Dec 19th, 2010 | By Merilyn Jackson | Category: Dance Headlines

Kun-Yang Lin Dancers by Matthew Wright

At times unfolding like a book, a two-year comprehensive training program devised by Kun-Yang Lin read through meditative arts with Hsu-Hui Huang of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theater, the martial arts led by Dr. Chik Qadir Mason and the art of moving with objects with puppet artist, Hua Hua Zhang. Each master wrote a workshop plan that took the dancers of Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers and other participants along a story-line that steeped them in their areas of artistic expression. In November, Losang Samten authored the final chapter in the project with workshops titled Tibetan Sacred Ritual and Dance.

As a child in the late 1950s, Samten escaped with his parents from Tibet to India. A former Buddhist monk, he first came to America in 1988 at the request of the 14th Dalai Lama to demonstrate the sand mandala art form, the first time the Tibetan mandala was seen in the West. In the following year he moved to Philadelphia, founding the Tibetan Buddhist Center here and making the city his home base ever since.

He’s since become a 2002 NEA National Heritage Fellow, a 2004 Pew Fellow, but may be best known for his role in Martin Scorsese’s 1997 film Kundun.  He played the role of Master of the Kitchen and served as religious technical adviser, sand mandala supervisor and, having been the Dalai Lama’s Ritual Dance Master at the Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, oversaw the choreography and dancing.

To read more:

http://philadelphiadance.org/blog/2010/12/19/the-culmination-of-the-kun-yang-lin%E2%80%99s-two-year-training-program-but-not-the-end/

By Jennifer Lin

Inquirer Staff Writer

HARRISBURG – After four years, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board finally ran out of patience with the Foxwoods Casino project.

In a decision that shocked Foxwoods’ attorneys and left anti-casino activists giddy with victory, the commissioners voted, 6-1, Thursday to strip the project of its $50 million slots license.

What will happen next, no one knows.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20101217_Pa__revokes_Foxwoods__casino_license.html#ixzz18Wq6ndjg

And my remarks on it:

Saving the S.S. United States

I couldn’t be more delighted that someone, i.e., Gerry Lenfest, has finally taken up my idea to convert the S.S. United States into a gambling hall (for the news story, click here) rather than allow Foxwoods to impose its imbecilic design further north on Delaware Avenue. (See “A shipboard casino for Philadelphia,” BSR, August 2009.)
If another casino in Philadelphia is inevitable, this ship couldn’t be a better place for it. The United States already has the potential of becoming a fabulously famous tourist attraction. Even at its current berth, it would cause fewer traffic/crime problems in the surrounding neighborhoods, as traffic could be funneled to it from the south, allowing the less used Oregon and Packer Avenues to take the brunt.
I do hope that Lenfest and other investors will prevail and, if so, use some of my visions for the ship as a glamorous, upscale hotel, dining and entertainment destination, rather than just gambling— which, as we are already seeing at Sugarhouse, draws mostly the most desperate. Above all, parking attendants should be at the entrances to ensure that no children are in any cars entering.
Merilyn Jackson
South Philadelphia
December 12, 2010

Pathways to Deeper Dance

Dance writer, Merilyn Jackson chronicles Philadephia Choreographer Kun-Yang Lin’s Innovative Training Program in Philadelphia.

Dec 4, 2010 11:20am

http://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/125/

Nov. 9, at Polish consulate: journalists John Darnton, Dan Rather, Bill Wheatley, Andrew Gorski and others told funny stories of coverage of Solidarnosc hosted by former journalist, Consul General Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka. Leading Solidarnosc architect and advisor to the the current Polish president, Komorowski, Henryk Wujek and the scamp of the underground press, Konstanty Gebert, AKA David Warsawski, also spoke. Gebert eluded police for years while playfully confounding them. After the fall of communism he resurrected the Jewish community in Warsaw finding, to his his shock and theirs, many friends with Jewish ancestry. I supported Solidarnosc for eight years because of its public declaration of being anti-anti-Semitic in its famous list of 21…

www.youtube.com

Video of first event for 30 Year Anniversary at the Polish Consulate. Great clips of my friend Elizabeth Sachs who was colleague with Henryk Wujek and Jacek Kuron, Solidarity leaders. Nathaniel Czarnecki, my escort for the event is seen weaving through the background as am I. Nathaniel is the son of the Reuters photo-journalist, Joseph Czarnecki, who took the most famous photos of the period.

On November 9th, 2010, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York, in cooperation with the Overseas Press Club of America, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the founding of Solidarnosc with a reunion of several U.S. foreign correspondents who witnessed the birth of the independent trade union.

Posted on Mon, Dec. 6, 2010

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

At the Painted Bride over the weekend, Charles O. Anderson’s Dance Theater X took us to the past and the future to show us what our world could look like in 20 years.World Headquarters features photographic projections, which Anderson designed with Bill Hebert and Troy Dwyer, of President Obama’s first days in office, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Nazi death camps. They show us that with just a few more cataclysmic events, our planet could take the few of us left back to our more primitive selves. The World Headquarters of the title has fallen, as represented by the images of the World Trade Center towers falling, and society has broken down.

