Latest news with #Gershwin
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
International Pride Orchestra plays outside DC in rebuff to Trump snub at Kennedy Center
An event by the International Pride Orchestra this week swung from classical Gershwin favorites to choral patriotism to high drag in a rebuff to Donald Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center and its subsequent snub of the LBGTQ+ ensemble. The spirited celebration of WorldPride, the peripatetic biennial international festival in support of LGBTQ+ rights which kicks off this month and is taking place in Washington DC, was staged instead at the Strathmore Music Center in Maryland, just north of the capital. Related: Four queer business owners on Pride under Trump: 'Our joy is resistance' Sequin-clad drag queen Peaches Christ acted as host and New York drag queen Thorgy Thor played a violin solo to Beyoncé's Crazy in Love to an audience of 1,166 people. The orchestra had hoped to play at the Kennedy Center, Washington's premier performing arts center, but shortly after returning to the White House, Donald Trump pledged on social media that there would be, in all-caps: 'No more drag shows, or other anti-American propaganda' at the public-private arts space. The Trump administration has issued executive orders limiting transgender rights, banned transgender people from serving in the armed forces, and rescinded anti-discrimination policies for LGBTQ+ people as part of a campaign to repeal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Michael Roest, conductor and founder of the International Pride Orchestra, a non-profit, reminded the audience that 'people don't feel safe to live and love openly'. 'That is the reason why we have this orchestra,' he said. During the event, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington sang American the Beautiful, and a pianist, Sara Davis Buechner, who is transgender, dazzled while leading the orchestra on grand piano in the Gershwin favorite Rhapsody in Blue. Both Stars and Stripes and rainbow flags were hoisted at the close. Trump in February fired the leadership of the Kennedy Center, named himself chair and put a loyalist in charge. The center then sent Roest a message that said: 'We are not in a position at this time to advance a contract,' according to an email chain seen by Reuters, after months of prior negotiations. Considering themselves 'disinvited', event organizers began looking for alternative venues and the Strathmore offered its space, an orchestra spokesperson said. A Kennedy Center spokesperson referred Reuters to an X post from leadership saying it had not actually canceled any shows.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Band to perform 175th anniversary concert at Bolton Parish Church
Eagley Band will celebrate its 175th anniversary with a summer concert at Bolton Parish Church. The concert will include the community choir and community band, led by Chris Wormald. The event, on Saturday, July 5, at 7.30pm, will be attended by the new Mayor and Mayoress of Bolton. The concert will include a range of musical pieces, featuring selections from West Side Story, Mission Impossible and Procession to the Minster, along with works by Gershwin, Rutter, Waespi, Toto, and Mike and the Mechanics, among others. Tickets are priced at £5 and can be purchased from Booth's Music Shop in Churchgate, online at or at the door on the night of the event. READ MORE: Bolton's top 10 chippies voted by YOU – now it's time to pick your favourite Entrepreneur and partners unite to help people with 'bravest step you can take' Meet Nya -the newest recruit for TransPennine Express Similar to previous years, interval refreshments will include a selection of wines, hot and cold drinks, and biscuits. Cllr John Walsh OBE, the former mayor of Bolton, has announced that this year, for the first time, beer will also be available during the interval. The church has three car parks within its grounds, all offering flat access with no need for stairs, ramps or lifts, and situated next to all church entrances. Free overflow parking will be available on all nearby side streets after 6pm.
Washington Post
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
At WNO, ‘Porgy and Bess' wins the heart by sticking to the script
Awash in the hard light of a summer afternoon in South Carolina, the opening scene of Washington National Opera's 'Porgy and Bess' bears the muted sepia glow of an old photograph — one that springs to life once the curtain goes up. It's a moment of stillness that conveys much about director Francesca Zambello's vision for George Gershwin's enduring 1935 'folk opera,' one she first realized in 2005 at the Glimmerglass Festival. Free of conceptual frills and narrative alterations (apart from a slight bump of the setting from the 1920s to the '40s), this is a revival that takes the reviving part seriously.
