MADE HERE to Air on NYC Life
May 15, 2011
Beginning May 23, 2011, NYC life (channel 25), the flagship station of the official network of the City of New York, will air MADE HERE, the documentary series devoted to examining the lives of performing artists in NYC and timely issues that affect them. The filmmakers involved are excited to expand the visibility of the project through the NYC life audience. Airing at 10:30 PM on Mondays on NYC life, episodes will cover a range of topics, including Artistic Homes, Day/Night Jobs, Artist as Activist, Technology, Inspiration, and Process.
Now in its second season, MADE HERE’s short-form videos have featured myriad artists, including Reggie Watts, Charlie Todd (Improv Everywhere), Joan Jonas, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk (The Wooster Group), Oskar Eustis (The Public Theater), Thomas Bradshaw, Young Jean Lee, Basil Twist, Elizabeth Streb, James Tigger! Ferguson, Taylor Mac, and Julie Atlas Muz.
Watch the trailer from season 1, and tune into NYC life on May 23rd to see episodes of MADE HERE.
Sesame Street Exposed Me to Glass
August 16, 2009
The music of American composer Philip Glass, who is known for “music with repetitive structures”, is frequently used for dance. In fact, some of my favorite works include a Glass score, such as Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces and Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. However, my first exposure to Glass was not at a dance performance, nor was it while watching one of the many feature films accompanied by an original Glass score. My first encounter with Glass was on “Sesame Street”. Before I even knew who Glass was, I heard his music in an animation series called “Geometry of Circles”, which first appeared on “Sesame Street” in 1979 and continued throughout the 80s – when I was watching. Glass created the short vocal and instrumental pieces specifically for the children’s television show. To this day, I find the combination of bright colors, geometric shapes, and repetitive sound to be pretty mesmerizing. By now, “Sesame Street” has probably (and unfortunately) replaced “Geometry of Circles” with more high-tech features to teach children about colors, circles, and music. I consider myself lucky to have first heard Glass while still wearing diapers.
Rachel Maddow on Dance, Art, and Society
August 10, 2009
Rachel Maddow at Jacob’s Pillow, photo by Christopher Duggan
Here’s another reason to love Rachel Maddow: this past Saturday at a free, outdoor PillowTalk hosted by Jacob’s Pillow, the popular television host, radio personality, and political commentator discussed the role that the arts play in our lives and society as a whole. In her characteristically smart, articulate, and witty manner, Maddow shared her thoughts on the importance of the arts and arts education while engaging in a discussion with the talk’s moderator, the Pillow’s Scholar-in-Residence Suzanne Carbonneau. But, Maddow started by boldly stating that she’s not a dance expert, just an appreciator: “I know nothing about dance. I am a fan. I am a fan of dance and of Jacob’s Pillow and a fan of people who know nothing about dance going to see dance.” Here are a few more of Maddow’s statements from the event:
“Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war. Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools. A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be. And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country. It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.”
“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ‘sissy’. Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, it is essential; you are, in [Jacob’s Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.” -Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow and Suzanne Carbonneau at Jacob’s Pillow, photo by Christopher Duggan
