2013-05-23T15:48:17-04:00 Christopher Atamian http://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=christopher-atamian Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Christopher Atamian Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3081447 2013-04-15T12:31:24-04:00 2013-04-15T19:37:48-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/

The 1992 Los Angeles riots belong to an almost forgotten part of contemporary American history. Though they were deadlier than the '65 Watts riots, claiming over fifty dead and causing billions of dollars in damage, they have more or less faded into our collective unconscious. No major film -- Hollywood or otherwise -- has emerged to claim the tragic events which officially lasted an entire five days -- from April 29th to May 4th. Little has been written to attempt to come to terms with the complex emotions and tensions that erupted into open racial and class conflict one fateful night when the brutal videotaped beating of Rodney King by white policemen unleashed a veritable hell of hatred and fire onto Los Angeles--until Aris Janigian's This Angelic Land, that is.

Janigian's perceptive and sometimes gripping novel brings together some of LA's many tribes -- African-American, WASP, Korean, Armenian, Jewish -- into an emotional and intellectual conflagration that mirrors the burning and looting that the city suffered. Like some concrete carcass laid bare no one -- not police or armed shop owner or concerned citizen -- seems capable of saving the City of Angels from its dire fate in what the novel aptly terms a Korean Kristallnacht. Janigian, the talented author of two previous novels Bloodvine and Riverbig, recounts the events through multiple lenses, but mainly through the eyes of narrator Eric Derderian who lives in New York City and his 27 year-old Angeleno brother Adam. The Derderians are refugees twice over, having settled in Lebanon after the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 and once again fled the carnage of the Lebanese Civil War to settle in LA:

"My name is Eric Derderian. My family were refugees from the Lebanese Civil War, and yes there was dark irony in the fact that they were now reliving the horrors we had crossed half the world to escape. Yes, I worried about them, but alongside the worry, I confess was a vague satisfaction in watching LA get exactly what it deserved for the very reasons I had left it." (p7)

Once in LA the Derderians must start over, not an easy thing for the family patriarch who is no longer young and speaks inflected English at best. Adam studies business at USC but is an artist at heart, someone struggling to find himself amidst the conflicting pull of family expectations, get-rich-quick schemes and a Protestant work ethic gone awry -- much to his surprise, he comes to realize, for example, that his best friend from USC has grown up in a family of alcoholic WASPS that lie around the pool all day drinking and will only support their own in business. In high school, we learn that as an Armenian, Derderian (who now supports himself as a bar owner), also battled wacked-out notions of color and race: "Some figured he was kind of Messican, some wondered whether Arm-onion was A-rab. Say whah, Lebuhn-on where de fuck ih dat? Syria, and Israel, in that general direction, he might've said, if he'd thought it would help." (P46) Derderian has never considered himself white but to the African-Americans he encounters he is just another cracker until he earns their respect by matching their verbal agility with a pun of his own, achieving a type of Pax Ethnicana:

"Lebah-on, huh?
"That's where the war was man, being Armenian in Lebanon is like being black in America.
"Armainyun.
"Exactly; Armain-yun. When you hear it you think, OUR MAIN MAN. Get it?!" He spread his arms out. It was an all-in absurdist wager ... Suddenly they had smiles on their faces, and their heads began to bob like dashboard dogs. 'Awright den. Ah main man. U coo.'" (p47)

Written partly as a third-person account and partly from a first-person perspective, This Angelic Land also intercuts re-imagined dialogue from television reports of the events. It's a bizarre feeling for the Derderians and others spread about who actually watch the city simultaneously burn right before their very eyes and on television, as if video confirmation of the events were necessary. Janigian cleverly reproduces the type of staid, meaningless dialogue that we have come to expect from TV. Here are news anchors Tim and Trish:

TIM
Disturbing, very disturbing.

TRISH
(contemplating the sign [BLACK OWNED])
It is.

TIM
Very, but... in a way... in a way, we can understand." (p97)

Janigian's prose hits just the right spot: it is not overly-realistic, and although he experiments with linguistic juxtapositions, regionalisms and levels of language, he never goes as far as some contemporary writers whose prose is so abstruse that the story itself loses all interest. This Angelic Land makes a sensible contribution to contemporary American letters on its way to sparing no one in its wake. One of its main characters, though, offers a message of hope in the Prologue: "At the heart of a story, the Kurd told me, there should be love--a man and woman, or friends, two people, anyway, who, amid the destruction, find in each other what may be worth dying for, what may even require it. As the city burns, imagine them at the kitchen table with cups of coffee, an atom of intimacy in a galaxy of waste... certain that if such goodness between two people were possible then all was not lost, even if it might all be destroyed." (P1)

Adam finds his one refuge amidst this violence and galaxy of Hollywood waste thanks to a wise old professor, a Jewish homosexual improbably named The Wizard who gives Adam a room in his house on the hills, to which our Derderian retreats whenever possible. The Wizard, to my mind, is the one character who rings a bit false in an otherwise nearly flawless novel: born on a Midwestern farm and partly self-educated, he dispenses his brand of all-knowing wisdom with a type of haughty detachment that makes him hard to empathize with. The Wizard, it turns out, has also suffered much in life, his books and intellectual condescension also a refuge from the horrors that he has seen and experienced. And yet, in a life otherwise full of turns and twists, it turns out that even he will not be able to spare his friend and confidant Adam Derderian a most tragic of endings.

This Angelic Land, on West for West Books is available at www.amazon.com]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2905020 2013-03-19T01:14:12-04:00 2013-03-19T13:47:06-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Carte Blanche at the Joyce Theater
March 17th, 2013

I have seen much derivative work in my time, but the presentation by Carte Blanche (the Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance) of Corps de Walk appropriated so many different genres of dance and art that it bordered on shocking. The first fifteen minutes or so seemed both kinetic and promising: the last forty five went absolutely nowhere. Certainly every choreographer at one point or another in his or her career suffers from what in literary terms Harold Bloom has termed the anxiety of influence--but here anxiety (and there was plenty of it in) crossed the line into artistic pastiche and intellectual dishonesty. Why Carte Blanche enlisted the services of Sharon Eyal and Gai Bachar, middling choreographers at best, remains a mystery.

