Go for gold, silver, bronze at NY Fashion Week
NEW YORK – If the economy hangs over New York Fashion Week like a basic black cloud, designers are seeking a silver — or gold, platinum or bronze — lining.
Metallic dresses melted down the runways Wednesd
Who needs to win an Oscar when you can dress like one?
But metallics weren't just for the red carpet. Marc Jacobs presented eye-catching metallic floral coats and Nanette Lepore dressed down the bling. "We showed metallic dresses in the show with hoodies and jackets to make it casual for day with their modest and simple shape," Lepore said after her runway show.
The hint of flash fit into the space-age theme that also emerged at fashion week, but avoided a costumey feel.
"Metallic dresses are a great option when a woman wants to wear clothes that have impact but she's not a big fan of any particular color," said Hal Rubenstein, InStyle magazine. "Metallic dresses are also perfect for the minimalist because they require little or no accessorizing with jewel. They have their own sparkle built in."
OSCAR DE LA RENTA
The beauty of an Oscar de la Renta design is its luxuriousness. For fall, de la Renta stayed true to his principles and didn't offer a "recession collection," or anything that could be called a "de la Renta lite."
Fur (and lots of it) set the tone, and during the 15-minute show de la Renta did what he could to reassure fashion-followers that everything would be all right as long as they looked good.
The best of the bunch were a contemporary gray broadtail vest and a regal hooded feathered sable coat. His signature beading and embroideries were sparser than usual, but, with his socialite customers dutifully filling the former church on Park Avenue he uses to stage runway shows, that seemed a commentary on emerging trends, not trying times.
MICHAEL KORS
Michael Kors is addressing what he calls "modern times" — designers don't like to mention the economy — by serving up a fall collection of classics with a twist.
Turtlenecks and women's tweed suits have sexy-but-not-skin-baring cutouts around the collar bone, sheath dresses and sweaters both the get the one-shoulder treatment and the overall strong silhouette is fueled by origami-folded shoulders, perhaps a more user-friendly alternative to shoulder pads.
Kors also used origami techniques for some of the best outerwear pieces so far for fall. A black "cashgora" coat worn over a simple white cashmere pullover and gray cigarette pants was the picture of chic that Kors aims for.
MAX AZRIA
Like the sexy cover of the night, Max Azria sent all the models down the runway at the preview of his namesake collection in black catsuits, sometimes under flowing dresses.
The clothes were mostly black with sharp lines, strong shoulders and tough leather trim, but there was a more sultry quality in his use of wool, velvet, lace and other tactile fabrics.
He also figured out an alternative to the shoulder pad that has been so prevalent this season: folding the fabric on the shoulder to create a stiff square that stands away from the body without bulking it up.
In his notes to an audience that included Rob Thomas, Alicia Keys and Rachel Bilson, Azria explained he was exploring "the ethereal seduction of the dark side."
NANETTE LEPORE
Nanette Lepore turned up the heat with layers upon layers of fresh fall styles. She also managed to mine a little romance, something that's largely been missing from this round of seasonal style previews.
Who could argue with a dress that brings the next generation of plaid, with laser cutouts of the usual geometric shapes and layering gold under them to contrast the purple on the rest of the dress?
She showed further attention to detail when she paired a gold pailette top under a V-neck tweed dress and lined with a gold fabric a shiny paisley print dress so that as the model walked, the audience caught glimpses of shimmer. A gold pailette cocktail dress was the a dressier complement to the daytime gold-fabric dress she wore to take her bow.
3.1 PHILLIP LIM
The era of the late 1960s-early '70s seems to be an endless well for fashion inspiration. The new 3.1 Phillip Lim collection borrowed ideas, inspiration and haircuts from the decade's breakthrough music scene.
One model wore an ivory morning coat with tails named "the Hendrix," and another wore a shorter "Sergeant Pepper" topper. A dusty-rose "Bowie" pantsuit with sharp shoulders and skinny legs also made its way down the runway to the live music of the band Lissy Truillie.
Designer Lim also tapped into Carnaby Street, mixing "dandy" blouses with more hard-core rock 'n' roll tight trousers, many of them slung low around the hips. Lim's staple military influences and ruffles were also well represented. "He loves a good ruffle," says Cindy Weber Cleary, fashion director for InStyle.
J. MENDEL
New York Fashion week is no stranger to drama — front-row dustups, shouting photographers, fewer seats than guests — but J. Mendel put drama to a better use: He put it all on the clothes.
Mendel didn't just put fur coats on this runway, which are the brand's heritage, he offered toppers that combined the luxe textures of swakara and mink with leather. And no bow details on the gowns here, instead he used wide black ribbon cascading down the front to create a little bit of art.
Those were the pieces the J. Mendel customer, who appreciates fine detail, is used to. But designer Gilles Mendel also put some untested styles on the runway, more casual — by ladies-who-lunch standards — daytime pieces.
It's part of a plan to broaden the brand's reach, says Susan Sokol, J. Mendel's new president.
BABY PHAT
Somehow "fabulosity" doesn't seem all that anymore.
That means even bling-heavy Kimora Lee Simmons' Baby Phat collection had to be toned down for the fall.
