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Friday, October 22,1999___Page 13
Weekend
ii Preview
The following is a brief list of
weekend events. Please call the
venue for more information.
CONCERTS:
Duffy’s, 1412 0 St.
Sunday: Thomas Irvin, World
Record Players, Mary Janes
Duggan’s Pub, 440 S. 11th St.
Friday and Saturday: Blue House
Kimball Hall, 11th and R streets
Friday: Logan Skelton
Sunday: Michael Cochran and
Patrick O’Donell
Knickerbockers, 901 O St.
Friday: Manifest, Ezra
Saturday: Black Light Sunshine,
lower case i
Sokol Hall, 2234 S. 13th St.,
Omaha
Sunday: George Clinton
Zoo Bar, 136N 14th St.
Friday and Saturday: LiF Slim and
the Back-Alley Blues Band
THEATER:
Lincoln Community Playhouse,
2500 S. 56th St.
All weekend: “The Reluctant
Dragon”
Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater,
12th and R streets
All weekend: Gay/Lesbian Film
Festival
Mueller Planetarium, Morrill
Hall, 15th and U streets
Friday and Saturday: Nine Inch
Nails
Star City Dinner Theatre, Eighth
and Q streets
All weekend: “Sweeney Todd”
Studio Theatre, 12th and R streets,
3rd Floor
Friday and Saturday: “The Lion in
Winter”
GALLERIES: '•
The Burkholder Project, 719 P St.
All weekend: works by Carol
Gallion, Sammy Lynn, Patsy
Smith and Prairie 7
Gallery 9, 124 S. Ninth St.
All weekend: “Masks,” an all
member theme show
Great Plains Art Collection, 215
Love Library
All weekend: photographs of
Laura Gilpin
Haydon Gallery, 335 N. Eighth St.
-All weekend: works by Judith
Ernst Cherry
Lentz Center, Morrill Hall, 14th
and U streets
All weekend: paintings by Shi Hu
Noyes Gallery, 119 S. NintfiSt.
All weekend: “Roaring ‘20s,”
works by Sandy Meyers, LeRoy
Van Gian, Ray Anderson, Max
Cox and Ralph Spangler
The Sheldon Memorial Art
Gallery, 12^ and R streets
All weekend: “Black Image and
Identity,” “Modern Masters,”
Charles Rain’s “Magic Realism,”
“Robert Colescott: Recent
Paintings”
■ Susan Marshall and
Company bring millennium
dance piece to Lied.
ByLizaHolimeier
Senior editor
As the millennium approaches,
musings on this century’s best and worst
abound.
To explore how communities wres
tle with these variances in light and
dark, Susan Marshall and Company
created a dance piece titled “The
Descent Beckons.”
The company presents the piece
tonight at the Lied Center for
Performing Arts, 301N. 12* St
The title comes from a William
Carlos Williams poem, which reads
“The descent beckons/as the ascent
beckoned.”
“It tells of a cyclical relationship,”
Marshall said. “It deals with death and
life and birth and rebirth.”
The dance piece also deals with
these issues and how we grapple with
the complexities these cycles pose.
Inspired by New Year’s Eve celebra
tions and winter solstice rituals, “The
Descent Beckons” moves from raucous
to tender, seeking redemption for our
transgressions along the way.
Marshall said the rituals in the piece
share several common aspects.
“First, the rituals try to deal with
purging the community of demons,
evils and pestilence,” she said.
Communities generally do this by
making a lot of noise, choosing a scape
goat or creating effigies, Marshall said.
To bring scapegoats and effigies
into the dance piece, Marshall and her
dancers fill the stage with 100 inflatable
dummies.
Marshall said the dummies have
numerous connotations. Because they
are manipulated by the dancers, the
dummies symbolize a dominated class.
Courtesy Photo
In “The Descent Beckons,” Susan Marshall and Company share the stage with 100 inflatable dummies. The
company performs tonight at the Lied Center.