The twelve dancers came out on stage with shellacked white hair, wearing white body suits and powdered white faces. The only hint of color in this visual albino fest emanated from the piercing blue contact lenses that made them look part-human part-animal, alien at first, alienating in the long run. For the better part of an uninterrupted hour of prancing and dancing, the performers mixed syncopated arm and leg movements with elements of contemporary dance, ballet and street languages such as voguing and regular old nightclub dancing. Speaking of clubbing, the press materials describe DJ Ori Lichtik as world-famous; perhaps so, but more compelling mixes could be heard at Danceteria in the 1980's than this migraine-inducing mix of Einstürzende Neubauten, David Byrne and Debussy. For the better part of an hour I felt like I was trapped inside a parody of a Devo video that had been intercut with Madonna and Lady Gaga. The dancers certainly gave it their all--one could tell they were straining and re-straining themselves in every possible different direction--but more original choreography could be seen at any weekend Harlem House event twenty years ago. The dancers also lacked extension in certain positions and consistency, but the moves themselves were so prosaic at times, it was hard to know whether to blame performer or choreographer. In one such recurring move, the twelve performers each quickly extended their legs backwards one after another while bending forward at 90 degree angles in a long row: it's a jazzy enough move but were we at The Joyce or watching the Rockettes?




Eyal and Behar both studied under Ohad Naharin at Batsheva, Israel's premiere contemporary dance company, and elements of Naharin's exciting, tensile choreography also appeared everywhere tonight but without any of the intellectualism or thought that makes the latter a powerful choreographer. It was just boring choreography masquerading as high art. At times the dancers retreated closely together in various poses and geometric configurations in what seemed like what, some sort of half-baked comment on sexual tension and violence? At others, they marched in place and across the stage--but again to what effect and for what reason? The choreographic statement avers that Corps de Walk "concentrates on the corps de ballet, traditionally the dancers who form the backdrop behind the ballerina" but this is hardly an interesting theme--in fact it is not much of a theme at all. At one point one of the female dancers marched forward towards the audience, her breasts jiggling distractedly up and down--thankfully the men all seemed to be wearing dance belts!

Carte Blanche turned out to be lily white indeed on this particular night, the physical whiteness mirrored in the harsh lighting as well. After a while, one wanted to all twelve of them to head south to the Riviera or hop into a tanning booth and get some color. I have never seen Carte Blanche before--but much about Nordic culture fascinates me, from its sense of democratic élan to its sometimes repressed emotional states. It is difficult to understand why the company chose to present this particular piece to a New York audience given everything that has taken place in Scandinavia of late, or why the Joyce chose to close its wonderful "Ice Hot: A Nordic Dance Festival" with this particular act. The 2011 Anders Breivik shootings, Moslem immigration--for God's sake the polar ice caps melting would have been more interesting. In the end, it seems that the choreographers thought they had carte blanche to mix in any elements of modern art with snippets of every conceivable existing form of movement: think Marina Abramovic, even white George Segal sculptures came to mind, as did the advanced Nox people on Stargate. Apart from a few onlookers who were genuinely bored most of the audience didn't seem to mind--in fact they loved the performance. Perhaps inured to good choreography by shows such as Dancing with the Stars and You Think You Can Dance, they mostly jived to the endlessly pulsating beat and non-stop movement on stage. Silence, one wanted to scream, can sometimes be golden.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2587352 2013-02-04T17:39:00-05:00 2013-04-06T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Keep the Lights On on DVD this weekend and have been trying to put into words what exactly bothered me so much about this seemingly accomplished film, which takes the viewer into one corner of the drug-soaked world of late '90s gay Chelsea. You have to at least give the lead character Erik (Thure Lindhardt) -- a Danish documentary filmmaker -- some credit for sticking with his boyfriend for so long. Or maybe not. The tall, wan, pretty Paul (Zachary Booth) after all is an unrepentant crack addict who relapses in grand fashion and doesn't seem to truly express any remorse -- he goes through the motions of attending rehab but the viewer doesn't quite believe in his sincerity (at least I didn't, call me fickle). And if we are to judge from a midnight phone sex episode, Paul at least occasionally cheats on Erik (and vice-versa, if one-night phone hook ups count as cheating in this world, I am not sure). In spite of the fact that Paul is a bright fellow and a lawyer working for a leading publishing house, he seems about as emotionally and intellectually deep as a puddle of water. He can be snarky and funny, and even romantic at times, but he never seems very invested in his opinions or feelings. Erik is so insecure and needy (and apparently so head over heels in love with Paul) that he simply will not leave him, no matter how much crack Paul ingests and how many missed dates his binging leads to.

It is almost besides the point (or is it?) that this semi-autobiographical film is apparently based on the director's own real-life relationship with the literary agent Bill Clegg, who famously went on a $70,000 two-month crack and call-boy binge in some of New York's tonier hotels. One would have more empathy for Erik if one did not suspect that his attraction to Paul is largely based on the type of superficial surface attraction that men -- straight or gay -- are often accused of engaging in. In Hollywood films, one expects a certain slavishness to otherworldly good looks when casting a film -- in an indie film of this nature, it seems almost gratuitous: Booth is ethereal, almost unbearably pretty and fawn-like. There is also something almost dishonest about Paul's feigned innocence in the way that he presents himself. We know that Erik and Paul spend time together -- much of it in bed -- but in the end they seem to not have all that much in common, emotionally or otherwise. Paul seems to be the type of guy/gay who (like Mr. Clegg in real life) is given the kind of second chances that most mere mortals can only dream of -- huge advances on books, jobs in prestige firms and of course boyfriends who keep coming back for more (Do I sound bitter? Sue me.)

To its credit, Keep the Lights On is beautifully shot and has well-paced. It has a languid feel to it which is appealing at first, but it lacks the humor or grit of say Sid and Nancy (now there's a good drug-love pic) or the humor of Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right. A deeper exploration of the emotional bonds that link Erik to Paul (not to mention the nefarious effects of crack on most users) might have yielded a film that goes far beyond its appeal to mainly LGBT audiences. And yet there is something compelling and recognizably human in both the characters' behavior, for neither can stop himself from indulging in his respective, self-destructive addiction. And as the film slowly comes to an end, the viewer can't help but wonder what he would do if he were in either of the their places.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2562306 2013-01-31T17:01:45-05:00 2013-04-02T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Kristina Reyes triumphed in the annual Shakespeare speech competition sponsored by the English Speaking Union. Among the many interesting facts about Ms. Reyes is that she was a student at Preston High School, an all-girls Catholic school in the Bronx. Her medley of speeches included her nuanced, perfectly-cadenced delivery as Viola from Twelfth Night. In the end, she triumphed over representatives from every other high school in New York, including finalists from well-known schools such as Riverdale, Packer Collegiate and Trinity. (Not a single student from one of the city's eight specialized public schools even made the finals). Going back to the mid-19th century, Catholic schools have educated tens of millions of Americans, including many of the nation's most successful citizens, all the way down to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who attended Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx.

