Places Magazine

Places

A preview of Performing Arts at Johnson County Community College www.jccc.edu/TheSeries

March 2010

Clytemnestra

Groovaloo

Martha Graham Dance Company

Guthrie Family Rides Again

Spizzwinks(?)

Airmen of Note

Flyin’ West

The Groovaloos rap with body and soul Life isn’t always choreographed. Sometimes you just have to go it freestyle.

Groovaloo

So goes the philosophy of the Groovaloos, a troupe of 14 hip-hop street dancers and winners of NBC’s SuperStars of Dance. Fresh from their five-week off-Broadway engagement at Union Square Theatre, the troupe is on a national tour performing an electric dance stage show, Groovaloo, with a stop in Overland Park at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, March 5-6, in Yardley Hall.

Based on the troupe’s true-to-life experiences as told by the dancers who lived them, Groovaloo combines jaw-dropping displays of physicality with heart-pounding music and powerful stories that chronicle the struggles, hopes and triumphs of the 14-member cast. Groovaloo celebrates the passion and purpose of life while revealing the heart, soul and artistry of freestyle dance.

“We created Groovaloo as a new form of entertainment that truly blurs the lines between theater and dance,” said creator Bradley Rapier. “The story is told through movement, though we also feature spoken word poetry as well as compelling stories which add to the show’s theatricality. In some cases, dance literally saved people’s lives — each performer has a story to share, and that’s where the real connection is made with the audience.”

During the 90 minutes of heart-pounding freestyle dancing, people do amazing high-energy stunts – head spins, hand spins, flips and floor work.

And there is more: stories about how dance changes lives.

“In Groovaloo, the spectacular movement isn’t mere spectacle. It’s deployed to tell the personal stories of nine of the company’s dancers.”

— The New York Times Driven by dance moves that challenge the laws of physics and intertwined stories, cast members discover the true meaning of family and share what it’s like to be “in the circle,” the ring that forms when street dancers gather to show off their moves.

“Take equal parts Fame and A Chorus Line … result? Groovaloo, an eye-popping display!”

— The New York Post With break dancing, a worldwide phenomenon given notoriety by street competitions from Germany to Japan and TV reality shows, the Groovaloos are the best in the league, appearing on the season finale of So You Think You Can Dance, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Groovaloo on the live stage will inspire everyone in the audience to celebrate his or her own true story – and jettison out of the theater doing handsprings.

Tickets $45, $35

Junk rocks

One of the hottest shows in the college market and a finalist in NBC’s America’s Got Talent, Recycled Percussion will perform at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 6, in Polsky Theatre of the Carlsen Center, sponsored by JCCC’s Campus Activities Board.

Combining power percussion with disc jockey music, Recycled Percussion performs metallic, rock, hip-hop, electronic and “junk” music using everyday items such as plastic buckets, ladders, metal tanks, chain saws and jackhammers along with traditional drums and percussion instruments.

Based in Manchester, N.H., band members are Justin Spencer, percussionist, drummer, band leader; Jimmy Magoon, electric guitarist; Ryan Vezina, percussionist, drummer; and Todd Griffin, disc jockey, spinmaster, keyboardist and vocalist.

This show is scheduled before Groovaloo starting at 8 p.m. in Yardley Hall the same night. Catch some dinner in between and see two fun shows in one evening.

Tickets $15, $10 for students with JCCC ID

Twice yearly the Note ventures throughout the United States, spreading its big band sound to communities from coast to coast. When the band started planning its Midwest tour, Master Sgt. Joe Grasso, one of the tour managers for the Air Force Bands, contacted his former teacher, Ron Stinson, JCCC professor, instrumental music.

“Since I have heard this band many times, I thought it would be a great concert for the people in our community,” Stinson said.

Throughout the history of the Airmen of Note, the Glenn Miller sound has remained a strong ingredient in the band’s musical heritage. In the early 1950s, the Note continued the course set by Miller and also adopted a more contemporary style under the direction of the legendary Sammy Nestico. Beginning in the 1970s, Senior Master Sgt. Mike Crotty, the Note’s chief arranger for more than 25 years, helped elevate the band to the forefront of modern big band jazz.

Today, Master Sgt. Alan Baylock, current chief arranger, maintains the band’s commitment to driving innovation and respect for tradition. To augment its talented writing staff, the Airmen of Note has commissioned works by such celebrated arrangers as Bob Florence and Bob Mintzer, Nestico and fellow Note alumnus Tommy Newsom.

Airmen of Note soar The Airmen of Note, the premier jazz ensemble of the United States Air Force, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 22, in Yardley Hall.