In her notes describing the clothes, Simmons still seemed caught up with the go-go luxury mentality that now is out of touch with reality. She used phrases included "arouse your inner mogul," and described the brand's style as "synonymous with a lifestyle of extravagance."
Yet, many of the looks on the runway signaled she was aware that the world, and especially the retail landscape, had changed from a year ago. Denim dominated the catwalk, with Simmons jazzing up skinny silhouettes with studs, purposeful tears or bleach stains, but it was the dressier styles — something Simmons probably relates to — that were the best.
William Rast's Motorcycle Diaries
New York – Justin Timberlake forms one-fourth of all-American denim label William Rast, and it is a good thing for the rest of the team - Trace Ayala, Marcella and Johan Lindeberg - that there is the Timberlake associatio
Timberlake's girlfriend, actress Jesicca Biel, slid into her seat champagne in hand just minutes before the show started, refusing to do any interviews. Even though it was her beau's collection, she didn't feel the need to offer anything in the way of commentary pre-show, but once the show started, her facial expressions and body language told all.
Derrier-hugging, acid washed, high-waisted skirts with jet bead embroidery garnered approving whispers and smiles between Biel and Timberlake's mother, Lynn Harless. A thick black blanket-like poncho with the same kind of black beading also incited enthusiastic head nods.
But those are the sort of items that are no-brainers - who wouldn't love a sexy miniskirt or a poncho that lets you bring your bed with you. In that sense, William Rast is quite saleable, if you're into that kind of thing. But to say that "we believe that during this coming era of modern America, it is creativity that will be one of the most important ingredients to bring energy into today's culture," as they did in their program notes, is misleading. There was nothing creative about this collection.
After the umpteenth studded motorcycle jacket and skinny pair of jeans came out - Earth to designers, just because they're acid-washed and embellished does not somehow make them "new' - one had to wonder whether all the thrift stores in the Midwest had seen their stock dry up or the vintage leather jacket stock of the state of California had dried up.
Citing films like Francis Ford Coppola's "Rumble Fish" starring Mickey Rourke as "the Motorcycle Boy" and girlfriends-on-the-road-living-dangerously "Thelma and Louise," William Rast clearly wanted to evoke the tough, free-spiritedness of those film's protagonists. True, biker chic never goes out of style. But bothering to spend money to produce a fashion show during New York fashion week for such uninspired casual wear seemed excessive, which is something a brand supposedly in touch with Americana should already understand.
Olympic sprinter Maurice Greene swaps spikes for dancing shoes
RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Maurice Greene's powerful legs still keep him in the spotlight but his ballroom dancing shoes, not sprinter's spikes, pay the bills these days.
The former Olympic and wor
"This is a lot fun-er," Greene told Reuters during a recent stop in Raleigh. "When I was competing that was stressful. This is going out and having fun."
The 34-year-old American retired from athletics before the 2008 season, citing a calf injury, but he was not ready to put away his showmanship.
An agent arranged for the sprinter to team up with professional dancer Cheryl Burke on the television show and after a fifth-place finish they joined the 37-city tour.
"He's very good, he's disciplined and an athlete," Burke told television reporters.
"I thought I was okay (as a dancer)," Greene told Reuters, "but ballroom dancing is completely different than dancing in the clubs. I knew nothing about that."
The biggest challenge was learning technique, Greene said.
"When you are on the TV show, you have to learn a new dance every week. Then there is different techniques for the different dances and different step placement and arm movement."
He missed the competition of athletics, he said, "but my heart was not in it any more, and the sport is in a lot of trouble. ...I decided it was time for me to move on."
LONG CAREER
Three times the world 100 meters champion, winner of Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000 and bronze in Athens in 2004 and the world-record holder at 9.79 seconds for more than three years beginning in 1999, Greene would not single out one event as his greatest achievement.
"You're at places in life that no one can ever touch," he said of his lengthy career in which he ran the 100 in under 10 seconds a record 52 times. He still holds the world-best mark for the indoor 60 meters.
"I will always be known as once the world's fastest man," he said. "Then you are on a shortlist of people who have won Olympic gold. Then you have a list of people who have won world championships... Everything is significant to me."
If he could have one race back, it would be his 2001 world championship in Edmonton, he said.
His body had never felt so fit before a race, Greene said, but the feeling did not last long.
Sixty meters into the final, pain racked his left thigh and by the finish line he was hobbling. Yet he still ran 9.82 seconds, the third-fastest performance ever at the time, to defeat compatriot Tim Montgomery.
"Who knows what I would have run," Greene said. "That was truly an out-of-body experience...I was injured but I was able to pull it off."
Victory, though, eluded him at the 2004 Olympics, where he placed third behind since-disgraced American Justin Gatlin and Portugal's Francis Obikwelu after winning the U.S. trials.
"The biggest disappointment (of my career)," Greene said. "I felt like I gave that race up.
"I should have run hard all the way through in the semi-finals, which would have given me a better lane," he said. "In the middle of the track I can feel what is going on to the left and the right...Justin was just too far away from me. I didn't even know he was there."