Hailing from Richmond, Va., Anderson earned a master of fine arts from Temple University and is now an associate professor of dance at Muhlenberg College, where he also heads the African American studies program. For World Headquarters, he was inspired by the late science fiction writer Octavia Butler, but also drew on Essex Hemphill, Sam Shoemaker, and Walter Benjamin for what was a bit too much text that he wrote with Dwyer.

Anderson virtually turned the Painted Bride into a makeshift encampment. He had a section of seating removed and replaced with scrounged objects from children’s books to walkie-talkie, from teepee to TV. The dancers visited this set from time to time but danced mostly on the stage, which held additional seating to accommodate the large audience.

As Professor Bankole Olamina, Anderson led the eight ragtag survivors of “The Pox” in dances ritualistic and mournful. Anderson’s robust dancing hangs from his powerful, undulating shoulders and ripples electrically through his body’s bent knees, essed torso, and imploringly released fingers. Raising the staff he wields, he is clearly the Moses of this tribe.

In the beginning, he leads them in the piece’s most poignant dance. All wear mesh hoods and, with bodies bent over in grief, propel themselves forward as best they can.

It was good to see Michael Velez dancing locally again. He’s late of Koresh Dance Company and working in San Francisco. As Zebulon Pierce, he represents the progenitor of what could be the next generation of these survivors. Shavon Norris and Karama Butler stood out even in the group dancing, but all performed this work they helped create with conviction and skill. In this parable of parables, Butler, as Olamina’s daughter, states: “God is change.”

Hua-Hua Zhang Puppetmaster

Dec 4th, 2010 | By Merilyn Jackson | Category: Artist Profiles

By Merilyn Jackson for The Dance Journal

Dance is a career that parallels those of athletes in terms of length – short, and actors in terms of character development – elusive.

Dance training – especially on a professional level – is rigorous, endless, expensive, often leads to painful injury, and the repetition can just be a boring pain. But it can also lead to the joy of attaining perserverance and the mastery over a difficult combination and, in the end, the gratitude of an appreciative audience after a soaring performance underpinned by good technique.

Last year, choreographer Kun-Yang Lin devised an innovative training program with master teachers that he hoped would reinvigorate his company by engaging their skills, mind and sense of self. It began with the first visit by master teacher from Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theater Hsu-Hui Huang and expanded this year with the return of Huang, followed by Chik Qadir Mason in Martial Arts, Hua Hua Zhang a master puppet artist now living in Boothwyn, PA and concluded with Tibetan ritual dance master Losang Samten (who will be the subject of the next installment in this series.) Lin’s intention is to provide his company dancers’ (and any others who wish to participate) with new pathways that can lead them to reach ever deeper into their psyches to bring out emotionally expressive nuances that trump mere technique. As anyone who has watched Lin himself dance knows, the externalization of these inner impulses create a more organic experience for the audience.

To read more:

http://philadelphiadance.org/blog/2010/12/04/hua-hua-zhang-puppetmaster/

Posted on Sat, Dec. 4, 2010

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

EDUARDO PATINO

Parsons Dance Company dances the rock opera/ballet
“Remember Me,” lambasted by critics, loved by audiences.
After two years of touring, choreographer David Parsons’ Remember Me finally landed in Philadelphia Thursday night at Annenberg Center. A brilliant hit, it slams at the highbrow expectations of New York critics who’ve labeled it superficial and more soap than rock opera. Some say it’s a pop-opera; the Village Voice’s Deborah Jowitt called it a dansical.

None of this matters to audiences, which erupt in applause at the end of each act and bolt from their seats to cheer before the finale’s last notes fade. This is the kind of show that would have elicited flowers flung on the stage in another era.

What puzzles me is that Twyla Tharp gets nary a raised eyebrow for her Broadway excursions with Billy Joel and her Sinatra syndrome, while Parsons has his feet held to the fire for collaborating with the East Village Opera Company (EVOC) to create an uber-sexy, easy-to-follow narrative as entertaining as any opera from a century ago – a gorgeously performed work for our time.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20101204__Remember_Me___and_you_will__at_Annenberg.html#ixzz17BYewx4O
PLEASE NOTE: For some reason, my best line was edited out of the article and now reads incorrectly. It should have read, as I’ve corrected it above: “What puzzles me is that Twyla Tharp gets nary a raised eyebrow for her Broadway excursions with Billy Joel and her Sinatra syndrome…”

I meant it that way because Tharp has gone off the deep end on Sinatra and I’ll gag if I ever have to review one of those pieces again. What’s with that?

