It's Finally Here -- Pilobolus's Shadowland: The New Adventure

                                                               © Beowolf Sheeha

I’ve been waiting since February 23, 2017 – the day I saw Pilobolus’s Shadowland at the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Shannon Hall – for the arrival of Shadowland 2 (The New Adventure).  Finally, it’s here.  Shadowland 2 plays Shannon Hall next Friday, Nov. 1.  I can hardly wait.

Let me explain. I’ve followed dance/theater company Pilobolus – the name, biologically speaking, belongs to a genus of fungi that grow on, well, cow poop – since its beginnings, in the early ‘70s. In the twenty-first century, though, the troupe turned toward TV commercials for financial support, famously putting out an award-winning Hyundai ad in 2006 – a shadow play that became the foundation for Shadowland – and, because I’m a dance snob, I lost interest.

Then Shadowland came to the Union Theater, on that fateful February day, and I fell head-over-heels in love with the production. The story, written by "Spongebob Squarepants" lead writer Steven Banks, with a score by singer/songwriter David Poe, was about a teenage girl transformed into a dog who trots through a series of truly perilous adventures rendered in a mind-blowing mix of shadow and revelation. Shadowland 2 has the same technology, and Banks and Poe had the same roles in putting it together.  Still, I had my doubts.  Could Two possibly be as good as the original?

To get a handle on this show I spent some time on the phone with co-artistic directors Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent, neither of whom was among the collectively run troupe’s original founder/directors (all of them now retired), though both boast long Pilobolus histories. Their enthusiasm was contagious, their approach to dance theater so creative and righteous, that I emerged convinced I’ll love Two, too – maybe even as much as the original.

CulturalOyster: Lets talk about Shadowland: The New Adventure.  It started touring, I think, around the time we saw Shadowland 1 in Madison.  I’m happy to be able to see Two, but I was crazy about One – I could see it again and again, in part because it’s about a dog, and the Shadowland dog was practically a ringer for my own beloved pooch in both looks and spirit. People love and relate closely to dogs – so can the sequel, which is not about a dog, possibly be anywhere near as good as Shadowland 1?  Do audiences love it as much?

Jaworski: It’s different, and what I think people take away is different as well. Shadowland 2 doesn’t have that mushy feeling – what people connect to instead is the need to fight and resist and hold on to your individuality and do the right thing. It’s really a direct commentary on resistance – it’s about what you’re willing to stand up for. 

Kent: It’s a different kind of story than Shadowland 1. It’s about two goofballs trying to survive in a world that wants everyone to be the same. They work in a factory where peole just move boxes – it’s an oppressive work environment, and they have a bully boss.  Even the male lead in the story can’t really muster his power – what elicits the response that leads to change in the heroine is the impulse to nurture, when she finds a magical tiny bird in one of the boxes. It needs her and that makes her stand up – and together they go on a crazy journey.

I will say – to me – this is truly my subjective opinion – in America, Two seems to have connected in a way that One did not. One is a story about coming of age, and it’s pretty dark, but people don’t realize how dark it is. We met a college student once whose girlfriend brought him to the show and the dancers were going on and on about the shadows and dance techniques and the young man said he found it interesting that everyone was applauding as this girl – the dog – was being abused. He hadn’t known that dance could raise questions about abuse. In Shadowland 2 the story is much more direct.

CulturalOyster: Beyond the story, is the technical approach you use in Two similar to what you did with One?

Jaworski: We do use the same approach, but we also have some new tricks up our sleeve. 

CulturalOyster: The special end of Shadowland 1 – the way it was about Madison – was heartfelt, touching, a delight. It made me cry. Do you still do customized endings?

Jaworski: We still make what we call the encores specific to the town – they’re a sort of tribute to the town we’re in.

Kent: People love that so much and we are so blessed to have performers that can do that in every town they go to. They have to put it together the day they’re there.  We really trust these guys to make something great on the spot. There’s this glimmer of fun at the end that people take away, along with the real-world relevance of the show.

Jaworski: It’s sometimes irreverent – and it’s always playful.

CulturalOyster:

Will there be a Shadowland 3?

Jaworski: Never say never.  At this point we’re not sure how long the novelty of it will last.  Other people are doing shadow now.  It might be time for us to innovate again.  We’re always excited to get into the studio and be novices again.  We’re always looking for new ways to work.

