Master Tapper Jared Grimes in 'Cotton Club Parade'

‘Cotton Club Parade’ brings back musical history 

By Valerie Gladstone

Cotton Club Parade opens with the robust Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars, directed by Daryl Waters, swinging into “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” offering a tantalizing taste of what’s to come.

Composed by Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen and Jimmy McHugh, the music sets the scene for a rollicking, sexy, funny and joyful recreation in song, dance and novelty acts of the legendary Harlem club where Ellington perfected his style in the ’20s and ’30s. Conceived by City Center’s Encores! artistic director Jack Viertel and Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, whose numerous credits include Chaplin, the 90-minute show returns to  City Center from Nov. 14 to 18, after a hugely successful debut last winter.

When Viertel and Marsalis began working on the inaugural collaboration of Jazz at Lincoln Center and Encores! in the spring of 2011, Marsalis liked the idea of starting off with Ellington. “Wynton calls him the font of everything that he’s done,” Viertel said recently. And what better way to celebrate him than at the Cotton Club, they agreed, where he perfected his array of styles between 1927 and 1931.

“There was entertainment at the club of an elegance no one had seen before,” Viertel says. Line-ups would feature greats like Bessie Smith, the Nicholas Brothers and Lena Horne. Hitting its zenith during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, it thrived in a neighborhood bursting with writers, artists, musicians, playwrights and fiery politicians; a period when Langston Hughes celebrated blacks’ history and gifts in his poetry.

But neither he nor Marsalis would ignore the Cotton Club’s racist policy of headlining blacks, yet not allowing them entry. That is at least until Ellington made such a fuss about it that the rules were eased. “We didn’t want to be overtly political,” says Viertel. “We felt in the very beauty and artistry of the performers, in their self-respect, that we would convey the atmosphere of the time. You can be sure that Wynton wouldn’t have allowed anything patronizing.”

They created a link between past and present through their choice of performers. Viertel gives Carlyle and Marsalis credit for choosing 25 singers and dancers of incomparable individuality and talent. Master tapper Jared Grimes, singers Adriane Lenox, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Amber Riley and all the others each have their moments in the spotlight. No one will forget Floyd’s crooning Ellington’s “Creole Love Call.” “When I talked over my interpretation with Daryl and Wynton,” Floyd says, “I said I thought I should sound like an angel. They thought I should sound like a sexy angel. There are no words, so I just make musical sounds. I do it differently every night – sometimes sad, sometimes fun and flirty. But Ellington’s music is so classic, no matter what you do, everyone relates to it.”

That’s what Carlyle likes about working with Floyd and other members of the cast. “We selected people who are innately musical,” he says, “who can translate music through their bodies. I’m using them like instruments. They have to get what the Cotton Club was all about, how very special it really was. Its time is lost to us now. We’ve all done our period research and checked out performers from the club on YouTube. But we weren’t going to do something old and dusty. For 90 fleeting minutes, we want the audience to experience what the Cotton Club was all about as if it were today.”

From CityArts

BY VALERIE GLADSTONE

When Alonzo King established LINES Ballet in 1982 in San Francisco, few believed he could maintain a new company in the city where the San Francisco Ballet had long captured the area’s ballet audience. Moreover, King did not conform to the typical ballet artistic director—he grew up in Santa Barbara in a distinguished family of movers and shakers in the African American community, trained at both the school of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and American Ballet Theater and performed with Dance Theater of Harlem. Even more unlikely, he wanted to start his venture on the West rather than the East Coast.

Quickly, he proved all the doubters wrong.

Today, King is one of the top choreographers in classical contemporary dance, with a wide-ranging repertory that includes collaborations with numerous international composers, musicians and visual artists, including China’s Shaolin monks, actor Danny Glover and jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. Plus, the company has an enviable tour schedule and a vibrant school.

It has been featured at the Venice Biennale, the Edinburgh Festival, Montpellier Danse and the Holland Dance Festival, and King has been commissioned by the Swedish Royal Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, The Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hong Kong Ballet and North Carolina Dance Theatre, among others.

Asked the secret of his success, King says, “I try to choreograph beautiful works that resonate with universal truths.”

In LINES Ballet’s upcoming season at The Joyce Theater May 8-13, King’s choreographic gifts and widely heralded dancers will be on display in a program including Scheherazade, commissioned by the Monaco Dance Forum to inaugurate the centenary of the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo and set to a new score by tabla master Zakir Hussain after Rimsky-Korsakov, and Resin, an exploration of Sephardic music with songs and field recordings from Yemen, Turkey, Morocco and Spain.

A true scholar of the world’s cultures and music, King mines relationships between diverse groups of people, bringing them subtly to light in works like those that will be presented at The Joyce Theater. The character of Scheherazade particularly fascinated him. He explains that she had to convince the ruler not to kill her and save her sisters by healing him with her voice.

“It wasn’t simply her stories,” he says, “but her voice. It transported him. Your voice is the key to who you are. I had to show this through movement, how her lovingness transformed him. In a sense, she represents the divine mother.”

While he likes the Rimsky-Korsakov score, he also thrives on working with living composers, and so asked Hussain for a new score. “It’s a partnership when I collaborate with a composer, just as choreographing is a partnership with my dancers. Artists are givers. They inspire me,” King explains.

Dancer David Harvey joined LINES five years ago. “Alonzo sees endless possibilities in dance and his dancers,” he says. “It makes it challenging but also rewarding—you never reach the point where you are finished.

“He’s never abandoned ballet; he’s committed to fulfilling its potential. He’s a purist in the best sense—no flash, no glitter, just honest and courageous dance.”

The Barcelona Ballet company in Pálpito. Photo by Manuel de los Galanes.

By Valerie Gladstone

Corella’s Barcelona Ballet Fulfills a Dream

Many great ballet dancers dream of starting their own companies, though few get the opportunity. Even as he performed with American Ballet Theater, Angel Corella was plotting to establish a ballet company in his native Spain.

Unlike most European countries, Spain had never been able to sustain a first-rate ballet troupe and ballet school, forcing Spanish dancers who wanted a career in ballet to leave home to make their names. “Even though many of us have loved performing with the great companies of the world,” he says recently, “we miss Spain and bringing the art to our people.”

Corella went about the formidable task with determination, first establishing a foundation to support classical ballet in 2001 and slowly building enthusiasm among potential supporters and the government. By 2008, he had fulfilled his dream and was awarded a base in a small town near Segovia, not too far from Madrid.

The Corella Ballet started touring Europe—and the United States, most importantly—winning a strong Spanish following almost overnight. But last year, with Spain suffering from a severe economic recession, he lost his original backing. Undaunted, he found support in Barcelona, and in February, the Corella Ballet became the Barcelona Ballet.

To read the full CityArts piece click here.