byrd over at Spectrum, I did some work with Maureen Whiting; I wanted to explore other modern and contemporary works. The ballet career--forty weeks a year, thirty to forty hours a week--I had done that since I was sixteen years old. So I wanted to do some things I felt I was motivated to do.

Timothy Lynch had retired the year after me from PNB, and I knew he wanted to continue dancing. You know, retiring from PNB doesn't mean your dance career ends, unless you decide that. We were talking about Maureen's work, and how much we loved contemporary and new works, and other dancers--Alexandra Dixon, Oleg Gorboulev was here teaching and doing some guesting, and Dana Hanson. We just had a great group of people hanging around with similar interests, so that's why we started it, really. Kory [Perigo] and Betsy [Cooper], they're from modern dance, though they trained in ballet....

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Beginning last night, and continuing tonight and Sunday, SIFF is holding a mini sci-fi film festival with five classics shown in sterling Blu-Ray on SIFF Cinema's excellent projection system. Tickets for the remaining three movies are $10.00. On Sunday, your ticket stub for the first screening gets you into the second screening at no additional charge.

Thursday's opening brought a double feature of the venerable Planet of the Apes from 1968 and Terry Gilliam's melancholy and weird 12 Monkeys. Tonight, beginning at 7:30 is Stanley Kubrick's mind-blowing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sunday's double feature begins at 3:30 p.m. with Nicolas Roeg's Man Who Fell to Earth, followed at Logan's Run at 6:00. 

It's hard to argue with SIFF's Blu-Ray choices on purely aesthetic grounds, because the majority of these films are standards in the category of sci-fi films. And, oddly enough, that's my objection to the first three films in the lineup. ...

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