Elaborate Costumes Research Articles

Making Mas: TruDynasty Carnival Takes Josephine Baker to the Caribbean Carnival

Over a million spectators descend on Lakeshore Avenue each year to watch Mas Bands create a kinaesthetic landscape of colour with elaborate costumes as they parade in Toronto's Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Festival. Despite the importance of costumes to carnival, Canadian scholarship of Toronto's Caribbean Carnival overlooks the material and aesthetic elements. However, by focusing upon the costume as the subject of study, we can begin to evaluate and connect to the critical discourses surrounding Caribbean Carnival from another perspective that foregrounds the interconnectedness of objects to ideas and social practices. In particular, the design and performance of TruDynasty Carnival's Queen Mas, “Josephine Dancing at the Market,” illustrates the role of re-imagining as a potential strategy of re-presenting Josephine Baker's historical and cultural body within a carnival(esque) aesthetic to be read and performed in a new way for a Toronto audience.

Traditionalism and Modernity: Choreography and Gender Portrayal in the Brazilian Popular Dance Bumba-meu-boi

Dancers in the Brazilian folk celebration Bumba-meu-boi once performed in simple, repetitive, and predominantly circular movements. This structure promotes multigenerational participation, increases community interaction, and maintains a semi-intact historical legacy. Nevertheless, many groups are currently adopting choreographic steps and patterns familiar from popular entertainment culture and urban Carnival celebrations. This evolution is uneven, with many of the nearly 300 groups that perform in the federal state of Maranhão maintaining the older practices. Nevertheless, for groups embracing modern entertainment values, greater appeal to tourists and general audiences comes at the cost of the traditional form and content of the celebration described by field researchers only two or three decades ago. Gender presentations have been particularly affected, with the increased use of elaborate and skimpy costumes, younger and more athletic performers (mostly young women), and professionalized musical support. These changes are part of the modernization and urbanization of the festival, and they create an ambivalent dialectic in which women appear increasingly as leaders and major performing figures, but also as chorus line bodies with minimal narrative function. Our research includes visual documentation from several years of field research in Sao Luis (Maranhão), Brazil, available online at http://simoneferro.com. Albums of still photography are available at http://meredithwwatts.com.

Bullfighting: a troubled history

is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honour', wrote Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon. Art? Ritual? Sport? Cruelty? Though opinions are divided, one thing is certain bullfighting sparks passionate responses. Supporters argue that bullfighting is a culturally important tradition stretching back thousands of years, while animal rights groups argue that it is cruel and barbaric, causing unnecessary suffering to both bulls and horses. In Bullfighting, Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier brings clarity to this debate through an exploration of the long history of killing bulls as public spectacle. The author shows how in the late 1700s bullfights became mass leisure activities, with paying spectators packing into arenas the classic bullfight of popular imagination. It was at this time that bullfights became lucrative and the bullfighter became a celebrity. The first cross-cultural study of its kind, Bullfighting also relates the regional variations of style throughout Europe and Latin America: in the Basque-Navarre style of bullfighting, for example, the bullfighters wear street clothes, the fight is unstructured, and the bull is not injured; in Spanish-style bullfighting the fighters wear elaborate costumes, the fight is highly ritualized, and the bull is usually killed. In this vivid and comprehensive history, Hardouin-Fugier explores the extensive influence of the bullfight on art, literature and culture, from the paintings of Goya to the writings of Georges Bataille. Enriched with many fascinating and sometimes disturbing illustrations, Bullfighting presents a discerning and intelligent approach to this highly colourful yet deeply divisive practice.

