The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, February 12, 2016 — 5

Petrus and Qiu bring 
the East to the West 

By MERIN MCDIVITT

For the Daily

Juliet Petrus is comfortable 

and at home in her cozy Chi-
cago apartment. Yet the posters 
on her wall, 
1960s socialist 
art accompa-
nied by bright 
red 
Chinese 

characters, 
hint 
at 
the 

exotic 
expe-

riences 
that 

have 
shaped 

her career.

Opera sing-

er Petrus and 
her accompa-
nying pianist Lydia Qiu will be 
performing at Britton Recital 
Hall on Friday, Feb. 12, and at 
the Detroit Opera House for a 
Valentine’s Day Concert on Sun-
day, Feb. 14. The performance, 
entitled “A Great Distance,” will 
feature Chinese art song off 
their recent album of the same 
name.

The genre, unknown to most 

Western listeners, even those 
knowledgeable 
about 
opera, 

blends European classical opera 
with Chinese lyrics, which are 
taken from ancient Chinese 
poems and set to music. The 
style was originally created by 
Chinese composers educated in 
Europe during the early 20th 
Century who wanted to breathe 
new life into old forms. But dur-
ing and after the Communist 
Revolution, foreign forms of 
expression were frowned upon, 
if not banned. This period of 
musical history remains fas-
cinating for Petrus, as those 
brightly-hued posters suggest.

As China has opened up to the 

West in recent decades, a hun-
ger for European and American 
artistic traditions has taken the 
country by storm.

“There’s so much emphasis 

these days in China on being 
‘Western’ as in dressing or 
looking Western, listening to 
Western music and watching 
Western TV,” Petrus said in an 
interview with the Michigan 
Daily.

This 
desire 
for 
Western 

expression led to the collabora-
tive forces that drew both Qiu 
and Petrus to China and then 
eventually together.

After training at the Uni-

versity of Michigan School of 
Music, Theatre and Dance, both 
Petrus and Qiu found their way 
into the Chinese music scene. 
For Qiu, it was relatively simple: 
as a Chinese national, her inter-
est in both Eastern and Western 
classical music pulled her in 
both directions, working with 
Chinese students at times and 
spending the majority of her 
time as a faculty member at the 
University.

For Petrus, the route had 

a few more twists and turns. 
After performing as a Western 
opera singer throughout the 
United States, she enrolled in 
a brand new program called “I 
Sing Beijing,” which sent clas-
sically trained American sing-
ers to China for free intensive 
language, cultural and music 
training. She fell in love with 
the country that welcomed her 
with open arms.

“Initially, it was the audi-

ences in China that hooked me. 
There’s a great appreciation for 
Westerns who take the time to 
sing or speak Chinese,” Petrus 
said. “But these days, it’s truly 
about giving back a part of the 
musical culture.”

As Petrus’s Chinese perfor-

mances became more and more 
popular, she wanted to raise 
awareness of overlooked forms 
of expression in the country’s 
vast musical repertoire. Chinese 
art song, a form often relegated 
to music conservatories, seemed 

like just the thing.

“There is so much Chinese art 

song that is beautiful and under-
performed or unnoticed,” she 
said. “In a way, it seems like a 
Westerner shining light on this 
helps to bring validity to these 
songs.”

As a beloved Western per-

former, she was able to bring 
attention to the form more than 
even a Chinese national alone 
could.

Petrus and Qiu knew each 

other slightly from their time at 
the University, and now seemed 
like the perfect time to com-
bine their talents. The result-
ing album, “A Great Distance,” 
bridges great musical traditions 
from two continents. It has been 
well received in China, where 
many opera teachers now use it 
as a way to show their students 
the true artistry that the genre 
is capable of.

“Being that we come from 

very different backgrounds,” 
Petrus said, “I believe that we 
both bring a very different point 
of view to the music and push 
each other to look at songs with 
fresh eyes.”

After their United States tour 

is complete, the two women will 
return to China for another visit. 
They perform at conservatories 
and concert halls throughout 
the country, and hold work-
shops and master classes for the 
many aspiring singers thirsty 
for new musical styles.

Helping 
young 
students 

reach their dreams is a rich and 
rewarding process for both per-
formers.

“As much as I love to per-

form, I also love working with 
young Chinese singers,” Petrus 
explained. “I have been so 
impressed with the levels of 
singers at many of the conser-
vatories we’ve visited. I always 
look forward to going back and 
working with more students.”

MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Album of the Year: 
Give it to Kendrick

By WILL GREENBERG

Daily Arts Writer

Kendrick Lamar does not need 

an Album of the Year Grammy win 
— let’s start with that. The Gram-
mys, however, need to give him the 
award.

