Arts & Entertainment
Dancers present impressions
By Micki Haller
Senior Editor
Reviewers across the country have
raved about David Gordon/Pick Up
Co., which will dance in Kimball
Recital Hall Friday at 8 p.m.
The group, known for creative
ideas and simple natural movements,
will perform “Words, Music, Wild
life and Weather,” a dance inspired
by the western United States. Alert
audience members will recognize the
Comhusker Football Fight song,
“Hail Varsity” and a list of famous
Nebraskans.
The piece is part of a large dance
called “United States.” Each section
was initially inspired by a specific
region or city in the country. The
dancers will also perform “Mozart,
Memories and the First Frost,’ ’ based
on Minnesota.
The western section was commis
sioned by 27 patrons in 17 states,
including the World On Stage UNL
Performance Series at Kimball Hall.
Commissioners not only gave
money, but written material, music
and visual art from their region.
“It’s like a collage,” said Cynthia
Oliver, a dancer with the company.
“We’re not trying to necessarily
represent a region ~ we’re not trying
to become that region,” she said.
Instead, the dance is about impres
sions of a region.
“I don’t know if David’s been to
each and every one of the places
represented,” she said. “It’s not like
a tour guide to the United States.”
Instead, Gordon was able to gather
impressions for each place without
necessarily spending a lot of time
there, she said.
She is often able to incorporate
text with movement, sometimes with
humorous results.
For instance, the New England
section has the text to a Robert Frost
poem spoken, Oliver said. The
speaker may stutter or repeat himself,
and the movement “stutters” or re
peats also.
“I know there’s a lot of humor in
David’s work,” she said. “I think
that’s enjoyable for an audience.”
“David has a good sense of tim
ing,” she added.
Getting a job with the company
also involved a sense of liming, she
said.
“To be honest, I was looking for a
job,” she said. Oliver was making the
transition from modeling and com
mercial dance to concert dance. She
looked in the paper, she said, and
found the job. Oliver has been with
the company for 2 J/2 years.
Oliver said she likes being with a
group interested in making Gordon’s
movement come to life, but she also
has a little more freedom than in other
groups.
“With David, there’s a little more
space and time for exploration,” she
said. “We have a lot of input. David
encourages that often.”
Most people stay with the com
pany for a fairly long time, she said.
She knew of one person who was in
the group for seven years.
David Gordon and his wife, Valda
Setterfield, also dance with 10 other
dancers in the group.
“We’re an ensemble of working
artists,” Oliver said.
Although David Gordon/Pick Up
has been described as post-modern,
Oliver said it’s best to see the per
formance without any preconceived
notions.
“To walk into the theater cold is
good enough, unless they’re dance
aficionados,” she said.
Tickets for the performance are
$13 and $9, half-price for University
of Nebraska-Lincoln students.
Andrew Eccles/AT&T
David Gordon/Pick Up Co.
Debut album needs rock ‘n ’ roll sound, human touch
Hy Matt liii rton
Staff Reporter
Siren
All Is Forgiven
Polygram
Here’s an idea: Make an album
and don’t tape it.
Polygram uses this gimmick hop
ing a consumer will buy the record.
The result is “All is Forgiven,” the
debut album by Siren, another pop/
heavy metal band.
“All is Forgiven” marks the in
iroduction of new recording tech
nologies navigating the “primitive”
need for rccl-to-reel tape and replac
ing it with “superior” capabilities to
process the sound directly onto disk.
—
Consequently, the record has an
extremely polished synthesizer/gui
tar-based sound that’s blind to a fun
damental rock V roll approach. This
could be attributed to Haas and
Massey, the apparent creative forces
behind Siren and their musical back
grounds.
Haas and Massey concentrate on
keyboards and guitars with too much
synthesizer meshed with electric gui
tar, resulting in a modern, technical
sound.
In the title cut, former Cheap Trick
replacement Jon Brant lays down a
heavy bass line that sounds similar to
Living Colour’s “Cult of Personal
ity.’’
Between the bass lines are fast,
unoriginal and plastic guitar riffs.
The song also features drum machine
noises lacking a personal or human
touch. The synthesizers and vocals
combine to add a Gothic sound, tacky
in a rock ‘n’ roll album.