Miss Brooks Loves Books! (and I Don't) (review)

Reviewed by: Miss Brooks Loves Books! (and I Don't) Jeannette Hulick Bottner, Barbara . Miss Brooks Loves Books! (and I Don't); illus. by Michael Emberley. Knopf, 2010. 26p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-94682-0$20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-84682-3$17.99 R 5-7 yrs The first-grade girl who narrates this story is not a fan of the printed page, despite the best efforts of her enthusiastic school librarian, Miss Brooks, who regularly dons elaborate costumes and reads the class a dismaying (to the narrator) variety of books. When our protagonist has to find a story she likes to share with the class (and wear a corresponding costume) for Book Week, the girl grumpily despairs, until a comment by her mother ("You're as stubborn as a wart") finally leads her to her kind of book: William Steig's Shrek. Filled with new purpose, the girl happily practices her presentation, even making stick-on warts for her classmates to wear, and both librarian and student rejoice at this newly kindled passion for a book. Head and shoulders above the usual purposive pro-library materials, this will undoubtedly resonate with children who just haven't bought into the pleasure of books yet and also with the librarians or other adults trying to win them over. Bottner's comically wry, no-nonsense text ("I ask my mother if we can move to a new town. My mother says there's a librarian in every town") is a stitch to read aloud. Emberley's illustrations (drawn with pencil, then scanned and printed onto watercolor paper and painted with watercolor) are cheerfully casual, with the figures posed against lots of refreshing white space. The bespectacled girl in her slouchy striped sock cap, bedraggled brown hair, and overalls is clearly one tough (if short) customer, while Miss Brooks is a long, tall figure with a riot of sproingy brown hair (frequently bedecked with theme-appropriate accessories) and colorfully eccentric costumes. This would make a great beginning-of-the-year class read or preparation for a Book Week celebration for aficionados and resisters alike. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

30 th Illinois Shakespeare Festival

30th Illinois Shakespeare Festival Justin Shaltz Much Ado About Nothing Presented by the Illinois Shakespeare Festival at Ewing Manor, Bloomington, Illinois. June 28–August 11, 2007. Directed by Debbie Alley. Set by John Stark. Costumes by Jenny Mannis. Lights by Julie Mack. Sound by Joshua Horvath. With Elizabeth Audley (Beatrice), Christopher Oden (Benedick), Henson Keys (Leonato), Hannah Wolfe (Hero), Kelsey Nash (Claudio), Jeremy Van Meter (Don Pedro), Eddie Collins (Don John), Matt Daniels (Dogberry), and others. Henry V Presented by the Illinois Shakespeare Festival at Ewing Manor, Bloomington, Illinois. June 27–August 8, 2007. Directed by Alec Wild. Set by Jack Magaw. Costumes by Dottie Marshall Englis. Lights by Julie Mack. Sound by Joshua Horvath. With Eddie Collins (Henry V), Jeremy Van Meter (Exeter), Matt Daniels (Fluellen), Mark Hines (Bardolph), Ed Swidey (Nym), Christopher Oden (Pistoll), Henson Keys (Charles VI), Crystal Finn (Princess Katherine), and others. Love’s Labour’s Lost Presented by the Illinois Shakespeare Festival at Ewing Manor, Bloomington, Illinois. July 12–August 12, 2007. Directed by Stephen Fried. Set by Aleksandra Maslik. Costumes by Jennifer Moeller. Lights by Julie Mack. Sound by Joshua Horvath. With Ed Swidey (King Ferdinand), Eddie Collins (Berowne), Kelsey Nash (Longaville), Evan Fuller (Dumaine), Elizabeth Larson (Princess), Elizabeth Audley (Rosaline), Emily Young (Katherine), Crystal Finn (Maria), Matt Daniels (Boyet), Christopher Oden (Don Armado), Henson Keys (Holofernes), Christopher Hirsh (Nathaniel), and others. The Illinois Shakespeare Festival entered its 30th season with new Artistic Director Alec Wild—only the fourth Artistic Director in the Festival’s history—but the main components of the Festival remained the same: three Shakespeare productions performed outdoors within a 425-seat theatre on the grounds of Illinois State University’s Ewing Manor. The Festival has matured in recent years, signing with the Actors’ Equity Association in 1997, and fifteen of the twenty-one members of the 2007 company were either union performers or candidates. The Festival built its new amphitheatre in 2000, and with the addition of a complete state-of-the-art lighting and sound system, and its consistently [End Page 95] elaborate costume designs, the mid-state Festival can compete in terms of production values with theatres in Chicago, ninety miles to the north. In 2007 Wild continued the Festival traditions of “Green Show” courtyard mini-plays before nightly curtains as well as the strolling, lushly Elizabethan-costumed Madrigal Singers. The Festival debuted in Bloomington/Normal on July 6, 1978 with a space-age Twelfth Night and was fondly dubbed, “Shakespeare in the Cornfields.” Over the years, the Festival has made tremendous strides both technically and commercially. Inventive staging for Wild’s slate of plays characterized the 2007 season—Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, and Love’s Labour’s Lost—with Much Ado the feel-good comedic centerpiece, performed fifteen times during the summer compared to Henry’s nine and Loves Labour’s twelve. Costume and scenic designs have always been a Festival strength, in part owing to Illinois State University funding and its wealth of design talent and expertise as well as support from local businesses such as the State Farm headquarters, and this season featured the continuity inherent in having the same sound and lighting designers for each of the three shows. Henry V was elaborately staged in a literal “wooden O,” a gravel pit encircled by uneven wooden ramps that ingeniously transformed into the jagged terrain of battlefields and the under-lit mines and tunnels at the siege of Harfleur. Tattered banners suspended from the stage walls were pulled down to become the battlefield tents for the “A Little Touch of Harry in the Night” scene, an eerie purple glow lighting the conversations between the cracks in the wooden ramps. The broken ramps evoked the hardships of the new King’s efforts just as the mottled shades of brown suggested the patchwork nature of Henry’s kingdom of English, Irish, Scots, and Welshmen. With the productions staged in repertory, Wild’s crews deconstructed and rebuilt the stages daily from Tuesday through Sunday throughout the summer. The unique designs consistently set this Festival apart from other, less well-funded, in-a-field outdoors Shakespeare productions with makeshift sound and lights and bring-your-own...