Kent: If there was a shadow story that excited us we would do it.  We did Two because there was demand for it. Next time, it would be if we found something to say in that technique.  But right now we’re going in another direction. The next story show we’re working on is a collaboration with [British synth-pop duo] the Petshop Boys and the choreographer [Venezuela-born iconoclast] Javier de Frutos. Steve Banks, who wrote both Shadowlands, also might be involved.

Jaworski: Its working title is Tales from the Underworld. We’re imagining an evening of stories about the underworld – the dark and light of it.

Kent: The company is going to be 50 next year and we’re doing a Big 50 tour – we’re going to be doing the underworld piece for that.  The other thing we’re looking at is going to be about borders and – the wall.  We’ve been working with Nortec Music Collective in Tijuana – the name’s a mashup of norteño and techno.  It’s great – it’s got that techno beat and they play these norteño instruments like accordion and tuba. It’s like being on another planet where nobody owns art or feeling and everybody wants to dance together. 

To get ready for that we’re going to go to border towns and do workshops to make work together. What does it look like to keep someone out, and what does it mean to get into America?  The collaborations on those themes will allow us to show multiple perspectives onstage.

            We’re really excited to try these things.  They’re in the same spirit the company’s always had, but they take us in new directions.  To go out and crowdsource collaborations has limitless potential. It applies the idealism of the ‘70s collaborations that company started out with to contemporary issues. Renée and I are not interested in being museum curators, trying to do pieces made in the past. The old works will be sepia-toned with certain nostalgia – but we want to keep Pilobolus alive and breathing.

__________________________________________________  interview by SK

The day of the show, Pilobolus leads a free movement workshop for people with diverse abilities/disabilities at the Memorial Union’s Festival Room.  The class is limited to 20 – there may still be time to register.  If you’re interested, the person to contact is WUT’s Community and Campus Relations and Engagement Director Esty Dinur:  edinur@wisc.edu, 608-262-3907

Maestro and Chanteuse -- Sandoval and Monheit return to Madison next week

Because Madison still isn’t a real city, the legendary trumpet player Arturo Sandoval hasn’t played here since his pre-New Year’s Eve show at Overture Hall in 2007. He returns, to the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Shannon Hall, on Friday, October 25, with special guest Jane Monheit, who last sang here, as far as I know, exactly a decade ago. The show’s billed as “Ultimate Duets.” 

Since these artists rarely come through town, we have a lot of catching up to do. Here’s a summary: In 2009 Monheit (who ex-Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddens had once called a “wannabe”) was just stepping into the big leagues with her ninth album, The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me, an eclectic set of standards and mainstream pop. Her most recent record – her eighteenth, recorded (with Nicholas Payton on trumpet) in 2016, when she was 39 – is The Songbook Sessions, a set of tunes from Ella Fitzgerald’s repertory. And on the snowy night of his last Madison appearance Sandoval was touring his fourth Grammy winner, Rumba Palace. Today he’s got ten gilded gramophones, and in 2013 President Barack Obama – oh, how we miss him! – awarded Sandoval, who fled his native Cuba in 1990 while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sandoval, 70, might be the busiest player in the music business. When I interviewed him in 2007 he was in a cab, rushing to the Miami airport.  This time around we’d had a phone interview set up for an early afternoon slot a couple of weeks ago, but when I dialed his number at the appointed hour he didn’t pick up. I left a voicemail and contacted his manager, who promised to try again – though the very versatile trompetista, who’s written at least twelve film scores, was still tied up in a recording session somewhere in Hollywood.

As I was emailing with his manager, a text came in from Sandoval – he was in a cab on his way to LAX to catch a flight to Croatia. From there he was heading to Brasil; Madison is his first stop after his international tour. “I have a couple of minutes now,” said my iPhone screen.

“OK,” I texted back, “I’m calling.” And that’s how I grabbed another interview-on-the-fly with the maestro.

CulturalOyster: Ultimate Duets, recorded last year, is disc number 44 for you.  I thought it was an album, but it turns out to be a bigger, ongoing concept.  What led you to the idea of doing duets?

