Fresh Loaf

Given labels such as “Ballet Mavericks” in the press, the Trey McIntyre Project uses ballet technique as the jumping off point for emotionally charged dance performances. Trey McIntyre of the North Carolina School of Arts, the Houston Ballet Company and the New York City Ballet founded the company in 2004. Executive director John Michael Schert describes the Trey McIntyre Project’s approach to ballet and pop music in anticipation of his performance with the company at Georgia State University’s Rialto Center for the Arts on March 14.

I heard someone on the radio say the Trey McIntyre Project “turns ballet on its head.” How would you describe the company’s work?

What the Trey McIntyre Project is trying to put onstage is as authentic as possible. If we were in the theater, we’d be method actors. The dancer really has to feel and express the emotions of a piece. Trey sets a lot of his work to pop music: There’s Beethoven, but also Beatles, Etta James, Beck, bluegrass musicians like Ralph Stanley. This show is being billed as Peter, Paul and Mary or Beatles music, but Trey treats it as a classical score, which has just as much import as a Ravel composition. I believe what Trey’s doing is the next evolution of an art form. We’re classified as a “contemporary ballet company,” but labels tend to come from outsiders and are applied after the fact. What Trey’s doing isn’t contemporary ballet — that happened in the 1980s. It’s something that doesn’t have a quote-unquote style attached to it. It is ballet-based, but ballet’s really a technique. Every dancer takes ballet — ballet training is like your daily dose of medicine.

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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: Elle Fanning as the title character in 'Phoebe in Wonderland'

Conyers natives Dakota and Elle Fanning are an impressive pair of acting sisters, particularly given the fact that they’re both kids. Elle Fanning was only 10 years old for the filming of Phoebe in Wonderland, yet her rich performance nearly carries the entire movie and makes a potentially gimmicky role into more than a collection of tics.

Fanning’s Phoebe is a creative, precocious girl, bored by the rule-obsessed teacher at her school. Phoebe decides to audition for the school’s production of Alice in Wonderland. The free-spirited theater teacher Ms. Dodger (Patricia Clarkson) intrigues her, and Phoebe wins the role of Alice. Phoebe in Wonderland’s cleverest creation is Phoebe’s classmate Jamie (Ian Colletti), a budding theater queen who collects dolls and tries out for the Queen of Hearts.

During the rehearsal process, however, Phoebe’s quirks become more problematic. She washes her hands until her knuckles bleed, engages in endless rituals, spits at classmates and lets verbal outbursts fly. Her scholarly parents Peter and Hillary (Bill Pullman and “Desperate Housewives’” Felicity Huffman) grapple with guilt and concern when she exhibits symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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HORNY COUPLE: Idris Ackamoor (left) and Rhodessa Jones

In 7 Stages’ The Love Project, Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor bring their considerable talents to explore that many-splendored thing that makes the world go ’round. Love is an impossibly broad subject — it’s like devoting a show to everything and nothing — but Jones and Ackamoor prove to be such consummate entertainers that they can delight audiences no matter what their ostensible theme may be.

Co-artistic directors of the San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey, Jones and Ackamoor wrote The Love Project with Atlanta’s Pearl Cleage and Zaron Burnett. Dancers Dezrica “Star” Murry and Millicent Johnnie occasionally provide hip-swaying accompaniment. Directed by Harriet Schiffer-Scott, the show offers a cabaret-style variety of songs, stories and set pieces, beginning with a spoken-word poem about “love in a time of war,” and how people should cling to each other, romantically and otherwise, at a time of national turmoil. The introductory piece feels more written and less spontaneous than the rest of the show. The segment’s evocations of Gaza and Iraq, while hardly out of date, make The Love Project initially seem less timely than it actually is.

When Jones riffs lustily on Barack and Michelle Obama’s first night in the White House, however, The Love Project proves fresh and funny. Jones croons and scats jazz tunes but turns out to be a born raconteur, chatting up the audience, recounting tense stories of life on the road and celebrating sensuality. (The name of her one-woman show, Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers, presented at 7 Stages in 2000, hints at her cheerful, frank attitude about sexuality.) She’s the kind of force-of-nature performer who can get audiences to stand up and sing love songs, even at an afternoon show.

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LINE BACKER: Glexis Novoa's 'Refurbish, 2007'

At least one historian has described the Peruvian song form called cumanana as “descuidado,” or careless. He meant that in the best way, referring to the form’s random, haphazard meter. Likewise, the group exhibition Cumanana currently on view at Saltworks showcases art that feels casual, thrown together and improvisational.