The Daring Adventures of Penhaligon Brush (review)

Reviewed by: The Chaos Code April Spisak Richards, Justin The Chaos Code. Bloomsbury, 2007388p ISBN 978-1-59990-124-4$17.95 Ad Gr. 7-9 Penhaligon Brush is a refined fox with a taste for adventure beyond his small-town life as an apothecary. An urgent summons from his adopted badger brother sets him off on more adventure than he bargained for; when he travels to see his brother, he finds that his town is under siege and his brother has been imprisoned by a nasty cat named Sir Derek, who is using his wealthy aunt's illness to his advantage. Penhaligon teams up with the recovered but dissembling Lady Ferball, his escaped brother, and a host of crafty creatures to defeat Sir Derek's nefarious plot and restore peace and harmony to their town. The animal characters have a restrained charm that leans toward sweetsy but mostly manages to pull back in time. The plot twists move somewhat predictably to put our heroes at advantage, with the usual problems of arrogance and double-dealing with the mercenaries causing the final defeat of the villain. There's a fair bit of compensation, though, in the romping pace, clean plotting, and age-appealing action. Christian Slade's illustrations feature Disney-worthy animal caricatures in elaborate costume performing swashbuckling feats of arms and cross-dressing; what humor there is in the story is found in the pictures. The text, on the other hand, plays it straight and light, so readers who don't yet have the stamina for the Redwall saga may enjoy this fast-paced, heroic animal tale. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Picturing the New Middle Class: Two 19th Century Portraits of Serbian Women

