page 8
daily nebraskan
monday, february 27, 1978
n o arts ond
Director's dream materializes;
fortune creates 5 by 2 Plus
By Charlie Krig
Bruce Becker owes his dancing to good
doctors, proper healing and luck.
Six years ago he had back problems
beginning with a slipped disc that had to be
removed and ending with the collapse of
the remaining discs in his lower back.
After a lengthy operation, Becker's
spine healed correctly and during his year
of recuperation he imagined what he
wanted to do with the rest of his dance
career: form a small repertory dance com
pany free of the limitations of a full-time
choreographer. On April 4, 1973, his
dream gave its premiere performance.
dance
fVIW
That was the start of the 5 by 2 Dance
Company. Becker joined Jane Kosminsk.
another dancer who was tired of dancing in
other persons' shows and companies, to
make a dance company with a special
theme. The company was made of only
two people who performed only five works
during each concert. Hence the name 5
by 2.
Now the group has a new name: the 5
by 2 Plus Dance Company. The "Plus"
refers to Carol Parker, Kathryn Komatsu
and Dan Ezralow, who joined the company
two years ago. Becker said adding the
extra dancers allows for a greater repertory
and that he might add another male
"just to even things out."
"I'm very proud of the concept of the
company. We're absolutely a modern
dance company. There's not a touch of
ballet except for one spoof of ballet we
do called Gallopade" Becker said.
"We do a spectrum of styles of modern
dance from the last 40 years."
Part of Becker's interest in dance came
from his aunt, Helen Tamiris, a woman
who spread the influence of modern dance
with Martha (itahani and Doris Humphrey
during the early days of the Bennington
College dance program. Becker also per
forms one of Tamiris' works, a piece called
Negro Spirituals copyrighted by the 5 by
2 Company.
Becker said he studied with his "marve
lous" aunt and received much support for
his dance career. But his entire family is
arts-oriented. Becker said. Lveryone is
some sort of artist (in dance, painting or
sculpture) except for the one "queer
duck" of the family who is a mctalurigical
engineer, he explained.
Becker now is 33 years old which,
since he began at age 7. is "a long time to
dance." He said he experiences enough
pain, from his past injuries to "tell me that
my performance career is limited." so he
is going to do more choreography and less
dancing. Also, he said he would like to
return to Broadway as a director or chore
ographer. "My return to Broadway is imminent.
I loved that work (as a dancer) and learned
a lot from it. In fact, 5 by 2 wouldn't
be here without that experience. The
texture and the feel give you a drive for
performing," Becker said.
If his work on the stage is a hit, 5 by 2
will benefit, he said, because the company
will be subsidized by his earnings and will
be able to produce concerts without worry
ing about money. Becker said his new
dream is to get that freedom for the
company.
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Photo by Zachery Freyman
Bruce Becker, 5x2 Plus Dance Company co-founder, performs Negrr Spirituals,
choreographed by Helen Tamiris.
'Blind Date' captures world's adventurous complexity
By David Wood
Blind Date, bv Jerzv Kosinski, Houghton
Mifflin, S8.95
Jerzy Kosinski has arranged another
blind date; this one is the blind date
between George Levanter and his life and
times.
Levanter is a fictional Russian defector,
who escapes across the Iron Curtain by
contriving international acclaim for his
photographic style. Living off these same
wits, he makes quite a go of it in the lands
of free enterprise.
By chancing and free-lancing, he
becomes accomplished in commercial art,
investment theory, political and corporate
cold-warfare, and in romance.
. book
Levanter is an uncompromising, self
styled man. He has a finely tuned system
for playing the jetset game. He can react
with spontaneity and authority. And
however earnest or urgent, he always keeps
a cool head .
While you can sense his honesty. Levan
ter seems to offer his soul only in super
fically unrelated and dryly recounted
incidents
It is appropriate though. His life is
episodic and undefined, just as Kosinski 's
novelization of it is. Levanter and Kosinki
draw out the potential of every moment as
they stumble into it. Then Ixvantcr moves
on to some half-planned future and naks
up a past that is "nothinj but an old Pol
aroid snapshot: no negative pi'-1 rap!icr
unknown, camera thrown awa
kosinski'1 uriiiiii: sivle. like ii-vanter
v-c! h rx less than diaries Mat.M .t a'
Wie'i k.os;iisk all- ' "iscM anv i,-- r;rv
!''! he - ' ' ipt Hot I " j
ing by making it trite or out of place.
