Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com By Jeff Stillman ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 04/10/19 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 04/10/19 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2019 ACROSS 1 Punk rock subgenre 4 Catches red-handed 8 Medieval stringed instruments 14 GoPro product, briefly 15 Many a homecoming attendee 16 Covent Garden offerings 17 All-Star pitcher 18 Controversial excavation method 20 Beach house? 22 Little biter 23 Bible book between Daniel and Joel 24 Biblical pronoun 25 Nursery cry 26 Form 1040 agcy. 28 Permanent sites? 30 Sounds of contentment 33 __ Fables 37 Criticize harshly 38 Beachfront property, often 41 Org. for netmen 42 “Barney Miller” star Hal 43 Linear 44 Biathlon weapons 46 __ Bund: Swiss newspaper 48 Skelton’s Kadiddlehopper 49 Merit badge org. 52 Tut-tutted 56 Scottish family 57 Breed of Tonto’s Scout 59 Handyman’s work suggested by the starts of 18-, 20-, 38- and 57-Across 61 Shortest surname in Cooperstown 62 Kin of jujitsu 63 Yours, to Yves 64 Once known as 65 Planted a red herring, say 66 Poolroom powder 67 Drop the ball DOWN 1 Cybermoney 2 Chinese gambling mecca 3 Forebodings 4 Sprint Cup org. 5 Utah ski resort 6 Break open 7 Word for word? 8 Tiber River capital 9 Center starter 10 Cincinnati player 11 “Happy Days” actress 12 Inhabitant of ancient Palestine 13 NCO rank 19 Work at, as a trade 21 Reason-based faith 25 Easter liturgy 27 One-piece dresses 28 Go through 29 Floored it 30 On __ with 31 Constitution section that creates the executive branch 32 On-the-sly alcohol containers 34 Poetic time 35 Downcast 36 Bullfight cheer 39 K thru 6 40 Upper body 45 Soup legume 47 Cultural, as cuisine 49 Sheep’s cry 50 Occupy, as a desk 51 Santa __ racetrack 53 Scandinavian coin 54 Fragrant compound 55 Discourage 56 Pull an all-nighter 57 Urge 58 Item in a kit 60 “__ to My Right Knee”: Rita Dove poem COMEDIC WRITER needed to write funny captions. Pay is $25 for 12 cap tions. Basically ~$2 per caption. Contact mitchelj@umich.edu. STUDENT SUMMER STORAGE Closest to campus, Indoor, Clean, Safe Reserve now at annarborstorage.com or (734) 663‑0690 EFFICIENCY ‑ 1 & 2 Bdrm Apt Fall 2019/20 Rents range $875 ‑ $1850 most include heat and water. Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3 734‑996‑1991 FOR RENT SERVICES HELP WANTED Question: What goes great with your morning coffee? Answer: michigandaily.com Concertos for two pianos and orchestra are somewhat rare, maybe because it seems like such overkill. The conventional piano concerto stages a dialogue (or a competition, or a fight) between the orchestra and the soloist, which can usually nearly match, or at least analogize, the orchestra in power and scope. It’s less clear what a concerto for two pianos is really accomplishing by the addition of the third character — a piano duet, by itself, can accommodate nearly any piece of orchestral music. Many pre- 20th-century examples of the form simply trade the role of the soloist between the two pianists, leaving whichever player not playing the prominent role to fill in gaps in the texture or mirror the orchestra. One recent example of the form, Philip Glass’s double concerto, works in part because Glass’s style tends to be more planar than dialogic — the piece plays interlocking masses of sound off each other. Glass uses the piano not as an analogue for an orchestra, but something like mallet percussion. A younger composer who borrows heavily from the minimalist tradition that Glass helped create is Bryce Dessner, whose latest set of recordings includes a concerto for two pianos played by the French duo Katia and Marielle Labèque. This piece splits the difference between Glass’s static, rhythmically inflected style and the more narrative concerto tradition, balancing a sense of thematic development with a bright, clear harmonic language and motoric rhythms. Dessner doesn’t shy away from the intricate, nearly overloaded textures that are possible with the instrumentation, and the spontaneity with which he combines themes and gestures is thrilling. Phrases ricochet around the orchestra, woodwinds scribble around the edges of phrases, abrupt shifts in texture and color abound. It’s like a liquid minimalism, just as likely to disperse into skittering phrases as it is to condense into a stampeding rush. The second piece on the album, “Haven,” is scored for piano duet and two guitars, played here by the Labèques, Dessner and the guitarist David Chalmin. “Haven” is a much more restrained form of music than the piano concerto, and carries a superficial similarity to the earlier, pulse- driven form of minimalism from the late 1960s. Like much minimalist music before it, it establishes a basic, repeated shape that then accumulates and disperses dissonance, like a river flowing over rocks. “Haven” doesn’t have the monomaniacal intensity of early Glass and Reich, though — it’s rather