Reyes' outstanding result underscores the tragic nature of the New York Diocese's announcement last week that it will soon close another 24 schools, including such neighborhood standouts as Holy Cross in Hell's Kitchen and Our Lady of Angels in the Knightsbridge section of the Bronx. The New York Diocese likes to describe itself as "cash-strapped" -- but this is barely believable given the fact that it makes a hefty income just from voluntary donations during mass and the fact that it established a Diocesan Fund some years back specifically in order to raise money for its parish schools. (Not to mention a voluntary church tithe in certain places of 5 percent.) Worse yet, Diocesan representatives like to imply that individual schools are to blame for their own mismanaged funds, and while this may be partly true, the church itself rarely accepts responsibility for the continued debacle of school closings that it is witnessing in every diocese around the country.

From 2003 to 2009, it is estimated that nationwide the Catholic Church spent over one billion dollars in settlements in cases of priests who sexually exploited, abused and raped thousands of young boys across the country. In the meantime, this same Catholic Church cannot find a few million dollars to keep the 200 or so schools in its second largest parish, New York City, afloat -- a parish, mind you, where literally millions of Latino parents, not to mention others, would kill to send their children to any one of their institutions of learning.

Watching Archbishop Dolan squirm on television as he states that "he wouldn't be here if it weren't for Catholic education," and his slick PR representative Joseph Zwilling explain that the latest round of closures is part of their "master plan" for catholic schools is nothing short of sickening. What about the Diocese's own continued ineptitude in managing its own schools? In today's highly competitive education market the Church needs to snap out of it and, if anything, improve the academic quality and financial management of its parish schools, instead of closing them down. Pointing a finger at local nuns and priests -- none of whom have ever claimed to be fund raising experts -- is beneath contempt.

Secrecy -- another Church specialty -- has always reigned inside even its most hallowed institutions, but it cannot continue to do so. In the case of Catholic schools, the Church should first publish this so-called "master plan" for all to see, down to how they intend to spend every last nickel. Then the Church should re-open schools like Holy Cross which they obviously -- denials to the contrary -- hope to sell off in order to make huge real estate killings. (43rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues is now prime real estate -- it was anything but when the school opened decades ago.) And when the Church finally begins to let priests marry, and turn in sexual offender priests rather than defending or re-settling them elsewhere -- then maybe the lawsuits will stop coming in with such blinding rapidity. Then Archibishop Dolan can say the required number of mea culpas and perform a few thousand of Hail Marys to make up for the the turmoil that he caused thousands of Catholic families by closing their parish schools. And then he and his minions can finally get on with one its most historically important task: properly educating the city's poor and middle class youth.

P.S. I am all too conscious of the witticism "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic." In spite of this somewhat unpleasant truism, I now practice Buddhist meditation while trying to recognize the good the Church does and decrying the bad.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2587216 2013-01-31T15:35:41-05:00 2013-04-02T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Holy Motors that I hesitate before proffering any type of criticism about this respected French director's latest effort. Holy Motors is an extraordinary acting tour de force, a filmic reverie whose real topic is film history and the film medium itself -- in this sense it is wholly self-referential. And it is true that the film is in fact so seamlessly put together and brilliantly acted by both its leads -- Denis Lavant and Edith Scob -- that one can almost forgive the fact that it is also achingly boring and pretentious. As I watched it in the theater with a few hundred seemingly engrossed spectators, I began to understand what some of the dazed English majors felt like in college when attending lectures in the comp lit department on Deconstruction and the work of Jacques Derrida. The theory and comp lit majors sat mesmerized while the equally bright English majors listened on, to quote another film's title, simply dazed and confused.

The plot is simple enough. It is morning in a distant Parisian banlieue where a certain Monsieur Oscar (Lavant) -- a wealthy businessman who lives in a large modernist house -- readies for a day of work. Oscar says goodbye to his loving family and then spends the rest of the film driving around in a black stretch limo accompanied by his tall and mannish driver/assistant Céline (Scob). Along the way, Céline reads out a series of assignments -- acting directives which Mr. O. then enacts with remarkable aplomb. In the course of almost two hours (it feels more like three or four), he transforms himself into a panoply of roles -- a beggar, a 3-D live gamer/combatant, a woman, a concerned if slightly insane parent, a dying bourgeois and many more. In all of these roles, Lavant delivers bravura performances. The film's high point may well be the scene in a cemetery where, transformed into a homeless person of some type, he suddenly bites off the nose of an American photographer's assistant. The assistant embodies a stereotype that some who have worked in Paris in a particular milieu may recognize -- a cloyingly efficient young lass with a grating American accent when she speaks French who is perhaps just a bit too proud of both her efficiency and the job that she has somehow nabbed for herself in the City of Light. You can't help feeling at first that she almost deserves having her nose bitten off, until you realize how terrible what has just transpired onscreen really is --part horror, part humor.







Watching Lavant's thespian prestidigitations onscreen is indeed impressive, and Holy Motors may well go down as one of the most respected French films of the year. In spite of all of its many great qualities though, it is essentially composed of skits that are not all that satisfying to watch after a while -- they are after all, simply takes on classic film tropes. As a general rule I am a huge fan of "European film" and I prefer slow things to fast ones (slow films, slow food) but Holy Motors is just a bit too slow, even for my taste. Others, however, may find it just simply brilliant: last I checked yesterday, Holy Motors was still running downtown at the IFC center.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2562371 2013-01-31T14:12:36-05:00 2013-04-02T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ shocked by the attacks in the past few weeks that have been perpetrated in the Samatya neighborhood of Istanbul on elderly Armenian women, one of them as she was on her way to church. Is this the increasingly tolerant Turkey that we keep reading about in the press and in white papers at conferences around the world? Granted, this may be the work of one isolated crazed killer; its effects are nonetheless chilling.