The 13 artists assembled by curator William Cordova all have long histories of collaboration — many of the same shows from the last half decade pop up over and over in their CVs. In Cumanana, the artists use mostly trash, found objects and low-grade materials to channel the experience of making something from nothing. This should sound familiar — the trend of making art whose list of materials reads like the inventory of a homeless lady’s shopping cart is well-established.

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KID 'N PLAY: Azur (top) and Asmar as boys

The French fairy tale Azur and Asmar uses cutting-edge digital animation to replicate centuries-old artistic styles. For his fourth cartoon feature, awesomely named French director Michel Ocelot crafts backgrounds that evoke medieval tapestries or illuminated manuscripts. You can imagine seeing images from Azur and Asmar hanging in a museum, only the figures within them move and talk.

Like one of Scheherezade’s tales from the Arabian Nights, Azur and Asmar presents a classic storybook quest. Beginning in an unidentified European country, the film depicts two boys: blue-eyed, privileged Azur and dusky Asmar, the son of Azur’s nursemaid. Azur and Asmar grow up literally suckling at the same breast and hearing the nanny’s tales of her homeland’s mythic Djinn Fairy, a magic princess held in an impregnable prison. They become close friends, despite comically frequent arguments, until Azur’s father callously sends his son off to a distant tutor and casts out Asmar and the nursemaid.

Entranced by his nanny’s stories of the Djinn Fairy, Azur travels as an adult to Asmar’s home country, where the Muslim natives treat him as an outcast because of his blue eyes. Azur undergoes sharp reversals of fortune before reuniting with Asmar, and the two become rivals who each seek to find, free and wed the Djinn Fairy.

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WAITING ROOM: "Stella"

Kristen Ashburn doesn’t flinch. Training her lens on some of the hardest to look at sights in Iraq, Gaza and New Orleans, she’s become versed in the art of not looking away. The photographer’s most recent excursion found her in sub-Saharan Africa documenting AIDS-ravaged communities and families. The result, Bloodline: AIDS and Family, runs through runs through March 6 at the Atlanta Photography Group Gallery and March 15 at Composition Gallery.

What first drew you to this topic?
Millions of people are sick and dying because they lack medicine that we as Americans take for granted. As a journalist, this pandemic is something that I could not ignore.

What countries did you visit?
I documented the AIDS crisis throughout Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi.

Which was the hardest to document?
As I began making visits to communities, hospitals, and homes, I quickly realized that Zimbabwe was in bad shape. Not only was the country going through political and economic turmoil, but the basic social fiber of society was being torn apart by this disease. I spent most of my time in Zimbabwe, but it became too dangerous for me to work there without the official press credentials. Journalists are not allowed to work in the country without government-issued press credentials, which are rarely given out. If caught working without these papers I faced up to a two-year jail sentence.

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BED BUGGIN': Marcela (Ana Geislerová, left) and Jarda (Roman Luknár)

A paperback copy of a Milan Kundera novel, held in the hands of a Czech expat, briefly appears in Beauty In Trouble. It’s a fleeting moment (and easy to miss), but it’s also an important gesture of respect from director Jan Hrebejk. Like the best of Kundera’s fiction, Beauty In Trouble explores the ways that politics, history, and economics can meet in the bedrooms of Prague.

The title’s Beauty is Marcela (Ana Geislerová), a down-on-her-luck mother of two. The Trouble is her husband Jarda (Roman Luknár), an unlikable brute who’s resorted to stealing and chopping cars as a full time profession. Cynical and thick-skinned, they’re scraping by in a world diminished by the Soviet Union’s failure and a disastrous flood. When Jarda lands in jail for a stolen Volvo, Marcela gets mixed up with the car’s owner, the wealthy and intellectual Evzen Benes (Josef Abrhám).

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Karl Marx famously said that history repeats itself, once as tragedy, twice as farce. King Lear may not have been an actual English regent, but he looms larger than most historical royals as the title role in one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. And if the Bard gave King Lear his tragedy, cult author Christopher Moore somersaults in for the farce with Fool.

The comedic novelist offers a bawdy, balls-out take on King Lear with a loose version of the plot from the point of view of Lear’s fool. The tragedy’s jester provides the perfect point of entry for a post-modern goof on King Lear, since the role’s rather ambiguous in the play, with an indeterminate age and a tendency to pop in and out of the action. Moore officially gives him a name — Pocket — and a sense of humor that elicits belly laughs from the kind of modern audiences unlikely to giggle at codpiece jokes.