ENTERTAINING ATHLETES
Always a showman, Greene said the sport today needed more athletes to entertain crowds -- and not just with their races.
"That's why I was the way I was," said the outgoing Greene. "Some people might not have liked it but a lot of people laughed at it and I was a joy to watch."
A lot of that joy had gone from the sport now, he said, because of positive doping tests.
"I think people believe in the sport but then they don't," he said. "It's just hard once you see people working hard and then something comes up on them. Every time drugs is brought up in our sport, it's hurtful to the sport."
Greene himself was linked with a Mexican steroids dealer last year although he said that he had bought only legal products to give to his team mates and he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
"When some man tries to come up and lies about me, that hurts," he said.
The dance show tour, which ended on Sunday in Philadelphia, gave him a chance to find new joy in a different type of competition.
"It was fun but now I have to move on to my other business," Greene said. "I have a record company that I have been working with, and we are about to put our artist out," he said. "His name is Amazing and the music is hip-hop."
"I own the company and I'm the mastermind behind it," he said with a smile.
(Editing by Clare Fallon)
Cabell, Dizzia, Niebanck Plugged Into Ruhl's 'Vibrator Play' at Berkeley Rep
The new comedy about marriage, intimacy - and electricity - was commissioned by Berkeley Rep, which will present the staging in the Roda Theatre Jan. 30-March 15, 2009. Opening is Feb. 4.
The cast will include Hannah Cab
"Some may find the title titillating," Waters, associate artistic director of Berkeley Rep, stated, "yet this is a serious work that examines how sexuality and sexual politics affect our lives, how race relations and women's rights influence our society, and how technology is trumpeted as an answer to our ills - even as it repeatedly fails to meet our deepest needs. Sarah achieves all this with the light touch and the elegant comic sense that have brought her national acclaim, and I'm honored to have been a part of her development as an artist."
"I can't think of a better town than Berkeley to premiere a play about the history of the vibrator," Ruhl stated. "Although saying that the play is about vibrators is slightly misleading, because the play at bottom is about marriage, and intimacy, and the mind/body split. Still, I'm fascinated by the fact that the vibrator was a very early invention at the dawn of electricity, right next to kettles and light bulbs. No one thought its use was sexual, because women weren't thought to have sexual pleasure. As soon as we discovered that vibrators caused sexual pleasure for women, we made them illegal. So the play is about that tension between the mind and the body at a time when people were, in a sense, enormously innocent about female sexuality. Now we live in a time when pornography is mainstream, but the connective tissue between the emotions and sexual pleasure is a rarity."
According to Berkeley Rep notes, "In the Next Room illuminates the lives of six lonely people seeking relief from a local doctor - but, despite his expertise with a strange new technology, all they really need is intimacy. It's a tender tale that takes place in the twilight of the Victorian age, a comedy lit by unexpected sparks from the approaching era of electricity, equality, science and sexuality."
In the Next Room received the 2008 Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award and is supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation's New Play Development Program, the Mosse Artistic Development Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In addition to this being Berkeley Rep's 50th world premiere, the troupe announced that it has a plan to commission another 50 works by 2013. More than 25 writers have been engaged for the project so far.
Berkeley Rep debuted its first new script in 1968 and went on to earn a national reputation for nurturing writers and developing new work.
In the last five years, Berkeley Rep has invested more than $1 million in new play development.
Ruhl has written numerous award-winning plays, including The Clean House, Dead Man's Cell Phone, Demeter in the City, Eurydice, Late: a cowboy song, Melancholy Play, Orlando and Passion Play: a cycle.
The creative team for In the Next Room includes Annie Smart (scenic design), David Zinn (costume design), Russell H. Champa (lighting design), Bray Poor (sound design) Jonathan Bell (composer) and Michael Suenkel (Berkeley Rep's resident production stage manager).
For more information visit berkeleyrep.org.
Videogames get set to go on vacation
RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – With the holiday season fast approaching, videogame makers are making sure they have games and consoles handy for trains, planes and automobiles -- and so are holiday destinations.
Nintendo is introducing two limited edition Nintendo DS bundles on Friday which include a Mario Red Nintendo DS with the "New Super Mario Bros." game and an Ice Blue Nintendo DS with a matching carrying case and a copy of "Brain Age."
In Japan, Nintendo recently introduced its next generation portable, Nintendo DSi, which adds two cameras, an SD card slot, an online game store, advanced music capabilities, larger screens and a slimmer body to the dual-screen handheld player.
The Nintendo DSi will be released in North America and Europe in 2009, about five years since it debuted the Nintendo DS in North America of which it has shipped over 84 million units.
Sony Corp. has a new portable game offering, the PSP 3000, which adds a high-resolution screen and a built-in microphone to let users call friends between games or movies.
Since debuting the original PlayStation Portable in December 2004 in Japan, Sony has sold over 40 million PSPs worldwide.
Apple's iPhone 3G and iPod Touch have also become popular gaming devices for vacationers. There are over 13 million iPhone 3Gs around the globe and over 1,500 games available on the App Store.
DESTINATION WII
But videogames are not just becoming an integral packing item for vacationers on the move. Their end destinations as well have noticed the wider demand for gaming, way beyond just families.
