MXi iktcdi* Otg
Green eggs and a book signing
Steve Johnson and Lou Francher are children's book illustrators who
drew the wild pictures in some of the books by Dr. Seuss. Today at
Borders they will be signing books and talking about the late author,
who is a favorite of generations of children. The event begins at 7 p.m.
I
Thursday
September 12, 1996
iDAI
Evolving NYC dance arrives in A2
'U' students take part in rich performance celebrating Puerto Rican women
By Orit Greenberg
For the Daily
This weekend Evelyn Velez-Aguayo's "Qucrida
Mama:" will make its Ann Arbor debut. First per-
formed in New York City a year ago, the dance has
continued to evolve into a piece rich with text, music,
dance and laughter.
"Querida Mama:" deals with a range of issues, from
a mother's concerns for her daughter to representing
"'illustrious Puerto Rican women
and other role models that the
performers and members of dif- . PR
ferent communities embrace," VQui
Velez-Aguayo said in a recent
interview with The Michigan At t
Daily. Tick(
"Also incorporated into the
piece is historical awareness of
unpublished history or history that is published but not
widely known."
A performer from the original cast, Gloria
QuiIones, who is an attorney by profession and an
activist in New York City, interpreted the piece as a
letter that unfolds and is enacted.
"There are discreet paragraphs within the dance,
and the performance spans all stages of womanhood,"
Qui~ones explained.
Dancer Ellen Baxt added that the piece portrays
"Latinas as strong female role models."
Even though "Querida Mama:" could be seen as
dark, and while it touches on some serious issues, "it
th I
<ets
is very humorous and there is a sense of been-there-
done-that - of something known - that all women
could relate to," V6lez-Aguayo said.
"The dialogue of a mother who voices the concerns
and traditional questions of marriage, money and
grandchildren, and the conflicts between mother and
daughter, are universal."
Evelyn Velez-Aguayo, a native Puerto Rican who
moved to New York in 1987 to study dance, considers
herself a Puerto Rican choreog-
rapher.
EVI EW "Through displacement you
rida Mama: reach for identity," she poetically
remarked.
rough PeaseaT 8 pem.Imperatively, Vlez-Aguayo
are $6 for students. relies on Puerto Rican history
and environment to create her
work. "I take ideas from the
flora, fauna and women found in my country. "
A graduate of New York University's Pre-Dance
Therapy and Dance Education Program, she received
her master's from the University of Arizona, dance /
theatre department. Velez-Aguayo has also been
involved in teaching dance to handicapped children,
and making dance performances and theatre more
accessible to the Latino community. She is currently
an assistant professor of dance in the University's
dance department.
As part of a class offered through the dance depart-
ment titled Dance of Latinos and Latinas, Evelyn
Vlez-Aguayo, six University student dancers, Ellen
Baxt, Helena Birecki, Heather Garcia, Laurah
Klepinger and Leyya Tawil, along with guest artists
Esther "Requi" Gonzalez and Gloria QuiNones, spent
the month of June in New York City researching and
rehearsing for this performance.
"The dancers lived in different communities in
Brooklyn," Velez-Aguayo explained. "They went to
libraries to do research, and through performances,
museums, galleries and storytelling gathered informa-
tion to convey their characters." The piece has inte-
grated aspects of the community into the past perfor-
mance.
One of the many wonderful things about the perfor-
mance, Baxt added, is that "there is a diversity of
dance forms and a broad scope of music within the
piece." It includes everything from country to club -
Puccini to George Jones.
This clarifies that dance is not some hoity-toity elit-
ist art form. Dance is for everyone, and, as Velez-
Aguayo stated: "Everyone is a dancer in their own
heart."
QuiNones demonstrates this fact. "At the age of 52
I am fulfilling a fantasy of mine. It is wonderful
dancing in this piece and it has been a delightful
opportunity to work with such strong and talented
women."
