Schimmel Center seeks to enrich and engage our audiences by bringing world-class talent to Lower Manhattan. Our programming features internationally-acclaimed talent in the areas of music, dance, cabaret, comedy and family programming
Last week I dropped in on a rehearsal for this week’s production of Recuerdo Tango with the Mariela Franganillo Company. I was very fortunate to get to see these talented dancers in action. Choreographer, Mariella Franganillo was very generous with her time and granted me an interview. Please enjoy the following video of my day with the dancers of Recuerdo Tango!
See you at the Schimmel!
Michael Torbet
2013-14 Pace Presents Blogger
October 9th – October 30th
ART HISTORY ALIVE: France’s Fascinating Art
October 9th, 11:00am | October 16th, 11:00am | October 23rd, 11:00am | October 30th, 11:00am
FRANCE’S FASCINATING ART: FROM THE GREAT MEDIEVAL CATHEDRALS TO POST-IMPRESSIONISM
A LECTURE SERIES WITH DR. JANETTA REBOLD BENTON, PH.D.
All Tickets $25 or each of the Series for $80
Dr. Janetta Rebold Benton
France is unequaled for her range of artistic styles and accomplishment–always with unparalleled French elegance and sophistication. Travel vicariously through the ages as these richly illustrated lectures examine the high points of architecture, sculpture, painting, and decorative arts in France, from the late Middle Ages through Post-Impressionism, approximately 1000-1900.
October 9 – Middle Ages: Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, sculpture, and stained glass: Romanesque, monsters, morals, and building methods from Autun to Vezelay. Gothic soaring cathedrals–Notre-Dame-de-
October 16 – Renaissance and Baroque: Chateaux of the Loire Valley; Poussin, Louis XIV at Versailles: Join Renaissance and Baroque French royalty and enjoy life in the splendid chateaux and gardens of Chambord, Chenonceau, Versailles, and elsewhere.
October 23 – Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Realism: Boucher, David, Gericault, Manet: The pendulum swings from light Rococo pastel fluff, to austere severe Neoclassicism, to Romantic escapes, and finally to the everyday genre scenes of Realism.
October 30 – Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: Monet, Renoir, Degas, van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Seurat: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists depicted subjects from daily life, but while the Impressionists painted in terms of light and atmospheric conditions, the Post-Impressionists used color to express emotion and to analyze pictorial structure.
The Conversation Continues: Lunch with the Lecturer $25 – Limited space available.
To purchase a series or lunch with the Lecturer, please call the box office at (212) 346-1715.
Lecturer’s Website: http://
Learn more about this series and Dr. Janetta Rebold Benton at this Huffington Post blog post! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-blackmore-Dobbyn/janetta-rebold-benton-med_b_4077418.html
For tickets visit schimmel.pace.edu or call (866) 811-4111
Everyone here at Pace Presents is thrilled to be welcoming back The Mariella Franganillo Company to perform their popular blend of classic and contemporary Argentinian tango. Two years ago, the company dazzled our audience with their program entitled “Tango Connection,” and quickly became a downtown favorite. This year they bring us “Recuerdo Tango”. “Recuerdo” is the Spanish word for “Memory.” This program promises to be a reflection of the dance in both the past and present. The dances will be brought to life by nine outstanding dancers, a quartet and vocalist under the direction of renowned dancer and choreographers, Mariela Franganillo and Bob McAndrew. Seeing as the theme of the evening will be memory, I thought it would be appropriate to look back on the history of this passionate and exciting dance form.
Because of the nature in which Tango has been passed down through the years and its lack of written history, the origins of the dance remain unclear. The general consensus among historians is that the dance dates back to the mid 1800’s. It is believed that the dance is a result of the influence that African slaves had on the folk dances of the native people of Argentina. Although there is much debate on how the word “tango” developed, it was originally defined as a place where African slaves and free black men came to dance in Argentina around the time of that country’s emancipation of their slaves in 1853.