New York Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Opera History Was Made in This House. Its Future Is Uncertain.
The scholars, preservationists and historians had been strategizing for about an hour inside the salon of the charming cypress cottage they were trying to save. They all agreed that magic had been conjured in this very spot nearly a century ago. That's when the writers DuBose and Dorothy Heyward invited the composer George Gershwin to visit their retreat, nicknamed Follywood, on the cozy barrier island of Folly Beach. Gershwin was writing an opera based on DuBose Heyward's novel 'Porgy,' which was adapted into a play co-written with his wife. The story depicted Black life in Charleston, S.C., and the Heywards thought Gershwin should see firsthand the place, people and culture he was writing about. Although Gershwin composed some of the music in New York, his South Carolina visit resulted in eternal anthems like 'Summertime.' 'That does bring up the elephant in the room,' said Harlan Greene, an author and historian who has done extensive research on the Heywards and the opera. He looked at those around him in mid-March, taking note that there were no Black people among the hopeful preservationists. 'Here we are, a bunch of white people in a very diverse economy and you know, cultural appropriation.' 'Porgy and Bess" is largely celebrated as the Great American Opera. It is also weighted by the country's historical baggage. The opera is an elevated piece of culture that explores the dynamics of segregated African Americans; in depicting Blacks as fully formed people nearly a century ago — and not as mammies or Mandingos by performers wearing blackface — it was an outlier. Yet it also faced significant criticism for reinforcing degrading stereotypes. The Heywards were American. DuBose Heyward's great-great-great grandfather, Thomas, signed the Declaration of Independence. They teamed with George and Ira Gershwin, whose parents had immigrated from Russia. The opera's brain trust featured no one who looked like the people depicted in it. The house has been on the market since last June with no serious buyers on the horizon. Folly Beach, just outside of Charleston, has no safeguards for historic homes, raising the question of what a city's responsibilities, if any, are in safeguarding its own history. The cottage, which stretches about 1,600 square feet across two stories, is surrounded by a tall wooden fence and is a portal to a bygone era. It stands out among the modern vacation homes that now line the area. 'It hearkens back to a history that is visibly being erased on Folly Beach itself,' Greene said. The home would likely be the spot of one of those nondescript homes if it wasn't for the current owner, Myles Glick. His motivation is less historical and more personal; the home was cherished by his late wife, Kathy. 'I'm trying to preserve it for one reason,' said Glick, a retired architect. 'I want the house to stay exactly the way she knew it, which is the way it is right now.' It was headline news when Gershwin arrived on the barrier island nearly a century ago. 'Gershwin, Gone Native,' read a 1934 article in The Post and Courier in Charleston: 'Sleek Composer, Burned by Sun, Lets Beard Grow, Wears Only Torn Pants While Writing the Opera 'Porgy.'' 'I have become acclimated,' Gershwin declared in the article. 'You know, it is so pleasant here that it's really a shame to work.' Kathy Glick also adored the region. And she was an enormous fan of the opera. Myles estimates that she saw 'Porgy and Bess' more than a dozen times. He knew better than to resist when the cottage was up for sale. 'It was just a matter of finding out how to pay for it,' he said. 'When she wanted something, she got it and that's the truth.' They bought it for $375,000 in 1998. The home features small rooms, built-in bookcases, a second-story sleeper's porch with a two-sided fireplace and an unattached writer's booth. 'When I walked in here, I could feel the genius,' Kathy told The Post and Courier in 1999. The Glicks held onto the Heywards furniture and memorabilia, restoring the house by placing fresh wood in the foundation and locating appliances that fit the era when replacing the kitchen and a bathroom. Kathy opened the house for tours about a decade after buying the property. She kept index cards that discussed the cottage, the Heywards and 'Porgy and Bess.' Inevitably, she'd break into songs with tourists. Kathy never let her husband in for a tour, though. She was worried that she couldn't keep a straight face with him as a spectator. The Glicks also purchased another home across the street from Follywood. They dreamed of living in that home to be close to the cottage. But Kathy became ill with Lewy body dementia about a decade ago. Instead, their son moved into the other home. In 2022, Kathy died at the age of 73. The Glicks were married for 48 years. 'I'm glad I married her,' Myles Glick said. 