Nintendo's Wii consoles, with its unique motion-sensing controller and simpler games, can now be found in select Marriott and Westin Hotels and on board many cruise liners with games like "Wii Sports" and "Endless Ocean" part of daily itineraries.
"We always have had PlayStations aboard our ships but we've upgraded recently to Wiis and integrated them throughout our ships for kids, teenagers and adults to play," said Jim Urry, vice president of entertainment for Disney Cruise Line.
Urry said next year, Disney will introduce a new videogame experience to passengers using motion-sensor technology designed by Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI).
A "Pirates of the Caribbean" game, which can be played by large groups on the ship's deck, lets players steer a course for Captain Jack Sparrow's ship by leaning in different directions.
The virtual characters and ship will be displayed on a giant outdoor screen used by the cruise line for some Wii tournaments.
Videogames are also influencing the work of WDI at Walt Disney World and Disneyland with both parks introducing a new ride this year, "Toy Story's Midway Mania," which plays like a next generation videogame with 3D glasses and special effects like air and water.
"We know kids come into our parks with Nintendo DSes and they're with them all day," said Sue Bryan, senior show producer and director, WDI, who oversaw development of the new ride.
"If we can involve them more in the theme park storytelling with that game technology, that's a great thing."
(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)
'Bedroom Farce', Ayckbourn's Comedy of Four Couples, Opens in NYC
Per the TACT mission, which is to shine light
Ayckbourn is the prolific British playwright who chronicles the foibles, passions and subtle ruefulness of middle-class English folk. Think House and Garden, Woman in Mind, Absurd Person Singular and A Chorus of Disapproval.
Jenn Thompson (who staged TACT's lauded spring revival of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale) directs a cast that includes Cynthia Harris, Larry Keith, Eve Bianco, Margaret Nichols, Scott Schafer, Ashley West, Mark Alhadeff and Sean Dougherty.
Performances continue to Nov. 8.
Harris is a veteran of TV's "Mad About You" and was recently seen in the world premiere of Richard Greenberg's comedy The Injured Party at South Coast Rep. She is one of TACT's three artistic directors. Keith starred in Broadway's Caroline, or Change.
According to TACT, "Written for the National Theatre in 1975, Alan Ayckbourn's dexterous and gloriously funny play about four couples in four very different stages of marriage gets its long awaited revival. Bedroom Farce marks a significant turning point in Alan Ayckbourn's writing career, bridging the broader style of his earlier work with the darker aspects of middle-class English life he would so successfully go on to explore. Known as the 'bard of the bourgeois,' Ayckbourn's ironically titled Bedroom Farce displays many aspects of his unique talent - comedy that relies on circumstance rather than one-liners, inventive use of physical space, and a refusal to sacrifice the realism of his characters and their relationships to one another for cheap laughs or neat candy-coated endings."
The play "examines the dysfunctional relationships of four couples over one chaotic Saturday night. Trevor and Susannah are on the verge of a break-up - and they're determined to take their friends and family down with them! After Trevor and his ex-girlfriend, Jan, are caught kissing at Malcolm and Kate's housewarming party, all hell breaks loose. Susannah flees to her in-laws who are trying to salvage their anniversary celebration; while Trevor pays a midnight visit to Jan's in order to explain his misdeeds to her husband, Nick. As the evening progresses, this unstable pair travels from bedroom to bedroom, raining hysterical havoc on everything they touch and assuring that no one will get any sleep."
Co-artistic director Scott Alan Evans (whose artistic partners are Harris and Simon Jones) stated, "With his extraordinary sense of the theatrical and his deft use of language, Ayckbourn has been on the top of our to-do list for a long time. We're thrilled to reintroduce New York audiences to this tremendously funny and touching play."
Ayckbourn's more than 70 plays include Relatively Speaking, Absurd Person Singular, Just Between Ourselves, A Chorus Of Disapproval, Woman In Mind, A Small Family Business, Man of the Moment, Things We Do For Love, Comic Potential and Private Fears in Public Places.
The design team includes Amir Khosrowpour (original music), Aaron Copp (lighting), Martha Hally (costumes), Stephen Kunken (sound) and Robin Vest (sets).
The performance schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 2 & 8 PM, Sunday at 3 PM.
The Beckett Theatre is located at 410 West 42nd Street.
Tickets are $25-$56.25 and can be purchased at Ticket Central by phone (212) 279-4200 or online at www.tactnyc.org. For more information on this production or TACT, visit www.tactnyc.org.
In spring 2009, TACT will present the World War II drama Incident at Vichy by Arthur Miller, directed by Evans, running Feb. 22-March 28, 2009 at The Beckett Theatre, Theatre Row.
TACT "is dedicated to presenting neglected or rarely produced plays of literary merit, with a focus on creating theatre from its essence: the text and the actor's ability to bring it to life. TACT's company of actors was drawn together in 1992 by a love of the literature of the theatre. Over the 15 seasons and more than 80 productions [most of them concert readings], it has grown to become a true repertory ensemble: a group that has developed a common vocabulary and a technique based on our artistic vision and collective body of work."
