pt at large

The Elders Dance Ensemble, a silver lining

The Elders Dance Ensemble, Prometheus Dance Company
The Dance Complex, 536 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA
April 16, 2006

You've got to be kidding me. A dance ensemble made up of eight women from 60 to 83 years of age? These proto baby boomers who've spent their lives telling their offspring "You can become anything you can dream" appear to have taken their own advice. They call themselves "post career" dancers.

To its credit, the dance community has become much more diverse. Dancers of all colors, shapes and sizes are the norm. But we're hip deep in youth culture. People beyond a certain age are not represented in popular entertainment media. Is there an audience for a senior dance company? What will audiences of elders think of dancers who look like them - gray haired, with the wrinkles and sags that come with age? Will they be inspired by the creativity, wisdom, and complete lack of self-consciousness of these performers or jarred into an acceptance of their own struggles with age and the spectral future. I've been old enough to qualify for an AARP card for several years. Those were the contradictory thoughts that raced through my mind as I watched these Elders.

Where did the idea of silver haired sylphs come from? The spirit of Dame Margo Fonteyn smoldered in the hearts of these women while they raised families or climbed career ladders. The embers were fanned when some began performing at senior citizen and assisted living centers and became fully ignited when many of them performed in a Prometheus Dance performance in 2002. By 2003, the artistic directors of the Prometheus Dance were sufficiently awed and inspired by the work of these grande dames that they assumed responsibility for training them in their 55+ dance class at the Dance Complex in Cambridge and created The Elders Dance Ensemble as a performing company within their own Prometheus Dance Company. The Elders Ensemble of Prometheus Dance Inc. was founded by a grant from the Cambridge Arts Council in 2005.

The evening's performance at the Dance Complex studio in Cambridge consisted of five pieces: “Interview”; “Shadow Prophesy”; “Reading of Original Stories and Poems”; “Troika”; and “There's a Dance in the Ol' Dame Yet”.

The performers dance their age. Slow graceful movements, facial expressions, bends, and rolls are the staples of their dance. One reason it's fascinating to watch them perform is that they don't embarrass themselves, or us, by attempting grande jetes and deep plies that just don't work for dancers over sixty. They've found grace by respecting gravity.

"Interview" is actually the audiotape of a WBUR FM “Here and Now” story about the Elders Dance Company. "Reading of Original Stories and Poems" offers a window into the interior personalities as three dancers read their work. "Shadow Prophesy" performed between one dancer and a quartet of others who seemed to be guides, might be interpreted as a metaphorical dance from uncertainty to a centered calm and acceptance of the future.

The two-part “Troika” was a brilliant surprise. Part One was a fast paced vigorous dance performed by three dancers in their twenties. The energy and firm bodies of the young women were a stark contrast to the more stately and mature Elders. What were they doing here? The lights dimmed momentarily, the three young women drifted off stage and three members of the Elders company, using the same edgy music, echoed the movements of their young counterparts, with equal intensity but without the athleticism. The six joined for a confident and proud finish together… a very satisfying fusion of age and energy.

The last dance, “There's a Dance in the Ol' Dame Yet”, is imaginatively conceived. As the stage lights come up, there stand all eight Elder dancers wearing retro sunglasses and exuding attitude. Using lawn chairs as props, the eight seem to portray the range of life in the gray zone: some interact energetically with each other, one or two seem in a fog (dementia, Alzheimer's?), others are contemplatively engaged. At one point, they perform a synchronized send up of a chorus line, high kicks and all, from sedentary positions on their lawn chairs. The music slows and fades. In small groups and individually, some holding hands and hugging, they exit the stage. A poignantly bittersweet finale.

Perhaps the story here is not so much what these senior women did, but that they did it at all. They may be the forefront of a movement of in which elder members of society will showcase their vitality and make performing arts a truly intergenerational experience. I'm not kidding.

The web site for the Prometheus Dance Company
www.prometheusdance.org

Here and Now WBUR story about Prometheus Dance Elder Ensemble
http://www.here-now.org/shows/2005/06/20050610_17.asp

MC Restaurant, a gem on the ocean

MC Restaurant
Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, Maine
207-646-6263

When you’re a tourist, you just love a good ‘find’. If you’re a tourist ‘foodie’, this 'find' was  a pot of gold.

Wedged near the end of the road into Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine is a restaurant that’s a light year removed from the bakeries, coffee shops, and breakfast nooks dotting the landscape like so many lobster pots floating in the bay outside this precious seacoast tourist mecca.