"It has been a collaborative process throughout. I
collaborated with my husband, Jonathan Belcher, as
well," Velez-Aguayo said. As the lighting designer, he
"has transcended ideas and been very supportive."
"Every branch took a leaf."
"Querida Mama" arrives tonight at the Betty Pease Studio Theatre.
Poets,.
novelists
tocome
to 'U'
By Elizabeth Lucas
Daily Arts Writer
The English department's Visiting
Writers series has consistently brought
intriguing authors to campus - Rita
Dove, Arthur Miller and Maxine Hong
Kingston among them - and this year
is no exception.
The writers in this year's series range
from Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek
Walcott, to novelist Lorrie Moore and
to Michigan native and mystery novel-
ist Elmore Leonard, who will speak at
the Hopwood Underclassmen Awards
Ceremony in January.
"I think it's nice to get a mystery
writer. It's unusual," said' Hopwood
Program Associate Andrea
Beauchamp.
Each year, writers on the English
department staff select that year's visit-
PREVIEW
Visiting
Writers Series
At Rackham, 4 p.m. Sunday,
Sept. 15. Admission is Free.
ing writers. For example, this year
Charles Baxter and Jonis Agee chose the
fiction writers, while Alice Fulton and
Lorna Goodison chose the poets. The
writer who will speak at the Hopwood
Awards Ceremony is selected by the
English department staff as a whole.
"Sometimes they're teaching (a
writer's) work in a class, sometimes it's
someone the students wanted to hear,"
Biohazard tears it up on new relea
Biohazard
Mata Lego
Warner Bros.
Biohazard is a band that needs little
introduction. With three previously
released LPs full of integrity and hard-
core guitar chords, these "good old
boys" from Brooklyn have done it
again. "Mata Ledo" is their newest
release, and it combines everything that
Biohazard is known for, plus
some. "Mata Ledo" is hard,
angry, funky, and fresh.
What more could one
ask for?
Although "Mata
Leao" does not fea-
ture guitarist Bobby
Hambel, who left
Biohazard before they
began -work on this
album, the three remaining
members, Billy Graziadel (vocals /
guitar), Even Seinfeld (vocals / bass),
and Danny Schuler (drums / percus-
sion), worked extra hard to fill in for his
vacancy. With help from a friend, ex-
Helmet guitarist Rob Echeverria,
everything worked out fine, and there
are some great Helmet influences on
this album.
"Mata Leao" begins with the track'
"Authority," a hard-driven, hip-hop
inspired song about questioning "the
man." Or as Biohazard puts it, "Fuck
the rules!" This is the type of song that
youngsters should not play loud, espe-
cially while their parents are just down-
stairs.
Biohazard combines enough styles
on this album that every hard-rocking
kid from NYC to LA will be pleased as
punch and never for a minute bored.
"Gravity" is a song as hard as any
other, mixed with bongos that give it a
certain tribal feel. "True Strengths" pre-
sents a frenzied base line, similar to that
of Primus on the song "John the
Fisherman."
An extremely good track, "Waiting to
Die," isn't as hard as the others, but
gives a very frightening edge to "Mata
Leio." DJ Lethal of House of Pain pro-
vided the scratching on this song, while
Biohazard sings, "Watching everyday
of my life go by / just waiting, waiting
to die."
Then, of course, there are the politi-
cally driven, old-school-style, NYC
hard-core songs, like
"Stigmatized" and "Better
p Days,' that just barely
reach two minutes
each and contain the
essential "call and
response" between
the singers and back-
ground vocalists.
Although, proving that
they have evolved that
mold, the song
"Competition" combines Minor
Threat hard-core; with Onyx-style hip-
hop.
"Mata Ledo" is a great album for
anyone ready to crank up their stereos
and jump around their rooms to the new
style that Biohazard has whipped up. If
you really love this band, don't hesitate
on the purchase. Plus, if you hurry, the
first 100,000 copies are packaged in a
special 0-card, featuring exclusive art-
work. Get yours now!