Although the Turkish police has apparently sent countless plainclothes officers to parole the Samatya area, not enough has been done to decry these cowardly attacks or to publicize them in the Turkish press -- the Armenian-Turkish publication Agos notwithstanding. What kind of a coward attacks eighty- and ninety-year-old women on their way to church, stabbing them to death in one case and beating another senseless in the other? Coming as this does on the heels of the sixth anniversary of Turkish-Amenian journalist and human rights activist Hrant Dink's assassination in front of Agos headquarters, these attacks are particularly alarming. And given the history of subjugation and persecution that Christians faced during the Ottoman Empire and the upcoming 100th memorial of the Armenian genocide of 1915 -- which also saw the annihilation of Turkey's Assyrians and Pontic Greek populations -- these aggressions are particularly shameless. The Armenian community of Istanbul, called Bolsahays in Armenian, are understandably alarmed and cowed. As a result they have stayed largely silent about these latest attacks on their community.

But they shouldn't stay silent. The Bolsahays must not let the forces of xenophobia and hatred win out. They should form neighborhood watches and escort their elderly to and from market and church if necessary. Along with the equally persecuted Alevi and Kurdish minorities, they must make their voices heard as much as they can in official and unofficial Turkish channels and become agents of change. Easy to say, writing from the safety of the Upper West Side, some might snicker. But the alternative is to appear defenseless and to invite more attacks.

I happen to be a great fan of Turkish culture and the Turkish language, and a true lover of Istanbul, once one of the world's great cosmopolitan cities. My Turkish friends always encourage me to visit, to spend time, even to come back and live in Turkey as my ancestors once did. But I need more than just these righteous few and their welcome encouragement in order to believe that there exists a safe haven in Turkey for people such as myself, descendants of Armenian genocide victims deported form their homes in Shabin-Karahisar and Adiyaman and a myriad of other villages into the Syrian desert. I need -- the entire world needs -- for Turks to rise up en masse and say enough! No more violence against our Christian, Kurdish or Alevi minorities. We need the Turkish government to come clean and make reparations for 1915 and we need their ongoing campaign of hatred -- in Turkish schoolbooks and on TV and in the written press -- to end, once and for all. Then Turkey can claim its rightful place as a great country and become cosmopolitan and tolerant, one fully cognizant of the fact that it is a country -- like the United States -- in fact made up of a mosaic of interwoven and beautifully different yet similar ethnicities and religions. It has been almost 100 years since the Armenians of Anatolia disappeared into a haze of brutal pillage and destruction. Turkey can transform itself from a denialist state into a beacon of hope for the Middle East, but it must start now and act quickly. There can be no more dithering. Time is of the essence.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2547838 2013-01-29T10:46:05-05:00 2013-03-31T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Mazurkas, set to music by Frédéric Chopin. These turned out to be as sweet, lyrical, and perfectly thought-out an adaptation of a traditional dance form as I have seen by any modern choreographer. Limón composed this set of dances after a 1957 trip to Poland as an homage to the Polish people who at the time were living under communist dominion. Ten dances in all, each one lovelier than the next. The work has been out of repertory for some 20 years, so it was a particular treat to see them so ably performed after such a long hiatus. The entire ensemble deserves praise for its light-footed and precise renditions, though Kathryn Alter and Belinda Mcguire in particular seemed to positively glow as they delivered their performances.



Set to music by Henry Purcell, The Moor's Pavane (subtitled "Variations on a Theme of Othello") provides a stunning example of how dance can tell a narrative story as well as any other artistic medium. Bringing Shakespeare -- or in this case a Shakespearian theme or conceit -- to life onstage without dialogue is a tall challenge indeed and rarely has it been done in recent memory with such subtlety and aplomb. Raphaël Boumaïla as the Moor (Othello) perfectly alternates between confident lover and jealous husband roles, while Dante Puleio delivers a bravado performance as his friend (Iago): at one point he literally snakes around Boumaïla's body as he whispers his cabalistic untruths into the all too believing Moor's ears. Roxane D'Orleans Juste as the trusting Moor's wife (Desdemona) and Kristen Foote as the Moor's friend's wife (Emilia) also delivered stellar performances. The handling of the handkerchief motif in particular was wonderfully executed as it floated from one dancer to another like so much semiotic poison. The pavane itself, a delicate high renaissance art form, was danced with grace and mastery by all four performers.

The last piece of the evening Come with Me by choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras was an unfortunate choice. This combination of classical, jazz and latin dance ensemble piece, set to music by Paquito D'Rivera, simply went on for too long. One can see the logic in choosing an airy, breezy counterpart to the pavane in particular. And although there were some fine elements to the dance, including some lovely puppet-like release movements and wonderful leg/lower body work, it possessed too much of a gaudy cha-cha-cha feeling -- in comparison to the artistic delivery of the other pieces that night, it possessed an almost cheap cabaret feel at times. As the Martha Graham Company has also found out in recent years, finding talent that measures up to its namesake isn't always easy, and perhaps that isn't a fair comparison. With some judicious editing and bit more complex movement, Come with Me might have lived up to this task.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2546236 2013-01-28T11:21:45-05:00 2013-03-30T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/

Photo by Alexis Silver


A strain of majestic Teutonic froideur runs through much of Rübsam's work -- the powerful linear leaps and thrusts, the underground electronic music of DAF and other Mitteleuropasiche bands. But the choreographer also presents another side of German culture, the cultured world of Heine and Goethe, Schumann and Brahms that often goes overlooked in facile generalizations that Americans too often engage in. Classically trained at the Hamburg Ballet before capping off his training at the more experimental Juilliard School in New York, Rübsam's early work as part of the Jose Limón Company is apparent in the eye-pleasing rounded movements and the attention to facial gestures. This is set off, however, by an equal passion for jagged, rugged movement reminiscent of more experimental choreographers. This constitutes just another fascinating duality in one of our more intellectual downtown choreographers.

Rübsam seems unable to resist a good pun, visual or otherwise: in Petit Pas (2003), he plays on the Russian choreographer Petitpas' name, the steps that his dancers take onstage, as well as the "small step for man" that American astronaut Neil Armstrong took when he stepped onto the moon in 1969. Set to music by Laibach, the piece begins with the dancers lying flat on the ground, their legs and arms raised in slow flight. But soon, they rise up and surprise! they are on pointe. As befitting a choreographer so concerned with social justice, the piece ends with the voice of Gloria Steinem commenting on the need for social equality.

