News

Bard SummerScape is honoring the choreographer's 20-year-old Grace with live music—and a new collaboration with the musician Meshell Ndegeocello.

by Rachel Rizzuto

As director of Bard's dance program, Maria Simpson has made partnerships a hallmark of the curriculum—first by teaming up with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, then the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and, now, with the American Dance Festival. But this partnership, which began last year, is less about learning from a specific company and more about turning the higher education curriculum model completely on its head.

With ADF dean Leah Cox (who doubles as an associate professor at Bard), Simpson is giving equal weight to African diaspora dance, arguing that it's had as much influence on modern dance as its more-frequently-lauded counterpart, Western European dance.

"Dance is not Eurocentric," Cox explains. "We only teach it as so. The entire academy is Eurocentric. It was originally created for white men. When women got there, it was very 'What are you doing here?' And for people of color, it was 'What are you doing here?'"

Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish and starring Patrick Vaill ’07 as Jud, earned eight Tony nominations, and won best musical revival and best featured actress. Its Broadway run has been extended through January 19, 2020 and national tour will begin in Fall 2020.

by Jennifer Wai-Lan-Huang and James Rodewald ’82 in the Bardian, Summer 2019

Twelve years ago, JoAnne Akalaitis, director of the Theater Program, invited Daniel Fish to direct a student production. Patrick Vaill ’07 recalls Akalaitis telling Fish he could choose any play he wanted. “Over time it was revealed that the show would be Oklahoma!” says Vaill. “There was a lot of excitement. People were surprised.”

The surprising choice, in Fish’s hands, meshed perfectly with the ethos of the Theater Program under Akalaitis. “She fostered an incredibly vibrant, hardworking, interested group of students who just loved doing this work together,” says Vaill. “It was thrilling to be a part of.” Fish reimagined the patriotic, upbeat 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein original as a morality tale for our time. Three-quarters of a century ago, America was at war, and it responded to the musical’s celebration of pastoralism, the charm of country folk, and the idea that “Everythin’s goin’ my way.” Since then, our tribes have become less homogeneous, the tension between the haves and the have nots continues to increase, and guns are less icons of the frontier than instruments of violence and terror. The realism, the immersion, and the sensitivity of the acting in Fish’s Oklahoma! give modern audiences—who hear the very same words and tunes—a very different experience than theatergoers of the ’40s had.

Auditions for the student production were held just before winter intersession. Vaill had hoped for the part of the handsome cowboy, Curly, who gets his sweetheart, Laurey. He was cast instead as Jud Fry, the brooding farmhand, whose own desires for Laurey are violently thwarted. “The idea was that we were all—the audience, the actors—in a room together to hear and to tell this story,” says Vaill. “When we performed it in Theater Two [now LUMA Theater] at the Fisher Center in 2007, with an all-student cast, it was clear to me and to those who saw it that we were involved in something very special.”

Vaill was raised in Manhattan, and his parents often took him and his sister to the theater. “I fell in love with it as a child and harbored a secret desire to pursue acting,” he says. “It was a magic trick that was completely amazing to me, breathing the same oxygen as the people doing that.” He had a similar instant connection with Bard. On his first visit to the campus, Vaill felt a deep kinship with the College. He applied Early Action, was accepted, and never considered another option. “I felt this was the place I had to be. I am very pleased to say I was correct. I flourished.”

Vaill’s decision to major in theater was a less straightforward process. “Moderation loomed over me. I couldn’t be cavalier about my major. I tried on many different possibilities—religion, Victorian studies, literature, art history—until I finally realized that theater was the only major I was passionate about. It was during Parent’s Weekend, after Vaill took his parents to Akalaitis’s production of the Euripides drama Orestes at the Fisher Center, that he told them about his decision. “There’s something very personal about telling someone that you want to be an artist, so I was very nervous about it. They said they absolutely understood my decision after seeing the play we’d just seen.”

After graduation, Vaill went on to act in several off-Broadway shows in New York City and with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., working on stage professionally for three years before pursuing his MFA in acting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The first role Vaill landed after graduate school was on the Lincoln Center stage in Shakespeare’s Macbeth directed by Jack O’Brien and starring Ethan Hawke as the Scottish king. “It was an incredible experience. I played Graymalkin, one of the witches’ familiars. I leaned very heavily into the supernatural and played those scenes as a demonic being.” Vaill then played Ernst Ludwig in the Roundabout Theatre’s national tour of the Broadway revival of Cabaret directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes. Then, eight years after performing it as an undergraduate, Vaill learned that Gideon Lester, Fisher Center artistic director for theater and dance and director of Bard’s Theater and Performance Program, had commissioned a professional production of Fish’s Oklahoma! for the Fisher Center’s 2015 Bard SummerScape season.