Unimposing from the street, the modestly sized place morphs into a two-story refuge. After a day’s wanderings through a diaspora of tiny shops selling jewelry, gifts, and clothing from casual to chic, the traveler is ready to enjoy the ambiance of this smartly designed restaurant.

Three steps past the threshold, this meticulous little place seems to shout "Ahoy there!"

A short walk on polished red oak floors past the well appointed ten seat bar and into a dining room reveals a view from the rocky shore just outside to the silhouette of the coastline all the way to Wells, Maine. The diner may sigh with relief to see no kitschy marine artifacts on the walls, just copper-topped tables, comfortable strait backed chairs with padded seats, track lighting, exposed beam cathedral ceilings and a boatload of windows  revealing surf and sky. One short flight of stairs up is a cozy bar/dining room the size of a trawler’s wheelhouse, with a view to match.

You’ve arrived MC, no doubt standing for the first initials of chef/owners Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier. The menu starts with offerings from “The Oyster Bar”, followed by Starters,  Salads, Maines (entrées),  Grilled Maines, Sauces, Evil Carbos, and Virtuous Vegetables.

We decided to order two starters and share a Maine. The tuna carpaccio was raw Yellowfin tuna pounded out and topped with shallots, capers, fresh picked garden greens tossed in champagne vinaigrette, red sea salt, and extra virgin olive oil. And it was divine. As were the steamed mussels with garlic, herbs, and grilled onion focaccia. The greens are picked from the restaurant’s own garden. A true fact.

Let me stop right here. You can see the entire menu with prices on the MC web site at http://mcperkinscove.com/menu_dinner.cfm.  What you can’t appreciate is how damn good these guys cook.

The plank roasted catch on the list of Maines was a filet of cod, cooked just so, topped with greens. The plank-roasted selections are cooked on round half-inch thick cedar medallions, the cedar imbuing the fish with an ever so delicate flavor. The kitchen plated the fish separately so we could each enjoy a different sauce. To call these concoctions sauces is like calling Winslow Homer a watercolorist. The  ‘tarragon mustard sauce’ was evoo, puréed tarragon, whole grain mustard and Dijon mustard. ‘Mom’s sauce’ was Worcestershire, soy sauce, rosemary, thyme, oregano, whole grain mustard, and Dijon mustard. The taste buds in my mouth were jubilant.

We passed on the Virtuous Vegetables and from the ‘Evil Carbos’ list we chose the Yam and Potato gratin. The contrast of the sweet yams with the gratin potatoes was noticeable and tasty.

Nice touches: gently squared plates for appetizers, oversized plates for entrees; tall curvy water glasses, tiny gas lamps on copper topped tables, a Bar Menu for more casual dining, a sign on the menu saying, “Please refrain from cell phone use in the dining room.”

Another pleasant surprise. It wasn’t till I visited the MC web site that I saw “Clark Frasier & Mark Gaier, Nominated by the James Beard Foundation as Best Chefs of the Northeast March, 2006” These guys own also own the Arrows Restaurant in Ogunquit, voted one of America’s top 50 restaurants by Gourmet Magazine in 2001.

Need I say that this place, about an hour and a half from Boston, is worth the ride?

Photos courtesy of MC website: http://mcperkinscove.com

Earth Day photo

David Ure puts his back into celebrating Earth Day by repairing the stone wall in front of his Drift Road home. "I'm doing this without the heavy equipment that pollutes the air," he said. "I'm just using blood, sweat and tears." Moral support is offered by Ure's neice Alexandra Orlich, his daughter Kayla, and neighbor Sophia Lejacq Smith.

Photo on Opinion Page April 27, 2006

Volunteers get a little dirty at Westport's waterfronts

Overcast skies did little to diminish spirits of nearly fifty volunteers at the Head of Westport who donned gloves for a hands-on annual Earth Day Cleanup sponsored by the Westport River Watershed Alliance Saturday morning. The celebration included the unveiling of a sign explaining the newly constructed wetlands system at the Head of Westport Landing on Old County Road. The bulrushes, cattails, and arrow-arum that were planted in the wetlands are designed to filter pollution out of storm water runoff.

Volunteers at the Head included parents eager to be “stewards of the earth” role models for their young children, residents from Drift Road, WRWA members, and young men and women from Water Watch at U Mass Dartmouth. After Executive Director Gay Gillespie welcomed the group, including Highway Surveyor Jack Sisson and former Selectman Liz Collins who had both moved the project along, she gave the volunteers their marching orders. For the rest of the morning, the group enthusiastically removed the temporary fencing that held silt from running into the river while the basin was built, removed debris accumulated during the winter, raked the bottom of the retention basin and planted grass seed there.