Created in 1950 to carry on the style of Glenn Miller’s Army Air Corps dance band, the Note carries on its 60-year history of strong leaders, distinguished writers and arrangers, and 18 of the finest jazz musicians in the country.

Over the years, the band has remained on an innovative musical course to continually challenge the frontiers of contemporary big band jazz. The Airmen of Note is one of today’s few touring big bands, having made literally thousands of appearances all over the world.

The Airmen of Note’s steadfast commitment to musical excellence and reputation for setting the highest standards has earned the respect of the world’s foremost jazz artists. This has led to many collaborative efforts, recordings and performances with such luminaries as Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan and Cleo Laine. Legendary jazz icons like Clark Terry and Louis Bellson, as well as today’s top artists like Arturo Sandoval and Randy Brecker have considered it a great honor to share the stage with the Airmen of Note.

The Note are regulars at the world’s most famous jazz festivals, including the Detroit/Montreux Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz Festival, Notre Dame Jazz Festival, Jacksonville Jazz Festival, Elkhart Jazz Festival, Hartford Jazz Festival and the Pensacola Jazz Festival. The band makes its home at Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C. Free. Reserve tickets in advance at the box office.

Spizzwinks(?) are unquestionably enjoyable The Yale Spizzwinks(?), America’s oldest underclassman a cappella singing group, will perform at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 7, in Polsky Theatre.

The performance is free and open to the public.

The 16-member all-male ensemble, directed entirely by Yale students, has charmed audiences around the world with its unique blend of sweet harmony and tongue-in-cheek humor.

Late in 1913, four Yale freshmen met at Mory’s, Yale’s historic tavern, to choose the name of their new singing group. Their group was intended as a satirical response to the Yale Whiffenpoofs, the only other a cappella group existing at the time. After thinking and drinking (and perhaps more drinking than thinking), one of them glimpsed the ghost of Frank Johnson, the postmaster of his small Iowa hometown, who had attributed the Corn Blight of 1906 to an invisible insect called the Spizzwink. The name was adopted, but that year a yearbook editor who was unsure of the word’s spelling added a question mark in parentheses. It remains to this day.

Maintaining a repertoire of exclusively original arrangements from the past 97 years — jazz standards, ballads, Broadway show tunes, pop and rock music, traditional Yale songs and humorous numbers. From the solemn spiritual Over Jordan to the Motown stylings of Smokey Robinson’s The Tracks of My Tears, the Spizzwinks(?) take pride in maintaining the most eclectic and memorable repertoire on America’s college campuses. No Spizzwinks(?) performance would be complete, however, without a generous dose of choreography and a unique brand of humor.

Today, a cappella has swept the nation from universities to prime-time television (NBC’s Sing Off ). And the Spizzwinks(?) lead the charge with

Spizzwinks(?)

100 concerts a year from the White House to Carnegie Hall and world tours.

This performance is sponsored by George H. Langworthy Sr., former JCCC trustee, with underwriting also provided by the Yale Club of Kansas City.

Sample of the Spizzwinks(?) current repertoire Ain’t No Crime

No Regrets

All the Things You Are

One of Those Things

Bright College Years

On a Clear Day

Build Me Up Buttercup

On Broadway

Copacabana

Over Jordan

Grapevine

Shenandoah

In a Sentimental Mood

Since I Fell

Last Goodbye

Somebody to Love

Loch Lomond

Wake, Freshmen, Wake

Magic

Why Can’t I Fall in Love

Moon River

Yale Football Medley

Mr. Grinch

You Go to My Head

Free and open to the public. No tickets required.

Graham’s masterpiece re-created The oldest and most celebrated contemporary dance company in the world, the Martha Graham Dance Company will perform a stunning re-creation of Graham’s only full-evening work, Clytemnestra, at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 13, in Yardley Hall.

Recognized as groundbreaking when it premiered 52 years ago, this compelling psycho`drama features 21 dancers portraying the classic characters of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Electra, Orestes, Helen of Troy and more.

Artist Insights by a company member begin at 7 p.m.

Graham founded her company in 1926 and choreographed 181 works in her lifetime. Though she herself is the best-known alumna of her company, having danced from the Company’s inception until the late

1960s, the Company has provided a training ground for some of modern dance’s most illustrious performers and choreographers including Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Erick Hawkins, Pascal Rioult and Betty Bloomers, who later became better known as First Lady Betty Ford.