Picturing the New Middle Class:Two 19th Century Portraits of Serbian Women* Ljubomir Milanović [Illustrations] During a recent visit to Belgrade fashion designer Milan St. Marković's apartment, my eye chanced upon two portraits of young women (Figs. M-1 and M-2 in the graphic insert following p. 200 of this issue).1 What drew my attention is that the women in these paintings looked very similar, and yet they sent a markedly different message to the spectator. Their most attractive features are the dresses that fill both canvases and the clandestine eroticism emanating from their carefully comported bodies. Little is known about these sitters except that they were cousins of Mr. Marković and siblings of Stevan Petrović, better known as Knićanin (1807-59). Knićanin was a member of the Council in Serbia during the reign of prince Aleksandar Karaðorðević (1842-58) and was a commander of the Serbian volunteers in Vojvodina during the revolution of 1848.2 The author of the portraits is unknown; however, several indicators, which will be discussed later, suggest the hand of Uroš Knežević (1811-76). The rise of the new elite classes in Serbia in the nineteenth century was accompanied by a new taste for secular subjects that reflected everyday life. This interest in representations of everyday life grew stronger at every level of [End Page 181] society and elicited an artistic response. Portraiture played a crucial role in the development of these new bourgeois modes of representation. The evolution of Serbian portrait painting was therefore deeply bound up with the economic, social, and national changes that took place during the nineteenth century.3 Given that the subject of a portrait is the human body, it may be argued that ideological content plays a greater role here than in any other genre of painting.4 Baudelaire wrote that there are two ways of understanding portraiture: either as history or as fiction.5 With this insight, the French critic recognizes the conflicting demands of portraiture in relation to its dual function as historical record and transformative fiction. The discussion of portraits of Serbian women in the middle of the nineteenth century touches on the broader question of the role of women in society at large, of their emancipation and participation in the exercise of social power. During the nineteenth century interest in human personality and the desire for self-knowledge increased. With this, however, came heightened investment in the use of representations as a key form of public self-fashioning. The new visual idioms of nineteenth century Serbian female portraiture attempted to satisfy the paradoxical demands for naturalism on the one hand, and the evolving social roles of their sitters on the other. Visual representations could ideologically reconcile these two opposing impulses by giving the semblance of the real while furthering the social aspirations of their subjects. Corporeal rhetoric was a key component of this program. This new body language paralleled the traditional rules of verbal action, which encompassed every aspect of behavior, posture, gesture, facial expression, and even dress, i.e. all the instruments which a "speaker" can use in order to make a desired impression on his or her audience. In this paper I will, therefore, argue that we may view the portraits of Petrović sisters in light of their social context as manifested in the representation of their gestures, clothing, compartment, and other indicators of the evolution of women in nineteenth century Serbian culture. [End Page 182] Uroš Knežević was a well-known Serbian portraitist of the nineteenth century.6 Most of his commissions came from members of the middle class who tried to find a way for a more public means of self presentation. Knežević become famous for his keen eye for detail. In his attempt to be more historically accurate, the artist meticulously noted every particular detail of the elaborate costumes of the epoch. After completing two years at the Vienna Academy of art, where he was educated in the classical tradition, he introduced romantic elements into his paintings: brighter color, contemporary fashion, and often included some folk elements. These innovations were employed in order to emphasize the status of the individual...

“He's not a White Man, He's A Small Bird Like You and Me”: Learning to Dance and Becoming Human in Southern New Ireland

In the Lak region of southern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, music and dance performance is not a discreet element of society; it is in performances that communities show others who they are, what they consist of and how powerful they can be. It is also in a performance that “individuals” (in the Lak sense of the term) display their identity and reveal their spiritual capacity. In addition it is in performance that the visible reality of humans meets the invisible realm of the spirits. The movement and costume elements of performance are the visual poetic representation of the spirit and human worlds as cast by the local imagination. Unlike many Highlands Papua New Guinea societies, where dance movements are kept to a minimum in order to accommodate elaborate costumes (Strathern 1979:244), among the Lak, dance movement is vigorous, powerful, and essential to a community's successful existence. Dance movements, which predominantly occur on the vertical plane (see Kaeppler and Niles 1998:482), differ significantly in style between the sexes; as Eves has recognized (1998:54), these movements are a definitive aspect of “gender conceptualisations” in the region. For male performers (and this article mainly focuses on men's dances), performance is a physical and spiritual display that transforms participants into something more than human. This article begins by introducing several key Lak notions. Local concepts concerning the individual, relationships, community, and male and female are explored. The mythical foundation of society is introduced as a basis for comprehending some of the aesthetics and emotions that underpin performance. And Lak notions surrounding the relationships between space, gender, and power are examined to reveal the invisible boundaries that divide the physical landscape.