For Lamar, who has a near 

record-tying 11 nominations for 
his earth-shattering To Pimp A 
Butterfly, this one award means 
nothing to his legacy as an artist. 
His work will, and already does, 
speak for itself when it comes time 
to evaluate his career.

Not to mention, plenty of crit-

ics disregard the Grammys for 
rewarding only pop stars, rarely 
recognizing music with complex-
ity or boundary-pushing imagina-
tion. But that could change if they 
give To Pimp A Butterfly the win 
for Album of the Year. It would 
mean Grammy voters reward 
pure artistry — which is the way it 
should be.

Lamar has already suffered 

a high-profile Grammy snub. In 
2014, his wildly popular, but still 
thoughtfully crafted, good kid, 
m.A.A.d city lost Best Rap Album 
to Macklemore’s debut LP. Most 
of the hip-hop world, including 
Macklemore himself, thought 
Kendrick deserved the win: the 
voters made a mistake. If they’re 
smart, they won’t do it again — 
especially when there is so much 
to gain.

To Pimp A Butterfly (TPAB) 

is the album to beat for the rap 
world. There has never been any-
thing like it and rappers will be 
hard pressed to compete with it 
moving forward. Lamar’s mas-
terpiece achieved the crown for 
two reasons that the Grammys 
should note: it perfectly fits the 
platform of an “album,” and it 
was a huge risk.

A brief point needs to be made 

that TPAB is not exceptional 
because of its racial timeliness or 
commentary. Yes, Lamar makes 
exquisite observations about race 
in 
America 
(“Institutionalized 

manipulation and lies / Recip-

rocation of freedom only live in 
your eyes” on “The Blacker the 
Berry”), but far too many critics 
praise TPAB for its political timeli-
ness amid the discussion of police 
discrimination, 
basically 
giv-

ing him credit for addressing the 
topic at all. Let’s not kid ourselves: 
there have been plenty of rappers 
that took on the topic long before 
Lamar was even recording (see 
Rakim, Nas, or Tupac, to name 
a few) and while racial inequal-
ity might be back in the spotlight 
it’s by no means a new issue (see 
American history).

Being Black comprises a signifi-

cant part of who Kendrick Lamar 
is, so of course the topic will per-
vade every corner of his writing 
— and it does. But simply taking on 
the topic isn’t what makes Lamar 
or TPAB stand out. What’s more 
significant is Lamar himself — his 
identity.

To Pimp A Butterfly is like a 

tour through the highs and lows 
of Black American life, and Lamar 
is the tour guide. The music pro-
vides the scene — sometimes 
resilient, jazzy and celebratory 
like in “Alright;” sometimes bit-
ing, ominous, and overwhelming 
like in “Wesley’s Theory” or “How 
Much a Dollar Cost.” All the while, 
Lamar’s rapping explores the dis-
cord with his first-hand, anecdotal 
account of a conscientious Ameri-
can’s life.

What makes TPAB a complete 

album is that it takes all 16 tracks 
for Lamar to walk us through 
it all. You can’t sum up Lamar’s 
feelings on life as a young, Black 
man in the US with just one song. 
He explores the complexity of his 
newfound fame, sometimes own-
ing his accomplishments like in 
“King Kunta,” but also his regrets 
and untreatable guilt in songs like 
‘u.’ The album is a character study, 
becoming more universal as it 
becomes more personal. Lamar 
mostly discusses his life as a suc-
cessful recording artist, which is 
not something most of his audi-
ence will directly relate to. But 
nearly everyone can connect with 

the insecurity or regret that comes 
with pursuing a goal, or reaching a 
new point in life. Lamar achieves 
relatability by actually sharing 
more specifics about his emotional 
path.

Now, what makes TPAB quint-

essential art is that it is not just 
about Lamar’s emotions, but it is 
his emotions. It’s the difference 
between third person and first 
person. Taylor Swift, a hot con-
tender for the Album of the Year, 
can talk about life and its com-
plexity, and many argue she has 
plenty to say, but with To Pimp 
A Butterfly, we are experiencing 
Kendrick Lamar in real time. The 
way he blends music with his con-
fessional, poignant rap feels genu-
ine and intimate — the work itself 
is his identity. Kendrick Lamar 
exemplifies what an artist should 
be: a human who experiences life 
through his craft.

Acknowledging 
this 
alone 

would be a step in the right direc-
tion for the Grammys voters, but 
it’s not the only important point: 
Lamar also took a huge risk with 
To Pimp A Butterfly.