Graham’s Clytemnestra premiered at the Adelphi Theater, New York City, on April 1, 1958. With sets by her longtime collaborator Isamu Noguchi and a commissioned score by the Egyptian composer Hakim elf-Dabs, the dance is based upon Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia, and is the culminating work in Graham’s Greek Cycle. Told from the perspective of Clytemnestra, the Queen of Mycenae, during the Trojan War, the story creates a sympathetic protagonist out of one of literature’s most reviled women.

For Graham, the action took place in the theater of the mind. Moving back and forth across time and space, Clytemnestra relives scenes of betrayal, revenge, murder and finally reconciliation in a dance that ends as it begins in the Underworld. Although the scenes recall a bloody path, Clytemnestra is about rebirth and redemption.

Clytemnestra demonstrated Graham’s mastery of total world theater, synthesizing elements of classical Eastern theater forms such as Noh and Kabuki, while making the experience of the female protagonist center. The drama has three acts with two intermissions. Its evocative orchestration, including two voices, reference the sound of the Middle East while serving Graham’s modern approach to psychological themes.

The 50th anniversary re-creation of Clytemnestra won rave reviews when it first ran in Athens and Washington, D.C. And the Graham Company reached to modern audiences with the “Clytemnestra ReMash Challenge,” an online contest in 2009 that encouraged participants to create a modern twist to the ancient characters through current pop culture, new personalities or events. You have to think that Graham, who died in 1991, would have loved the contest paralleling ancient and recent history.

Janet Eilber is the current Martha Graham Center artistic director. As a principal dancer with the Company, Eilber danced many of Graham’s greatest roles and had roles created for her by Graham. Clytemnestra was made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts’ American Masterpieces: Dance Initiative, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Tickets $45, $35

Guthrie Family Rides Again

Music is a Guthrie family tradition Celebrated folk singer Arlo Guthrie officially introduces the fourth generation of Guthries to the stage in his tour, Guthrie Family Rides Again, at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 27, in Yardley Hall.

Favorite folk songs, video clips, Arlo’s hits and a selection of unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics that have been put to music by friends and family make for an unforgettable multimedia performance.

Guthrie Family Rides Again features Arlo with son Abe, who has played keyboards and sung vocals in his father’s shows since the ’80s. Daughters Cathy, Annie and Sarah Lee Guthrie, all of whom have their own musical careers, will sing and accompany on acoustic guitars. The youngest generation of Guthrie children, Woody’s great-grandchildren, join in on selected songs.

Hitting the road is nothing new to the Guthrie family. For generations they have traveled the world making music. Arlo and wife Jackie raised their children on the road.

The entire family will be performing songs that they’ve written, learned together and come to love. Along with Arlo’s standards, the evening will include a selection of recently re-discovered Woody Guthrie lyrics put to music. Woody joins in the newly found recordings via The Woody Guthrie Archives.

Born in 1947 with a guitar in one hand and a harmonica in the other, Arlo is the eldest son of America’s most beloved singer/writer/philosopher Woody Guthrie and Marjorie Mazia Guthrie, a professional dancer with the Martha Graham Company and founder of The Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease. Growing up surrounded by music, dancers and philosophers, Arlo witnessed the transition of ballad singers to a new era of singer-songwriters.

Arlo’s career exploded in 1967 with the release of his album Alice’s Restaurant. The 18-minute, 20-second title cut became an American classic.

His biggest hit was City of New Orleans.

During the last four decades, Arlo has continued to sing, play and tell stories on tour. He started his own record company bringing in his children to record. Not to be confined to the world of folk and rock, Arlo created An American Scrapbook, a program of symphonic arrangements that he has performed with prestigious orchestras throughout the U.S. Arlo performed at Yardley Hall in February 2002.

The Guthrie family is involved in two not-for-profit groups dedicated to community services and social issues — The Guthrie Center, housed in the old Trinity Church that inspired Alice’s Restaurant, and the Guthrie Foundation.

Tickets $45, $35

Performing Arts Events J o h n s o n

C o u n t y

C o m m u n i t y

C o l l e g e

March 2010 Monday 1

* Cindy Egger Ruel Joyce Recital Series noon Recital Hall

the Magic Tree 2 p.m. Black Box * Brown and Gold Men’s Follies 2 p.m. reception 3 p.m. Polsky Theatre No ticket required

21

15 * Alberto Suarez, horn Ruel Joyce Recital Series

Friday 5

* Jazz Nights 7:30 p.m.

Polsky Theatre

6 Groovaloo, Center Stage Series 8 p.m. Yardley Hall, $45, $35

Groovaloo

* JCCC Chamber Choir Concert 7:30 p.m.

