Andy Warhol+Taylor Mead = Art Performance

Taylor Mead Superstar and Human Being 12/31/24-5/8/13

“I want to heat up/ the spoon of your intellect/ to feed my sensuality,” says Taylor Mead in his 1968 book Taylor Mead On Amphetamine and in Europe.

photo: diaart

In the early 1980s Taylor and I were sitting next to each other at a Museum of Modern Art poetry reading that was located near the west side train yards on W. 30^th street.  Robert Kelly was reading.  A videographer took his camera off the tripod and walked down the middle aisle toward the poet.  Kelly, deeply offended, stopped reading and called down a cosmic malediction upon the videographer.  He then said that he would not read anymore and was leaving.  I was sitting next to Taylor and I shouted out from the back of the room, “Read the poem Bob!”  The poet continued his reading, which was wonderful, profound and rich with layers of meaning.  (It was Robert Kelly after all.) 

Taylor asked me then and there if I would be videographer for, The Taylor Mead Show.  It was being recorded at Chinese Chance and then moved to The Mudd Club.  This was before I did the Willoughby Sharp Show or hosted the Midnight Muse.
Stephen Paul Miller was producing and booking the show. He worked well with Mead; he kept things sane among the upstairs crowd at this downtown club.  Most of our run was in the upstairs room at the club.  Miller was quiet, intellectual and sane; he was a perfect contrast to Tailor’s persona of fey, frenetic, decadence.
Steve Mass bought The Mudd Club building from Ross Bleckner and it became an important venue.  Some very amazing people were among the performers.  I remember seeing the B-52s early on. William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg, The Talking Heads and a lot of people who were never heard from again had great moments at The Mudd Club.
I was the videographer and read my own work on various nights.  Everybody did everything.  Marilyn Schrut took lots of still pictures.  I shot a lot of video at the Mudd Club and a little at Chinese Chance that I hope will help preserve the legacy of Taylor Mead and the downtown performance scene.  Taylor Mead may have penned his own best epitaph when he wrote, “Some of these lost people are the best lovers on earth.” EC

Parsons Dance Doesn't Miss A Beat

Parsons Dance
Artistic Director: David Parsons
Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts
13 April 2013

 The new piece Round My World, made in 2012 is a killer.  It opened the show, broke the ice, and put the audience on notice that they were in for a fine evening of dance.  The second piece was the Ebben section of Remember.  The program listed Hand Dance and Nascienento Novo but they were not performed.  In the Question and Answer session after the performance associate artistic director, Elizabeth Koeppen explained that Hand Dance had been done here recently and that they decided to make some changes in the program. The company also performed A Strays Lullaby by the Polish born choreographer Katarzyna Skarpetowska.  Although born in Warsaw, Skarpetowska graduated the New York High School of Performing Arts and The Julliard School.
Caught, the first piece after the intermission, was made by Parsons in 1982.  It is a crowd pleaser of the first water.  It is a solo that uses strobe lights to make is seem as though the dancer is frozen in air.  Suffice it to say the crowd went wild.  Caught is a  wonderful coup de theatre, but the best piece was the new one, Round My World.  The evening ended with Swing Shift from 2003.  Everything was choreographed by David Parsons except the piece by Skarpetowska. The company is amazingly strong and amazingly skilled.  Two of the dancers from this small company are from Marymount Manhattan College: Abby Silva Gavezzoli, and Christina Ilisije.  As well as dancing Ilisije is a choreographer and keeps a blog at WWW.living-dance.com.  Parsons Dance is precise, profound, & pleasing to the eye.  One hopes they will return next year. 

Windsor Art Center Puppets

The World of Puppetry

Curator: Anne Cubberly

The Windsor Art Center
Windsor CT

16 March – 27 April 2013

Puppets and puppet art took center stage at the Windsor Art Center tonight and will hold that stage until the end of April.  The walls and ceiling of the space are covered with elements showing the history and current status of the world of puppets. 

As well as the exhibit of puppets in the main gallery there is a video in the video gallery, a table for building puppets in the workspace, and, in the side room, there are some examples of puppets made in schools.

The exhibition works on a multiplicity of levels.

There are performing objects.  Shadow puppets, Marionettes, Indonesian puppets, hand and rod puppets, examples of puppets from history and puppets that were made in the past few days.  

Curator Anne Cubberly brought together talented people and fascinating objects to create a compelling and informative show.  There are works by Frank Ballard, founder of the puppetry program at UCONN, Bart Roccoberton, current director of the Puppet Arts program at UCONN Paul Spirito, Sarah Beth Parks, and Cubberly herself.

The sophistication of conception and amount of detail in the execution of these works is a testament to the fact that puppetry is a high art that brings together threads from the visual, graphic, and performing arts.

The Windsor art Center is peculiar in that the members of the board, and the attendees at the show, seem to be more open to, and more responsive to, artwork than one usually 

discovers at an opening.  Their approach to art is knowledgeable and sophisticated without being precious or fussy.  The Windsor Art Center is a good place to see an artist's work. 

Associated with the exhibit is a series of lectures, performances, and workshops.  The dates and times can be found on the Windsor Art Center’s Facebook page or webpage.

Bob Woodward Speaks at Eastern

Bob Woodward, Author

Geissler Gymnasium

March 12, 2013

Edmond Chibeau & Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward is best remembered for his investigative journalism with Carl Bernstein into the Watergate scandal that brought down the administration of Richard Nixon in 1974.  Woodward spoke at Eastern Connecticut State University tonight.    As well as his speech in Geissler he had dinner with a small group of students, professors, and administrators, and then spoke to a group of Communication, Political Science, and History students and student writers for the Campus Lantern newspaper.  Speaking to the newspaper students he asked them to think about, “What does the first Amendment mean?” and “What are newspapers for?”  He told the young journalists that, “You are the instrument of accountability.” 
Speaking of what he called “the cartoon-gate episode” that had recently been a topic of considerable controversy at the University, he said he was going to take a copy of the Campus Lantern student newspaper, “Back to Washington DC to show them that the first Amendment is alive an well in Connecticut.”


Speaking about TV news outlets he said that, “Fox is for the conservatives, MSNBC is for the liberals, and CNN is for the airport.” 



Introduced by Political Science professor William Salka, Mr. Woodward spoke to approximately one thousand people.  He drew parallels between the Nixon administration and administrations that came after.  Referring to the need for a free and open press he said that, “Democracy dies in darkness.” 
He went on to discuss the ways in which presidents make some of their decisions, and the methods used to try to keep those decisions, away from the voters and the press.  

Led off by a thoughtful question by Jordan Sakal, a communication student at Eastern, several students from of Eastern Connecticut State University, the University of Hartford and the University of Connecticut asked questions and received thoughtful replies from Woodward.  When asked about the future of the nation he responded with, “What I worry about most is secret government.” 


Woodward was witty, articulate, insightful and kind.  The audience was informed, entertained, and pleased with their opportunity to see one of the great journalists in American history.