Mariana Parma and Hernan Brizuela
By the early 1900’s, as was in the United States, there was a huge influx of European immigration to Argentina’s shores. The customs of the Argentinian people were now also being influenced by Germans, Russians and Italians. The Argentinean dances that had already been re-shaped by the Cuban “Habanera” and the African “candombe” rhythms, were now being colored by Italian Tarentellas, Polish Polkas and Viennese waltzes. The tango we know today was mostly developed in African- Argentinean dance halls by young men known as “compadritos”. These young men would dress in slouch hats, loose neckerchiefs, high-waist slacks and high heeled, pointy, leather shoes. The compadritos started a dance revolution in bars, dance halls and brothels in Buenos Aires. Tango had become the dance of Argentina’s proletariat.
By the 1920’s the dance started to catch the attention of the country’s high society class. Although it wouldn’t be proper for the women of Argentina’s upper-class to mix with commoners, their sons didn’t see any problem with “slumming it” to learn the new dance sensation. With the dance now in the well-heeled grip of the porteño oligarchy, Tango was destined to become a world-wide sensation by the early 1930’s.
The world-wide rise of the Tango movement coincided with Argentina’s golden age of the 1930’s. While tango was being featured in popular Hollywood movies, Argentina became one of the ten richest countries in the world. To the rest of the world, Tango came to be the embodiment of Argentinian culture, with its passionate, sensuous beats and pulsating rhythms. This “Golden-age” would continue through the 1940’s and 50’s.
Changes in political climate durring the 1950’s led to dancers having to take their dancing “underground.” Tango saw a decline in interest from the late 1950’s through the mid 1980’s. During the late 1980’s, a resurgence in the dance form occurred in the cafes and discothèques of Paris. Renewed interest in the dance led to a stage show in Paris entitled, “Tango Argentino.” The show was such a success in Paris that it toured all around Europe and North and South America. Tango had, once again, captured the minds and hearts of culture seekers all around the world.
Ana Padron and Diego Blanco will perform with the Mariela Franganillo Company on the Schimmel Stage.
Now Pace Presents invites you to come to the Michael Schimmel Center and experience the pulsating and sensuous rhythms of the dance form known as Tango. For tickets visit schimmel.pace.edu or call (866) 811-4111
See you at the Schimmel!
Michael Torbet
2013-14 Pace Presents Blogger
RECUERDO TANGO with The Mariela Franganillo Company/ Thursday-Saturday, October17th-19th/ 7:30pm/The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts/3 Spruce St, New York, NY/$55/$40/$30/ Curated by Livesounds.org
When the name Richard Rodgers is heard, one cannot help but instantly team him up with his most famous writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein II. In 1943, the team formed a dynamic duo that most historians agree, changed the course of the American musical. On one fateful March evening an audience assembled at the St. James theatre and heard the opening chorus that forever changed the way we look at musical comedy, “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow….” There certainly was a bright golden haze over the future of the great white way. Oklahoma! was odd and exciting because it was the first time that the score of a musical comedy was so successful at both furthering the plot of the piece as well as creating character development. The success of the “first mature book musical”, Oklahoma! paved the way for a golden era in American musical comedy history. The team would go on to write more classics including Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific and of course, The Sound of Music. If these five classic and much beloved musicals had been his only legacy, it would have been a fantastic one. But Richard Rodgers’ story did not begin or end with Oscar Hammerstein II. His legacy is a much greater and more vibrant one.
Richard Rodgers is regarded as one of the greatest composers of the American Musical Comedy!