- Brian M. Kemp
Various Artists
MAD Grooves
Rhino
Some wacky stuff here. Culled from
various sources, including several
MAD-produced albums, some flexi-
discs stapled into various issues of the
magazine and a couple of covers by
current bands, "MAD Grooves". .5
proper encomium of MAD's m sic.
output over the past 30-some years..+,
"She Got a Nose Job, from ,the;
album "MAD Twists Rock 'n' Roll" i °
a frighteningly straight (straight circa
1962) rendition of a song that sounds'
like it could have been shown playing
on the jukebox in Al's on "1 Hppy;
Days." The song is just slightly offs Tii
the normal subject matter, and tIrpe
tlety makes it a great song.
The songs included from "Fi.
Along With MAD" aren't quite as sub-
tle. The burping of "It's a Gas" and-the
limited possibilities of the totally self-
explanatory "She Let's Me Watc i Her
Mom and Pop Fight" make the tunes a
little unappetizing and a little too raw.
Oddly, they're more in the MAD vein,
but just don't work as well in music as
the translated type would in print.
The songs from the soundtrack of t
theatrical production "The MA
Show" are some silly nonsense tunes,
but are imbued with some real musical
style. "The Boy From..." has some
south-of-the-border swing to it, and was
in fact written by composer Stephen
Sondheim as a parody of "The Girl
From Ipanema." The song is well sung
by Linda Lavin. "Well It Ain't" is a sort
of honky-tonking parody of Bob Dylan
and sounds sort of like Arlo Guthr6,
Go figure. These two songs are the or*
most like MAD in theory that come
across successfully on this collection.
The collection's songs from flexi-
discs are of varying quality. "Makin'
Out" is a dull song that is trying too
hard to be novel. "Meet the Staff of
MAD" isn't actually a song, and is
somewhat tiresome. The three disco
songs'are very good parodies, but-hey
come across as a little too heavy-hap
ed, and wear on the listener wp
clumped together the way theyro.
See RECORDS, Page12A
Author Lorrie Moore will participate in the Visiting Writers Series later this year.
said Beauchamp, of the criteria used to
select writers.
This year, Borders Books and Music
is co-sponsoring the Visiting Writers
series with the University. While
Borders and Shaman Drum host their
own literary events of equal caliber,
Beauchamp was quick to assert that
there really is no competition between
the bookstores and the University. She
noted that often writers will speak at the
University while on book tours
arranged with Borders.
"I really like the spirit of collegiality
and cooperation," Beauchamp said.
"Everybody's interested in promoting
good writing."
For students who have this interest,.
the reading series is not the only avail-
able activity. If a reading is scheduled
for a Thursday, Beauchamp said the
writer will usually attend that day's
Hopwood Tea, which occurs every
Thursday in the Hopwood Room. At
these events, students can talk directly
to the writers.
"The writers are very nice and quite
encouraging to students," Beauchamp
commented. "They'll talk about the stu-
dent's work, not just their own."
The Visiting Writers series will kick
off with Walcott's reading, at 4 p.m. this
Sunday in Rackham Auditorium. But
those interested in literature won't want
to miss a single event in this year's
series.
SATURDAY GALLUP
SEPT.14 PARK
StUdn
H. AROAH SAVDE
P H A R OAH SAN DE R S
Did Someone Say
Fall semesterjust started, but already it's time to think
about applying for winter term courses at the
School of Information at the University of Michigan.
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Our deadline for applying in
consideration of financial aid is
October 1, 1996. General
applications will be accepted
until November 1, 1996.
Our Master of Science in
Information program prepares
vnn in an eiicationl setting-
Real Jobs, Real Futures
Our graduates work
*At CNN, America Online, --
Microsoft, United
Technologies, and other
leading corporations
* At DreamWorks and other
entertainment companies
" At libraries, museums, I
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