Harris, Keith and More Open Door to Ayckbourn's 'Bedroom Farce' in NYC
Jenn Thompson (who staged TACT's lauded spring revival of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale) directs Bedroom Farce, which opens Oct. 13 at the Beckett Theatre in the Theatre Row complex on West 42nd Street. The run ends Nov. 8.
Harris is a veteran of TV's "Mad About You" and was recently seen in the world premiere of Richard Greenberg's comedy The Injured Party at South Coast Rep. She is one of TACT's three artistic directors. Keith starred in Broadway's Caroline, or Change.
According to TACT, "Written for the National Theatre in 1975, Alan Ayckbourn's dexterous and gloriously funny play about four couples in four very different stages of marriage gets its long awaited revival. Bedroom Farce marks a significant turning point in Alan Ayckbourn's writing career, bridging the broader style of his earlier work with the darker aspects of middle-class English life he would so successfully go on to explore. Known as the 'bard of the bourgeois,' Ayckbourn's ironically titled Bedroom Farce displays many aspects of his unique talent - comedy that relies on circumstance rather than one-liners, inventive use of physical space, and a refusal to sacrifice the realism of his characters and their relationships to one another for cheap laughs or neat candy-coated endings."
The play "examines the dysfunctional relationships of four couples over one chaotic Saturday night. Trevor and Susannah are on the verge of a break-up - and they're determined to take their friends and family down with them! After Trevor and his ex-girlfriend, Jan, are caught kissing at Malcolm and Kate's housewarming party, all hell breaks loose. Susannah flees to her in-laws who are trying to salvage their anniversary celebration; while Trevor pays a midnight visit to Jan's in order to explain his misdeeds to her husband, Nick. As the evening progresses, this unstable pair travels from bedroom to bedroom, raining hysterical havoc on everything they touch and assuring that no one will get any sleep."
Co-artistic director Scott Alan Evans (whose artistic partners are Harris and Simon Jones) stated, "With his extraordinary sense of the theatrical and his deft use of language, Ayckbourn has been on the top of our to-do list for a long time. We're thrilled to reintroduce New York audiences to this tremendously funny and touching play."
Ayckbourn's more than 70 plays include Relatively Speaking (1967), Absurd Person Singular (1974); The Norman Conquests (1975); Bedroom Farce (1977); Just Between Ourselves (1978); A Chorus Of Disapproval (1985); Woman In Mind (1986); A Small Family Business (1987); Man of the Moment (1990); Things We Do For Love (1998); Comic Potential (1999); and Private Fears in Public Places (2004).
The design team includes Amir Khosrowpour (original music), Aaron Copp (lighting), Martha Hally (costumes), Stephen Kunken (sound) and Robin Vest (sets).
The performance schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 2 & 8 PM, Sunday at 3 PM.
The Beckett Theatre is located at 410 West 42nd Street.
Tickets are $25-$56.25 and can be purchased at Ticket Central by phone (212) 279-4200 or online at www.tactnyc.org. For more information on this production or TACT, visit www.tactnyc.org.
In spring 2009, TACT will present the World War II drama Incident at Vichy by Arthur Miller, directed by Evans, running Feb. 22-March 28, 2009 at The Beckett Theatre, Theatre Row.
TACT "is dedicated to presenting neglected or rarely produced plays of literary merit, with a focus on creating theatre from its essence: the text and the actor's ability to bring it to life. TACT's company of actors was drawn together in 1992 by a love of the literature of the theatre. Over the 15 seasons and more than 80 productions [most of them concert readings], it has grown to become a true repertory ensemble: a group that has developed a common vocabulary and a technique based on our artistic vision and collective body of work."
An intimate, richer second season for Wheeldon
The au
The answer is that he's progressing nicely, thank you, though with perhaps a few small bumps in the road.
The company — still a group of stellar dancers borrowed largely from New York City Ballet and the Royal Ballet in London — was strongest when performing Wheeldon's own work, most notably "Polyphonia," a mesmerizing and intricate ballet that helped establish the choreographer's stellar reputation in 2001.
"Polyphonia" remains one of his best works, sharper and more coherent than "Commedia," his latest, which still has its considerable charms. Choreographed to Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite" and done in the style of commedia dell'arte, the Italian comic tradition, it is stylish and always interesting.
"Commedia" also sports striking scenery and costumes by the husband-wife team of Ruben and Isabel Toledo — a backdrop of huge faces in masks from him, and white body tights with diamond patterns from her, along with black lacy gloves, white ruffled collars, colorful capes and executioner-style hoods with eye slits.
The ballet also spotlights two lovely ballerinas at opposing ends of their careers — the Royal Ballet veteran Leanne Benjamin, now in her 40s, and the stunningly self-possessed 15-year-old Beatriz Stix-Brunell, a 10th-grader with a radiant smile.
A duet for these two was one of the ballet's highlights. And in a sweet, homey touch beforehand, Wheeldon threw in an amusing film clip on how these two spend their day: Benjamin sipping cappuccino or shopping, and Stix-Brunell eating lunch in her school cafeteria.