Interestingly enough, the highlight of the evening may have been a solo performed by the waifish gamin Oisín Monaghan, who delivered a sensitively-rendered interpretation of "Göttingen," set to the 1967 hit of the same name by French cabaret singer Barbara. The BBC recently named this now long-forgotten classic one of the "songs that changed the world." Barbara, a French Jew who was pursued by the Nazis during WWII, developed a postwar love affair with the German city of Göttingen. In her song of the same name, she warns of the return of hatred and war and repeats that "children in Paris and Göttingen are all the same." Göttingen the song has been credited with bringing the post war French and Germans together after close to a century of mutual distrust. In the SENSEDANCE performance, Monaghan was wonderfully light on his feet as he twirled, moved his arms right and left and somehow captured the essence of this most beautiful of peace songs.

The first half of the performance was rounded out by the world premiere of "Obsession/Calm" to music by Ernest Bloch, "Charon," a miniature solo excerpted from the 2008 Amaranthine Road, and the pulsating, excitingly rendered Half-Life which refers back to nuclear decay and the Japanese power plant accident of 2011.

Post-intermission was entirely taken up by a set of pieces performed to Brahms lieder. Rübsam is known as a fusion choreographer, one who mixes contemporary, pointe ballet and jazz vocabularies, depending on the piece and sometimes even within the same creation. The lieder were all performed with verve, and at times Rübsam partook in onstage farce and clowning (slapping his rear, mugging for the camera) that lent humor to the proceedings. This did not quite match the flow and inventiveness of the evening's first pieces. Choreographing to a great composer such as Brahms requires remarkable creative aplomb. Mark Morris, for example, delivers a powerful, ground shaking interpretation of the German master in his Love Song Waltzes, but he is a more established choreographer and has a larger, more experienced cast of dancers. Still, O Schöne Nacht and Wechsellied zum Tanz -- both ensemble pieces -- impressed most.

Overall it was a fine afternoon of dance, one that showed off to good effect Rübsam's tenacity and creative flair and the more than credible efforts by a diverse and enthusiastic group of performers who included standouts Matt Van and Uthman Ebrahim.


Photo by Julie Lemberger]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2530682 2013-01-24T13:00:25-05:00 2013-03-26T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ RescYou (needlessly subtitled Stranded in a Life Raft in a Vast Ocean Beyond Time) starts off prosaically with the two dancers standing still at each other's side before they begin to walk and then sprint around in a circle surrounding the raft. The piece takes full advantage of Judson Memorial Church's soaring architecture and its rounded arches and stunning bay window, which parallel the raft's circular shape, in a subtle visual mise en abyme or geometric play that even the most exacting Inca architect would admire.

Having attended Juilliard and NYU respectively, Carlye and Sorensen's technique is steeped in the modernist styles still being taught in these two hallowed institutions of dance: truncated arm and leg movements, half lifts, counterclockwise arm movements and sometimes odd-looking leg extensions abound. Each movement they perform, however, is done with precision down to the stress in their shoulders and their often purposefully bent limbs. Artists in Residence at Judson Church since April 2011, the two have performed with reputable companies: she with Jonah Bokaer, Aszure & Artists and Keigwin & Company; he with the Lucinda Childs Company, John Jasperse Company and Twyla Tharp.

They are a fun duo to watch, as they perform (un)dressed in exercise togs of different colors, most notably yellow dayglo unitards and asymmetrical blood-red tops. The two seem fearless as they splash about in the ocean. Finally, after a good half hour spent pursuing and just plain old ignoring each other, they actually butt up against their backsides and begin to really interact, grabbing hold of each other and coming together in various sundry and romantic ways.

It's hard to explain why some contemporary dance pieces bore one to tears while others enchant. RescYou belongs more to the latter category than the former, though the piece begins to feel a little long towards the end of its 50-minute denouement. Part of RescYou 's success lies in what its own press release accurately terms "flawless execution," which includes a well-chosen soundtrack comprised of music by The Rachels, Four Tet, Loscil and Klimek. Loud screeching noise -- think John Cage on crack -- gives way to pleasant background music, bells jingling, then a dark thundering to announce a coming storm. Kudos go to lighting designer Miriam Crowe, technical director Chimmy Gunn and sound designer David Fishel: as with the movement itself nothing about these various elements is particularly revolutionary or innovative, but every element fits in just right to produce a well-executed whole that exceeds the sum of its creative parts.

I am pretty sure that if I were stuck on a raft at sea with a big strapping redhead like John Sorensen-Jolink, I would err on the side of caution and not rock the boat, so to speak. As wave after wave of movement unfurls, you want to scream out: steady Freddy, you're in the middle of the ocean on a dicey piece of plastic technology, for Pete's sake! And the dancers seem to read your mind. As the music winds down ("tick tock, tick tock) and the lights dim, the performers also begin to slow. But even that most subtle of movement strategies -- immobility -- may be all for naught: as the piece ends, the raft slowly deflates until nothing but a crushed plastic tarpaulin remains. Have they or the audience been rescued? Or was the point of the exercise the exercise itself? Stay tuned for answers to these fascinating questions and others, brought to you by the performance team of Eckert+ SorensenJolink.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2523935 2013-01-23T14:56:10-05:00 2013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Chris Atamian's Book of the Month: Richard Soghoian's Mind the Gap!

I just finished a short, fascinating book written by Richard Soghoian called Mind the Gap which carries the rather lengthy but illustrative subtitle: "An Insider's Irreverent Look at Private School Finances and Management-with a Lesson for Government and Industry, Too!" I don't usually read books on management because they tend to be repetitive and either state the obvious or go into schemes so unrelated to the real world that you wonder why they aren't listed as fiction. Soghoian, however, is the highly respected Headmaster at Columbia Grammar and Prep School (CGPS), an institution which he more or less single-handedly pulled out of near receivership and returned to its former glory. For those not familiar with the New York prep school scene, CGPS was founded in 1764 by King's College (today's Columbia University) and for some two hundred years operated as one of the city's most storied educational institutions. Over the centuries it graduated thousands of businesspeople, lawyers, academics, artists and writers, including a Nobel laureate (Murray Gell-Mann), Time-Warner CEO Steve Ross, lyricist Lorenz Hart, writer Herman Melville and more recently actresses such as Ally Sheedy and Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame.

By the 1980s however, when Soghoian took over CGPS after running a small college upstate, the school had -- like much of the neighborhood surrounding it -- devolved into a third-rate type of place with poor facilities and a questionable student body. When I was in grammar school elsewhere in the city, I remember CGPS as a very bohemian place with a strong faculty, but also one where you enrolled if you couldn't hack it at a more rigorous school. Graduates attended mostly small liberal arts colleges not because these were excellent schools -- which many of them were -- but because they couldn't get into Ivy League universities and other comparable institutions across the country. The walls of the school were a'tumbling, metaphorically and figuratively.