The war of independence in feature films: The Patriot (2000) and the ‘special relationship’ between Hollywood and Britain

It is one of the more curious points in film history that the American War of Independence has been largely neglected in feature films. Stories centred on the country's origins would seem to offer vivid cinematic material, and not least because there are so many dramatic episodes associated with the revolutionary period: the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's ride, the first shots fired in Lexington, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Washington crossing the Delaware, to name but a few. Equally, the Founding Fathers would seem to make ideal cinematic heroes, and it is easy to envisage scenes in which a young George Washington admits to having chopped down a cherry tree, Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Franklin experiments with electricity. Indeed, throughout the 20th century (and into the 21st) the Founding Fathers have remained among the best-known figures in American life. Their stories and deeds have been kept alive in the country's classrooms, from el...

Women's Studies in Sin City: Reactionary Politics and Feminist Possibilities

Imagine: a women's studies administrative assistant in her fifties was a showgirl at nineteen. A part-time instructor in our 30-plus sections general education course, Gender, Race, and Class, served a term in the state Senate, where she was successful in abolishing the anti-sodomy law. (Anti-Semitic baiting denied her a second term.) Another women's studies instructor was previously curator at the Liberace Museum. A graduate student dropped out of Feminist Theory mid-semester because she was going through a divorce-her seventh. Half-time shows at the university's women's and men's basketball games consist of local girls, as young as three or four, dancing and performing the dominant local idea of female sexuality. The former dean of the College of Liberal Arts advertised the annual book fair, co-sponsored by the college, with bookmarks picturing a white showgirl in elaborate costume, holding a stack of books. The most popular upper division women's studies class has been Porn in the USA. These anecdotes exemplify the local character of Women's Studies in Sin City, Las Vegas. My perspective is that of a member of the founding generation, having taught my first women's studies class in 1970. I have taught in research and comprehensive universities, seasoned by a few liberal arts colleges. Recently, I was hired as chair to build and institutionalize the women's studies department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In part, I took this job to make a bigger splash in a smaller puddle. This location, however, is like none other. Nowhere else in the country is there such a unique form of conservatism, nor such possibilities for transforming it. As I will show, the Las Vegas factor, the academic setting of UNLV (an institution attempting a fast-track to research extensive status), the state context (heavy libertarian and conservative political influences, both secular and religious), and the geography (isolated desert), all contribute to the context for Women's Studies in Lost Wages (Moehring 2000; Rothman and Davis 2002.) I also will show how UNLV illustrates two long-standing maxims: the right strategy for Women's Studies is the one that works on your campus; and organizing broad networks of women and men who support Women's Studies is essential. Women's bodies, and minds, don't fare very well in Nevada, as exemplified by the Institute for Women's Policy Research rankings of women's quality of life in this state: 47th (of 50 states and the District of Columbia) in proportion of women with college degrees; 40th in its employment and earnings index; 42nd in its composite health and well-being index, and

Misrecognition and Antimodernism in the Grove Plays of the Bohemian Club

Almost every summer since 1902, at great expense of time, labor, and money, the Bohemian Club has produced a play in its redwood grove north of San Francisco. Members of the Club give a single performance of these so-called Grove plays — complete with new text and music composed for the occasion, full orchestral accompaniment, and elaborate costumes and sets — before an exclusive audience of other members and their guests.2 The Grove plays feature themes ranging the historical, prehistorical, natural- historical, and counterhistorical gamut, from the story of Robin Hood to tales of cavemen to a story of spiders to the defeat of Mammon by Bohemia. In these plays and other annual theatrical rituals, the men of the Bohemian Club industriously misrecognize themselves and the sources of their own power. In the Grove plays, indeed, one can see an awkward embodiment of the production of the aesthetic as a response to the open secret that capital has reduced almost everything to the universal equivalent.