Photo: Executive Director Gay Gillespie hands out cleanup equipment to young volunteers as Town Administrator Charlene Wood looks on.

“It was a very worthwhile day at Cherry and Webb Beach, too,” WRWA staff member Dee Morris reported. Members of local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, families, and other members from Water Watch at U Mass Dartmouth collected stray lobster pots and fishing net, tires and debris from negligent partiers. “There was more debris from parties in the dune area and more intentionally broken glass in the parking lot that I can remember from previous years,” Morris recalled. “The Water Watch volunteers actually sifted sand in the dunes to remove glass from broken bottles,”

Morris also thanked Larry Hookey and Anne Fitzgerald for heading a small cleanup group at East Beach. “They reported lots of people debris and no marine debris at East Beach,” Morris said.

Seeing so many youngsters involved in the cleanup had to be a good sign for adults who are frustrated by what seems like senseless trashing of beach areas. Earth Day is celebrated once a year, but everyone proud of Westport’s natural beauty wishes that the spirit of the day would be honored by all who use its shorelines the rest of the year.
Correspondent Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

A birder's eye view

A birder's eye view;
how man has shaped the bird's environment over time
April 20, 2006
By Paul Tamburello

Wayne Petersen's view of "Changes in Massachusetts Bird Populations" begins when the Pilgrims began to nest in New England about 400 years ago. Since then, deforestation, fashion trends and pesticides have caused changes in the bird population of Massachusetts and the Northeast.

Speaking at the WRWA's annual meeting on March 26, Mr. Petersen said that at the first colonists' arrival 400 years ago, this area was mostly unbroken forested land. Over time, settlers set about chopping down everything in sight in order to open it up for subsistence farming and agriculture.

Photo: Petersen answers a question from Lucy Goodridge

While some birds like pileated woodpeckers and turkeys nearly disappeared, other birds that thrive in open landscapes like bobolinks and upland sandpipers began to colonize as they migrated from the Midwest.

Mr. Petersen said another forestation phase occurred as the country became urbanized and clear-cut forests began to fill in. Birds that thrive in shrub lands (Eastern towhee, brown thrasher, field sparrows) began to colonize in the shrubland that developed.

"From mid-1800s and forward there was continuous change of forests due a combination of logging and new forest growth," Mr. Petersen said. Another factor was what he described as the "Smoky the Bear" syndrome, the policy of suppressing forest fires.

In the late 1800s, a phenomenon known as "market gunning" had a severe impact on a narrow segment of the bird population. Market gunning was the "indiscriminate persecution of shorebirds like sandpipers and plovers and waterfowl like long-legged wading birds, egrets, terns and roseate spoonbills that had spectacular plumes. These birds were systematically slaughtered for the plume trade in women's fashion and millinery industries."

In the tremendous decline in bird population that ensued, an outcry was spearheaded by two Boston Brahmin women who "got the ear of William Brewster, the most important ornithologist of the day, who was to become the first president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1896," Mr. Petersen said.

Legislation was passed over the next 20 years and the practice of market gunning was shot down.

The introduction of DDT in WWII and its widespread use thereafter was another event that affected bird population over time. Mr. Petersen said that by the time Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" sounded the alarm on pesticides, "signature species like bald eagles and ospreys, as well as red shouldered hawks, peregrine falcons, and brown pelicans, were all impacted by pesticide overloading."

By 1972, DDT was taken off the shelves. One of the consequences of DDT use was that "high in the food chain predators like fish eating ospreys, peregrine falcons, and bald eagles couldn't metabolize calcium. That resulted in eggshell thinning so that even weigh of incubating bird would crack the eggs." Mr. Petersen described two intervention programs that helped falcon and eagle populations breed successfully in the Northeast.

Mr. Petersen also praised the intervention programs begun in the 1970s by Gil and Josephine Fernandez to rescue the faltering osprey population (only ten successful nesting pairs) in Westport. The Fernandez plan "brought healthy eggs from the Chesapeake and placed them under beleaguered birds here and then provided nesting platforms. The population increased and we now have a "robust and flourishing colony."

About Wayne Petersen

Wayne Petersen is a founder of "Bird Observer" magazine. His 1993 "Birds of Massachusetts," co-authored with Richard Veit, is considered the bible of Massachusetts birders today. He was the 2005 recipient of the American Birding Association's prestigious Ludlow Griscomb Award. Part of the citation is for individuals who have dramatically advanced the base of ornithological knowledge for a particular region.

