PopSmart

Riverdance calls it quits after 13 years with eight farewell shows at the Fox. (Photo © Joan Marcus)

1) Riverdance continues its six-day run at the Fox Theatre.

2) Puppets take over the world for the 20th annual Xperimental Puppetry Night at Center for Puppetry Arts.

3) Carbonas play at Drunken Unicorn with opener Pinche Gringo.

4) Chris Bohjalian signs and discusses Double Blind at Decatur Library.

5) Collage and film exhibition The Beginning of Man in the Age of Disbelief, Anna Christine’s and Michael David Perkins’s exploration of the origins of man in the debate between science and religion, is at Art House for one night only.

Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s own Chanté Lagon and David Lee Simmons chatting about the 2008 Summer Guide — dropping today! Check it out for the best 111 things to do this summer.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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For 13 years, RIVERDANCE has injected a great appreciation of Irish song and dance into the cultures of 32 countries on four continents. This epic celebration of Irish tradition has sold more than 2.5 million copies of its Grammy-winning CD, and now the performers are calling it quits with eight farewell shows at the fabulous Fox Theatre this week, beginning Tues., MAY 13. If you weren’t one of the 21 million to catch their previous 10,000 performances, now is the time to see what the Washington Post describes as “a phenomenon of historic proportions.” The thunderous feet of more than 100 Irish dancers are directed by John McColgan and perform to music composed by Bill Whelan. Through May 18. $25-$62. Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. 404-881-2100. www.foxtheatre.org.

(Photo © 2003 Joan Marcus)

For Lil Malcolm & the House Rockers (right), it’s all in the family. Accordionist Malcolm Walker leads his group Sat., MAY 3, for the ATLANTA CAJUN ZYDECO DANCE ASSOCIATION’S MONTHLY DANCE, with his father Percy on guitar, uncle Joe on bass and brother Percy Jr. on drums. Percy Jr. performed with the original Rockin’ Dopsie’s band before going on to form his own zydeco band, Percy Walker & the House Rockers, and now he’s passed the torch to Malcolm. This is a special treat for the ACZA, considering south Louisiana is in the middle of its musical festival season with Jazz Fest in New Orleans and Festival International in Lafayette. The House Rockers’ most recent CD, Zydeco Three Way, pays tribute to two of the genre’s legends: Rockin’ Sidney and Clifton Chenier. The monthly gathering features Louisiana food cooked up by former Katrina evacuee and current Atlanta resident Daisy Angelety, and dance lessons before the show. $8-$15. Dance lessons, 7 p.m.; performance, 8 p.m. Knights of Columbus. 2620 Buford Highway. 404-825-9768. www.aczadance.org.

(Photo courtesy Percy Walker Sr.)

As I walk to my seat, I can’t help but notice the palpable static of expectancy and excitement running through this very atypical crowd of ballet-goers. Age, race, gender and money is of little apparent importance to the make-up of the human spectrum filing through the Fox’s gilded doors. It’s refreshing and unique, setting the tone for the evening of dance.

Several minutes from the show opening, dancers in various forms of costume and warm-up clothes preen across the stage, stretching, talking, moving — essentially rehearsing — in full view of the filling theater. Classical ballet merges with modern-influenced choreography to form a hodge-podge of movement, serving as a preview of what’s to come. And suddenly … there is that lull unique to theater, where the crowd has settled in and somewhere a stage manager has signaled a beginning.
Big Boi struts onstage in full Southern I’m-on-my-own-time style replete with hoodie and bright yellow socks. All bravado and bass, he’s in stark contrast to the array of dancers clad all in white behind him. The lights go out, the curtain falls and all I can think is showtime.

From the start, the ballet is a mix of confusing imagery, characters and concepts. One thing I was most curious (and concerned) about was how this performance would flow, what thread would tie the songs together and make a coherent story. It seems those producing the show had the same concerns but also had no answers.

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Well, the Atlanta Ballet’s big moment with Big Boi finally came, and it was certainly as unprecedented a pairing as one could have possibly hoped on Thursday night. I’ll leave most of the critical-dance appraisals for others (more on that later in this post), but here are some general impressions:

* God, were they having fun up there! With some 80 performers — Atlanta Ballet company members (including a select group from its school of youngsters), the Purple Ribbon rappers and singers and their 10-piece band, and of course the man of the hour — all whipping around the stage in various sequences, you couldn’t help but feel the passion in the air. Throughout the weeks leading up to my cover story, dancers would mention how they couldn’t believe they were being afforded such an opportunity, and they took advantage of it, full-throttle.
Part of that came from Lauri Stallings’ choreography, which featured a wide range of groupings, pairings, solos, stagings, and which allowed the dancers to essentially let it all hang out. Part of it came from the interactions with the Purple Ribbon crew, who at first could be forgiven for looking like interlopers as they snaked through the pieces, grins aplenty, rapping and singing and feeling like they had just been gifted with the greatest back-up dancers ever.

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Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s David Lee Simmons and WMLB-AM’s Max Arbes discussing this week’s cover story (out today) about big, the collaboration between Outkast’s Big Boi and the Atlanta Ballet. big. $25-$125. Thurs.-Sat., April 10-12, 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., April 12-13, 2 p.m.; Sun., April 13, 7 p.m. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. 404-817-8700. www.foxtheatre.org.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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(Courtesy AJC Decatur Book Festival)

In a continuing effort to dump my reporter’s notebook on this week’s cover story about the Atlanta Ballet’s collaboration with Big Boi, I thought I’d turn an interview with former Creative Loafing dance critic Thomas Bell into a “guest blog,” something I hope to do more of in the future. I should confess that not only did Tom cover dance for four years at CL, he’s also an old friend of mine. But more impressively, he now serves as co-chair of the AJC Decatur Book Festival’s Programming Committee, and is a member of the festival’s board of directors.