sectional, and can be read as following an overall A-B-A structure, like a sonata. Similar to the piano concerto, Dessner uses minimalism as a stylistic resource that can be channeled into more conventional forms. “El Chan” is the final piece on the album, for piano duet. The set of miniatures are dedicated to Alejandro González Iñárritu, who Dessner worked with on the expansive score for The Revenant. Dessner’s language acquires a slightly more ominous, but still luminous, cast: dissonances accumulate in clouds above triads and seventh chords, frenetic gestures are cut short by bass hammer- strokes. The music feels more differentiated, a jagged, misty landscape. The final piece, subtitled “Mountain,” ends with a series of slow, widely spaced chords, not suggesting tension or resolution but simply hanging, suspended. Bryce Dessner plays with composition on ‘El Chan’ ALBUM REVIEW EMILY YANG Daily Arts Writer El Chan Bryce Dessner Brassland Records Dessner doesn’t shy away from the intricate, nearly overloaded textures that are possible with the instrumentation Before attending Assistant Professor José Casas’s “Flint,” I had already decided that I really wanted to like it. The premise of the play — a “call to action,” as the author describes it, meant to inform audience members of the Flint water crisis — seemed noble and highly important. While the play did have its poignant, powerful moments, it lacked the focus and clarity to bring them home. The disparity of the many narratives in the play all but eliminated any overarching themes that might be drawn from the crisis, reducing a complex crisis into a series of heart-wrenching individual problems. To understand these problems, one must first understand the basic structure of the play. It consisted of a series of monologues and duets in which people affected by the Flint water crisis spoke to the audience about their experiences. Over the course of the evening, we heard from various concerned stakeholders: a professor, an Autoworld worker, a deliver guy, an attorney and a nurse. Though this technique was interesting at first, it eventually became cumbersome. I found myself wishing that characters would interact with each other at some point — that some character evolution or continuity between scenes and characters would begin to develop. Furthermore, at many points, the dialogue resulting from this narrative structure began to feel awkward and preachy. The play began to feel as though it were a series of interviews with unrelated subjects, each one addressing the audience to detail the horrible effects that the crisis had on their life. The great disparity between the messages of these characters, however, diluted any central narrative or take away that might have developed. Despite this, the acting talent on display was impressive. Any scene requiring a monologue usually becomes a staple of an actor’s repertoire; in this instance, the cast was required to perform two or three quasi- monologues each. Each member of the cast excelled in this regard, consistently breaking the fourth wall and speaking seemingly extemporaneously to the audience without losing the audience’s attention. The opening and closing ensemble numbers, for example, were absolutely stunning. In the opening, various members of the ensemble doubled each other‘s dialogues about the crisis. These were short, powerful statements meant to capture the lasting effects of this crisis. And near the end, as water flowed out of the pipes on the edges of the stage, the cast’s violent motions and groaning noises were truly horrifying; of everything in the play, this is the moment that stuck with me as I left the theater. The set was very impressive: A chain-link fence stuffed full of dirtied water bottles framed the stage while dark brown pipes flanked the back left and right portions of the stage. During the intermission, these pipes were uncapped — in the ensemble scene, a slow trickle of water dripped from them into giant oil barrels. A few of the narratives were particularly moving. The Attorney’s complaints about potentially moving trials to majority-white counties, for example, was particularly captivating. The Gardener and Socialist were also quite powerful, as the Gardener spoke of the peace that gardening brought him, the Socialist spoke of the damages that lead and other foreign substances can have to plants grown in contaminated soil. The last minutes of the play, however, were its most powerful. In this monologue, a woman of color speaks to the audience about the cultural expectations that mothers (and mothers of color) face in speaking about this crisis. At one point, she tells the audience that “this play is over.” As the house lights abruptly turned on, she admonished us to listen to these stories and respond to them — to act on what we had heard and help be part of the solution. In the end, I found myself wishing that the whole play had been this