“I sent Daniel an email about how exciting it was and that I would love to audition to play Jud again if they were holding auditions,” says Vaill. “He wrote back that day saying he had already given my name to the casting director as someone whom he wanted to see.” Vaill auditioned and was cast as Jud. “As a senior at Bard, I was largely going on impulse. There was something about the character that I absolutely understood instinctively. Over the years, with more training and experience, I have found the tools to express it.” The production, Vaill believes, developed in a similar way. “I think it had distilled in Daniel’s mind. His understanding of the material and what he wanted to do with it is more purposeful, more fully realized. The student production was the kernel of what came later.”

In his review of the 2015 SummerScape production, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley described Vaill’s Fry as “a paranoid but oddly understandable stalker.” Most earlier portrayals presented the character as muscular, brutish, and simple; a caricature of the marginalized working stiff. Vaill played him, in Brantley’s words, as a “pale, weedy man with the kind of grudge that lands sociopaths on the front page and in prison.” The complexity Vaill brings to the role, and the empathy he evokes, are crucial to the success of the reimagined musical.

The immersive, groundbreaking production garnered rave reviews, and Fisher Center executive director Bob Bursey and his staff began working to bring it to New York City. In fall 2018, the Fisher Center production transferred to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where it had a sold-out six-week run, and it opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre in April. “We knew that something special was happening again,” says Vaill.

A hallmark of Fish’s production is the absence of any preconceived notions about Oklahoma!—seeing the play for what it is, and revealing the script’s deeper meanings. “Jud is often played as a very scary, mean brute of a man,” says Vaill. “What Daniel and I have tried to do is look at the words on the page with fresh eyes to see who this person really is. Not to judge him before he speaks. If you look at Jud’s song ‘Lonely Room,’ it is about dreams. He has dreams, wishes for things. Beautiful words and images come out of him. It’s not what you’d expect to come out of the mouth of a ‘dirty farmhand.’ He expresses this desire to be seen, this desire to be loved, and this desire to be held that is incredibly human. When you strip him bare, what you’re left with is someone who just wants love so badly. And who hasn’t experienced that?”

The Maria Callas award is presented each year in recognition of an outstanding company debut. Blythe received the award for her portrayal of Mistress Quickly in the Dallas Opera production of Verdi’s Falstaff.

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory “is deftly and confidently written, full of experimental fun,” writes the Post.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad across the United States. The US-China Music Institute at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Stanford Center for East Asian Studies have collaborated with the Chinese Railroad Workers’ Project to commission a musical work, Men of Iron and the Golden Spike, to give voice to the thousands of Chinese workers who labored to build the railroad.

Evidence, A Dance Company and its founder, choreographer Ronald K. Brown, make their Bard SummerScape debut with the world premiere of Grace and Mercy. Commissioned for SummerScape 2019, the two-part program opens with Grace, created in 1999 for Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and performed here for the first time to live music, and concludes with the premiere of Mercy, a companion piece set to a score written and performed live by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello.

For its summer 2019 season, CCS Bard will present the first U.S. solo museum exhibitions of work by Leidy Churchman and Nil Yalter, along with Acting Out, a group show featuring artists in the Marieluise Hessel Collection, including Larry Clark, Lyle Ashton Harris, Nan Goldin, Boris Mikhailov, Lorraine O'Grady, Cindy Sherman, and Jo Spence. The shows will open to the public on June 22, 2019 and will run through the fall. 

The Times interviews artist Tschabalala Self, whose textile works are on view at MoMA PS1 through September 8.

Sunday night was a big one for Bard at the Tonys. Oklahoma!, which started its revival at Bard SummerScape in 2015 and has roots in a 2007 student staging, won best musical revival. This marks the first competitive Tony win for the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. Ali Stroker won best featured actress in a musical, and became the first wheelchair user to win a Tony. “This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena,” Ms. Stroker said. “You are.”

Read more in the New York Times.
 

Bard MFA alumnus Fitz Patton won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Play for Choir Boy.