Sandoval: Oh, because I never did such a thing before. I thought it’s about time to do something different. I love that almost all of my albums are different – I like to keep my sound as fresh as possible.

CulturalOyster: The duos on the album are with singers I might not expect you to team up with, but I’m a big fan of some of them, Juan Luis Guerra, Stevie Wonder – but the tune that really got me was where you do “Quimbara” with the ghost of Celia Cruz. What did it mean to you to do that?

Sandoval: We extracted only her voice from a live performance she had done. We put everything else – a new big band arrangement – on top of that. You know, I love her. I had the opportunity to play with her a few times. She was a beautiful human being. I felt like if I wanted to do duets she had to be part of it, she had to be there. 

CulturalOyster: You’re teaming up with Jane Monheit for the Madison show.

Sandoval: She’s going to sing some of the songs from the Ultimate Duets album. She’s an excellent singer – very musical, very professional, and I really enjoy working with her. We’ve done duets tours a few times already – this will be the third or fourth time.

CulturalOyster: As far as I know you and Jane haven’t recorded together yet, and there’s no substantial video of the two of you together on YouTube that I can find – so how do you two sound together?

Sandoval: Oh, I prefer to hear the opinion of the audience – my opinion is irrelevant, it’s what people get from it that counts. I hope you will enjoy it. Listen, we are already at the airport, I have to go now.

CulturalOyster: Maestro, thanks for taking my call.

                           _________________________ interview by SK

¡Viva México! Mariachi Herencia comes to the Capitol Theater

                                                photo courtesy of Mariachi Herencia

“Sin mariachi no hay fiesta,” they say in Mexico – without mariachis, it’s not a party. Happily, the big fiesta that caps Overture Center’s Latinx Art Fair on Saturday, Oct. 12 is a performance by Mariachi Herencia, in Capitol Theater at 7:30 PM. Herencia means heritage, and the name is perfect, since the members of this large (16-18 piece) group – amazingly – are high school kids from Chicago’s barrios who represent the future of their rich musical heritage. Mariachi Herencia got a Grammy nomination for its debut album, Nuestra Herencia, recorded in 2017.

Right now, the group is touring its third recording, Esencia, released this past June. The album pays homage to Mexico’s golden age of cinema. These flicks – black-and-white masterpieces from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s (some would say into the Technicolor ‘70s) – have mariachi music woven into their plots, testimony to how integral this sound is to Mexican culture. As the icing on the cake, the tunes on Esencia were arranged for Mariachi Herencia by maestro Rigoberto Alfáro, one of mariachi music’s grandest figures; his arrangements of the classics are the ones everyone knows from recordings by great mariachi deities like José Alfredo Jiménez, Vicente Fernández, and Juan Gabriel.

César Maldonado, president and founder of the Mariachi Heritage Foundation, was born and raised in the Windy City to Mexican immigrant parents. Mariachi Herencia is his brainchild, and in anticipation of the group’s Madison appearance I interviewed him on the phone a few weeks ago.

CulturalOyster: You’ve done this amazing thing, taken high schoolers and gotten them involved to the point of grammy-nominated albums and performances with artists like Lila Downs and Los Lobos – with mariachi music! – while most of their peers on both sides of the border don’t even listen to norteño or banda any more; they’re into hip-hop, or Thalía-style pop. What motivated you to do this, and how did you manage to pull it off?

Maldonado: Actually, my background is in finance; I had a career in investment banking. But I see myself in these kids. Growing up on Chicago’s Southwest side with blue-collar parents who worked 12-hour days in factories and only had a few hours to have dinner and sleep and get up and do it all over again, I was lucky to have the opportunity to seek higher education and a career. It was always important to me to come home and help the kids who were growing up the way I did. I wanted to get a little creative, to marry my passion for mariachi music with my passion for service. I came up with the idea of using mariachi not only to teach music to the highest standards but also to use it as a bridge – to engage the kids in school, and to introduce their families to school life (most of the parents lack communications skills in English). 

Nati Cano from Los Camperos [the Los Angeles mariachi band that played Overture’s Capitol Theater in the fall of 2010] gave me the idea. We started promoting it in Chicago, producing mariachi shows – we’d bring Los Camperos and other groups in to play downtown, where they’d never really had Mexican artists before, and we noticed that the audiences were our parents’ generation – what was missing was the presence of youth. So Nati Cano tells me the only way to change it is to teach the kids, and that’s exactly what we did.