commanding. And while I applaud Prof. Casas’s ambitions on this project, I cannot say that it entirely lived up to what I had hoped for. Ultimately, it was a lengthy, slightly-disorganized rumination on the hazardous effects of the Flint water crisis — an incredibly important play, though not the most well- executed attempt. ‘Flint’ is an ambitious play that does not hit the mark COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW SAMMY SUSSMAN Daily Arts Writer Megan Bascom and Nicole Reehort’s “Intersections” MFA Dance Thesis Concert explored themes of isolation, empathy and personal aspiration in the groups we find ourselves in on a daily basis. In Reehorst’s “Playing Dead,” a female protagonist navigates the practice of classical ballet, a journey that forces her to be both gentle and aggressive, fragile yet enduring. Bascom’s “ReGuarding,” on the other hand, has no protagonist. Instead, a group of dancers move around an obstacle course of abstracted sculptures, with relationships among the dancers and their environment constantly in flux. Drawing from their distinct backgrounds, the two Masters candidates made very different choreographic decisions. Reehort’s piece began with her protagonist standing still at stage center, lights slowly illuminating her face and then her body. As a classical piano began to play, two dancers rolled across from either sides of the stage, unfurling fabric that would eventually entangle the protagonist as she slowly began to move. Bascom’s piece, by contrast, began with a bright red screen suddenly providing back-lighting for five dancers standing tall across stage center. As distorted electric guitar began playing over an electronic beat, the dancers energetically ran about the stage until they suddenly all stomped the music and screen to a halt. These beginnings placed the audience in two very different places from the start: Reehorst’s piece demanded attention to subtlety, while Bacom’s simply had us along for the ride. The stage design acted as an early indicator of the different approaches. Reehorst’s set was comprised of ropes made of beige-colored ballerina lingerie knotted together, Bascom’s set employed eight abstracted containers of wood and metal. While the lingerie referenced a long history of lingerie in ballet and represented the established norms that literally entangle the main dancer, the containers seem to symbolize the immaterial obstacles of urban life, as the cast continuously fights to overthrow them. The biggest difference between the performances, however, seemed to be the use or omission of music and dialogue. Reehorst’s piece used music sparingly, allowing us to be intimately connected with the protagonist for most of the time. When music did play, it was classical piano that indicated the start of a performance within the performance itself. This omission of music when the ballerinas were “offstage” gave the piece a self-aware objectivity that wouldn’t have been communicated otherwise. Bascom, on the other hand, made use of high octane music and dialogue throughout. If all five dancers seemed to be acting as a group — playing off each other in any number of ways — fast-paced music would serve to accentuate the frenzy. During moments when only one or two dancers acted as others watched on, slower, more atmospheric music would support this intimacy. In this way, the use rather than the omission of music supported much of the social commentary Bascom seemed to be making. Despite these differences, the performances had a great deal of thematic overlap (hence, “Intersections”). Reehorst’s focused on the plight of a woman trying to establish herself in a ballet company, hence its more muted, introspective nature. This protagonist fails to integrate herself throughout, only finally noticing the web of lingerie at the end after a great deal of strenuous, inward-looking solo performance. It is only then that she joins the other dancers as they synchronously roll offstage to conclude the performance. The dancers in Bascom’s performance seem equally aloof to the obstacles before them. They move the metal containers around throughout the show, at times using them as protective barriers but at others involuntarily being bound to their control. After much quarrel, the five original dancers, aided by a curious new group of three others, come to a collective understanding that these containers are the source of their angst. The show ends on much the same note as Reehort’s with the group coming together to aggressively abolish these obstacles offstage. Regardless of their differences, “Playing Dead” and “ReGuarding” offer cohesive individualistic and collective insights into our intricately intersecting lives. ‘Intersections’ impresses with original choreograpy COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW BEN VASSAR Daily Arts Writer 6A — Wednesday, April 10, 2019 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com