The Stigmata or the Tattoo

The Stigmata or the Tattoo

Musings of a New-Again Teacher

AS I WRITE this column, Halloween remains two weeks away. But our third-grade classroom is already filled to overflowing with black-and- orange paper chains, bats and vampires and witches galore, and jack-o'- lanterns drawn in every imaginable shape and size. We still have to make scarecrows, stuffed paper people dressed in Halloween costumes; a frightening door mural; and individually carved jack-o'-lanterns. There are also many scare stories to be written, laminated, and framed. And, of course, there is the party. Plans for the best Halloween party ever are constantly developed and revised. I note that each evolution includes large amounts of sugar and increasingly elaborate costumes. Now, I'm an experienced teacher. I know there is surprising joy in orange-and-black chains and bats made of toilet paper rolls. I know the sparkle in a child's eye and the sense of power in her voice when she creates a new variation on the standard decorative fare. I know that the patience of Job is required to get through the holiday roller coaster that is October, November, and December. I've taught preservice teachers about it. I've mused with practicing teachers about it. But living what I know, or what I think I know, is quite different from memories, notions, and theories. I hadn't begun a new school year with children since 1985. So I was unbelievably hyper -- actually more like a madwoman -- when that big first day finally came. I wanted to do every single thing possible to make sure our day was successful. I had gotten rid of the teacher's desk, added a carpet for morning meetings, and found enough tables to set up five centers. I had done all I could. I was worried and excited when the first child crossed the threshold into the space we would share for 180 days. This room is really colorful, Saffie said. What do you think of that? I asked. sometimes I think too much color can overwhelm you. But this is balanced. My feet began to melt under me. Well, I said, about if we start out like this, and if the color doesn't work for us we can change it? She agreed. I noticed my palms were sweating. Even with the confidence-shaking beginning, I've had a pretty successful first quarter. With Saffie's guidance, our class has morphed into a comfortable living and working space. The walls are filled with children's work, our systems and expectations have become articulated, and the children can make good choices about how learning will take place. They are finally beginning to understand that they can have fun and learn, something that took a surprising amount of work to attain and requires constant attention to maintain. As for me, I have managed to find the teachers' rest room. My feet have stopped aching all day. I've learned to use the laminating machine without catching my shirt in the rollers (if you have seen the Three Stooges, you can probably visualize that experience). I can, most of the time, use the computerized attendance system. I understand the field trip policy and the different roles the administrators play. The lesson plans are killing me. They take hours, and the week's plan must be turned in each Monday morning. I can usually follow Monday's plan and make only minor alterations for Tuesday. But by Wednesday I have learned so much more about what the children need that alterations and shifts make the plans written the previous Saturday seem irrelevant. And there are still things I just don't get about school. For example, the lines! Who in this world came up with the idea the children should walk in straight, single-file lines everywhere they go? It just goes against nature. But in our school it is important, so we try. In that trying, I often feel like a sheepdog herding my little flock to music or art or recess and everywhere else, barking if they get out of line, nipping at their heels to keep them together. …

Traditional Junkanoo music instruments of the Bahamas

Junkanoo is a carnival-like parade that takes place twice a year in the Bahamas. The parade grew out of the music practices of Africans who had been enslaved in the Bahamas during the nineteenth century. Today, the parade incorporates large, elaborate costumes, and music played on traditional instruments. The number of participants in Junkanoo has grown tremendously, and moves have been made to incorporate amplified, electronic music in the parade in order to project the volume of the music over the sounds of the participants and spectators. Despite attempts to incorporate amplified music, however, acoustic instruments have remained primary. Junkanoo music performance has retained many of its African characteristics in terms of timbre, percussion, and density, and throughout the past two decades adjustments have been made to the instruments to enhance these characteristics. In this discussion the instruments of the Junkanoo music tradition will be introduced, their timbral qualities will be examined, and their particular functions and relationships within the tradition will be explored.