Later, another clip showed dancer Celine Cassone sewing straps on her pointe shoes in speeded-up motion — a tedious task that dancers must take care of several times for each performance, as Wheeldon, dressed casually in jeans, pointed out in remarks from the stage. It was a nice way to bring the audience closer to the dancers, and hard to imagine one of the major companies — New York City Ballet, or ABT — doing the same thing.
A highlight was Frederick Ashton's "Monotones II," a charming 1966 work for a woman and two men set to "Trois Gymnopedies" by Debussy. Maria Kowroski and Wendy Whelan, both NYCB stars, each made their mark on this brief work in successive performances. A possible distraction for some: the glittering "moon caps" that all three dancers had to wear.
One relative disappointment in the program was a work commissioned by Wheeldon from the Canadian choreographer Emily Molnar, "Six Fold Illuminate." At first compelling, Molnar's writhing movements failed to build into anything more substantial and soon grew repetitive.
"Fool's Paradise," again by Wheeldon, fared better. This dreamlike work, with nine dancers interweaving against a backdrop of glittering paper confetti, was never better than in its last moment, with each dancer staking a spot in an elegant tower of bodies. It created such an arresting final tableau on Sunday, the last performance, that appreciative gasps were heard.
It was a nice way for Wheeldon to end his season.
Iconic L.A. tattoo artist Mr. Cartoon branches out
More recently, though, Mr. Cartoon's work has been showing up everywhere. You'll find it on lithographs, on hot-selling Joker brand T-shirts, on high-end Nike shoes. That's not to mention the framed paintings that cover an entire wall of his studio, which is buried deep in an anonymous section of warehouses on the edge of gritty Skid Row.
"That will be later in my life when that stuff kicks in," the 39-year-old artist says as he gestures to the works and briefly ruminates about someday spending more time creating fine art. Already, he says, some of his works have been hung in galleries in Paris, London and Amsterdam.
But for now he keeps coming back to the genre in which he first made his mark — tattoos.
"Nothing like skin," he says as he pauses the whirling needle that sounds like a quieter version of a dentist's drill to look up briefly from the arm of a customer he's spent the last several minutes inking.
"The only canvas that bleeds," he says with a smile. "The only canvas that moves. Where the art directs you."
With tattoos covering almost every exposed part of his body, from the back of his shaved head to his ankles, Mr. Cartoon is not only an artist but a living billboard for his art.
Short and stocky, and dressed in baggy shorts and a T-shirt, he's sometimes been described as looking like the central casting version of a street gang member. But his friendly demeanor and penchant for waxing nostalgic about his childhood ("My first computer," he says pointing to an old manual typewriter) quickly dispel that image.
Skin, meanwhile, is the canvas that made him an L.A. underground legend, ever since he put an elaborate drawing of an urban street scene onto one of Eminem's arms.
Soon after, just about everyone else in the hip-hop world was beating a path to his door. And they had to — because he wasn't going to them. Mr. Cartoon doesn't accept walk-in customers, won't list his phone number in the book and, until recently, wouldn't even say where his studio was.
Still, high-profile customers managed to find him.
"Done Eminem and 50 Cent. Missy Elliott, Keyshia Cole, Usher, Pepe Aguilar, Cypress Hill," he says, not bothering to look up at the celebrity photos on another wall.
But most of his business is provided by "blue-collar guys who want to save their money and come get a nice tattoo."
They are guys like Bobby Flores of Los Angeles, who met him years ago at a lowrider car show, when Cartoon was a kid hawking airbrushed T-shirts. Since then, the artist has etched an entire mural of Los Angeles on Flores' back.
He uses a Sharpie marker to draw about 90 percent of his tattoos and then he inks them. There's no pattern.
"It's not cheap," Flores says of the cartoonist's work. "But he's the best. He's the world famous Mr. Cartoon. I wouldn't let anybody else touch me."
The artist won't say what he charges, adding that every circumstance is different. The result: rumors have circulated on the Internet that a Mr. Cartoon tattoo can fetch anywhere from $100 to $20,000 depending on how well-heeled you are and how elaborate a one-of-a-kind drawing you want.
As for price: "I just say if you're asking about price you're at the wrong spot," he says. "Focus on the quality. Focus on the style you want. Find the artist and then negotiate."
There was a time, he acknowledges, when he'd do them for free. That was before he was very good.
"You've just got to practice," he says of learning the art. "Your friends don't have any money, you don't have any experience. Perfect situation."
He was Mark Machado back then, although his friends were already calling him Cartoon. He threw the Mister in front to dress it up a little. These days it annoys him if someone tries to address him as Mark.
"The only ones who call me by my Christian name," he says, "are my mother and my wife. And my wife only if she's angry at me."
As Mr. Cartoon, he drifted into tattooing after trying his hand at numerous other art forms, including graffiti, airbrushing, etching and an ill-fated nine months at a trade school trying to learn sign-painting.
"They gave me the boot," chuckles the ordinarily laconic Cartoon. "The teacher told me, 'Man, you're a great artist, maybe the best in the class. But you've got to go. You don't turn nothin' in.'"