CulturalOyster: Tell me about these kids.  How close are they to their Mexican roots?

Maldonado: Almost all of them are first generation – their parents were born in Mexico. Some are still undocumented. They just have this natural, authentic passion for the music – they’re like sponges. They absorb everything and do it with such passion at their age, it’s unbelievable. On the last album in particular you hear that oomph that you can’t teach – it has to come from inside and these kids have it. That’s what distinguishes them – this passion and pride for what they do. 

CulturalOyster: How do they learn to play mariachi instruments like guitarrón y vihuela? Do they teach that in Chicago public schools? 

Maldonado: Our approach was this: four and a half years ago I went to the Chicago Board of Education and said we need an alternative to traditional band programs – we need to try out mariachi. We picked five schools on the Latinx side of the city that didn’t have music programs and I drafted a curriculum to fit the new art standards that were being adopted across the US. We set up a full-time program of teaching mariach as part of the school day – not as after-school, which isn’t taken as seriously. After a year we could see that these kids, who’d never been exposed to music education before, had an amazing amount of talent. We had 1,100 students or so – and so much talent that we started an all-city program. We opened up 90 seats to meet for class on weekends, and we took the cream of the crop – out of the 90 the 20 most advanced students became the elite group.

The way we teach them is in line with classical; we focus on theory and technique. Mariachi is just about how you apply that technique. At first the kids weren’t singing – they didn’t understand the style – so we started training the elite group and at the end of the year we went into the studio as a lesson plan and recorded eleven songs that sounded great.  We released the recording independently on iTunes and it got nominated for a Grammy and Mariachi Herencia’s been a life-changing experience since then.

CulturalOyster: Tell me more!

Maldonado: The Grammy nomination was the key that propelled everything that’s happened since. It was totally unexpected. That first album was arranged by José Hernández [of Mariachi Sol de México] – he came and worked with the students.  We looked at it from the first session to mastering the album as a class project, and then three months after we released it, it got the nomination. It was just out of this world for me when it hit the students what was happening. We actually walked the red carpet in las Vegas. The events around the awards were designed for adults – it’s rare to see kids at these things, and Las Vegas is an adult location, lots of bars and things. The kids would walk in wearing their blue trajes de charro, looking like a group, and people would come up and say who are you? And we’d tell the story over and over. We didn’t mind ‘cause peoples’ jaws would drop and they’d ask the kids to sing on the spot.

That experience changed their mentality. I use the bubble metaphor for what happened. When you grow up in the barrio, because of the family routine, you graduate from high school and you’re still living in the five or six block radius that’s your world. It’s rare for Mexican families to go downtown and explore the city. We need to use the experience of music to explore the world – to do anything you want, I tell the kids.

Their passion just grew and grew after Las Vegas. They put in more and more time and they became much more dedicated to the group. There aren’t a lot of mariachi groups out there these days releasing albums consistently. When you search “mariachi” on Google, Herencia comes right up. I’m really proud of them. But it’s only possible because they just love it so much.

CulturalOyster: I’m from Chicago, and I’ve lived in Mexico – mariachi is Mexico to me. But the youth culture there is so estranged from that music, I’ve wondered if it can survive. Watching the release video for Esencia had me in tears – I had the sense that the home of mariachi is now my home town. Does that sound right?

Maldonado: I think it looks that way. The group was on tour in Mexico and you’d look into the crowd and see the older generation, and families with young kids, but not a lot of teens. Hopefully Mariachi Herencia appeals to a wider demographic than in Mexico – to youths their own age as well as to older folks and families.

CulturalOyster: Getting Rigoberto Alfáro to do the arranging for Esencia was quite a coup – how did you do that? 

Maldonado: He’s been a personal hero of mine – he’s the Michael Jordan of mariachi music. In the ‘50s he joined the most famous mariachi band of all, Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, and he did a lot of arranging for them and for others – his resumé is just enormous. I’ve known him for many years and he was always in the back of my mind for Herencia but I waited till I knew the kids were ready for his level. He did completely new arrangements of the songs the kids picked – they spent a couple of months watching mariachi movies with the great singers like Lucha Villa or José Alfredo Jiménez. They came up with a list of 50 or 60 sings and then worked it down to the ones they wanted most.