Tom’s comments, which barely made the story, provide a rather keen insight and context for big, considering that he’s probably one of the few Atlantans who has seen both the Joffrey Ballet collaboration with Prince (Billboards) and the Atlanta Ballet’s collaboration with the Indigo Girls (Shed Your Skin). Enjoy …

First, a little back story for my ballet studies. I was a competitive cyclist in college. I attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Minnesota has very long, bitter winters, so we always struggled to find ways to keep our legs strong in the winter. I’d seen that old “Brady Bunch” episode where one of the boys takes ballet to get better at running the hurdles. So I signed up for ballet. I wasn’t very good at it. Not. Very. Good. At. All. But my teacher was patient with me, kept helping me grow and improve in whatever ways I could. It did help my cycling. After college, I stopped racing bikes, but by then my interest in dance had become a thing unto itself. So I kept taking classes. My ballet teacher, Toni Sostek, died soon after of lung cancer — like so many ballet dancers, she was a smoker — and I haven’t taken ballet since. But I’ve taken a lot of modern dance.

I saw Billboards, a rock ballet set to music by Prince, up in St. Paul, Minn., when I lived there. Prince is from Minneapolis, so it was a good place to see it. Billboards was actually a four-part ballet by four choreographers, unified only by their use of Prince’s music. They were Laura Dean, Charles Moulton, Peter Pucci and Margo Sappington (who later choreographed the Indigo Girls/Atlanta Ballet collaboration Shed Your Skin). As you might expect with such an endeavor, some of the pieces worked better than others. My favorite was “Sometimes it Snows in April,” choreographed by Dean. It was minimalist, serialist, moved like a beautiful silver and brass clockwork. The movement would have been at home in a Philip Glass composition. I think it worked best because it didn’t try to be like Prince, didn’t try to be a rock star. Rather, Dean found the mathematics of the music, and she choreographed to that, and left the music to give the emotion.

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HAPPY FEET: Peng-Yu Chen, center, and Nicole Johnson, right, rehearse for big at the Atlanta Ballet studios. For more photos of dancers rehearsing the show, click here.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

(Updated with link to cover story)

My cover story about big, the collaboration between OutKast’s Big Boi and the Atlanta Ballet, will appear in this week’s issue and should be “live” on the Creative Loafing website by Wednesday afternoon — complete with the story and a few online extras. But there’s PLENTY of stuff that didn’t make the article, unfortunately, so I thought I’d use PopSmart to clean out the reporter’s notebook, so to speak.

One of the things I wish I could have used more was an interview with dancers Nicole Johnson and Peng-Yu Chen. The interview was conducted during the first week of full-time rehearsals for big, so even the dancers were still learning the choreography and the story, but the interview offers some interesting perspectives on the collaboration at the ground level.

Here’s the bio for Peng-Yu Chen, better known to her fellow dancers as “Pong,” as taken from the Atlanta Ballet’s website …

A native of Taiwan, Peng-Yu Chen began training in Chinese folk dance and gymnastics at the age of ten. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase under Carol Walker and received the Chancellors Award for Student Excellence and the Presidents Award for Achievement. She has performed with the Kevin Wynn Collection and in the Metropolitan Opera Ballet’s production of The Rite of Spring choreographed by Doug Varone. She danced for American Repertory Ballet for three seasons where she performed works by Graham Lustig, Lauri Stallings, Val Caniparoli, Melissa Barak, and Twyla Tharp. Peng has been named by Dance Magazine as one of the “25 to Watch” in 2007, and she thanks her family and friends for all the support and love.

And here’s Nicole Johnson’s bio …

Nicole has trained with Atlanta Ballet since John McFall came to Atlanta as artistic director. Since then she has been involved in several productions including Nutcracker, Serenade, Requiem, Romeo & Juliet, Dracula, Swan Lake, Cinderella, Snow White, Peter and the Wolf, Madam Butterfly, Giselle, and Lauri Stallings’ works Shoo Pah Minor and bekken/the drum also waltzes. Most recently, she enjoyed performing the role of Jordan in John McFall and Lauri Stallings’ The Great Gatsby, as well as Caribosse in Sleeping Beauty. Outside of ballet, Nicole is a student at Georgia State University and will graduate with a degree in history in the fall of 2007. Nicole enjoys an array of artistic expressions and hopes that she will be able to make a valuable contribution to the dance world.

And here’s the interview. Enjoy.

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Calling all starving artists: Idea Capital wants to help you. Due to the lack of funding from government and private organizations, Idea Capital (a work-in-progress movement started by several local art patrons) will grant an Atlanta artist a $500 grant to “encourage an experimental and investigative art project.” All genres are invited to apply: literary, visual, dance, performance, music, critical writing, film, video and new media.

This isn’t the only such grass-roots grant for artists. A similar organization, Cadre Art, was started by photographer Carla Williams in California. Artists all over the country can donate to and apply for various grants at Cadre to help foster art projects.

But back to Idea Capital. Its purpose is simple, according to its press release:

We seek to foster a new tone of experimentation and support in the Atlanta art world, as well as encourage a larger framework of support … The grant is to encourage experimentation and investigation with funds designed to give artists permission to pursue new ideas. We want to foster our community and support innovative work…We are interested in new ideas, new artists and supporting emerging and established artists.

Any artists 18 and older in the metropolitan Atlanta area are encouraged to apply. Submissions must be postmarked Fri., May 9, 2008 and the winner will be notified June 2.

Continue to the next page for submission guidelines.

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