In their nakedness, they resemble our
alter egos. Because they are inanimate,
the dummies also stand for the dead.
In addition to purging demons, the
rituals create chaos only to reestablish
order. Creating chaos involves loosen
ing social taboos and engaging in licen
tious behavior, Marshall said.
To depict this chaos, she said, the
piece sometimes goes over the top,
using vaudeville, cabaret and Las
Vegas-style entertainment
“The Descent Beckons” is part of a
co-commissioning effort by the Lied
Center and several other arts organiza
tions. The Lied Center’s role in the com
mission is part of its ongoing emphasis
on supporting new work.
Charles Bethea, executive director
of the Lied Center, said the center had an
obligation to support new works, espe
cially in an era when other areas of
financial support, such as governmental
and foundation-based, have diminished.
The Lied Center has previously
commissioned works from choreogra
phers Danny Grossman and Donald
Byrd, both of whom were featured in
last year’s season.
This year, the Lied Center has com
missioned work from Marshall as well
as a theater piece from Junebug
Productions, Roadside Theater and
Please see DANCE on 14
60s art pops into Omaha’s Joslyn
By Jason Hardy
Senior staff writer
The question, “What makes some
thing art?” has always been a hot topic,
especially as artists try to relate their
work to the general public.
And while art is still seen by some
as being largely inaccessible, some
aspects of art and contemporary cul
ture were at one time combined to cre
ate an affordable alternative to one-of
a-kind masterpieces.
This weekend, the Joslyn Art
Museum, at 2200 Dodge St. in Omaha,
is showcasing a wide variety of works
by some of the most notable names in
-pop art, including Roy Lichtenstein,
Claes Oldenburg, Edward Ruscha,
George Segal and Andy Warhol. These
names are attached to some of the 100
works on display in the Joslyn’s exhib
it, “The Great American Pop Art Store:
Multiples of the Sixties.”
Pop art multiples were a medium
that stated in the mid-1960s. The mul
tiples incorporated an original design
that was copied numerous times and
sold to ordinary people rather than
strictly collectors and museums.
Because of the accessible nature of
the medium, many of the pieces are
hard to come by today. While pieces
Gallery Preview
The Facts
What: "The Great American Pop Art Store:
Multiples of the Sixties*
Where: The Joslyn Art Museum, 2200 Dodge
St., Omaha
When: Saturday through Jan. 2
Cost: $5 for adults, $3 for senior citizens and
students, $2.50 for ages 5-17
The Skinny: Exhibit features works by Claes
Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Edward Ruscha,
George Segal and Andy Warhol.
are readily available in galleries across
the country, to group 100 of them in
one exhibit is almost unheard of.
Amy Krobot, media relations
coordinator for the Joslyn, said aside
from the sheer volume of the event, the
quality of the works was also very
notable.
“The whole exhibition is wonder
ful in the sense that it’s not very often
that you get this many pop art pieces in
one place,” Krobot said. “But even if
there weren’t so many objects, it’s still
important to showcase them, so people
can see a variety of pop art multiples.”
Some of the more notable pieces in
the collection include Oldenburg’s
baked potato, some prints by
Lichtenstein and Warhol’s “Cows” and
“Campbell’s Soup Can.”
Krobot said regardless of whether
Courtesy Photo
Artists Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James
Rosenquist and Andy Warhol as well as fashion model Jean Shrimpton cel
ebrate at a party at Warhol’s Factory in the 1960s. Some of the artists’
works are featured in a new exhibit at the Joslyn Art Museum.
people recognize the actual pieces, they thought, because it is such a big
they will still have the opportunity to part of our culture.”
see something different. As part of this weekend’s opening,
“This show gives you a chance to the Joslyn is also including a Family
see some of the other things these Fun Day on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. in
artists have done,” she said. “They’ll which visitors can come dressed in
recognize the names of the artists for ’60s-style clothing, listen to ’60s
sure, and I think they’ll realize that music and make art inspired by some
they know more about pop art than of the pop art exhibited in the show.