A New York native, Rodgers was greatly influenced by the operettas his parents brought him to in Manhattan as a young child. He started playing piano at the age of six and was composing songs for his friends and family by his teenage years. With his love for the musical stage, the young composer would pursue an education at the prestigious New York institutions, Columbia and, the soon to be renamed Julliard school of music. It was at Columbia that Rodgers would meet his first great musical partner, Lorenz Hart. The two green songwriters wrote songs for musical reviews. The songs, though sophomoric, were a kin to those being developed in “tin-pan alley”. Their song writing seemed to be going nowhere and Rodgers almost gave up to pursue a “sensible” career in retail when the duo was asked by The Theatre Guild to compose new music for a one night benefit show. The songs hit a chord with their esteemed audience and their first contribution to the Great American Songbook of standards “Manhattan,” was introduced.
Together the duo wrote a slew of shows that were considered “hits”. A Connecticut Yankee, The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, By Jupiter and Babes In Arms are all classics that are still performed today around the country in high school, stock and regional theatres. The shows are recognizable but somehow not as recognizable as the unforgettable songs the shows supplied. “My Funny Valentine”, “Blue Moon”, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “The Lady is a Tramp” are all regarded as American Songbook classics and have all been recorded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. While Rodger’s later collaborations with Hammerstein were meant to further a plot, the songs written with Hart were written to be hits. The plots that revolved around these gloriously fun and exuberant musical numbers were rather flimsy and were written as a vehicle to showcase the fabulous music. By the sheer nature of these songs, they can fit into many different situations and settings. The songs written by Hart have become more universal and still live on today, well beyond the shows they were written for. Lady Gaga has even covered “The Lady is a Tramp,” I’m sure many listeners never even knew it was from an old chestnut titled Babes in Arms!
Another major difference between the songs written with Hart and the songs written with Hammerstein is tone. Many critics agree that the reason Rodgers and Hart’s collaborations were so sophisticated was due to dichotomy between Rodger’s upbeat melodies and Hart’s pessimistic lyrics. In one of the most famous love ballads, “Funny Valentine,” Hart wrote the words, “Your looks are laughable, unphotographable”. Even when writing about love, Hart would refuse to be “sappy”. Hammerstein, on the other hand, wrote lyrics that beamed with optimism. In South Pacific, a musical about racism and World War II, he still managed to fit in lyrics like, “When the sky is a bright canary yellow, I forget every cloud I’ve ever seen.” Hart may have been a master of the melancholy lyric and it certainly came from a dark place. Eventually his fight with alcoholism, drug addiction and repressed homosexuality in a pre-enlightened world would take a toll on both Hart’s personal life and his professional career with Rodgers. By the early 1940’s, it became clear to Richard Rodgers that he should begin searching for a new writing partner.
In 1942, Richard Rodgers was brought together with Oscar Hammerstien II by the Theatre Guild who was looking for a team to write a musicalization of the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs, which had been produced by the Guild ten years earlier. Together the team became the kings of Broadway. Not only did they write the greatest hits of the upcoming decade, they also formed a production company that would produce Broadway hits like Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. The two were sought after by Hollywood to score the 20th Century Fox musical remake of State Fair and were contracted by CBS to write a musical version of the classic fairy tale, Cinderella. The later was recently given its first ever Broadway staging this past March and is still running at The Broadway Theatre on 53rd Street. Together the songwriting duo won 35 Tony awards, 15 Academy awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards. Sadly, in 1960 their partnership ended after Hammerstein’s death to pancreatic cancer. The death came only 9 months after the Broadway premier of their greatest hit, “The Sound of Music”. Hammerstein’s last lyrics were to the song, “Edelweiss”.
Not to be discouraged by the death of his great writing partner, Richard Rodgers set out to write his first musical as both composer and lyricist. No Strings, may not have been Rodgers’ most commercially successful endeavor but it was regarded as a modest hit and won him two Tony awards and featured the beautifully haunting song “The Sweetest Sounds”. Rodgers would end his career with collaborations with Martin Charnin (of Annie fame), Sheldon Harnick (of Fiddler on the Roof Fame), and one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time, Stephen Sondheim. None of these outings were commercially successful but Rodgers was happy to be collaborating with such fine lyricists.