Coming off the wildly success-

ful, wildly popular, club-worthy 
m.A.A.d city, TPAB is an enormous 
leap. There’s not a large market for 
an album of jazz-laden funk, with 
an unpredictable musical gumbo 
of other genres and styles — or 
at least not before TPAB. This is 
the album Lamar always wanted 
to make and it’s an uninhibited 
expression of his artistry. The 
Grammys not only should reward 
artists that attempt to push the 
boundaries of their genre in this 
way, but it must reward them 
when they do so and succeed.

Again, this should mean very 

little to Lamar. He could go 10 
for 11 or 0 for 11 and he’d still be 
widely regarded as the best in the 
game, but giving To Pimp A But-
terfly the night’s most prestigious 
honor would be a sign from the 
higher-ups in the music world that 
they respect and encourage great 
music from real artists. The night 
is theirs to blow.

FILM REVIEW
‘Pride and Prejudice 
and Zombies’ is a lot

By LAUREN WOOD

Daily Arts Writer

The inside of this movie the-

ater smells like socks and stale 
popcorn, except I don’t know 
that 
because 

I’m not here. 
Instead, 
I’m 

fully 
present 

in a zombified 
Regency-era 
England, and 
I’m 
getting 

scared of what 
might be mov-
ing around me 
in the dark. 
On the misty, 
grey 
moors 

outside of London proper, zom-
bies are known to spring out of 
the woods at any passing car-
riage, hungry for the human 
brains that will complete their 
transformation into the undead. 
Like many girls their age, the 
Bennet sisters have completed 
their combat training in China, 
but now are entering into an 
equally difficult battle — try-
ing to find suitable husbands 
amongst those still living.

“Pride and Prejudice and 

Zombies,” based on the parody 
novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, 
rewrites Jane Austen’s origi-
nal novel with an underlying 
narrative of war between Eng-
lish society and the zombies 
that have arisen following the 
Black Plague. The film does not 
let this literary basis fall to the 
side, opening with the iconi-
cally mutated line, “It is a truth 
universally acknowledged that 
a zombie in possession of brains 
must be in want of more brains.”

Gimmicky and gaudy, yes, 

but completely engrossing and 
fun nonetheless. The rest of the 
film upholds this strange cross-

over, taking itself just seriously 
enough to pull its audience in 
but not so seriously that it fails 
to indulge in the utterly ridicu-
lous. The sets and costuming are 
elaborate, drawing out the gran-
deur of Bingely’s famed estate 
with candlelit dances and gilded 
parlor rooms and the Bennet 
sisters’ beauty in multihued silk 
gowns complete with match-
ing dagger sheaths and flint-
lock muskets. These displays of 
splendor are complemented with 
equally gory scenes of zombie 
violence. In one scene the sisters 
fight in slow-motion through a 
ball overrun with the undead, 
cutting down decaying legs, slit-
ting black-blooded throats and 
stomping in the skulls of every-
thing that crosses them.

This dramatized focus on vio-

lence and extravagance trickles 
into the romantic plotline of the 
film as well, where Elizabeth 
(Lily James, “Downton Abbey”) 
and Darcy (Sam Riley, “Malefi-
cent”) are caught verbally spar-
ring so precisely in the original 
Austen book; here their words 
are accented by expert physical 
sparring as well. Their hatred 
for one another is undercut only 
by their respect for the others’ 
skills as a warrior, and their 
unfolding love story holds true 
to the original theme of the book. 
Where the film indulges visually 
and physically, it does the same 
romantically, 
and 
although 

their love story is cheesily over-
dramatized at points, with both 
characters drawn to the point 
of ridiculousness, anything less 
would be overshadowed by the 
rest of the film.

The weird mash-up of the 

film’s 
premise 
works 
when 

considering the tone of repres-
sion and denial already pres-
ent in Regency England. While 

it may seem strange that the 
society is still focusing on balls 
and engagements in the face of 
complete annihilation, it would 
also be strange to accept any-
thing less from the strict social 
parameters of the time, where 
any discomfort is ignored for the 
sake of civility. The only time 
this careful balance between 
civil and gory seems to fall to 
the wayside is in the character-
ization of Lady Catherine (Lena 
Headey, “Game of Thrones”), 
whose strangeness the film 
could do without. In the book, 
Darcy’s aunt is an imposingly 
proper figure in society, and 
here is rewritten as masculine 
zombie-hunter 
extraordinaire 

who diverges from the careful 
construction of the other char-
acters.

