"You'll die laughing"
The New York Po
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COMEDY THRILLER 11 ,
V a t iooll
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April 17 - May 12
Meadow
Brook
Theatre
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by the
michigan council
for arts and
cultural affairs
Presented with the
generous support of
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Oakland University's
Professional Theatre
LEAR
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THE JEWE IR gi-INEWS
810.478.2010
Next time you feed your face, think about your heart.
Go easy on your heart and start cutting back on foods that are high in saturated
fat and cholesterol. The change'll do you good.
U American Heart Association
Craig Allen have met face-
to-face as artistic collabora-
tors just a couple times, but
this weekend they'll present a
music-dance performance that
they hope will generate as much
excitement — more even — as
one they might have rehearsed
Ticketmaster
(810) 645-6666
*Banquet...
*Party...
04
A
manda Stanger-Read and
Meadow Brook
Box Office
(810) 377-3300
*Bar/Bat Mitzvah...
'
LIZ STEVENS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
For tickets call
When Planning Your Next
•
It's All That Jazz
For Rabbi Craig Allen
WERE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE
of notation used to chant biblical
texts. In the process, he discov-
ered that troupe and Afro-
Caribbean and jazz music shared
similar rhythmic natures. And
both, he stresses, are "conducive
to dance (in that they are) very
nonrestrictive."
Allen approached Stanger-
Read about performing his
work after seeing her dance
this past fall in Ann Arbor.
They have officially "prac-
ticed" just once, though
Stanger-Read has been
studying a tape of Allen's
music. She will dance two
solos in the piece; her hus-
band Scott Read will join
her for the duet.
"The composer and in-
terpreter oftentimes have
been two distinct aspects
of a work like this," Allen
says. "And what I'm trying
to do is blur that."
The energy of the piece,
Allen believes, stems not
only from the unfamiliar
pulse of the music and his
atonal Hebrew chanting,
Above: Composer and pianist
Rabbi Craig Allen's three-part
work "Pilgrimage" will be
performed by dancer Amanda
Stanger-Read.
Right: Amanda Stanger-Read:
The dancer and Allen will have
practiced just once. Her
performance will incorporate
improvisational movements.
regularly together over the
course of several months.
"Pilgrimage" is a three-
part work in which compos-
er and pianist Allen, rabbi at
Congregation Beit Kodesh
in Livonia, accompanies
Stanger-Read's improvisa-
tional movement. What's
unique is Allen's score: The mu-
sic and vocalizations are based
on the biblical texts "Song of
Solomon," "The Book of Ruth"
and "Ecclesiastes." To add to the
confusion, Allen couches the
composition in the rhythms of
jazz, a world he is vastly famil-
iar with and one he believes fits
naturally in this context.
The texts, Allen says, "are edit-
ed and set to music in a very con-
temporary setting" — one
imminently conducive to the im-
provisational nature of both jazz
and dance.
As a master's student in com-
position at George Washington
University, Allen wrote his the-
sis on troupe, an ancient system
but also from the fact that no one,
not even the performers, know
what might happen on stage.
The audience, Allen says, `Iden-
tifies with your anxiety. They re-
alize that you realize that this is
the first and only time this music
will be done exactly like this."
Allen's live playing will be ac-
companied by a tape of his vocals
and percussion by jazz master
Jerry LeDuff. (Allen, who stud-
ied with William Albright at the
University of Michigan, has
worked with Marcus Belgrave
and other jazz luminaries; one of
his compositions was performed
by members of the Israel Phil-
harmonic after winning an Is-
raeli music festival in 1984.)
tN