Thanks to a sharp eye for business, some lucrative real estate deals and a tried and true philosophy of management, Soghoian achieved remarkable success over a thirty year span: he increased enrollment from 479 to 1251; added eight modern or modernized new buildings to a physical plant now valued at over $200 Million and turned CPGS into a player once again. The school's SAT's scores now exceed 650 on each section and its graduates head off to even the most selective colleges in increasing numbers. Faculty has increased in number from 75 to 302 and CGPS boasts the highest starting salaries for incoming teachers of any independent school in New York City.

Soghoian seems to almost operate in black magic at times, but his formula for success is really quite simple: he avoids any and all forms of deficit spending and he keeps his administration (and attendant administrative costs) as lean as possible. He runs his school on tuition payments alone and any fund raising drives are used only in order to add new facilities such as gyms, swimming pools and auditoriums: he calls this type of management and thinking "future oriented." In an attitude decidedly at odds with most other independent school heads, Soghoian shuns Annual Funds, which he views as marginally ethical and barely legal, as (according to him) they basically exchange tax-free donations for goods and services -- which is officially against the IRS code.

This last argument may seem iffy to some, but his criticism of endowments on the other hand is in fact an unfortunate reality. As even Harvard's CFO will tell you, over time endowments are never large enough. This hit home with me, as I served for a few years on the board of an institute affiliated with a major university in New York City with several endowed funds. One of these endowed funds was made in the 1960s for the then-astronomical sum of $1 million -- when I was on the board of this institute in the early 2000s, it stood at approximately $1.8 million, having weathered the vicissitudes of economics and many a market downturn. In the 1960s at 4 percent (generous on my part) the endowment would have yielded $40,000, enough to cover a professor's salary at the time as well as a few added administrative expenses. For argument's sake today, using the same theoretical percentage return, the endowment with accrued interest would yield about $72,000, far short of the $120,000 or so needed by current standards in order to pay the same professor a competitive salary. This is true of almost all endowments. As time goes by, more funds must be added to it in order to keep pace, no matter how large it is: as Soghoain puts it, endowments are literally financial black holes. As for Annual Funds, he is quick to point out that schools are often less than forthcoming in their campaigns: multiply the famous "tuition-cost gap" they quote by the number of students in a given school and you will see that the annual fund almost never suffices to fill the gap in question (This "gap" represents the stated cost of actually educating a child with all the frills of private schooling minus the tuition money parents pay. At some schools, this gap can exceed $10,000 per student, a remarkable figure.)

To be fair to the many other diligent and more than competent Headmasters operating other prep schools (and public schools) in New York and beyond, some of the accusations that Soghoian levels at them seem a bit excessive, and although he certainly deserves much encomium for having saved one of Gotham's educational jewels, his share of boasting and accusatory barbs do begin to grate at times. I would assume, never having been a Head of School but having served on several boards, that there are many different ways and methodologies for running a school, just as there are different approaches to running a successful business. Other institutions such as Brearley, Collegiate, Horace Mann and a few dozen others in New York City may or may not run on Soghoian's perhaps justifiably reviled deficit spending, but they are certainly more than remarkably successful in their own right. In the end however, I would bet that anyone who takes the time to read Mind the Gap, whether they work in pubic or private schools, business or government (or just out of general interest) will probably walk away with at least a few valid and applicable pointers or reminders that will one day save them a pretty penny. And that is more than most management books can claim, on even the best of days.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2168620 2012-12-04T15:05:46-05:00 2013-02-03T05:12:01-05:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ OntheFloor takes place in the basement of the trendy ACE Hotel on West 29th Street. In the tradition of theater productions such as Sleep No More and The Donkey Show, when guests arrive they are greeted by a gracious hostess, a paying bar and a two-hour performance in which they follow -- and sometimes join -- dancers and actors in a series of adjacent rooms. Taj and her company, The Dance Cartel, are enthusiastic and charismatic to a fault: Energy and exuberance checkmate all else, however, including a more careful attempt at matching choreography to a theme or story. (And no, dance does not necessarily need story, but it helps.)




Mysteriously enough in retrospect, OntheFloor opens up with a mock art auction at the end of which the auctioneer -- who is also a dancer -- is attacked and restrained by what I took to be mock police and the auction is shut down. On a screen behind the auctioneer, the words "What is contemporary dance/Qu'est ce que la danse contemporaine?" appear. Hence Taj mixes elements of Gaga, performance art from the '60s and '70s, and surrealism in this souped up 2012 vision of "social dance." Exit room one, and the audience now moves to a next door space where the über-enthusiastic Taj holds up a camcorder to explain examples of native dance that she has studied on a recent trip to Brazil. She calls attention, for example, to the overly swaying hips and remarkable rhythm of the on-screen performances. This is followed by a series of quick-paced club-land dance numbers in room number three, in which Taj herself participates.

Although these do indeed show the influence of her Brazilian experience, they are more or less choreographically unremarkable. (Which doesn't mean that they are not fun!) The company's press materials state that "Taking note of a dance community that too often suffers from anemia and esotericism, The Dance Cartel seeks to create dances that are vibrant, immersive and often participatory." Fair enough. Much contemporary dance may in fact be anemic and/or overly esoteric, but I am not sure that what The Dance Cartel is presenting in OntheFloor -- so-called "social dance" which thrives on audience participation and an overly facile attempt at deconstructing aspects of modern dance -- yields any more interesting results.

While Taj shines like a bright star throughout, the rest of her dancers are less impressive. And since Taj consciously highlights the link between her choreography and Brazilian dance, one needs to point out that these elements (the overextended hip thrusts, the rounded arm movements, and the "primitive" crazed trance-like state of the dancers) can all be traced back to Africa, whence Brazilian slaves originated before they brought these elements to their dances in the New World -- they are also present in everything from Elvis Presley's swaying hips to entire strands of contemporary dance. That Taj also highlights the issue of what contemporary dance is or isn't reveals itself to be more problematic. It is quite a question for anyone to bite off, after all -- and far more experienced and renowned choreographers (Graham, Cunningham, Forti, Brown) tackled this question over decades of incessant experimentation and intellectual questioning. Taj can only fall short if her answer continues to be the souped-up Afro-Brazilian inspired presentation that she has put together here. Unless of course her borrowing from Gaga, surrealism, the theater of the absurd and other modern movements is meant in a partly ironic mode -- but this was unclear from where I sat/stood the night I attended OntheFloor.