Like the birds he loves, Mr. Petersen's career has had an interesting migration pattern. He spent the first 18 years of his career as a middle school life science teacher. He followed that with a 15-year tour with the Massachusetts Audubon Society and a shorter one with the Swarovski Birding Community. He is currently director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

WRWA awards

The following people were recognized at the WRWA's annual meeting on March 26.

Volunteer Awards

* Russ Craig ("for the best summer event ever in the history of the WRWA")

* June Roche ("for the best auction event ever in the history of the WRWA")

Education awards

* Emma Sears

* Gregg Swanzey

Outgoing board members

* Carolyn Duby

* Edward Dufresne

New board members (three-year terms)

* Sheila Hughes

* Peter Kastner

* Samantha Ladd

* Jonathan Stevens

By Paul Tamburello

[email protected]

Tower of Power

Tower of Power
Scullers Jazz Club at the Doubletree Guest Suites
400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02134 617-562-4111
Thursday April 13 - Saturday April 15, 2006

The Tower of Power blew into town Thursday night. The timbers of Scullers Jazz Club are still shivering and the eardrums of Thursday's sold out first set audience are still ringing. It’s a wonder that the down and dirty din created by this band of funksters didn’t blow the club’s doors off their hinges.

Two trumpets, three saxophones (one played by big guy in black fedora, another played by rotund guy with a perpetually conspiratorial grin on his face), one electric organ, one guitar, one bass guitar, one drum set, and one lead singer equals one certifiable Tower of Power.

Tenor sax player Emilio Castillo, the grinner, and baritone sax player Stephen “The Funky Doctor” Kupka, the fedora, met in Oakland, CA thirty eight (not a typo) years ago, formed a band and began writing and playing their stuff in the Bay Area. They picked up a few more guys who love to play and developed their lean and mean sound. Their catalog hasn’t evolved a great deal from their original funk and ballad format, but when you can play with their brand of energy, you can live on your laurels.

Tower of Power 1971 Castillo (right foreground, Kupka center rear)

This band is not an acquired taste. Either you like loud and propulsive music or you don’t. The lady sitting next to me lip synched the words to all the songs and had all she could do to restrain herself from leaping out of her chair to boogy all night long. The band singled out one die hard fan who made it to the concert even though his house had been on fire that afternoon. They celebrated his loyalty by putting a blowtorch to the first set.

These ten guys ripped through a good chunk of the band’s nearly four decades and counting catalog. They charged out of the gate with “Soul with a capital S” and within thirty seconds the crowd was hootin’ and hollerin’. From time to time, the whole front line showboats between choruses. “Can’t you see you do me wrong?” featured all five plus the lead singer shimmying and jiving like the front line of a James Brown band. We loved it.

“Got to groove”, “You ought to be havin’ fun”, “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” had the audience clapping and tapping. Lead vocalist Larry Braggs sang the lights out of the ballad, “Willing to learn”, using a soaring falsetto to a whispering plea, bolstered by crescendos of brass and reed. The dramatic pauses between the lines of his ballads became booming silences in an otherwise blistering evening of funky soul music.

As the seventy-five minute concert hit the home stretch, the band spanked into overdrive with “Still be diggin’ on James Brown” and their classic “What is hip?” By this time, you’d given up hope of ever passing a hearing test again.

Vocalist Braggs dedicated the encore, another of their classics, “You’re still a young man”, to childhood friend and Celtics assistant coach Tony Brown, who’d helped Braggs in times of need and who was in the audience.

The days of hearing TOP music on top 40 radio are long gone. But memories die hard - there are plenty of fans that grew up listening to the fifteen albums they’ve released since “East Bay Grease” in 1970. And remember the unmistakable sound of the TOP horn section, which has appeared on recordings made by the likes of Santana, Huey Lewis and the News, Elton John, Lyle Lovett, and Aerosmith.

Tower of Power 2006 Castillo (Left foreground, Kupka right with fedora)

Over sixty musicians have been part of Tower of Power through the years, yet the horn section, the core of the sound, remains true to its first incarnation. Band leader Emilio Castillo and Stephan Kupka are two reasons. They still blow hard, look like they’re having the time of their lives while on stage, and make the rest of us feel like twenty somethings, give or take thirty eight years.

Photos: TOP 1971 and TOP 2006
http://www.bumpcity.com

Drama of Scale

Drama of Scale
Art exhibit organized by Mixit Print Studio
Regis College, Carney Gallery 781-768-7070
235 Wellesley Street, Weston, MA
Monday - Friday 10 a.m - 4 p.m. through April 20, 2006

Just the drive from an urban environment onto a soon-to-be-leafy campus of a small New England college campus is a spring tonic. The “Drama of Scale” exhibit at Regis College’s Carney Gallery might be upstaged by the annual drama Mother Nature is staging outside but it certainly puts you in the mood to shove the winter boots to the back recesses of your closet.