The lost chronicles of the Maya kings

Over the last two centuries explorers have made the most remarkable discoveries in the tropical forests of Central America. Across much of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras dozens of cities - some with populations of well over 100,000 - have been unveiled, and every year fresh reports emerge of the findings of unknown Maya ruins - great temples, palaces, towering stone pyramids and the tombs of the Maya kings. What these spectacular discoveries indicate is the former presence of an exceptionally advanced, sophisticated and complex society. Recently, major developments made in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics have revealed that alongside the material achievements of the Maya ran intellectual accomplishments in astronomy, maths and calendrics, seemingly tied to the complexities of Maya religion, that were remarkable for a society technically in the Stone Age. From reliefs on temple walls, from magnificent hieroglyphic stairways and from stone stelae planted by Maya rulers in the plazas of their cities has come written history: the Chronicles of the Maya Kings. In this fascinating book, David Drew brings to life this extraordinary civilisation. He answers questions about why they constructed their cities in the hostile setting of the jungle, the exact age of their ruins, the strange human images depicted in elaborate costume at so many Maya sites, and he asks why at the time of the Spanish conquest, all knowledge of the Mayas had been lost. He looks at their history, art, architecture, political systems, religion, and, finding that the Maya are not in fact a lost or dead people - there are still five million descendants living in Mexico - considers the ways in which their society today illuminates that of their ancestors.

Pacific Overtures (review)

Reviewed by: Pacific Overtures Cecilia J. Pang Pacific Overtures. Book by John Weidman. Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. East West Players. David Henry Hwang Theatre, Los Angeles. 29 April 1998. Click for larger view View full resolution Keone Young in East West Players of Los Angeles’s production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Pacific Overtures, directed by Tim Dang. David Henry Hwang Theatre, Los Angeles. Photo: Michael Lamont. Click for larger view View full resolution Paul Wong, Deborah Nishimura, David Furumoto, Janice K. Terukina, and Mike Hagiwara in East West Players of Los Angeles’s production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Pacific Overtures, directed by Tim Dang. David Henry Hwang Theatre, Los Angeles. Photo: Michael Lamont. To christen its new expanded theatre in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo, East West Players (the nation’s oldest Asian American theatre company) mounted its second production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Pacific Overtures. It is a fitting choice for the company, which seeks to prove that, despite the disappointment surrounding the outcome of the Miss Saigon controversy, the cultural war is not over; in fact, parody is the sweetest revenge. The Asian-Americans’ protest did achieve one victory: the awareness of a neglected voice. Thus, the all-Asian cast in the East West Players’ production of Pacific Overtures, with the use of half- or hand-held white masks for non-Asian characters, is one expression of this awareness. The move to a mid-size 240-seat Equity house is an important step for East West Players, increasing professional opportunities for Asian-American actors. Aesthetically, it is a vast improvement over its old 99-seat home, but its insufficient wing space makes Lisa Hashimoto’s set design of five mobile shoji screens and countless assemblages of wooden [End Page 537] blocks and fly drops appear overbearing, though perhaps intentionally configured to represent the American invasion. Designer Naomi Rodriguez’s ornamental and elaborate costumes worked best in the comic numbers. Her inventive dressing of the geishas and madam in kimonos with American flag motifs in “Welcome to Kanagawa” was the show’s highlight. However, when the flag design was used again on Commodore Perry and on the American Ambassador, the effect proved heavy and unwieldy. Initially, Sondheim and Weidman set out to devise a musical about Commodore Perry’s subjugation of Japan from the Japanese point of view, by liberally borrowing elements from traditional Kabuki theatre. East West Players faithfully adopted such conventions including Kurogo, the invisible stage hands, a Reciter (the narrator), elaborate white-face make-up, and males impersonating female characters. While the presence of a hanamichi (bridge) and the technically demanding mie (poses) are sorely missed in this production, director Tim Dang took gender-bending one step further by having women play some of the male roles. At times, it worked effectively, especially Deborah Nishimura who displayed virtuoso acting and singing range with her portrayals of the insidious Emperor’s Doctor in “Chrysanthemum Tea” and the innocent Boy in “Someone in a Tree.” Addie Yungmee, on the other hand, was ineffectual as Commodore Perry. Her “Demon Dance” betrayed more of her training as an LA Laker cheerleader than as a Kabuki performer. The choreography was filled with enough hair tossing, jumping, and vaulting to suggest a caged bird in heat rather than the author’s intent of a “strutting, leaping dance of triumph.” Nevertheless, this might have been part of the director’s concept, since Dang acknowledged that he got permission from Sondheim to reinterpret the “Lion Dance” as a “Demon Dance.” His goal to transform the triumphal arrogance of Perry into a demonic expression of his monstrosity would have been an appropriate one, had the artistry sufficed. Dang managed to establish East-West conflicts throughout, using cross-cultural satire. From the outset, he positioned the musicians on opposing sides of an upper-level proscenium platform. On one side sat the Japanese percussionists in kimonos, and on other, the keyboard players dressed in contemporary jeans. Perhaps the cultural artifice worked best at its quietest moment, in the ode to “A Bowler Hat.” Manjiro, a peasant turned samurai who personified cultural resistance, was pitted against Kayama...