Are you also related to this nutcase? She clearly is the ancestor of the Tea-Party. For that I heartily apologize to the American public…

Lucy Casad Wilhoite born April 8 1856, died? Married Louis Wilhoite born after 1840

Children: Jasmine, (my grandmother, mother of Edwin Philip Jackson, died 1979) Gladys and Harold Wilhoite all born after 1880

The letter to Carrie Nation:

My life was despaired of by my friends and I knew I was very near the borderland, and as I lay on my bed of suffering in the still hour of midnight, God showed me the awful desolation which our thirty eight saloons and five wholesale houses were making in the homes of Wichita and surrounding country, The sight so overwhelmed me, I cried unto the Lord and said, “Oh my God! Have I done all I could during this life of mine to dam up this fearful tide? Then I said, show me Lord, what this means. Immediately a great cloud of human souls came rolling down a steep decline and as my eyes followed them, saw them rolling on and on until they finally fell into a pit from whence fire and smoke were ascending. Then my eyes were turned again up the ascent from whence the souls were coming. When, Lo! I saw the National Capitol, with her Senate and Congressmen. I saw the Legislative Halls, and our Educational Institutions. I saw our churches with her educated ministry, and her secret societies, our public libraries and reading rooms, our National State and Local W. C. T U’s, all of them right in the track of this awful tide of human souls, yet they still rolled on and on until they reached the pit. Then I cried again unto the Lord and said, “Oh, Why do you show me these horrible things, when I am on the brink of the grave? And still the picture or vision remained before me, growing more and more vivid every moment until I struggled to my knees, and said, ‘O God, if I can do anything to dam up this fearful tide, just heal this body, and let the healing be the seal that I can do something to help, and I shall do it if it costs my life. Then a deep calm and soul rest settled over me and I sank into a deep sleep, when I awoke I realized the pain was gone and also the fever. I lay there, looking up to God and I said, “Now, Lord, show me what you want me to do. Immediately, like a great scroll reaching across the sky, these words appeared, written in letters of gold. “Spill it out!” Then he showed me the very place I was to attack Mahan’s Wholesale Liquor House.

“For many weeks I pondered upon this vision and prayed about it most earnestly, that I might not be mistaken and know of a truth that it was God’s will. I never found any soul rest until I wrote to Mrs. Nation, and told her the time was ripe for God and that we must attack Mahan’s Wholesale Liquor House, that was helping to degrade so many women and debase so many men. This resulted in an attempt to carry out God’s purpose on Sept. 30, 1904.

I was true to the “Heavenly Vision,” which is only the beginning of the fulfillment, for there are yet many things to be spilled out, not only the liquor, but also the hypocrites in the church, and the false prophets with sin of every kind, and our lives also.

The Wichita Eagle Reporter, uttered a profound truth, whether he intended to or not, when he said, we walked into the Court Room like a poem, a sort of a ‘Lead Kindly Light’ poem, for we were lead of God, who is the Light of the world. And we intend to follow on until this vision is fully realized.”

Yours for God’s love for Him and suffering humanity,
MRS. LUCY WILHOITE.

Posted on Tue, Nov. 16, 2010

Amy Smith, as Jane Fonda, lends the controversial work her humor.

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

There’s theater, dance, dance theater, musical theater, physical theater, and variations with multimedia and new media. The lines differentiating them have been blurring throughout the past century, especially in the last 30 years or so. And in Philadelphia the pairings and sharings among disciplines have blended in some surprising ways, among them That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play, which Theatre Exile opens here this week – with a dancer in a major role.
When Sheila Callaghan’s controversial play premiered last year in New York, it was variously reviewed as tricky and darkly funny or raunchy and only partly successful. It begins with two women in a hotel who entice an anti-abortion crusader into their room and murder him; the scene is immediately replayed with two men who kill a hooker. For the rest of the play, Jane Fonda flits in and out of these scenes like a misguided Tinker Bell, sprinkling feel-good happy dust over the carnage.

Dear Unelected Officials:

I live not far from the proposed Foxwoods site. I shop at IKEA, Lowe’s, Home Depot and other businesses along Delaware Ave. (Columbus Blvd.)  The traffic congestion is already such that I plan my shopping for late evening on Mondays through Thursdays. Saturdays and Sundays are impossible.

It is inconceivable to me and my neighbors that you in other parts of the state, who have no experience of our neighborhood, would take it upon yourselves to shove an unwanted business down our throats. The area between 8th  and 4th Streets and from Oregon to Washington is populated by mostly very poor people who will no doubt be lured to spend their welfare checks at a casino that can walk to. Many have large families and the children will surely suffer when money for food is gambled away. You need only go to Atlantic City to see the low-income and elderly populations that the casino industry preys upon and, moreover, how depressed that city is. Gambling only furthered the decline of Atlantic City.

I am not against gambling. For some who can afford it and have self-control, I say if they are stupid enough to gamble let them be free to do so. But I am against putting the opportunity to do so so close to family neighborhoods, the poor and elderly and schools.

There are plenty of other sites outside of Philadelphia that would be more suitable. You have already blighted our city with Sugarhouse and its low-income “jobs.” Rest easy that you have done enough damage to a city you seem to hate and that we love. Neither Foxwoods nor any other casino-entity will serve our wonderful city well. Have mercy on us and revoke Foxwoods license and grant none to any other investors.

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