Things began to look up after he was busted for spraying graffiti on a building and ordered to pay $800 in restitution. He had no idea where the money would come from until he landed a job painting a mural on the wall of a gymnasium.
"They went, 'How much to do the mural?' And I went, "Eight hundred dollars, sir.' And I kind of never looked back."
If he hasn't gone mainstream in the years since, Cartoon has slowly begun to go more public. His main studio is still more or less a secret hideout but he recently opened a more public one. Called Skid Row Tattoos, it is located in a rapidly gentrifying section of the hardscrabble neighborhood, an area Cartoon says he wants to give something back to.
Although his name isn't on the sign out front, anyone familiar with his work will recognize the place immediately from the beautiful airbrushed lowrider motorcycle on display in the front window. If that isn't enough, the boutique next door carries Joker brand clothes and Cartoon's line of Nike shoes.
Back in the day, he used to live at the main studio a mile or so away. He would throw big parties there that helped spread his reputation.
These days he says he leads a slightly more sedate life, with a wife and four kids and a house in the suburbs.
"I'm a white-picket-fence man now," he says with a laugh as he walks into the main studio.
Moments before, as he was maneuvering his tricked-out pickup truck through downtown traffic, he had reflected on growing older but not losing his connection to the rough-and-tumble side of L.A. that inspired so much of his art. As he spoke, menacing looking clown faces (a Mr. Cartoon trademark) stared up from the vehicle's floor mats.
"Hopefully you grow up and you have a family and you change," he mused at one point. "Some guys never change. But the majority of us get older, we start clothing companies, we start design centers, graphic design houses. And we go for broke."
___
On the Net: http://www.mistercartoon.com
Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch - Writer Henry Gilroy, p3
A good place to start is with the young Jedi and new addition to the Star Wars mythos, Ahsoka.
"[She's a] spirited young padawan who has something to prove," says Gilroy. She's very well learned at the temple in a book smart kind of way, but she doesn't have much practical experience. That doesn't stop her from jumping into any situation, sometimes ones she probably shouldn't.
"She's got a great potential for growth as a character because she's training under Anakin and takes some of her cues from him as far as improvising and being proactive and also impatient and brash. At the same time, she's got Obi-Wan around, who is more thoughtful and cunning, and she's picking up some of his ways, so she's kind of getting the best of both of Anakin and Obi-Wan as she learns from their example."
This, of course, leads on to her two masters, Anakin, who actually has been assigned to train her, and Obi-Wan, Anakin's former mentor.
"In the Clone Wars, Anakin is a bold, swashbuckling Jedi hero, bravely fighting to save the Republic from being destroyed by the Separatists," says Gilroy. "He's a good guy in every sense of the word. He's selfless, courageous and loyal. As a full-fledged Jedi Knight, he's not in Obi-Wan's shadow anymore, and he's coming into his own and is more upbeat and positive and good humored, plus he's maturing as he becomes a mentor to Ahsoka.
"I like to think of Obi-Wan as the Errol Flynn of the Star Wars universe, he's got that dry wit and he's always cool under pressure. Where Anakin flies by the seat of his pants and like to solve problems with force, Obi-Wan likes to solve problems with diplomacy and negotiation and is more methodical and by-the-book."
As everyone now knows, the voice of Yoda has been replaced, from Frank Oz to Tom Kane. Does this mean there are changes to the master Jedi as well?
"Wise and powerful, I always think of Master Yoda as this great teacher, who can use just about any situation to instruct those around him," says Gilroy. "All of whom are able to learn something from him. He has this great connection to the Force that gives him a deep insight into just about problem. However, he also has a lighter, comical side to him that we didn't get to see too much in the prequels that we will be seeing more of in the series."
Which takes us to key villains. After all, there's no good show without some good villains. In this series, the two primary ones are Assaj Ventress [pictured above] and her master, Count Dooku.
"Ventress is Count Dooku's assassin, who does his bidding with hopes that she will be taken as his apprentice and become a Sith Lord one day," says Gilroy. Dooku is secretly teaching her, behind Sidious' back, because he eventually wants to overthrow his master. However, Dooku knows that if Sidious found out he'd kill them both, so he trains her on the sly. She's a very emotional character, who is egocentric, arrogant and bloodthirsty. She really embodies the dark side, the vicious animal kind of seeps out of her every moment she's on screen. She's deliciously evil.
"Dooku is a sophisticated villain because of his two faces, one as this seemingly noble benevolent diplomat and the other as this power hungry murderous traitor. We wanted to explore Dooku's side as a master manipulator, this erudite leader who seems beyond reproach, then have him be able to suddenly turn on the evil and remind the audience that he is a powerful Sith Lord."
Add in the eventual Emperor Palpatine, Grievous, C3-PO, the Fett Clones and you start to populate one heck of a Universe. Of course, the next step is to set them all in motion.
The process began with the Clone Wars feature film released last month. The film's primary purpose was to introduce Ahsoka, but it also introduced a storyline that had Jabba The Hutt's offspring being kidnapped. As it turns out, the kidnapping was a Maguffin.