CulturalOyster: Vicente Fernández’s title tune from Los Mandados, with its defiant lyrics about crossing the border “let’s say 300 times,” is perfect for what’s going on today, even though the movie dates to the ‘70s. But how do you get a song like that – the lyrics are so important – across to an English-speaking audience?

Maldonado: Ever since Herencia started touring they’ve been able to communicate with their audiences. It comes from them – they have a maturity well beyond their age level. I have cousins their age and I realize how mature my mariachi kids are – they’re very cognizant of what’s going on in their community and their society. Even before we came up with the movie concept this song was on their radar and it was the first one we asked Rigoberto to arrange. A lot of times we do perform in areas that don’t have a huge Mexican population. Isaías López, who sings it, is 14, but he looks like he’s 20. He goes up there to present that song and tells the story of his family to introduce it so even if you don’t speak Spanish or you’re not tuned in to what’s going on it still brings you to tears and then you see the video backdrop and the performance and you will get the message.

CulturalOyster: Your last thoughts for my readers?

Maldonado: A lot of times you hear a kids’ group is going to perform and your natural reaction is ok, it’s just kids – just students – but with Herencia people should prepare for a high-level, professional musical experience. What these kids do is truly amazing, from the way they command the stage to how they take the audience through the experience of Mexican music. This is beautiful music. Tell people in Madison to get ready for one of the best mariachi shows they’ve ever seen.

       ______________________________________________  interview by SK

A Conversation with Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director of Ballet Hispánico

Línea Recta  © Paula Lobo, courtesy Ballet Hispánico

Ballet Hispánico, that venerable and resilient Big Apple cultural institution, has spent nearly half a century empowering diversity in a country that, despite growing ever more diverse, clings desperately to its dying dominant culture.  The company, last seen in Madison in 2010, appears at Overture Hall on Thursday, May 9.

Ballet Hispánico was founded in 1970 by Tina Ramírez, the Venezuelan-born, New York-raised daughter of a Mexican bullfighter and a Puerto Rican teacher. When she retired, a decade ago, the artistic directorship was taken over by Eduardo Vilaro, who left his native Havana for New York in 1969, when he was six. Vilaro grew up to become a principal dancer with the company before moving on to found and direct Chicago’s wonderful, and, alas, now defunct, Luna Negra Dance Theater; his return to Ballet Hispánico, in 2010, brought his career full circle.

Ballet Hispánico came to Madison that year with a worn-out repertory of older works by non-Latin male choreographers working – directly or indirectly – with Latin themes, though set, fortunately, on a largely Latinx company.  Today, a decade into its rebirth under Vilaro’s direction, the company’s caught up with the challenges of the twenty-first century.

CulturalOyster: When you were still at Luna Negra, you told me once that “When we come to the States we fuse, we change.  I’m not 100% Cuban any more.  In Cuba they tell me ‘tu no eres cubano.’  I’m like damn, who are we in this country?  Can we celebrate who we’re becoming? 

That was 2008, so 11 years ago; it was a different company, a different time, and the issues of immigration, cultural fusion, and identity have become much more visible and emotionally charged since then. I think you’re basically still coming from that same place – celebrating fusion – but how has your thinking on identity and dance evolved over the last decade? 

Vilaro: You know, yes, I still believe we become something else.  We live as a hybrid. This nation is a hybrd nation; it is not, contrary to popular belief, a white nation, although that’s the structure that’s been allowed to play out.  So I’m very interested in exploring cultural intersectionality. Some important cultural institutions [like Ballet Hispánico] were born between the ‘50s and ‘70s to say “I’m here, I belong.”  And now it feels like we’ve come to another moment, another catalyst to make that claim and update it: “Not only do I belong, but I’m part of the fabric, and I’m a leader in this fabric.” 

It’s so important to make works that celebrate our Latinx lives.  We are also waking up to the fact that the cultures in our own countries of origin are facing issues of nationalism and supremacy versus diversity and acceptance of race, color, gender.  So [directing Ballet Hispánico] is a warm, exciting, difficult, full-of-challenges opportunity and I feel that if I don’t take the bull by the horns we’re going to get further behind.