The Mixit Print Studio in Somerville organized this exhibit and nineteen of the artists who rent space there are represented. Artists went about evoking the theme of the show, Drama of Scale, with a variety of media and a wide range of formats. What is big and what is small becomes relative.

Occasionally a print would strike your fancy the same way the first glimpse of a crocus pushing its head up through a still monochromatic garden delights us after months of being starved for color in the landscape. That’s the way Ilana Manolson’s monotypes “Macro Moment I” and “Macro Moment II” struck me.

If none of the artwork appeals to you, just walk out the door. Mother Nature’s got her own show going and she really knows a thing or two about scale. The whitish pink buds on the Magnolia tree just outside the gallery are a good start.

Photo: Pansies waiting to be transplanted onto a campus garden

The Maternal Instinct

The Maternal Instinct
Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA
March 30-April 16, 2006, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m.
Box Office: 866-811-4111 or online at www.ootbtc.com
$20 Adults $15 Students/Seniors (requested donation)
Running time approximately one hour 45 minutes

Having a mother is an experience we all share so there’s something for everyone to relate to in “The Maternal Instinct”, currently playing at the Boston Playwrights’ Theater. Making a choice to have a baby seems contemporary enough. All the more interesting if the choice is being made by two lesbians on very different career paths and who were influenced by two very different mothers. Add to this an unlikely love triangle, serio-comic debates about the method of insemination, plus a chance encounter with a homeless person on a park bench and you have the ingredients for the play’s subtitle: A glimpse of the American psyche as defined by the 21st century.

The acting is spirited, the set simple, and the pacing swift. The dialogue is distractingly articulate, often sounding like the things you wish you had said during a conflict with someone you love rather than the incoherent shards of emoting you actually produced. It sacrifices depth for speed but it’s fun to listen in as lines referring to the mystery of why we choose our mates, how we identify ourselves with our work, and the hereditary grip of addictions go hurtling by.

Boston actors Rena Baskin, Stephen Cooper, Alisha Jansky, Elise Manning, and Karen Woodward Massey squeeze all the juice they can from their roles. The triangle of the two women (Jansky as Sarah and Woodward Massey as Lillian) and Fred (Stephan Cooper) seems credible. Fred, engaging and earnest, is an unwitting anchor keeping both Sarah and Lillian from being unmoored by their dissimilar needs. It’s harder to fathom the relationship between Sarah and Lillian but how much less complicated are they from many of the couples we know, let alone our own relationships? The lines that emotionally wounded Lillian rains down on Sarah are the shock and awe version of lovers in conflict.

Photo: Sarah and Fred debate methods of insemination over glasses of warm champagne

Director Melissa J. Wentworth builds the story through a series of short vignettes in which the individual actors address the audience directly or play off each other as an ensemble. It’s a bit of dramatic shorthand but it does the job of introducing the maternal instinct that unexpectedly seizes fortyish Sarah with a back-story that reveals Lillian’s experience with her own mother that has both scarred and scared her. Lorann West’s set and P.J. Strachman’s lighting designs are spare and efficient.

The play’s program notes offer an amazing look at the way a writing exercise might evolve into a drama. In a playwrighting class at Boston University, 2005 graduate Monica Bauer was asked to “go out and write down an exchange between two people you overhear in a public place.” Bauer made her way to Copley Square in Boston and witnessed a homeless man who would only say “ouch, ” and a well-dressed man who walked by and asked, “What’s the matter?”

Bauer, encouraged by her mentors, shaped the exercise into a ten-minute play, then a one-act play and to the present ninety-minute play in two acts. By the time the homeless person appears on stage, the audience is wondering how this little vignette will fit into the grand scheme of things. It turns out a little far-fetched but strangely touching. The ending that ensues is abrupt but one is left with a glimmer of hope for what appeared to be a relationship that had gone over the cliff. The play may be a work in progress but the three principal actors make the trip as interesting as the destination.

The Boston Playwrights Theater is another of the small theaters bubbling in the crucible of the Boston theater scene. It is the home of The Boston University Graduate Playwriting Program that was founded in 1981 by Derek Walcott. It’s a fitting venue for plays like the Maternal Instinct to be delivered to the public (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).

Production notes:
Maternal Instinct is an Actors’ Equity Association Presentation, in collaboration with Out of the Blue Theater Company (www.ootbtc.com), The Boston Playwrights’ Theater (www.bu.edu), and Pulse Media (www.pulse-media.com).