Dancing Dreams Come to Earth at Jacob's Pillow

James writes:

Jacob's Pillow, the legendary summer dance festival in Becket, Massachusetts founded in 1933, has had a stirring start to 2014, with dance that stands on its own two feet. On the second stage of the Doris Duke Theatre, Dorrance Dance tapped out a sold-out two-week run. Meanwhile on the main stage at the Ted Shawn Theatre, New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht directed several teammates from his NYCB squad in the enigmatically titled "Ballet 2014."

The purpose of Ballet 2014 was to present ballet of the present, with choreography from the past ten years. Introducing the evening, the Pillow's executive director Ella Baff promised "a range of works of many different choreographers, many of whom are most talked about in the ballet world."

NYCB has made big strides bringing the classical Balanchine aesthetic up to date, elevating contemporary dance with performers who are down to earth. A polished series of online video shorts, sponsored by AOL, recently put the dancers in the framework of reality TV and gave them a family-focused, all-American spin. Far from the ethereal, detached, and sometimes crazed reputation of ballet overseas, NYCB has all the knee-slapping, group-huddle wholesomeness of "Hey Let's Put on a Show."

Which is what Ulbricht did at the Pillow, and it was a hit. The first half presented five ballets that explored the romance (and longing) of pas de deux. Here was NYCB at its best, with dancers who were engaged with one another (if not actually married), the hometown kings and queens center stage at the summer-camp social. For me the first piece, "Furiant" (2012), danced by Teresa Reichlen and Robert Fairchild with choroeography by Justin Peck, was the least engaging. The flowing woodsy outfits were right for the setting, but Reichlen lacked the charged spirit, the twitters of expression, to connect fully with Fairchild. On this, I should say, I was in disagreement with my date, my four-year-old balletomane daughter, who most preferred the bright quality of this piece set to Dvořák's "Piano Quintet No. 2."

Up next (in reverse order from the program) was "Pas de Deux from Two Hearts" (2012), danced by Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle with choreography by Benjamin Millepied and original score by Nico Muhly. Now here was a marquee lineup of contemporary dance if there ever was one. Muhly's music had the saccharine emotion of a high-school mixtape, but in the sticky woods it seemed right. Millepied's dance is aqueous, slow-moving, a nighttime dip that ends with two steadies embracing on the lake shore. Peck and Angle wore swimsuits, and with her fluid, mellifluous movement, Peck was a dripping dream diving into Angle's arms.

"Liturgy" (2003), danced by Rebecca Krohn and Craig Hall with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, was the most self-consciously modern dance of the evening. Krohn was a specter floating through Hall's oaken branches, the treble and bass strings in fugue. The following world premiere of "Opus 19. Andante," danced by Emily Kikta and Russell Janzen with choreography by Emery LeCrone, was pleasant but ultimately the most forgettable dance of the night, although it had a goose-bump ending.

And finally came the "Sunshine" (2013), danced by the leader Daniel Ulbricht with chorgeography by Larry Keigwin. The work was set to the familiar tune of "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers. It was regrettable that the music wasn't live, as shown on the pillow's online preview of the evening. And it should be said that recorded dance performances in general have a terrible problem with over-amplification, and my ears were not spared during the night's run. Nevertheless, Ulbricht danced a remarkable pas de deux as a solo. Absent a partner, he radiated his athletic energy and puffed up chest to the audience in a way that called to mind the original hardest working man in show business, James Brown. 

Daniel Ulbricht, Tyler Angle, and Robert Fairchild in "Fancy Free." Photo: Christopher Duggan.

After intermission came the dessert: "Fancy Free" (1944), choreography by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein. The work is now even better known for its adaptation into the musical and movie "On the Town." Everything about this ballet of three sailors in the City on shore leave is quintessentially American and ideal for NYCB. Angle, Ulbricht, and Fairchild exude a natural camaraderie, and Georgina Pazcoguin and Tiler Peck are just right as the savvy purse-swinging ladies they meet outside the bar. As opposed to a pas de deux, "Fancy Free" is a three to two, with three sailors vying for two dames, and all the beer-drinking braggadocio that goes along with that. It is remarkable that "Fancy Free," according to the archives, had not been performed at the Pillow since 1949. Perhaps there just wasn't quite the right team of dancers to pull it off until now.  

The Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2014 continues in Becket, Massachusetts through August 24.

The Spiritual Home of the Hudson River School

South Facade of the main house at Olana. Photo: Stan Ries 

James writes:

The spiritual home of the Hudson River School is Olana, the homestead of Frederic Church, located on a 250-acre hilltop outside Hudson, New York. Thanks to the long-term efforts of the Olana Partnership, Church's theatrical house, designed by Church and Calvert Vaux in a colorful blend of Middle-Eastern styles, joins the grounds in a remarkable state of preservation. With sweeping views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, Olana is best appreciated in summer, when it feels like you are walking inside a lush nineteen-century landscape.

Bell Tower, south view of river from inside Bell Tower. Photo: Andy Wainwright

In the 1960s, after a two-year campaign to save it from developers, Olana passed from the Church family to the shared public-private stewardship of New York State and what is now The Olana Partnership. Church's art and artifacts remained in situ, making it one of the country's most well-preserved artist residences, and certainly the most singular. Since then the Olana Partnership has worked tirelessly to bring the ornate polychromed building back to its original splendor. It has also sought to restore the overgrown grounds and preserve the viewshed of this historical perspective on the Hudson. 

 

 Court Hall, Main House Olana. Photo: Andy Wainright

The next steps for Olana will be to turn the house back into a home and working farm—a home for the ideals of Church, a living destination emerging from a relic, with all the living sights and smells. The Olana Partnership have done a remarkable job restoring and preserving the soul, the permanent collection, the house and grounds. Now the task is to reveal it as a living beacon of art, culture, and preservation.

 

View of the Main House from Across the Lake. Photo: Melanie Hasbrook

 Some thoughts on the house and grounds: Today the building is approached from a parking lot at the top of the hill behind it. This gives the sense that you are visiting an artifact and not a home. The access road also has cars cutting across the property and through the viewshed. By depositing people at the top, in back, they are less likely to explore the grounds below. This current parking lot could be converted into a site for a much-needed respite and watering hole while car parking could be relocated down the hill, encouraging people to explore the grounds, walk up, and approach the main house from the front. Such a change may help restore sledding in winter, a favorite activity that I hear is no longer allowed on site. Olana could also offer a trolly to the top, adding to the charm of the landscape. The house museum should also be arranged to accommodate visitors who choose to experience it outside of the small, wonderful, but often sold-out docent-led tours (which now need to be booked in advance).  

View from Crown Hill, Olana. Photo: Melanie Hasbrook

Finally, I would love to see more involvement with contemporary artists. What a thrill it must be for artists to engage with these 250 acres. There could be residencies. I would be fascinated to see how artists working in a range of practices interpret the context of Olana: from the abstract artists of Bushwick to realist-revival painters to classical and modern dancers. They could mix on the hillsides with farmers, walkers, preservationists, children making crafts—a living tableau.

How to Help the Mentally Ill

"Homeless and cold" by Ed Yourdon, taken January 25, 2010 in Verdi Square, 72nd Street and Broadway, New York

CITY JOURNAL
July 21, 2014

How to help the Mentally Ill?
by James Panero

A New York City task force could repeat the mistakes of deinstitutionalization.

Early last February, Jerome Murdough, homeless and seeking shelter from freezing temperatures, was arrested for trespassing in the stairwell of an East Harlem housing project. Unable to post his $2,500 bail, the 56-year-old Marine veteran with a history of mental illness remained in police custody. A week later, on the evening of February 14, he was transferred to a solitary cell in the mental-observation unit of New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex. Guards were supposed to check on Murdough every 15 minutes, but he was not fully observed until early the next morning, when it became apparent that a malfunction in the prison’s climate-control system had heated his 6-by-10-foot cinder-block room into the triple digits. When discovered slumped over his bed, Murdough’s lifeless body registered a core temperature of more than 100 degrees.Headlines blared that Murdough had been “Baked to Death on Rikers Island.”

