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^\&Entertainment
Great
Plains
FESTIVAL
Celebration showcases
native music, dance
throughout history
By Liza Holtmeier
Senior staff writer
This week, Lincoln will display sev
eral centuries’ worth of culture.
Today kicks off the Great Plains
Music and Dance Festival and
Symposium, a seven-day festival cele
brating die song and dance of the Plains.
Sponsored by the UNL Center for
Great Plains Studies, the festival
includes daily performances and a two
day academic conference covering the
different cultural traditions in the Great
Plains region.
The festival serves as a tribute to a
region whose culture has often been
overlooked.
The marginalization of Great Plains
culture was due in part to how the region
was settled, said John Wunder, a
University of Nebraska-Lincoln profes
sor of history.
“The region was seen as a place you
go through, not a place you stop and lis
ten and look,” Wunder said.
To complicate matters, the region
has experienced serious ethnic divi
sions, said Susan A. Miller, an associate
professor ofhistory and ethnic studies at
UNL.
“The non-tribal people are often dis
couraged from thinking what
they have in common with tribal
people. Tribal people are often
discouraged from thinking about
their contribution at all,” Miller said.
But this festival is a sign of changing
times.
Every year, the Center for Great
Plains Studies holds a two-day academ
ic symposium addressing a facet of
Great Plains life.
But four years ago, planners of the
symposium began discussing the possi
bility of a conference on music and its
inseparable partner, dance.
“When you’re doing music and
dance, you can’t just have people come
and talk about music and dance,” said
Ron Bowlin, one of the festival’s co
chairmen.
So the symposium was expanded
into plans for a weeklong festival.
Now, after two years of program
planning, UNL presents a series of per
formances by some of the region’s best
artists.
Highlights of this week’s diverse
offerings include:
■ Kansas City jazz musician
Claude Williams with the Nebraska
Jazz Orchestra.
■ Native American blues musi
cians Indigenous and John Trudell.
■ two |
American j
Indian drum
groups.
■ Juan
!
1 fc
Tejeda and his
Conjunto band. ^
■ the Salem Baptist
Church Choir.
■ western swing kings the Texas
Playboys with Jimmie Dale Gilmore
and Butch Hancock.
“The festival is a sampling,” Bowlin
said. “We don’t have any pretext at all
that we’ve included everything.”
Even though the artists represent an
array of musical and cultural back
grounds, each is dedicated to the pre
serving tradition, Miller said.
‘Tradition is what makes us human.
It’s what makes culture,” Miller said.
In addition to the traditional works,
the Center for Great Plains Studies also
commissioned a new work for the festi
val
“Chasing Bird,” to be performed by
the Danny Grossman Dance Company
on Friday, is a modem dance piece set to
mudit ui ja^z,
great Charlie
Parker, a native of Kansas
City, Mo.
“It was a case of putting your money
where your mouth’s at,” said Randall
Snyder, another of co-chairman.
Arts funding in the United States is
limited, Snyder said, and a festival that
celebrates the arts should also advocate
the creation of new works.
Given the array of the artists, the fes
tival should make for a jam-packed
week of entertainment.
“We don’t get this much greatness
performing in our town within one week
very often,” Miller said.
“I don’t know of any event that has
brought together such a diverse group of
people in one compact package like
this,” Bowlin said. “I’m not sure people
know how to react when they have this
much activity going on.”
5
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-Jon Frank/DN
‘Matrix’ a web of visuals, but plot slips through
Pottotfov Photo
NEO (KEANU REEVES) blasts his way to the
freedom of the human race in the futuristic
action film “The Matrix.”
By Sam McKewon
Senior editor
Just the like the computer system that is the
main focus of the film, “The Matrix” is not what it
seems.
The film sets the inventive course of creating a
false world run by a computer that treats all
humans as slaves. It introduces rebels that have
broken out of the computer system and attempt to
destroy it. It gives us a character who is the “chosen
one,” die one who will lead the rebels to victory.
It’s a high-aiming concept from the
Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, who togeth
erwrote and directed the film. The script having
been completed years before, the Wachowskis
knew exactly what they wanted to do here.
But take away the shroud of kinetic eneigy, its
futuristic plot and its brilliant visuals, and you real
ize what “The Matrix” really is: a shoot-em-up
with gravitational wonders. For all of its revolu
tionary ideals, “The Matrix” devolves into typical
gun battle in its final act, ignoring the real issues at
hand. Take “The Matrix” for what it is, and it’s a
superior action film. Take it for what it could have
been, and it’s disappointing.
The film charts the course of Thomas
Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a computer software
programmer who goes by the name of “Neo” in his
illegal hacking business. He is haunted by dreams
of strange agents interrogating him about pro
grams and a mysterious woman, Trinity (Carrie
Anne Moss), kidnapping him to take him to an
--,
Him Review
impacts
Title: “The Matrix
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishbume,
Carrie-Anne Moss
Director: Larry and Andy Wachowski
Rating: R (adult language, violence)
Grade: B
Five Words: “Matrix” is action over imagination
even more mysterious leader.
That man is Morpheus (Laurence Fishbume),
the leader of the rebellion against the Matrix, an
artificially intelligent computer that ultimately
takes over the world. It employs humans as its
slaves, forcing them to live in a computer program,
which generates energy that the machines need to
survive. If it sounds confusing, it’s not: it’s all
described very well early in the movie.
It’s also where the movie went wrong slightly
off course. Out of the system, Morpheus tells Neo
that he can save the world by freeing it from its
slavery. Exactly how that’s done isn’t entirely
made clear. Some of it isn’t even addressed. The
entire cyberspace world, where the rebels must
ultimately fight the Matrix, seems to only be a
palette for some amazing action sequences.
About those'sequences: They are incredible
pieces of work. The Wachowskis pull out all the
stops with f/x to stop the camera, allow people to
walk around walls, to bend time, etc. The movie is
worm these sequences alone.
But these scenes are honestly all there is
intended to be. The climactic battle is, while stun
ning visually, a bit of a letdown. If the Matrix can
create an entire world, it seems a little strange that
it can only conjure up three super agents led by
Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) to stop Neo and Co.
How about entire armies? Planes, tanks or
nuclear missiles? If the Matrix can learn and
understand, surely it can create a war that these
rebels couldn’t possibly win.
The entire concept also creates a final bastion
of human resistance in a far away city of Zion,
somewhere near the core of the Earth. It is Zion
that the Matrix ultimately wants to destroy. But its
status is dropped by the end of the film in favor of
a budding romance that never, ever works.
When confronted with the sheer proportion of
their ideas here, it becomes clear that there’s no
way all these questions could be answered within a
reasonable time frame or budget. “The Matrix”
gives us an infinity of equations to consider, then
goes for most basic of formulas: guns and kung fu,
for its eventual conclusion.
The acting is secondary to the film premise,
which is probably why Reeves is in it He’s a mini
malist in the strictest sense of the word: He can
minimally act. Still, he stays out of the way for the
most part, and as always, shoots a gun with style.
Fishburne is a good call as the
philosophy/action connection of Morpheus. He’s
got the looks and his voice fits the role. Moss, a
Please see MATRIX on 13