All this being said, OntheFloor is a wonderful night out if one is young and simply looking to watch and perhaps join in on some fast-paced and invigorating dancing -- though after a few numbers, the novelty of even Taj's energy begins to wear thin. Taj, I think, needs to make an important decision in the coming years. If what she wants is commercial success of the MTV and Dancing with the Stars variety, then she is on the right path -- and I don't mean that in a derogatory manner. If, however, she wants to take on serious questions in dance, choreographic, or theatrical history, then she needs to go back to the drawing board and study the history of her craft a bit more. (One would like to underscore that not everything "hi" on the Hi-Lo continuum is pretentious and not everything "lo" unworthy of attention.)

The Dance Cartel's Web site states that OntheFloor is "taking rhythm as a central theme," but that is a pretty loosey goosey creative statement to operate from. And any which way one looks at it, OntheFloor lacks a real through line: adding one couldn't hurt. If I sound overly critical, it is because Taj, a wonderfully lithe androgynous young woman with a shock of hair dyed red, is one of the more effervescent new talents to appear on the scene in quite a while. She has more energy and spunk than a medium-sized comet and she should succeed at whatever she undertakes in the future. This critic, for one, will be patiently waiting for her time to arrive.

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Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/
I

The Limón Dance Company proved once again that a dance troupe can survive the passing of its founder and thrive. Under Carla Maxwell, Limón continues to perform with verve and enthusiasm. In Missa Brevis, all eyes and bodies turn continuously upwards toward heaven and some form of earthly transcendence. Everything about the piece was uplifting, literally and metaphorically. Male dancers held their female counterparts' clenched fists and drew them upward vertically, over their heads. In the Sanctus section of Missa, Kathryn Alter, Roxane D'Orleans Juste and Kristen Foote performed with inner grace and outward power -- they were a pleasure to watch. Then, in a message of human communion, the dancers all came together (Ite, Missa Est) in a dance in the round, then parted again and came together once more, each time more beautiful, each time more transcendent.



The Limón dancers were accompanied by the Simon Bolivar National Youth Choir of Venezuela, which is made up of young men and women from throughout that country. Interestingly, the choir was most impressive during Missa Brevis, which they sang beautifully: in the presence of the dancers, they sounded simply angelic -- some eighty voices raised in unison and cohesion. In the ninety minutes preceding Missa Brevis, they sang without the dancers. A mixture of religious hymns presented under the heading Sacred Lights presented works by Trond Kverno, Randall Thompson, and Penderecki among others. This was followed by a selection of songs from their native Venezuela (header: Venezuela Breeze)-they seemed nervous at first (they are teenagers after all performing perhaps for the first time at Lincoln Center), but even when they settled down they sometimes tried too hard to push their voices rather than let them emerge organically -- they sounded strident rather than harmonious. By night's end and Missa, however, they were right on track!

II

Miro Magloire's New Chamber Ballet has been producing three and four- person ballets in the intimate setting of City Center's 5th floor studio for nine seasons now. In the past I have likened Magloire's spare but balanced choreography to a precious jewelry box--small, charming, each one a unique variation on a theme. And one must judge NCB somewhat differently from a typical dance company, as Magloire's stated goal is to present contemporary music accompanied by dance. In this most recent performance Magloire presented four ballets, two of them set to music by Morton Feldman (Ghost Stories and Glove) and a third (Moments) to another minimalist composer, Salvatore Sciarrino. I must say that I responded tepidly to both these composers: their compositions are purposefully spare but they would benefit from a tempo change or an inserted melody once in a while. Ghost Stories, as performed by Nora Brown, Holly Curran and Katie Gibson, a tale of "murder, revenge and an (un)happy end" was hallmark Magloire: elegant, based on a few set movements that recur throughout, with a semi-abstract storyline. Again, I could not help but wonder how much more powerful this piece could be with a larger stage and a fuller troupe of dancers performing it: same concept, same music, just bigger, livelier. Glove, set at a garden party featured the same lovely movement (Elizabeth Brown, Holly Curran and Kate Gibson) as Ghost Stories: the dancers variously take off a pair of gloves which is then worn by the next dancer etc. If one combined this piece with the last ballet of the night about a letter which circulates among the dancers, Edgar Allen Poe's The Purloined Letter came to mind. Like the Poe story as interpreted by various theorists, these two ballets seemed to be as much about circulating desire and the games this produces, as anything concretely related to the gloves or letters that changed hands constantly.

I can't say that I was swept away by the third ballet Moments, a solo masterfully danced by Katie Gibson on pointe (Magloire's dancers all dance on pointe). To her credit, Miranda Cuckson, a shy but confident presence, played the violin beautifully. With seeming ease she drew out Sciarrino's strangely sibilant hushings, which sounded like odd if beautifully ebbing gusts of wind.

The fourth ballet (The Letter) set to Hayden's Sonata in D Major was the most transcendent, a tribute to the talent of the composer as much as to Magloire who effectively used the tempo changes in the score to craft a fun, lively ballet. The dancers were again accompanied by Cuckson on violin and a luminescent Melody Fader on piano. Fader is equally at home with spare minimalist compositions as she is playing Mozart or Hayden. Fader has been playing intensively around the globe since graduating from Juilliard a few years back. She is a pianist to watch as she is only musically gifted, but possesses a charisma and intelligence that will hopefully take her far.

Magloire certainly succeeded in highlighting some composers that one does not often encounter at the ballet. Yet one somehow felt that after nine years, it is perhaps time for the him to stretch his choreographic talents a bit and break out of his usual comfort zone -- he seems ready to create larger, more important works.




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Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Requiem, (Süssmayr? I vote for Salieri!). Authorship issues aside, it's a thunderous, stunning work that one never tires of hearing, one of the classics that reveals new layers and surprises upon each encounter. So I was curious to see what John-Mark Owen's dance theatrical presentation of the Requiem would be like -- classical or experimental, slow-paced or quick? The answer is: a bit of all these things rolled into one. Owen (who also dances in the piece) it turns out, is no choreographic slouch by any means. And Owen's dancers are all inordinately beautiful specimens of dance humanity -- the men wear only short shorts, the women body suits. The delicate Oisin Monaghan in particular, possesses such refined features that he passes for a woman in the prelude dance and still looks remarkably like Tilda Swinton when he reappears as a man in Requiem -- shades of Virginia Wolf's Orlando.