In 1979, at the age of 77 Richard Rodgers left the world behind with an extraordinary legacy. His music from all three eras of his career had left a mark on a burgeoning generation of new musical theatre composers. Among these composers are his daughter Mary Rodgers who brought us the classic Carol Burnett, fairy tale vehicle, Once Upon A Mattress and his grandson, Adam Guettel who won the praise of critics with his score to The Light in the Piazza.
Fred Barton leads his orchestra in celebration of the works of Richard Rodgers!
Pace Presents is excited to welcome back Fred Barton to lead his orchestra and stellar cast of all-star Broadway performers to bring to life the music of Richard Rodger’s career. With his witty mix of anecdotes about the composer and his fine orchestrations of these classic pieces this promises to be an evening not to be missed. Come on down to the Schimmel Center and celebrate the life and music of this great composer. They are sure to be “the sweetest sounds you’ll ever hear.”
American Showstoppers: An Evening With Richard Rodgers/Saturday, October 12/ 7:30pm/ $45/$35/$25/ Student Tickets: $5
See You at the Schimmel!
Michael Torbet, 2013-14 Pace Presents Blogger
For tickets visit schimmel.pace.edu or call the box office at (212) 346-1715
Continuing in our precedent of showcasing up and coming talent from around the globe, the Schimmel is pleased to welcome acclaimed Bharatanatyam dancer, Aparna Ramaswamy to its stage on Saturday, October 5th. The esteemed artist will bring us the US premiere of her work, Sannidhi (Sacred Space). In five sections, her new work will weave together music and movement, rhythm and lyric, spirit and emotion like a fine tapestry. Her art form “creates an invisible link between dancer, musicians and audience.” Although Ms. Ramaswamy is well studied in the art of Bharatanatayam dance (she is a protégé of the legendary artist Alamel Valli), she is an artist who wishes to use her classical upbringing as a medium to explore more universal themes. Her work becomes a dance for all audiences.
Aparna Ramaswamy
While it may be a mystical thing to watch, Bharatanatyam is not a medium that may be familiar to the lay New York culture seeker. Therefore I decided it was necessary to delve into the history of this classic Indian dance form. Bharatanatyam is the combination of three distinct principals; Bhava (Expression), Raga (Music) and Tala (Rhythm). The dance originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu which is a current day state of India.
Temple dancers known as the Devadasis, dedicated their lives to performing for the Hindu deities. For centuries this ancient dance stayed in the temples only to be seen within the glorious carved walls. Occasionally, during the middle ages, nobility would bring these dancers to their palaces to dance for them and changed the dance from one of devotion to the gods to mere entertainment. A new class of dancers, known as the Rajanarthakis, was born. The Rajanarthakis entertained with their dances but the Devadasis offered up their souls to the gods.
It wasn’t until the 1930’s that some of the elite class of India would express interest in learning the temple dances and start to hand down that heritage as part of their own cultural development. The development of the dance form itself has caused a certain controversy. Some Indian dance historians have seen it as a “way for some women to appropriate the customs and practices of the Devadasis while disassociating themselves with other aspects of the contemporary Devadasis’ practices.” Women and men can now learn this dance form in local and commercial institutions all around the globe. What was once a dance only to be seen by the temple gods, now is a cultural art form to be expressed for the masses.
Bharatanatyam is a vital art medium that displays all the pillars of dance. It is dramatic. It is musical and rhythmic. It brings forth emotion from both dancer and audience. It reveres the gods. It is community in its richest and fullest form. The gestures and movements of the dancer not only tell an old story, they recite a poetry that only she can write. Come to the Schimmel and experience with us as another artist places her hand on yet another turning point of this beautiful medium.
Please enjoy the video below of Aparna Ramaswamy to learn more about her fascinating art.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiN_6yLMl8]
For tickets, visit schimmel.pace.edu or call (212) 346-1715
See You at the Schimmel!
Michael Torbet