“One Good Lover” is another
futile attempt toward a rock ‘n’ roll
song. Again, the overbearing synthe
sizer ultimately detracts from the
guitar riffs. The synthesizer fades out
for a moment to highlight Haas’ cli
che guitar solo that will disappoint
even the most loyal headbangers.
Siren uses the ol’ “Jimi Hendrix
wah-wah pedal” on “Good Kid.”
The opening note sounds vaguely
like the intro to “Arc You Experi
enced,” but the similarities end
there.
Overall, Siren appears to be a clas
sic example of what is wrong with
' music today.
The group is caught up with tech
nological breakthroughs and tries tc
rely on supposedly hot guitar licks. In
the process, the members have made
an album lacking fundamental rock
‘n’ roll abilities. In the end, all is
forgotten.
A Theft breaks new ground in 109 pages
By Mark Lage
Senior Reporter
Saul Bellow
A Theft
Penguin Books
Saul Bellow’s latest book, ‘‘A
Theft,” ventures into new territories
for one of America’s most celebrated
authors, in both subject and form.
The novella of 109 pages is Bel
low’s longest story to feature a fe
male protagonist, and his first book to
be released as a paperback original.
Clara Velde, the heroine of the
story, has a husband (her fourth), who
does nothing all day but read paper
backs.
One day Clara becomes so exas
perated with this practice that she
grabs his book and hurls it out the
window of their apartment building.
This scene is detailed in the cover art,
and the book being thrown out the
window is ‘‘A Theft.”
Clara, a high-fashion executive in
r—11 1 . 1 ■' 1 l
ner lorues, nas me compacuy ana
intricately constructed background
of any Bellow character.
A strictly religious, Midwestern
small town upbringing, a coming of
age in New York, four rather uninter
esting husbands and a lifetime male
friend who has remained Clara’s only
real love are a few of the things that
have made up her struggle.
Teddy Reglcr, important behind
the-scenes governmental thinker, is
Clara’s friend, and he gave her the
emerald ring which she treasures
above all else. The theft of this ring
gives the story its title and main
thread.
For a writer with a Nobel Prize for
Literature, a Pulitzer Prize and three
r,—■■■■■.Ml. ,-Tn-g . iiTinr'it.,"." —
National book Awards, a paperback
original (usually reserved for ro
mances, Westerns and bad science
fiction) is a puzzling move.
In attempting to widen his audi
ence, Bellow is apparently running
into the same kinds of problems that
many of his characters have faced in
his stories — mainly, the incredible
shrinking attention span of the aver
age American.
One hundred pages is about as
short as Bellow ever gets, and when
he couldn’t find any magazine that
would lake it, he decided to release it
as a paperback.
Still, Bellow doesn’t seem en
tirely comfortable with the idea,
since ‘‘A Theft” takes a couple of
-" il
digs at ilsclt. Besides being short and
in paperback lorm, Bellow’s style is
as massively digressive as ever. Un
like many of his long novels, the
digressions in this story stay away
from the philosophical and theoreti
cal and frequent Bellow stars like
Marx, Freud and Spinoza arc absent.
The subplots in ‘‘A Theft” arc of
a more intra- and interpersonal na
ture, as Clara thinks about her rela
tionships with Teddy, her children,
her confidante Laura Wong, her hus
bands and the baby-sitter who is indi
rectly responsible for the theft of the
ring. Also important are Clara’s re
flections about the ring’s importance
as she attempts to get it back.
Clara Velde is the latest in a line of
convincingly created .vibrant charac -
tcrs who move intelligently and deci
sively through their difficulties, and
who never cease trying to dig as deep
within themselves as possible. At $7
her story is an incredible bargain.
However, none of this is likely to
gain Bellow many new readers, and
there probably won’t be much of a
rush on this book in the near future.
Occasionally, though, someone
will wander into a bookstore accus
tomed to paying big money for a good
new book, sec the new Bellow story
in the paperbacks section, blink sev
eral limes in disbelief, and then in
stinctively suck a copy of the book
directly up the nose. Don’t get in the
way.
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