On a bare black stage with sand-colored brambles attached to the ceiling serving as the only décor, Owen puts in motion a deeply personal and innovative vision. He sets the piece inside some type of prison-like world run by a bully/warden/Nazi/villain (Aaron Mattocks) who alternately wants to bed or simply beat up half of the company members. And yes, an element of sadomasochism runs throughout the piece. The villain is particularly keen on a young man (Josh Christopher) who already has a lover (Owen) and he comes one short of beating the life out of both of them. He is joined in this sometimes brutal exercise--too brutal I think for the Requiem -- by a defector from the good side (Amy Brandt) whose betrayal the other dancers have a hard time countenancing: a Wicked Witch of the West, but one who can in the end feel some remorse -- think Wicked, not The Wizard of Oz. In the end it is the intervention of one of the female dancers -- a mother/protectress figure (Kerry Shea) whom I took to represent goodness and some type of moral law -- that saves her friends. Or at least we think she saves them, as the ending has a somewhat ambiguous twist -- at least when one is watching in the audience.






Owen's Requiem must, I think, be viewed metaphorically -- as an almost Biblical battle between good and evil (shades of Cain and Abel), and between compassion and cruelty. Ultimately, it is also about the freedom of personal choice -- as evidenced by Shea's betrayal, which contrasts markedly with Amy Brandt's role and the two male lovers who remain devoted to each other throughout.

During the performance, the stage remains dark and empty for rather long interludes. One assumes that the dancers are preparing backstage, but these pauses drag the performance down some. Owen's technique-a minimalist mixture of release-technique-inspired movement, more classically balletic exercises and well-synchronized floor work does not always rise to the occasion. But that is not really a critique of Owen himself -- he is a fine choreographer -- but rather of the calculated folly of trying to live up to music as great as the Requiem. In this case, when all is a said and done, we're glad that the choreographer did.

Requiem was preceded by "A Short - Étude 6", a study in minimalist movement set to Vivaldi in which five elegant dancers move arms and torsos with uncommon grace: Amy Brandt, Kristin Deiss, Oisin Monaghan, Jovanna Parks, Kerry Shea.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1874545 2012-09-17T15:55:35-04:00 2012-11-17T05:12:01-05:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/
Orban first stated that he transferred the prisoner to Azerbaijan on the understanding that he would serve out the rest of his life sentence in his home country. In later statements, Orban admitted that he not only signed the extradition agreement himself, but that he had repeatedly been warned that if Safarov were extradited to oil-rich Azerbaijian, he would be pardoned and even celebrated by Ilham Aliyev's brutal dictatorial regime. In the past, Aliyev has referred to Armenians in only the most vile of terms and continually threatened to destroy Armenia and Nagorno-Karabagh by military means. Not surprisingly upon his arrival in Baku, Lieutenant Safarov was pardoned by Aliyev, restored to military duties and promoted to major. He was also given an apartment and awarded back pay for his time in prison. In the press, Safarov has been hailed as a national hero.

The pardoning of Safarov sets back the quest for peace in the Caucasus, as it is a direct provocation to the Republic of Armenia and increases the possibility of a renewal of armed conflict between Armenia and its neighbor Azerbaijian. Unfortunately both Margarian's murder and his murderer's pardon falls in line with continued violence and hatred against Armenians that has existed unabated for several hundred years. This type of barbaric act -- a hate crime pure and simple -- should belong to the dustbin of human history. Yet after the Safarov incident and the murders a few years back of Hrant Dink and Sevag Sahin Balikci in Turkey -- the first a renowned Armenian journalist, the second a young Turkish-Armenian man performing his military service -- we can only conclude that the continued hatred against Armenians that is propagated in Azerbaijian and Turkey in schoolbooks and the media -- is doing its job of fanning the fires of ethnic and religious hatred.

The United States, the United Nations and other international organizations and governments should apply all available pressure on the Azeri government to honor its agreement with Hungary and return Safarov to where he belongs for the rest of his life -- a jail cell. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban -- who has most probably parlayed Safarov for loan guarantees or cheaper priced Oil from Baku, should on his end understand the grave consequences of his actions and of his remarkable moral bankruptcy and resign immediately.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1819705 2012-08-22T15:56:56-04:00 2012-10-22T05:12:07-04:00

Christopher Atamian http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/ Iceberg, the long-haired balladeer alternates between post-breakup songs ("Colorblind"), disquisitions on the human condition and the state of the world ("Traces" and "There Are") to the more serendipitous and unique--an ode to scientific (un)certainty, for example ("More than Zero"). Some songs hit while others miss, but they are all smart and presage more good things to follow upon this neophyte effort.

Selendy's voice is deep with a touch of country and bluesy plaintiveness to it -- think Nick Cave meets Jeff Buckley. At his best, Selendy produces delicate poetry of the type: "The second bottle celebrates the first" ("Nice Little Thing"). He also has a predilection for playing with gerunds and other adjectival forms, as when he writes "another cup of warming tea." At other times, his compositional aim misses its target ever so slightly as in "Gently Green Vegetables," where he croons mysteriously enough: "when there's no one/ to ease your fears/time for someone to fry/gently green vegetables." Gently green vegetables... Really? While the sentiment leading up to the final line are wholly understandable (despair, clinging to daily routine to save one's sanity), the final image is simply a bit odd. On the driving, rather convincing title track "Iceberg" Selendy hits his mark: "You wasted fissures waiting in that carnival of ice/waiting for the crack to rend your flaw."

"Colorblind" may be the strongest track on Iceberg. Beginning slowly, someone in recovery (relationship? alcoholism?) cannot avoid "the colors running into gray." But listen carefully because by the end of the song, things have turned upbeat, reconciliation has occurred: "You're my home. Think I might. /stay, won't walk away, the colors/just stopped running into gray."

The American-born Selendy makes his home in Sweden now. One senses that he is still trying things out, looking for the proper register and range and precisely how far to push his lyrics. (Simplicity, one might counsel him, is always preferable to the arcane surfeit of words.) One hopes -- dare I say it -- that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Selendy and that more CDs emerge from this gifted if sometimes uneven storyteller.

________
Selendy is ably assisted on Iceberg by Staffan Johansson on guitar, Paul Börjesson (bass, synth, backup vocals), Micke Häggström on percussion, Emili Jeremias on cello and Ted hector (organ, piano, synth). Lisen Elwin and Anna Ericsson provide light, airy backup vocals throughout.

Learn more about Béla Selendy here.]]>