Polsky Theatre

* Flyin’ West, a play about Nicodemus, Kan. JERIC Productions 7 p.m. Polsky Theatre

12 * Ming Lee and the Magic Tree JCCC Academic Theatre 7:30 p.m.

Black Box Theatre

18

19

11

Saturday

Recycled Percussion Student Activities 5 p.m. Polsky Theatre $15, $10 students with JCCC ID 13 * Ming Lee and

the Magic Tree 2 and 7:30 p.m Black Box Theatre

Martha Graham Dance Company Clytemnestra 8 p.m. Yardley Hall $45, $35

16

17

20

* Carol Comer with PBT Jazz Series noon Yardley Hall Clytemnestra

22 * Jay Carter, countertenor Ruel Joyce Recital Series noon Recital Hall * Airmen of Note 7:30 p.m. Yardley Hall No charge; reservation required at the box office

28

4

10

* Horace Washington Quartet Jazz Series noon Recital Hall

Thursday

▲

14 * Ming Lee and

3

* JCCC Concert Band 7:30 p.m.

Polsky Theatre 9

8

KC Symphony Sunday Stern Conducts Copland and Beethoven 2 p.m. Yardley Hall $52, $42, $12 youth

2 * Rob Whitsitt Quartet Jazz Series noon Recital Hall

Wednesday

29 * Andrew Fuller, violin Laura Fuller, viola Ruel Joyce Recital Series noon Recital Hall

For best seats, order early.

Call 913-469-4445 or buy tickets online

www.jccc.edu/TheSeries

23

24

* Al Pearson Quartet Jazz Series noon Recital Hall

30

25

26

27 Guthrie Family

▲

7

* The Yale Spizzwinks(?)

2 p.m. Polsky Theatre

* Emily Smith and Ronda Ford, flute Jerry Pope, piano Ruel Joyce Recital Series noon Recital Hall

Tuesday

▲

Sunday

Rides Again Arlo and his extended family Special Event 8 p.m. Yardley Hall $45, $35

31

* Bowdog featuring Jerry Hahn Jazz Series noon Recital Hall

Box Office: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday • Call 913-469-4445 Tickets are required for most events in Polsky Theatre and Yardley Hall. Programs, dates and times are subject to change.

There is a $1 per ticket handling charge at the JCCC box office. Discounts are available for music, theater and dance students.

Carlsen Center Administrative Office: Open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday • Call 913-469-4450

for tickets and information.

A request for interpretative services must be made 72 hours before a performance. Call the box office at 913-469-4445 or TDD/TTY 913-469-4485.

Service fee applicable.

Persons with disabilities who desire additional support services may contact services for patrons with disabilities, 913-469-8500, ext. 3521, or TDD/TTY 913-469-3885.

Purchase live online

*free-admission event

JOHNSON COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE 12345 COLLEGE BLVD OVERLAND PARK KS 66210-1299

NONPROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE PAID Johnson County Community College

www.jccc.edu/TheSeries

Flyin’ West spotlights Nicodemus, Kansas with Bates, cast members, the audience and JCCC faculty Dr. James Leiker, director, Kansas Studies Institute and associate professor, history, and Dr. Carmaletta Williams, executive director, Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and English professor.

In advance of the play, Bates will give a lecture, Blacks and Black Towns in the West – The Nicodemus Story, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Thursday, March 11, in the Craig Community Auditorium.

Co-sponsored by the KSI, ODEI and Performing Arts Series at JCCC, the lecture and play are free and open to the public.

Nicodemus, in the northwest corner of Kansas, was founded after the Reconstruction Period had ended following the Civil War. This living community is the only remaining all-black town west of the Mississippi River that was settled on the western plains by former slaves. Now part of the National Park Service, five historic buildings represent this community.

Flyin’ West, a play about Nicodemus, Kan., an all-black town settled by former slaves in 1877, will be performed by JERIC Productions at 7 p.m.

Thursday, March 11, in Polsky Theatre of the Carlsen Center.

In this frontier drama, playwright Pearl Cleage tells the tale of three strong black women struggling to keep their land and preserve their way of life, fighting the greed of both white speculators and some of their own black townspeople only 20 years after the end of the Civil War.

Flyin’ West debuted in September 2009 at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, Kansas City, Mo., home to JERIC Productions, a black theater company. This encore production features Evelyn Trigg, Laura Partridge, Andrea Agosto, Ro Flowers Jr., Cheri Brown and Stephen Brown.

Flyin’ West will be followed by a brief presentation by Angela Bates, executive director, Nicodemus Historical Society, and an informal discussion

Free. No ticket required.