In one rare metaphor, when Levanter is
fatally stranded on an Alpine slope, Kosin
ski writes of skiing, "A descent was like
life: to love it was to love each moment, to
rejoice in the skill and speed of every
moment."
Careening the courses of tlat crystal
mountain of the rich, famous, and power
ful Levanter has the rare fortune of meet
ing, or nearly meeting, some historical
notables. He was next-door neighbor to
Stalin's daughter at Princeton In his
editor friend's office, he chatted with
Lindbergh .
Another time, but for a baggage mix
up. he just missed a chance to be slaugh
tered by no less than Carles Man son. at
the home of his friend's friend. Sharon
Tate. And. not least. lx?vanter was among
the very last to speak with the Nobel
Prize -winning biologist Jacques Monod
Inviting people like that into a novel,
and them making them talk, is poor form
It only makes the fiction that they are a
party to just that much more unreal. I
would complain that historical orientations
should be kept subtler, except 1 would not
like to see Monod bounced out. He is
perhaps the most important member of
the book.
Monod won tfie Nobel for his contro
versial book. Chance and Necessity. His
theory is a sort of molecular Darwinism
Organisms are the product of what the
cells have kept by phance. Kosinki signi
ficantly takes Blind Date epigraph from
Monod
"All the traditional systems have placed
ethics and values beyond man's reach
Values did not belong to him: he belonged
to them. He now knows that they are his
and his alone."
B hosting Monod. Kosinski makes
some of the novel's otherwise vague the
matic and snlistic motivations accessible
Monod is the key tor understanding the
nature o! the blind date with environment
Kosinski take 'I : - ! .. ..: ;r,
istic morality, which has through billions
of years made presidents out of proteins,
and fabilizes it into the short, haphazard
career of one man, who, now dead, once
lived in our seamy, space-age world.
The result is more than a "nothing
ventured, nothing gained" outlook. Kosin
ski sees there is so much arbirary chance in
our lives that meeting our present and
future is less like a venture, more like a
blind date. You get into it. and have to
play it as it comes, and get what you can.
Levanter evolves up through the higher
classes of society so readily, because he
courts chance, is great at improvising, and
is as principled and aimless as a cell. He
lives in the present, will identify with no
certain self, and he likes his involvements
ambiguous and open-ended.
After one blind date, Levanter ends up
married to maybe the richest, youngest,
terminally ill, widow in America. On
another blind date, his exciting lover is a
transsexual. Levanter always moves on.
Kosinski makes a comment on it all.
Levanter is killed by the winds and
weather. It is a reminder that this is a
morality necessitated by mortality.
However, in Blind Date. Levanter is
not the main character so much as his
date, the world. Kosinski mostly spends his
book glimpsing at the texture of our ran
domly chance-ridden, capitalist, dislocated,
technological modern time. It is a small
world, where paths can cross in marvelous
ways, and big enough that nobody is so
different that there is not someone else
like him running around.
It is a world where politics, sex. money,
or nature can evolve pathologies into
graces and graces into pathologies. And it
is a world more fraught with blind dates
than ever.
Blind-dating is the adventuresome
nature of living, to Jerzy Kosinski.
Though bund Date blandly deters judge
ment on it, it does capture the complexity
well.
Voice instructor to perform
Ldward J. Crafts, a voice instructor in
the IJNL School of Musk, will perform a
free, public recital at 8 p.m. in Kimball
Recital Hall.
Crafts plans a 14-part program including
these works: O Dajfni che di quest 'aninxa
( and Due canzonet te ftaliane ( 182H)
by Mikhail Qlnka; giocator sfortunato
by Giovanni Cam! Clari; Vo cenando by
Lmanuele Barone d'Astorga: Aus dem
spanisrficn Liederbuch. Am dem italienis
chen Liederbuch and Prometheus (IXX9)
by Hugo Wolf ; Dcs Knahen Wunderhorn by
(.ustav Mahler: l.c Hestiare (I91H by
Lrancis Poulenc. and Twelve Oxen 11924
Corpus Chnsri (1927), The I ox (1930).
My Own ( ' nnln 1 1927) and Jilhan t if Ber
ry i9?f,i b I'cicr warlock
Heather Koss will sing with ( rafts dur
ing five selections and Harold Ivans, ano
'her Scb..o! ,,f Mum, ,ikc imifii.-int. uill
ther recital Tuesday night. The UNL Sym
phony Orchestra will perform i concert at
8 p.m. in Kimball Hall. Again, the concert
is tree and open to the pu blic .
M(o0
Red Cross
is counting
on you.
CUV U:r ; Kii
i... s
M.