Moore retains the play’s basic outline, including Lear’s vain, disastrous decision to divide his kingdom among his daughters and cast out good-hearted Cordelia while trusting her flattering elders, Goneril and Regan. In the play, Lear’s pride, cruelty and poor judgment bring doom upon his family and England, but Fool reveals that Pocket was the well-intentioned puppet master behind the vicious actions of Goneril, Regan and Edmund, the black-clad bastard.

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DON'T SPEAK: Andrea (Alessandro Calza, left) and Jeff (Adam Neal Smith) let their eyes do the talking.

An old commercial used to claim, “If you want to attract someone’s attention, whisper.” The indie drama Ciao seems to heed that advice in its quiet, compelling introduction. The audience reads a series of e-mail messages on a black screen interspersed between simple, enigmatic shots of one man leaving his apartment and another man going through his effects. We soon identify the two correspondents. Andrea (Alessandro Calza), an Italian graphic designer, plans to visit his chat room pal Mark in Dallas, Texas. Jeff (Adam Neal Smith), a financial planner, informs Andrea that Mark recently died in a car accident.

With no spoken dialogue, Ciao’s early moments draw us in. As we watch Jeff go about his routine, we reflect on how unexpected tragedy can lend gravity to the seemingly mundane activities of the survivors. Then, at about the nine-minute mark, the characters finally start talking out loud to each other, and Ciao becomes a lot less interesting.

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THE MAN IN BLACK: Atlanta Ballet's 'Dracula'

The Atlanta Ballet’s current show begins with a skin-crawling prologue. Wolfish, costumed dancers surround a sleeping man’s bed; a happy wedding repeatedly turns into a mournful funeral; and booming, insistent knocks resound throughout. The rapping sounds suggest Poe’s raven tapping at the chamber door. The images evoke Goya’s nightmarish paintings, and the whole disturbing tableau dispels any preconceived notions you have of ballet as a genteel performing art.

The surreal, sideways introduction to the Dracula ballet provides a fresh interpretation of one of our culture’s most familiar stories, like putting new blood in an old bottle. The Atlanta Ballet’s production proves ideal for audiences who don’t like dance — or don’t realize that they actually enjoy ballet. (more…)

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IN A PINCH: Michelle Williams in 'Wendy and Lucy'

In his new comedy DVD Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock remarks that people always feel sorry for dogs that belong to homeless guys. It never occurs to them to feel sorry for the homeless men. Director Kelly Reichardt’s spare drama Wendy and Lucy uses a canine companion to magnify the audience’s empathy for its drifting heroine.

Michelle Williams plays Wendy, a young woman from Indiana driving across America with a dog named Lucy and a vague plan to find work in Alaska. She keeps some cash in a money belt, but strictly rations the reserves to bankroll her trip. When her car breaks down in a former mill town in Oregon, Wendy suffers a series of misfortunes — some avoidable, some not — that emphasize the tenuousness of life on razor-thin financial margins. Even audiences with money will feel familiar pangs of nervousness while wondering whether an auto mechanic (Will Patton) will make a bank-breaking diagnosis.

Lucy’s disappearance exacerbates Wendy’s desperation, as she struggles to track down the dog while having no car, phone or place to live. Wendy’s attachment to Lucy, and her guilt over the pet’s disappearance, help cultivate our sympathies for a character who otherwise keeps an emotional remove. The script doesn’t explain how she entered such dire straits. Reichardt and Williams embrace a kind of working class American minimalism — clearly inspired by the Italian neo-realists — that keeps us from getting inside Wendy’s head in a conventional, Hollywood way. (more…)

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COURT OF SURRREALS: Mobile, Ala.'s African-American Mardi Gras court

The Order of Myths presents Mobile, Ala.’s Mardi Gras as the country’s first such celebration, predating New Orleans’, and as one of the South’s last bastions of segregation. Mobile’s white and African-American communities each embrace the pomp, pageantry and parades of Mardi Gras, and while their festivities may be unequal, they’re definitely separate.