'Because I was very happy.' Glick had planned to work until he was 80. 'But Kathy getting sick and taking care of her, it took everything out of me,' he said. Now 75, Glick spoke a day after he visited the cottage to fix some siding and rails and one day before a scheduled surgery. He is tired, he said, of working on the house. 'It's a wood house,' Glick said. 'Is it going to deteriorate even further? One of the shutters is rotted. I've got to get that replaced. The sooner the better to put it into somebody's hands that will take care of it and maintain it.' 'Porgy and Bess' was one of the first representations of Black life in American popular culture. The opera was exported across the globe when the U.S. State Department selected it to represent the country on an international tour in the early 1950s just as the Civil Rights struggle was taking root domestically. The Gershwins mandated that only Black performers play roles in an effort to avoid blackface. 'Porgy' supercharged the singer Leontyne Price's career. A young Maya Angelou toured the world in the traveling production. The opera's music found voice in Black jazz innovators like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. But the praise was far from universal. James Baldwin characterized 'Porgy and Bess' as 'a white man's vision of Negro life.' And while Harry Belafonte released a 'Porgy and Bess' album with Lena Horne in 1959, he declined a role to star in the film version because he found it 'racially demeaning.' Those complicated dynamics endure and were on the mind of the historian, Greene, when he looked around at those attending the meeting to help save the house. He would have liked to have seen some Black people in attendance. He'd like to have seen some young people. But he was conversing with several well-meaning white adults. 'I do think that that's an important conversation for us to be really transparent about,' said Layle Chambers, a community organizer who brought the group together. 'We're going to have to reach out and really be diligent in our efforts to bring all people to the table, because I think we've got to have it as a cultural arts center.' Lauren Waring Douglas, a producer who was not at the meeting, said she supports the house being preserved. Waring Douglas, who is Black, is working on a documentary about the first performance of 'Porgy and Bess' in Charleston. That moment did not arrive until 1970 because of local segregation laws. 'Because Charleston could be such a limiting place to so many Black people, saving the Porgy house doesn't hold the same meaning that it does to white people,' she said. 'I say this with all due love and respect: The history is the history. The complicity is the complicity.' The meeting closed with the promise to convene again soon. One person who did not attend was Myles Glick. Vince Perna, Glick's real estate agent, labeled his absence a reflection of the potential for conflicts of interest. Glick wants to preserve the house. He also wants to sell it. Perna's job is to find him the best buyer. Perna listed the house in June, and later sliced nearly half a million from the original $3.4 million asking price. There have been offers, but nothing concrete that would preserve it. Tom Goodwin, Folly Beach's mayor, joked that he would love for the city to buy the cottage and relocate his office to Follywood. About a year ago, the city talked to Glick, he said, without hearing any numbers on what it would take to land the house. Glick said he departed the conversations with the belief that city did not have the budget to purchase the home. Now, Goodwin is interested to see what the preservationists will propose. 'As far as the city goes, we're really in the infant stages of talking about what we would do or not do or can do,' Goodwin said. 'That's all I know right now. ' As the group met, the irony was not lost that Folly Beach is a short 20-minute drive away from downtown Charleston, widely regarded as the birthplace of the country's preservation movement. The Preservation Society of Charleston, founded in 1920, is America's oldest community-based historic preservation organization and Charleston passed the first zoning ordinance enacted to protect historic resources in 1931. 'Unlike the city of Charleston, there's really no preservation protections,' said Brian Turner, the president and chief executive of the Preservation Society of Charleston. 'You can see the character of these beach towns changing very quickly up and down the coast.' Glick has made indications he wants the home to be preserved, but he has yet to take steps to make that happen, Turner said. 'The ball is in his court to an extent,' he said. The city could enact ordinances, but that could take time, Turner added. 'And I don't know if that would work on the owner's timeline.' For Glick, the sooner the home is off the market and Kathy's memory is honored with a preservation plan — the better. 'I'd like to have sold it,' he said. 'Last year.'