Watching “PPZ” in the the-

ater, there is an equal mixture 
of screaming and laughing. For 
much of the film, I had a hard 
time closing my gaping mouth 
or looking away as brains flew 
across the screen or the leads 
kissed amid a burning town. 
After studying film for what 
will in April have been a full 
four years, I’ve come to accept 
that movies can be deemed 
“good” for any number of rea-
sons, a huge one being simply 
that they’re fun to watch. “Pride 
and Prejudice and Zombies” is 
exactly this, and in a way holds 
everything a strange, indulgent 
and massively dramatized hor-
ror film should. With a hoard of 
brain eating zombies, impres-
sively choreographed combat 
scenes, a pink wedding finale 
and a theater full of giggling 
girls cheering on the heroine to 
smash in the skull of the crea-
tures around her, the fun of 
the movie dissolves most of the 
faults to be found.

A

n introverted thespian. 
It seems strange doesn’t 
it? Most thespians (you 

would think) are loud and out-
going people. At least that’s 
what I’ve 
assumed the 
stereotype 
to be.

But after 

observing 
the dynamic 
between 
what people 
bring to the 
stage and 
how they 
behave off of 
it, I realize 
the phenomenon of the intro-
verted thespian is growing — 
and it’s an interesting one.

The first step towards under-

standing this is to dismantle 
the established stereotype. I 
don’t think that just because 
an actor feels comfortable tak-
ing on a role and performing in 
front of hundreds of people, that 
he or she behaves that way all 
the time. The same holds for a 
person who is extroverted at all 
times and would never dream of 
performing in front of people. 
One factor doesn’t make the 
other true — abandon this ste-
reotype.

In high school, the hours I 

spent in drama club gave me a 
lot of time to analyze the thes-
pian stereotype. They were loud, 
extroverted people, no doubt. 
I was among them. But more 
times than not, the people who 
stood out onstage were the ones 
who I didn’t see as extroverted. 
Onstage, their introverted 
qualities disappeared. They were 
entirely different.

The second point of under-

standing is this: taking on a new 
role literally means adopting 
traits and qualities that an actor 
doesn’t actually possess. When I 
watch an actor play a character, 
I often think they act the same 
way off the stage. That’s probably 
a sign of a good actor, not neces-
sarily an indication of their real 
personality.

We can all look at Kristen 

Chenoweth and say yeah, she fits 
the part of Glinda in “Wicked” 
perfectly. She’s outgoing, ener-
getic and lively, everything 
you need for the role. When I 
watch her in interviews or play-
ing other roles, her demeanor 
screams Glinda.

Someone else may play that 

part onstage with an equal 
amounts of energy and charisma, 
just as the role calls for. But I 
would not be surprised if that 
actress is nothing at all like the 
gregarious and charismatic Che-
noweth. 

But the calm and reserved 

actress preparing for her time 
onstage might just have some-
thing to offer.

My older sister Gabriel, for 

example, is an actress. Two 
words I would use to describe 
her? Calm and gentle. She is 
levelheaded and in a group, 
she’s rarely the one to demand 
the attention or provide the 
excessive noise. She leaves that 
task to those in her company. 
Most of the time, people would 
assume the thespians are the 
people around her who can’t 
shut up. She proves them wrong, 
of course.

Onstage, Gabriel shines. 

She plays such a vast range of 
characters, stretching from a 

young, innocent child to a grown, 
mature adult. You would never 
guess she’s the quiet one. That 
she’s the thespian. And an intro-
verted one at that.

That’s the point of acting. 

Becoming a character entirely 
apart from who one really is. 
That isn’t to say that resembling 
the character the actor plays is 
a bad thing, oftentimes that’s a 
pleasure to watch.

But to fall into the assump-

tion that a successful thespian, 
or a believable one, has to be 
extroverted — is false. A wise 
actor aims for the audience to 
simply believe the character 
that he or she takes on. It takes 
an incredible amount of time 
to study the physical and emo-
tional traits of a character and 
portray them as natural.

I think the best response an 

actor could ever get from their 
work is: “Wow, that was you up 
there? I’ve never seen you behave 
anything like that before.”

Yes. Exactly. That’s a job well 

done for the thespian embody-
ing a character whose traits are 
drastically different than what 
the actor views as inherent quali-
ties.

The actors who study their 

roles and think, “Nope, I don’t 
behave anything like this in 
real life,” are often the ones 
who make you believe their 
character the most. They have 
spent long hours reversing their 
natural tendencies to become 
an incredibly different per-
son onstage — and the result 
deserves our praise. 

Kadian is not an introverted 

e-mailer. To get in touch with her, 

send a note to bkadian@umich.edu 

COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

Understanding the 
introvert thespian

BAILEY 
KADIAN

A Great 
Distance

Friday Feb. 
12, 7:30 p.m. 

Britton 

Recital Hall

Free

B+

Pride and 
Prejudice 
and 
Zombies

Rave & Quality 16 

Lionsgate

EVENT PREVIEW

