r r ,~ :The ~Sky :dir. E lichigan Daily ARTS Monday, April 8, 1991 Page 5 ky's limited in film adaption INrvew Sheltering Bernardo Bertolucci by Brent Edwards The task of adapting a novel to the screen can vary widely, depending on the form that the book takes. Adapting such a straightforward novel as Silence of the Lambs is a simple matter of deciding what story elements should be left out of the two-hour telling. Novels that consist of more than a simple narra- tive, however, test the screenwrit- ers' skills of translation and fre- quently the result is a movie of the story without any attempt to in- clude the other more literary and philosophical elements of the text. Books such as The Sheltering Sky and The Unbearable Lightness of Being are two examples of this ap- proach to adaptation. In the film The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera's twisted and recur- sive story was linearized without any of Kundera's brilliant ideas or playful narrative manipulations remaining. The film, however, worked because the narrative, while not the only part of the book, was strong and interesting enough to stand on its own; reading the book and seeing the movie became both enjoyable and complimentary expe- riences. This is not so with the adaptation of Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. The story involves three Ameri- cans journeying through Tangier just after World War II. The rela- tionship between Port (John Malkovich) and his wife Kit (Debra Winger) seems decidedly on the rocks, and the presence of their friend Tunner (Campbell Scott) adds to the strain rather than relieving it. They travel from town to town, becoming more and more removed from their version of civilization, losing themselves in a foreign and alien experience which finally culminates in Kit becoming the sex slave of a camel trader. Bowles' story, biographical in certain respects, has spawned many Bowles-acolytes who have travelled to Northern Africa, looking to lose themselves in a foreign land and find the same metaphysical experi- ence that Port and Kit sought. In Bowles' words, they are attempting to "pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky" which, Port says, is "a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind... nothing... darkness. Absolute night." Unfor- tunately, director and co-screen- writer Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango In Paris, The Last Emperor) has expanded on this idea to create the sheltering camera, transforming the book's meaning into nothing and darkness, and reducing the audience's experience to an existential night- mare of sitting in the dark and watching the void, silently emitting a primal scream. Bertolucci and co-screenwriter Mark Peploe, in translating the nar- rative story only, failed to capture any of Bowles' ideas or his charac- ters' motivations. What remains is an excruciatingly boring story of a group of Americans wandering Dance your life away Linda Spriggs and Friends, this weekend's performance at the School of Dance, proved to be an up- lifting extravaganza for dance crit- ics and novices alike. The perfor- mance maintained a no-frills, viewer-friendly quality as it pre- sented universal and flexible themes in a warmly personal fash- ion. Each piece illuminated upon a fundamental element of life with unbridled emotional and physical energy. In "Interlude," the dancers seemed to transform themselves into volatile molecules. With grace and power they moved as individu- als, before smoothly flowing into cohesive formations. Energy of form and matter gave rise to the force of human feeling as Spriggs took the stage in four daz- zling solos. Amidst a barrage of concise splits, leaps and spins, Spriggs emanated her inner state of being through dramatic gestures. With her hands, she intermittently portrayed the fluttering of her heart in "From the Heart." In "Eye to I," her fingers shielded and then un- veiled her eyes, depicting her per- sonal revelation. The pieces were usually wide open to personal interpretation. A piece like "Dream Variation" ap- plied to all who have ever dreamed. However, the dance was also specif- ically focused on the personal mean- ing of dreams for Spriggs. Dancing to the poignant poetry of Langston Hughes, she pantomimed the con- struction of a wall, which symbol- ized the obstacles preventing many African Americans from realizing their own dreams. The performance added to its easygoing quality by avoiding ul- tra-abstract modem maneuvers and sprinkling in a few elements of the good-old-fashioned jazz genre. One abstract piece, "Abscrap," was made accessible to the audience through a casual introduction by Spriggs. She described the dance as dealing with "a schizophrenic bag lady who has trouble with society or about noth- ing at all." The upbeat, intriguing accompaniment in this piece capti- vated the audience as the dancer flung her legs to reach incredible heights. Her wild movements seemed to be generated from an un- known source of spastic energy. The power emanating from the dancers in Spriggs and Friends was of a unique, personal quality that can be attributed to the talent and devotion of the performers. They danced for the sake of dancing, pro- voking the audience to relax and watch for the sake of having fun. As the dancers contracted with wave- like undulations during the final piece, "Timeline," the audience moved along with them in their seats and smiled at a night of great entertainment. -Justine Unatin John Malkovich and Debra Winger comfort each otner Deneathl Bernardo Bertolucci's sheltering camera in the film adaptation of Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. around Africa looking bored. The movie does pick up somewhat near the end after Kit has joined the camel traders. Bertolucci provides dazzling shots of the Sahara, which haven't been depicted so powerfully nor beautifully since Lawrence of Arabia. That relatively brief time, however, is the closest the film ever comes to greatness. Interestingly enough, Bowles himself makes an appearance in the film as "the narrator," perhaps in an attempt to satisfy Bowles fans who would otherwise be totally disap- pointed by the film. He appears in three short scenes as a customer in a restaurant and in a caf6 at which Kit and Port dine. Seeming like a mysti- cal