Telegraph
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Ballet's body image issue: ‘I had problems with food and there wasn't the support'
Christopher Wheeldon has a guilty secret. 'I grew up listening to Phantom of the Opera,' he says. 'As an 11-year-old, those big blockbuster musicals were everything. Seeing Starlight Express: it was mind blowing. To be honest I really wanted to be in musicals. But my voice is so bad I can't bear to hear myself sing. Even in the shower.' We are sitting in an office at the Royal Opera House, home of the Royal Ballet, where Wheeldon, now aged 52, has been artistic associate since 2012. Musical theatre may have survived without Wheeldon but the international ballet scene has thrived because of him: he's one of the most in demand choreographers in the world. Yet as the title of a new career retrospective confirms – From Ballet to Broadway, which opens on May 9 – this former New York City Ballet soloist, famous for his sumptuously sensual aesthetic, has always kept one perfectly arched foot within the world of musical theatre. The self-effacing Wheeldon, though, shivers at my description of the retrospective as a tribute. 'They're not calling it that though are they? God, I hope not.' (The full title, Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works implies a tribute is precisely what the Royal Ballet intends.) Either way, the show suggests Wheeldon is now regarded by the Royal Ballet with the same reverence with which it regards former artistic directors Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. The celebration will comprise four pieces. There's Fools Paradise, the eerily exquisite 2007 piece he developed with his short-lived company Morphoses and inspired by a silent movie score; the UK premiere of The Two of Us, a duet set to the music of Joni Mitchell; Us, another duet, by turns pugilistic and tender, which is danced by two men and was created in 2017 for the BalletBoyz, and a sequence from An American in Paris, his wistfully gorgeous 2015 West End production of the 1951 Gershwin musical. Combining abstract neoclassicism with an audience-friendly edge, the evening sums up the style and ethos of an artist who has always loved to splice the elite world of ballet with popular culture. 'Anything I can do to bring people into the ROH or the ballet houses of the world who haven't stepped over the threshold before, while keeping our art-form alive and kicking, I do,' he says. Wheeldon, who married the American yoga instructor Ross Rayburn in 2017, works between London and his home in New York. In the 2000s, he spent nearly a decade as resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet, having joined the company as a 19-year-old dancer in 1993, rising to soloist five years later. 'So I grew up under the influence of MacMillan in London, and then worked under Jerome Robbins [the legendary American West Side Story choreographer, who became ballet master at City Ballet in 1972] for the last few years of his life.' The influence of both is threaded through a career that has embraced grand spectacle, be it the widescreen romance of Gershwin, or the eye-popping theatricality of his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2011) and The Winter's Tale (2014), both now Royal Ballet staples (in fact, Alice returns to the Royal Ballet this summer). It's also the watchword for the thrilling set pieces of his West End juggernaut MJ the Musical, based on the first three decades or so of the life of Michael Jackson, and which opened in London last year. 'Spectacle is a dirty word for some but I've always wanted to bring that epic scope to ballet, not just in a visual sense but through more daring story telling,' he says. 'Ballet doesn't have to be 'boy meets girl, girl goes crazy, girl dies, becomes a fairy, boy chases her through the woods'. Audiences want to be taken somewhere a bit deeper.' But only up to a point. MJ, which originated on Broadway and which has since spawned productions in Hamburg and Sydney, was criticised in some quarters for deftly swerving the unproven allegations of child abuse first levied against Jackson in 1993; the story stops on the eve of Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour. Wheeldon thought 'long and hard' about doing the show and admits many people told him he 'was mad' to be taking it on. Jackson, after all, is hardly unproblematic intellectual property – a long-gestating biopic, starring his nephew, Jaafar, has been repeatedly pushed back, and is now scheduled for release next year. Yet the controversy that continues to shroud Jackson hasn't stopped audiences flocking to MJ in droves – the Tony nominated show, which is still packing in audiences in the West End, is one of the highest grossing musical theatre productions of all time. 'Few artists have connected the world the way Michael did, which is why he continues to cut through,' Wheeldon argues. 