BARD x HGG
Curated by Stephen Shore
June 20 – August 29, 2019

Photographs by Recent Bard College Graduates Paired With Work by Dave Heath, Frederick Sommer, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lisette Model, Joseph Sudek, Minor White

New York—Last winter the legendary photographer Stephen Shore received an unusual request from Howard Greenberg Gallery: Would he be interested in curating an exhibition that included his students from the renowned photography program at Bard College? The answer was, “yes,” and the resulting collaboration, Bard x HGG, pairs work by seven of Shore’s recent graduates with photographs by historic 20^th century artists from the Gallery’s vast archives. The exhibition will be on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery from June 20 through August 29, 2019. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, June 20, from 6:00-8:00 p.m.

“Stephen Shore is a bridge connecting contemporary photography with the history of photography,” said Howard Greenberg. “As a contemporary figure and an important part of photo history, he is in a unique position to be able to connect a new generation of photographers and viewers.”

“I think of myself as both a photographer and a teacher and am delighted to have this opportunity to show my student’s work,” said Stephen Shore, Program Director & Susan Weber Professor in the Arts at Bard College. “Each of the recent graduates (from 2017 and 2018) is represented by a series of pictures so you can get a sense of their thought process and artistic practice.”

Works by the Bard graduates—Jasmine Clarke, Madison Emond, Briauna Falk, Vanessa Kotovich, Jackson Siegal, Naomi Zahler, and Ying Jing Zheng—are paired with photographs by Dave Heath, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lisette Model, Frederick Sommer, Stephen Shore, Joseph Sudek, and Minor White from Howard Greenberg Gallery’s extensive holdings.

Shore noted that the pairings vary from artist to artist, often highlighting an aspect of the recent graduate’s work. For the work by artists from the Gallery, Shore selected images by many photographers with whom he has personal connections: “David Heath was a friend to me when I was 14 and taught me about printing, and I was in a 10-day workshop run by Minor White when I was at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.”

Providing a gateway to the exhibition, work by Don Donaghy will be presented within the context of Bard x HGG. “While going through the Gallery’s archive, I came across Donaghy’s work and thought it would be wonderful to show,” said Shore. “His work was considered cutting edge in the 1960s. Yet, his photographs disappeared from public view despite the important role they played in the development of contemporary photography.”

About Stephen Shore
Stephen Shore's work has been widely published and exhibited for the past 45 years. He was the first living photographer to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since Alfred Stieglitz, 40 years earlier. He has also had solo shows at George Eastman House, Rochester; Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art opened a major retrospective spanning Stephen Shore's entire career. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His series of exhibitions at Light Gallery in New York in the early 1970s sparked new interest in color photography and in the use of the view camera for documentary work. More than 25 books of Shore’s photographs have been published. His work is represented by 303 Gallery, New York; and Sprüth Magers, London, Berlin, and Los Angeles, where his work will be on view from June 19–August 30, 2019. Since 1982 he has been the director of the Photography Program at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, where he is the Susan Weber Professor in the Arts.

About the Photography Program at Bard College
Bard College’s Photography Program, led by Program Director Stephen Shore, is widely recognized as having one of the strongest faculties in the country. It is noted for its traditional grounding in photographic techniques, and the range of aesthetic approaches of its students. Bard College, a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences, is located 90 miles north of New York City on nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; nine early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 159-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world. The undergraduate program at the main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement.

About Howard Greenberg Gallery
Since its inception over 35 years ago, Howard Greenberg Gallery has built a vast and ever-changing collection of some of the most important photographs in the medium. The Gallery's collection acts as a living history of photography, offering genres and styles from Pictorialism to Modernism, in addition to contemporary photography and images conceived for industry, advertising, and fashion. Howard Greenberg Gallery is located at 41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406, New York. The gallery exhibits at The ADAA Art Show, The Armory Show, The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, Photo London, Art Basel, Paris Photo, and Art Basel Miami Beach. For more information, contact 212-334-0010, [email protected] or visit www.howardgreenberg.com.

Sara Berman was 60 when she moved to New York with just one suitcase to start a new life. Berman's daughter, Maira Kalman, and grandson, Alex Kalman ’07, tell her story in a new book and museum exhibition.

The rising artist discusses her process and inspirations as she prepares for an upcoming three-person show at MoMA PS1.

Ali Stroker, who plays Ado Annie in the Broadway revival, won the award for outstanding featured actress in a musical, and composer Daniel Kluger was recognized for outstanding orchestration.