Director Margaret Brown, a white native of Mobile, returns to her hometown to chronicle the preparations for the 2007 Mardi Gras, particularly the hoopla and costuming surrounding the queens of the respective “royal courts.” Willowy Helen Meaher hits the country club circuit as the queen of the white organization, while schoolteacher Steffanie Lucas serves as her African-American counterpart of sorts. The two have more connections than they or the audience realize. Brown’s interviewees allege that the well-established Meaher family hired a slave ship that ran in the Mobile area in 1859, and that some of the unwilling passengers were distant relatives of Lucas. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Lucas says. (more…)

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HUSTLE AND FLOW: Bryan Brendle (left) and Chris Kayser in 'Mauritius'

Actor’s Express’s twisty thriller Mauritius turns on a question of authenticity: Is a pair of rare stamps really worth a seven-figure payout? Theresa Rebeck’s play explores issues of forgery and perceived value, questions that could be applied to Mauritius itself, which initially resembles a facsimile of American Buffalo.

David Mamet’s 1975 classic depicts a trio of losers in a hole-in-the-wall junk shop planning a score around a rare coin. For a while, Mauritius comes across as a Mamet-wannabe with women added to the mix. The play proves truly worthy in its second act, as if the real thing were only disguised as a fake. (more…)

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MIST-TAKEN IDENTITY: James Caviezel as Kainan

GENRE: Vikings vs. aliens!

THE PITCH: Like I said, Vikings vs. aliens. Kainan (Jim Caviezel of The Passion of the Christ), a human from another planet, crashes his spaceship in Norway circa the Iron Age, and must enlist the suspicious mead swillers against a glowing, whip-tailed beastie called a Morwen.

MONEY SHOTS: The opening shot of Kainan’s spacecraft hurtling down to Earth. Kainan and alpha male Wulfric (Jack Huston) race atop upraised shields in the Viking equivalent of a “Survivor” challenge. Great monster battles, along with details like blood dripping on the tip of a spear, or the Morwen snuffing out a torch under its claw. An interplanetary flashback reveals personal stakes for the Kainan/Morwen rivalry.

BEST LINE: “I’m hunting a dragon,” Kainan tells his hostile captors when they ask why he’s in their territory. (The explanation doesn’t go over well.)

BEST WORD: Kainan uses his computer to download the Norse language into his brain, causing him to scream, vomit and utter the film’s first comprehensible word, “Fuck.” (more…)

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WEB SITE: Oxford Comics' Zack Overton flips through the special-edition comic.

Inaugural Obama-mania extends to our nation’s comic book stores as the retailers can’t keep enough copies of The Amazing Spider-man #583, which features Barack Obama on the cover and a six-page story in which the 44th president plays a supporting role. Oxford Comics proprietor Mike Van Houten said that retailers didn’t pre-order enough copies and demand “went nuts,” until first editions were selling for $75 a piece when they went on sale on Jan. 14. Van Houten says that more than 500 customers reserved copies of the second printing, which went on sale today, and that more than 2,000 copies of the third printing will be due in the store next week.

The story, incidentally, finds photographer and Spider-man alter ego Peter Parker attending the inauguration where he sees two Barack Obamas — one of which is longtime Spider-foe the Chameleon, a master of disguise. According to the AP:

Parker decides “the future president’s gonna need Spider-Man,” and springs into action, using basketball to determine the real Obama and punching out the impostor.

I know Barack loves the game, but basketball? Really? The first African-American president has to use basketball to prove his real identity? Oh well, I guess there are worse stereotypes they could have.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Broadway and film composer and music director Louis St. Louis may be best known for his treatments of 1950s and 1960s rock ’n’ roll with Smokey Joe’s Café, Grease and Grease 2. (He even hints that his real name appears somewhere in Grease 2.) For the Alliance Theatre’s Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL (opening Jan. 21), he received permission from hit-making composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to reinterpret the rock opera through the prism of contemporary black gospel music.

You’re credited as the music supervisor, dance arranger and conceiver of the show. How did you get the idea to “gospelize” the material? It seems like a natural fit.
That’s what everything seems to think, but no one ever did it. I was conducting a concert for the New York League of Theatres in 2002 called Broadway Rocks. All of the women wanted to do “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar. Generally, if I can up come up with a new slant on something in a half hour, I’m excited about it. We gave the song a gospel treatment, with an African-American singer on one side of the stage and a white one on the other. It was plugged in the center of an 80-minute concert and brought the house down. The next morning, I had the revelation that I could do the whole show that way. I wrote a letter to Andrew asking permission in intentionally the worst Shakespearean language I could muster: “I beseech thee on bended knee, my lord…” Someone told me that when Sir Andrew heard about my idea, he said “None of you a-holes ever knew what to do with the old material. Who is this?”