Some aspects of nudity in theatre dance

Twyla Tharp says that in her early teens medicine and dancing seemed the only professions in which you could legitimately look at naked bodies.' Edwin Denby emphasized the importance in the aesthetics of dance of the fact that the bodies of the performers are mostly young, handsome, and healthy.2 In general, it is a commonplace that comtemporary Western theatre dance tends to strip and expose the performers, while oriental dance practice tends to conceal the body in elaborate costumes. Complete nudity, however, is not at all common in theatre dance-less so than one might expect, given the rather puzzling frequency with which actors have taken to exposing their skins on stage and screen during the last quarter century, usually with no real dramatic justification. Given this change in cinematic and dramatic practice, why is nudity so seldom used in theatre dance? Why is it ever used? What is the range of its aesthetic and artistic significance? I have seen no general discussions of this topic. But the topic plainly merits thought. Ensuing reflections, though neither systematic nor scholarly, will at least give other critics something to improve on. Guglielmo Ebreo distinguishes between and short dancing: when one dances in a long gown, nimble movements are in-

The Conquered Women of Cacaxtla

AbstractThe vividly painted “Battle Mural” of Cacaxtla (Tlaxcala, Mexico) depicts the gory results of a battle between racially distinct factions, characterized by their opposing jaguar and bird insignia. The two central Bird figures that remain standing are shown as captives, and in both cases they are attired in elaborate costumes that include diagnostic items of female clothing, including thequechquemitlcape and long skirt. Other figures are nude or are shown in simple male costumes, including themaxtlatlloincloth. This paper considers arguments of whether the two central figures were biological females, or rather, that the presence of female apparel on male actors was used within a context of conquest, symbolically transmitted through a gender ideology of male dominance and female subordination. While the evidence is inconclusive, we employ a contextual analysis of pre-Columbian pictorial manuscripts and Mexican cosmology to argue that these individuals were female. Furthermore, we suggest that the elaborate costume elements associated with these female figures, and their recurrence with the Jaguar Lord 3 Deer Antler “Tlaloc mask,” indicates that this was a noblewoman destined for marriage as a means of binding the Jaguar and Bird dynasties. Thus the Battle Mural depicts the capture of the “founding queen,” with the subsequent union demonstrated by the complementary depictions of Jaguar and Bird lords on Building A.

Listening to Theatre: The Aural Dimension of Beijing Opera

Behind its elaborate costumes and make-up, its pantomime and acrobatics, Beijing opera is above all a world created in sound - so much so that attending a performance in China is referred to as listening to and performing itself is termed singing theatre, rather than acting. This study takes the reader to the heart of the Chinese art form by showing how the elements of song, speech and musical composition are used to create a performance, and how that performance is understood by its audience. It begins with a discussion of the aesthetics of traditional Beijing opera, and then explores each facet of aural performance in turn - language, music, voice and orchestra. Numerous charts and musical transcriptions help to draw a vivid picture of the variety of languages at play in the opera - those with vocabularies of tones and sound patterns as well as those made up of words. The emphasis throughout is on the supremacy of the performer as both composer and interpreter of the sounds heard in traditional Beijing opera.

Kabuki, backstage, onstage: an actor's life

Describing the onstage magic and the backstage hierarchy that is Kabuki, this book looks at the 500-year-old spectacle of dance, music and elaborate costume from an actor's point of view.