shaman, he never speaks, but as "the narrator" he provides a couple of voice-overs in those scenes that hint at the quest the characters are on, which the film otherwise ig- nores. It is these moments, perhaps, that we pierce the fabric of Ber- tolucci's sheltering camera and glimpse not the void but the essence of Bowles' work. THE SHELTERING SKY shown at the Michigan through Friday. is being Theater Deee-lite is deee-with it, dig? Conductor leads Orchestra to new heights by Peter Shapiro "The depth of hula groove/ move us to the nth hoop/ we're goin' thru to/ Horton hears a who..." - "Groove is in the Heart" In one single quatrain, the three groove-niks that comprise Dece- Lite manage to encapsulate my first grade experience. The struggle of an awkward six year-old to re- late to his pelvis enough to shake his thang in a vain attempt to keep a hula hoop rotating about his waist during Miss Briley's gym class and the clandestine regression back to pre-school days by sneaking peeks at Dr. Seuss instead of "see Dick run" are captured in their refer- ences to everything hip/camp. On one hand, Deee-Lite is the most affectedly hip band since, oh, the Happy Mondays. Their celebra- tion of nerdom (Jungle DJ Towa Towa), mockery of the suave, debonaire foreign swinger (Super DJ Dimitry) and glorification of '70s chic (Lady Miss Kier) seems to be coldly calculated to win the hearts of everyone who spent their formative years in the Thermidorian Reaction to the '60s. People with copies of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack hidden (or not hidden) inside the fold-out jacket of Exile on Main Street can- not help being suckered in by their image, if not their slightly mod- emnist disco. On the other hand though, Deee- Lite's music and look traps the ebullience of childhood and the best moments of adolescence under a glass and lets you in to groove on the vibes. Their house-ish disco is more than the most cohesive col- lage of sampling and found-sounds since the dense songs on the Jungle Brothers' Done By the Forces of Nature. The comic sound bites, like the door bell and the munching potato chips in "Who Was That" or the slide whistle in "Groove Is in the Heart," are a hearkening back to the days when you drove your parents crazy by playing a rubber band wrapped around a bread pan or plucked a saw or even screeched on a violin behind doors that weren't thick enough. Similarly, their lyrics recall the pre-academe joy of messing around with language. "How do you say... / Deee-gorgeous?/ Deee-with it?/ Deee-groovy?/ Deee-line?/ Ooh lala lalalalala" ("What is Love?"), "E.S.P. ouijee yeeyee" ("E.S.P.") and "My supperdish, my succotash wish" ("Groove is in the Heart") all tap into the familiar inarticu- lated pleasures of being somewhat outside the system that pre- heartbroken youth affords so well. by Liz Patton D o you remember that movie with Tom Hanks, The Money Pit, where the young couple buys a huge coun- try house that falls apart on them (literally)? The wife played the vi- olin in an orchestra with a stereo- typically tyrannical European con- ductor. Cindy Egolf-Sham Rao, the doctoral conducting student cur- rently directing the University Campus Orchestra, doesn't quite fit that mold. For one thing, she's American, and second of all, she's female! Egolf-Sham Rao grimaces when I bring this up. "I don't know how difficult or different it is to be a 'woman conductor,"' she explains. "I've always been a woman, after all. That's the only perspective I have. And conducting isn't an easy profession to break into, for men or for women." That's where Campus Orchestra can help. In addition to giving our conducting students a large group to work with, it provides an opportu- nity for non-music majors to enjoy ensemble playing. Enough people auditioned last year to form two such orchestras. The group is con- tinually evolving - it's not a ho- mogeneous group of music majors, but people from widely varying backgrounds: engineering, anthro- pology, you name it. As Egolf-Sham Rao puts it, "We're not talking white bread here." What the mem- bers all do have in common is a love of music. For tomorrow night's concert, assistant conductor Matthew Savery leads Mendelssohn's tone poem, Fingal's Cave, with Egolf- Sham Rao taking Brahms' Symphony No. 2 and Liszt's Les Preludes. "One of the things I re- ally like about Les Prludes ," says Egolf-Sham Rao, "is the incredible range of emotion. It has very tender moments, and huge bombastic places, and it has spooky, intense moments, straight out of a. Hitchcock movie." It's Egolf-Sham Rao's job to shape the sound of the group as a whole, and her enthusiasm for the music shows as she describes how she gets the orchestra to do what she wants. "I try to draw a picture for them," she explains. "The big sounds are always the easiest - there are plenty of examples of BIG sounds in American culture. And ninety people playing as big as they know how to play can put out a lot of sound!" The little sounds pose a greater challenge. For example, in the Brahms symphony, there is a lovely serenade. "I told them, 'It sounds like you're playing for your grand- mother and she can't quite hear you! Think of someone you feel tender and romantic about,"' Egolf-Sham Rao says. "Suddenly, it was a new sound, like a brand new orchestra." This breakthrough is a tri- umphant moment for everyone in- volved. "But I can't be too demand- ing, she muses. "I find a way to let them enjoy themselves. And the best way to have fun at something is to be good at it." Sound interesting? "Come and audition next year," she urges. The CAMPUS ORCHESTRA per- forms tomorrow at hill Auditorium at 8 p.m. Admission is free. F E;P r JRussianl )[aa'1:ilgv " Start Fall term, speak it in Moscow next year. " Also, Russian Literature in English, Hu. Distr. " For information, call Slavic Dept., 764-5355 or check CRISP TornRobb~inS "The man is a vital natural resource." -Portland Oregonian S DEEE-LITE appear tomorrow night at Pontiac. tonight and Industry in Egolf-Sham Rao LONDON PARIS WASHINGTON GRENOBLE HAIFA MADRID NIGER OXFORD PADUA CORTONA CYP LONDON MAI MONACO PAD PARIS USSR/E. EUROPE RUS DRID )UA FROM THE MIDWEST -1991 Save BIG money with our low fares - and have more to spend when you get there! 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