How well did you know the material?
Jesus Christ Superstar has always been my favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber piece, and I can honestly say that I like all his work. In 1971, I auditioned 12 times for Judas on Broadway, but after awhile they started saying “You should come back for Herod.”
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ARMED AND DANGEROUS: Brothers Zus (Liev Schreiber, left) and Tuvia (Daniel Craig)

Like the Tom Cruise vehicle Valkyrie, the wartime drama Defiance seeks to put an asterisk beside the conventional wisdom of World War II history.

The sound-byte version of WWII would say something like, “The evil Germans victimized the Jews and threatened Europe until the Americans came to the rescue,” which may be true, but not complete. Valkryie challenges the blanket “evil German” preconception with its account of conscientious Nazi officers who tried to topple Hitler’s government. Meanwhile, Defiance corrects the “Jewish victim” stereotype with a rousing account of Jews in Western Poland who took up arms rather than passively wait for German invaders.

In adapting Nechama Tec’s book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, director/co-writer Edward Zwick tends to flatten wartime moral complexities in the name of telling a cracking good story. Less nuanced than Zwick’s Glory or The Last Emperor, Defiance nevertheless makes a thrilling action drama of non-soldiers combating not just vicious storm troopers, but also the harshness of the elements. (more…)

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LAST CALL: Dustin Hoffman as Harvey (left) and Emma Thompson as Kate

In Last Chance Harvey’s most winning moment, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson make faces at each other. Hoffman plays Harvey Shine, a jazz musician turned frustrated composer of commercial jingles. Thompson’s Kate Walker, a book-loving airline employee, explains to him the origin of the expression “stiff upper lip” with exaggerated mouth movements.

It may be the most charming scene of any romantic comedy of the past year, but that’s less an endorsement of the well-acted but disposable Last Chance Harvey than a reflection of the shrill, sorry state of rom-coms in general. Lately, movie love stories hit their jokes so hard and rely on such predictable romantic ups and downs, human moments seldom have the chance to emerge. Last Chance Harvey director Joel Hopkins’ best talent is an instinct to give plenty of breathing room to his leads, who happen to be two of the best actors of their respective generations.

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Nami Mun’s debut novel Miles from Nowhere follows Joon, a Korean American teenager growing up on the streets of New York during the ’80s. Mun, like the protagonist, came of age as a teenage runaway on the streets of the Bronx. These days, she’s the recipient of a coveted Pushcart Prize and teaches creative writing at the Columbia College in Chicago. She comes to A Cappella Books/Opal Gallery Mon., Jan. 19, 7 p.m.

How closely is Joon based on your own experiences growing up?
Joon and I are both Korean American and we were both runaways. But the similarities pretty much stop there. I mean, what happens to her, the decisions that she makes and the events that occur in the book, are completely fictional and in many ways are much more interesting than anything that ever happened to me in my own life. Fiction is always more interesting to me. (more…)

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American television so often takes its cues from English and European shows, including the original version of “The Office” and many reality series, that it’s refreshing to see a British show influenced by one from the states. The BBC One spy drama “MI-5,” debuting on Atlanta’s PBA 30 at 10 p.m. Fri., Jan. 9, clearly picked up a thing or two from Fox’s counterterrorism series “24,” such as the use of split-screens and a thrumming soundtrack.

“24” (which begins its seventh season on Jan. 11) already had episodes in the can when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred before its debut in November of 2001. “MI-5” premiered in May of 2002 and had the chance to adjust its focus to specifically reflect the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Compared to a soft-spoken, character-driven police procedural such as Helen Mirren’s “Prime Suspect,” “MI-5” is much more glitzy, action-oriented and “American” in its sensibility, although Tom Quinn (Frost/Nixon’s Matthew Macfayden), the hero of the show’s first seasons, proves more sardonic and less intense than Keifer Sutherland’s tormented Jack Bauer on “24.”

Called “Spooks” in England and “MI-5” in the United States and France, the show also reveals a sense of humor and awareness of real-world foibles completely absent from “24.” The “MI-5” pilot involves the search for an American anti-abortion zealot who plans an English bombing campaign. When Tom’s colleagues try to put the terrorist’s flat under electronic surveillance when no one’s home, they accidentally let the cat out in the rain, and not only have to track down the stray pet, but dry it off, lest the bad guys get wise to their presence. The show itself isn’t free of missteps, either: The actress playing the pro-life American affects a ridiculous Southern accent that sounds like a mixture of Texas, Florida, Scotland and late-night drunk.