"Originally, the Maguffin of Jabba's son being kidnapped was inspired by a Sonny Chiba samurai film entitled Shogun's Shadow that I always liked," says Gilroy. "It's about this disgraced samurai who's entrusted with escorting the very young son of the Shogun across the countryside back to the royal palace. There's a lot of intrigue about who's really behind the attempts on the kid's life and the samurai forms a bond with the kid. That was the inspiration of the idea, but I had specific ideas for why I did it.
"I also wanted to touch on Anakin's history and illustrate how he has a tendency to hang onto his past. Because we were going back to Tatooine eventually for the story, I wanted to give Anakin a physical representation of his past. Some in the audience would know that Anakin has an issue with the Hutts -- besides being Mafia-like criminals, they originally sold him and his mother into slavery, so he's bound to not like Hutts because of that. Just the idea of Anakin having to save this little huttlet, Rotta, and carry him around on his back is like a constant reminder in the back of his mind of what the Hutts did to him and his mom. A literal 'monkey on his back' is what we were going for."
From there, it was time to work on the TV series. After all, setting up the series Universe is half the process. Then there's the matter of providing the required number of episodes.
"I think there will be 22 episodes for the first season," says Gilroy. "As far as the biggest obstacle on a project this big and ambitious, it would have to be trying to put everything we loved about Star Wars in all the shows. Early on in the production process the studio resources were very limited so the stories were a little smaller in scale, as we were just getting the studio going and building the world of the Clone Wars in CG. We had a smaller crew as well, but as the series has gone on, more crew members have come aboard. As we built more characters and ships and worlds, the shows began to fill out and really grow in scope from stories with a few characters to stories with a cast of thousands so to speak. That's the sort of thing you expect on every animated show, CG in particular. Once the world is built however, watch out, the series gets beyond amazing.
"As for 'what it's like writing that much'," says Gilroy, "well, it my pleasure, it is Star Wars, after all and I could write it all day every day. It was never easy and there was always pressure because the bar had been set so high on the films and George and the fans have high expectations. By far, it was the most difficult writing job I have ever had, but that made it fun and always challenging.
"The toughest part about writing 'that much' was the time factor combined with the lack of writing manpower on season one. I was the only staff writer on the show for the first year. Because we were writing a TV show more like a feature, with far more drafts and rewriting than usual it was very challenging because we were still on a TV schedule. I had to keep the scripts coming in to meet TV deadlines. This made for about triple the work, very tough for one person to be able to physically do, there just were not enough hours in the day."
But Gilroy apparently got the work done. Still, it was an experience previous work for other major studios hadn't quite prepared him for.
"If I was doing a show like this at Disney or Warner [Bros.] there would usually be about 3-4 staff writers plus support staff," says Gilroy. "I had really great freelancers, like Steven Melching, who wrote about a third of the first season scripts and part of the movie, but he was down in Los Angeles. I remember at one point I was working on 9 scripts at once in various stages, from premise to outline to script to revised animatic as well as preparing recording scripts and I was the only writer working on them. Though scriptcasting coordinator Ellen Connell came in a few months into the process to help me out with copying and such.
"Still, the crew used to joke that the writing staff was me and the lizards that are all over ranch. I think I worked 12-16 hours, 7 days a week, for months then I remember one Sunday morning I tried to get out of bed to go to the studio and my body wouldn't move. I remember thinking, 'How am I gonna finish that script for George by tomorrow from here?' I have to hand it to Catherine [Winder], she was patient because I was always bugging her to get me help. I finally got some help about a year into production when former Dark Angel story editor Scott Murphy joined the show at the ranch to help complete the scripts for season one, even though most of the stories were written. It was great to have another mind to bounce Star Wars ideas off of at last.
Now ask Gilroy if he'd do it again.
"Regardless, of how hard it was, I think all the hard work is on the screen and I'd do it again in a second!," he exclaims. "I wasn't alone in working that hard, the rest of crew put in long hours and made life changing sacrifices. Dave Filoni, Catherine Winder, our two talented designers Kilian Plunkett and Russell Chong tore up their home and relocated from other parts of the country to work on the Clone Wars. I think that's one magical part of starting up a studio, being the first project created from it, that makes it special is that people really bond and come to feel like family. It was like we were all in the trenches, fighting the Clone Wars, all in it together to build something that we knew was going to be really special. It's rare to have such a great collaborative experience on a show. There were few egos, it was really about making the best show and continuing the saga. Everyone really came to create something extraordinary and I think the audience will see that come October."
As for what's coming up, Gilroy drops a couple of hints.
"I can't give you many details, but there's a fog planet, a coral planet, and some pirates and new bounty hunters. Ever wonder what a Gundark looks like? You won't have to for very much longer. We also will meet an important figure from Obi-Wan's past. Intrigued yet? The Clone Wars have only just begun."
NEXT EDITION: Talk about filling some big shoes. We next talk to Tom Kane about replacing Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda...
Related Stories:
Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch: Writer Henry Gilroy, 2
Star Wars: The Clone Wars debuts on Cartoon Network on October 3rd.
Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch: Writer Henry Gilroy, p1
Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch: Creating a New Clone Wars
Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch: From Big Screen to Small
Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch: Director David Filoni
Movie Review: Star Wars: Clone Wars
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