CulturalOyster: The choreographic idiom of Ballet Hispánico is polyglot, too –how do your dancers train?

Vilaro: It’s funny – this is going to be another hybrid discussion.  I have dancers trained classically and I enjoy a classical line or the ability to get as close to classical as we can but our dancers are hybrid themselves in terms of their training.  One guy trained in Havana with Ballet Nacional but also grew up as an Afrocuban learning Yoruba dances – and that changes the way you approach the movement quality and how it translates in your body.  We have a young man from Tampa with ballet training and a tap and hip-hop background.  The ladies all have very classical backgrounds, but some of them come from Juilliard so they bring a deep contemporary mixture, and that’s perfect for our company because we’re showing fusion. The hybridization, for us, is richer, it makes for stronger utilization of the folk forms a choreographer might want to expose.  You can’t do that with pure classicism – it looks forced, not real.

CulturalOyster: During your first year as artistic director of Ballet Hispánico the touring program was a celebration of the company’s 40-year history.  Only one work by a Latin choreographer – Pedro Ruíz’s (2000) “Club Havana” -- was on the bill.  The program looks a lot different this time.  From the press kit, it looks like all of the choreographers you’re working with now have direct Latin heritage. How has that changed the company, from the one you inherited to the one you’ve been leading for almost a decade now?

Vilaro: What we’re bringing to Madison is our all Latina program – three works, by three women – Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Michelle Manzanales, and Tania Pérez-Salas.  It represents the evolution of my curatorial tenure at Ballet Hispánico. When you first come in you have to work with what you have. It’s taken the decade I’ve been artistic director to scope out and develop the right kinds of artists and works for my vision. I think the program you’re seeing is the actualization of that vision in its totality.  When I first came in to take over the range from a powerful Latina founder who had a very different immigrant experience than I did, I had to start shaking off some of the things from the past to help the organization walk into exactly this moment. And it’s excellent – it couldn’t have happened more gracefully.  We’re now finding and nurturing young Latinx dancers and choreographers.  The idiom is clearer.  You’ll see work that’s clearly about fusion.  López Ochoa’s “Linea Recta” has some derivatives of flamenco, but contemporizes it and brings it forward – there’s partnering, the costuming is deconstructed, and there’s an electricity that shows the original folk form in a new way. It  answers the question ‘Who is the fused flamenco artist?’ – and that’s what this company can do.

The Manzanales piece, “Brazos Abiertos,” is a true homage to who we are as immigrants – how we feel doing our identity mambo as we go back and forth.  ‘Who am I and how does that affect my identity as a woman?’  As a company we reflect that and make statements of advocacy and invite the audience into the conversation. 

Pérez-Salas is still living and working in Mexico City, and she’s saying ‘My culture doesn’t define me.’ Her piece, “Catorce Dieciséis,” is the least culturally accessible – it’s about ‘I am mexicana and that means my piece is mexicana.  I wanted to meditate on the mathematical concept of pi and that’s what I did.’

The piece is visually stunning.  As artistic director I need to show that we don’t just look a certain way or dance a certain way.  I wanted to end the program with this piece because I want Ballet Hispánico to empower the audience to think differently about codifying culture.

CulturalOyster: What about your own work?  I’ve always been a fan of your choreography – you did a piece for Luna Negra that the company performed here in 2008 – a piece with deep Cuban sensibilities set to Sephardic music, “Deshár Alhát,” that’s still one of my all time favorites.  I hope you’ll bring some of your work next time!

Vilaro: Thank you for that!  I just created a new work and I’m trying to bring back my choreography.  It’s hard finding time when you’re taking a different kind of leadership role – it impinges on my artistic work, but there aren’t a lot of our voices out there and we all need to step up.

CulturalOyster: Eduardo, is there anything else you want to mention?

Vilaro: I guess I’ll just mention that in January, 2020, we start the celebration of our fiftieth year.  It’s a milestone – and it’s interesting that we’re not alone. The other companies that made a stand around the time of the cultural wars of the ‘60s are also celebrating.  Dance Theatre of Harlem is also 50, and the Ailey company just celebrated 60 years.  But there aren’t a lot of Latinx organizations turning 50 here in the US.  I’m honored to have this opportunity.

                              __________________________  interview by SK