In between taut cloak-and-dagger sequences, “MI-5” humanizes the lives of covert intelligence operatives. The early episodes have Tom falling in love with a civilian who only knows him by a cover identity instead of his real name and profession, a predicament mined for wry pathos. The series’ seventh season is scheduled to begin in late 2009, giving local viewers plenty of time to play catch-up. “MI-5” has a reputation for sudden, shocking character deaths, so first-timers willing to sign up for this take on British intelligence should expect to be both shaken and stirred.

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BODY OF WORK: "El Bicho" by Tomás Esson

In El Bicho: 2008/2009, Cuban painter Tomás Esson takes a detour around the well-behaved superego and  instead drives straight for the pulsing flesh of the id. The Hammonds House Museum exhibition comprises 60 of the artist’s sexiest, nastiest, most sublime works in an orgiastic feast surveying Esson’s creative output over the last 20 years.

A personal menagerie of half-human beasts and beings with confused and confusing bodies populate Esson’s large oil paintings. Rear ends substitute for breasts and a phallicized finger spits something aggressive and poisonous. (more…)

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HEART ATTACK: Eva Mendes as Sand Saref

TITLE: The Spirit

GENRE: Style-drunk superhero story

THE PITCH: After Central City cop Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) dies but gets better, he becomes a masked avenger called the Spirit who takes on criminals such as the similarly indestructible Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) and seemingly countless femme fatales.

MONEY SHOTS: Nothing looks particularly good, but it’ll be hard to forget the Octopus and the Spirit fighting in a swamp and hitting each other with a toilet, a kitchen sink and a six-foot wrench. Louis Lombardi plays all of the Octopus’s moronic cloned henchman, including a tiny side effect that amounts to a head attached to a bouncing foot. Belly-dancing Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) threatens the Spirit with sabers while he’s tied to a dental chair. Explosions leave sinister, octopus-like clouds.

BEST LINE: “Some day I’d love to do your autopsy,” Dr. Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulsen), the “good” love interest, tells the Spirit. (more…)

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CRUISIN' FOR A BRUISIN': Tom Cruise (left) as Claus von Stauffenberg

The best thing about the World War II thriller Valkyrie is that audiences can finally see it. Since its inception, the showbiz bloggerati have been beside themselves over Tom Cruise wearing an eye patch and a German army uniform in a docudrama about a decorated officer who spearheads an attempt to kill Hitler. It’s a relief to view Valkyrie on its own merits, rather than as a vehicle for celebrity snark. (more…)

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Soprano Teri Dale Hansen sings with the ASO on New Year's Eve.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra bids farewell (and good riddance) to 2008 with the help of two powerhouse vocalists, soprano Teri Dale Hansen and tenor Eric Van Hoven, under the baton of conductor Michael Krajewski. Van Hoven made his New York debut with the New York City Opera and has impeccable classical credentials, while Hansen has won international recognition as a Kurt Weill specialist and a crossover artist who moves between opera and musical theater styles. Both former Florida State University students, they offer a tag-team discussion of the ASO’s New Year’s Eve show, which begins at 8 p.m. Dec. 31.

Do New Year’s Eve shows have a unique vibe?
Hansen: Absolutely. I think it’s pretty much a drunken vibe. We start the evening by drinking, which sets the tone early.

Van Hoven: This show, involving more classical music than usual, I find takes on an entirely different feeling. If it was a Lerner & Lowe revue, we’d spend the evening moving through their collaboration. In this one, because of the combination of early pieces and later ones, we’re bringing more of an updated feeling to the opera pieces. We don’t necessarily want to do it in character as we would in opera — we want to entertain and connect to the audience.

Hansen: It’s opera presented in an entertaining way, not like it’s been extracted from the original show. It’s an interactive show. It’s 3-D. It’s hands-on. Eric sings “La donne e mobile,” which is sung by the biggest cad in Rigoletto, so Eric’s going to go out in the house and accost all of the women.

Van Hoven: Not all of them. Just two or three. (more…)

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FEMME FATALE: Kristin Scott Thomas as Juliette

In screen roles such as her Oscar-nominated turn in The English Patient, Kristin Scott Thomas personifies aristocratic elegance — like a U.K. equivalent to Katharine Hepburn. In reality, Thomas may be English more by birth than by choice. She’s lived and worked in Paris since she was 19 and speaks perfect French. For decades she’s worked in French films such as I’ve Loved You So Long, where her role as Juliette Fontaine still qualifies as casting against type: Thomas plays an ex-con who served 15 years for a crime that seems like the stuff of Greek tragedy. (more…)

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