Murdough’s gruesome death prompted New York City mayor Bill de Blasio to announce his first major law-enforcement initiative, the Task Force on Behavioral Health and the Criminal Justice System. Set to issue findings this September, it will seek recommendations from city police, judges, district attorneys, and mental-health workers on “innovative strategies to transform, reform and update this city’s criminal justice system.” In a statement, de Blasio said that the task force will allow the city to “provide real, lasting mental health and addiction treatment” for the city’s mentally ill. “For far too long,” he continued, “our city’s jails have acted as de facto mental health facilities.”

The mayor is right that the criminal-justice system dedicates inordinate resources to policing mental illness, often with disgraceful results. In this regard, New York’s experience mirrors that of much of the country. A 2010study by the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) found that there were “three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals.” Sheriffs’ associations estimate that the mentally ill make up over a quarter of inmates in their jails. According to E. Fuller Torrey, the founder of TAC, the Los Angeles County Jail has become the largest de facto inpatient psychiatric facility in the United States. Rikers Island is the second-largest.

It shouldn’t require a task force to understand why. The vast incarceration of the mentally ill is a consequence of the 50-year-old policy of deinstitutionalization—the closing of state mental asylums and the reduction of hospital beds set aside for the mentally ill. Lacking both the medical resources and legal framework to care properly for the severely mentally ill, the community-based system meant to replace it was never equipped to give true “asylum” to those patients unable to cope in regular society. As a result, those most in need of help often wind up revolving among outpatient facilities, homeless shelters, and the streets. Arrest and prosecution offered the only remaining method of sequestering the violent and delusional and preventing them from harming themselves and others.

Unfortunately, early indications suggest that the city’s new task force could actually make things worse. Just as government planning failed to account for the catastrophe of deinstitutionalization, a new decriminalization initiative could lead to the mentally ill being pushed back into the subway system and the open-air asylums of Broadway and Central Park. This would represent a shameful return to the status quo of the early 1990s, before quality-of-life policing began under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Each year, the NYPD receives 100,000 calls concerning “emotionally disturbed persons.” Elizabeth Glazer, the mayor’s criminal-justice coordinator and a leader of the task force, asks, “If someone picks up the phone and calls 911 because they see someone acting out on the street, then what does the police officer do?” Of all possible answers to this question, “leave them on the streets” seems to be the worst. Yet civil libertarians may use the task force cops to do just that, undermining proactive policing and the right of New Yorkers to live without the terror of unstable people undergoing psychotic breakdowns in public.

Instead, the task force should strengthen the state’s ability to compel the mentally ill to pursue proper treatment—for instance, by widening the use of Kendra’s Law, named after Kendra Webdale. In 1999, Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic who had stopped taking his medications, pushed Webdale to her death beneath a subway train. Kendra’s Law, which the ACLU opposed, gave New York courts the power to compel the mentally ill to accept treatment as a condition of living in society. According to D.J. Jaffe of Mental Illness Policy Org., Kendra’s Law reduces incarceration by 87 percent. By applying it to all prison inmates upon their release, the law would reduce reincarceration as well.

Another constructive measure would be to improve the mental-health services offered within the prison system, while revisiting the idea of asylums. Since prisons have become makeshift mental institutions, such an effort would have immediate results. But incarceration will always be an inefficient and inhumane method of caring for the mentally ill compared with purpose-built institutions. “The simple claims of a common humanity,” wrote Thomas Story Kirkbride, the progressive architect of the nineteenth-century asylums, “should induce every State to make a liberal provision for all its insane, and it will be found that it is no less its interest to do so, as a mere matter of economy.” Until New York comes to terms with the failure of deinstitutionalization, the criminalization of mental illness will never be cured.