'It's unrealistic to think [the controversy] is going to go away but to some extent the conversation around [cancel culture] exists in a bubble. But I can see why, for some people, MJ [didn't go far] enough. And I hope someone does make a show that concentrates on the complexities of Michael because the psychology around someone who became such an isolated figure is fascinating.' Considered and thoughtful in conversation, Wheeldon is relaxed and attentive company. Yet, in his career, he seems happier creating work that dodges obvious messages. Us – his choreography for BalletBoyz – is case in point, part of a larger piece developed for male dancers. He adores creating abstract dance: it allows him to be suggestive without 'being on the nose' as he calls it. 'Us is an exploration, without being overt, of various connections between men. In some cases, [these are] romantic connections, in others brotherly connections, in others connections that can come from a more macho antagonistic culture, men trying to alpha each other.' Yet he hates the idea the piece might have an agenda. 'Everyone loves an agenda!' He laughs. 'But my job is to create work to which audiences can bring their own interpretations.' Still, he has spent a career carefully pushing against ballet's more rigid traditions norms, sometimes without consciously intending to do so. Last year he created a new ballet, Oscar, for Australian Ballet, inspired by the life of Oscar Wilde, which he hopes might come to the UK. 'In my mind I hadn't really separated it out as a gay story and what that might mean to me as a gay man and to gay men in the company,' he says. 'I was actually trying almost to hush everyone around that part of it by saying 'we're telling good stories, it doesn't matter if they are gay or straight'. But it ended up having a very strong impact on the male dancers in the company. Male dancers have grown up in a very hetero-normative tradition, encouraged to play the princes who are all in love with the princess or the Romeo who falls in love with Juliet, and there has never been the opportunity to overtly express [through dance] love for another man, or a woman for another woman. Oscar flung open the doors and windows for a lot of gay men in that company. We are slowly breaking down some of those prescriptive notions [around sex and gender] in ballet.' What does he think of recent comments by Iain Mackay, the new head of the Royal Ballet School, where Wheeldon trained throughout his teens, who recently declared that plus-sized dancers are the future of ballet? Last year, the school reached an out of court settlement (without admitting liability) with a former ballerina who claimed she'd developed an eating disorder after being 'body shamed' during her time there. 'Everyone is much more keen today to concentrate on the health of the body and the mind, which is key to being a successful dancer,' Wheeldon says. 'We didn't have that growing up. I come from a generation in which you gave yourself fully to the art form, no matter what that means.' Did teenage boys feel the pressure as well as the female ballerinas? 'Sure, I suffered with my body image. I had problems around food and there simply wasn't the support. But it's given us a greater understanding of what ballet shouldn't be.' Where does this leave ballet's classical physical ideal? Famously, that uncompromising aesthetic was enshrined in the work of the choreographer George Balanchine, the legendary and highly influential co-founder of New York City Ballet, who liked his ballerinas to weigh as little as possible. 'I don't think [these conversations] are a threat to the Balanchine tradition,' Wheeldon replies. 'And they are certainly not a threat to the ethos of the New York City Ballet. And we don't know yet how these conversations around body shape will affect the way we think about the corps [the group of ensemble dancers who tend to move on stage as one] or the pas de deux [a duet typically performed between a man and a woman]. We're not there yet. But I think it will change the way we choreograph; it already has. Although let's not forget the male/female relationship remains a dominant one in society. Let's not pretend it doesn't matter.' Wheeldon remains fearsomely busy: he is developing a musical adaptation of the 1999 cult romcom 10 Things I Hate About You with the singer songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen and Girls writer Lena Dunham. He also has the rights to develop a graphic novel he came across about Aquababy, the 'forgotten gay son' as he puts it, of DC Comics' Aquaman. 'He's the only gay character in the DC universe. He's always very peripheral. He sort of floats around.' When it comes to work, it's clear Wheeldon is almost pathologically hungry. 'I'm always searching for the next big project,' he says. 'But sometimes I have to remind myself: I'm the old guard now.'
