6 — Friday, October 18, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By David Alfred Bywaters
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/18/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

10/18/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, October 18, 2019

ACROSS
1 Show anxiety, in
a way
5 No good
11 Prankster’s
projectile
14 Excited response
to a cue
15 Pressed
16 Also
17 Iranian vocal
improvisation?
19 Primitive dwelling
20 Furniture
cleaning brand
21 Bar __
22 Assistant
23 Web address
24 Household
employee’s
fraudulent ruse?
26 Approve
29 Put into words
30 Preface to a
conviction
31 Product warning
34 Sew up again
38 Nursery school
air fresheners?
42 First name in
black-and-white
photos
43 Stash
44 Cabinet dept.
45 Born, in Brussels
47 Smidge, to a
laddie
50 Poem that
seemed awfully
profound at the
bar last night?
55 Realtor’s unit
56 Words of
understanding
57 Shad product
58 Tabloid output
61 Catch
62 What optical
character
recognition
software often
produces?
64 I problem?
65 Purpose
66 “This is terrible!”
67 Intl. Talk Like a
Pirate Day month
68 Sudden reactions
69 Crucial things

DOWN
1 Plumbing item
2 “So be it!”
3 Casual pants
4 Make certain
5 Decree
6 Item near a
sugar bowl,
perhaps
7 Opera about an
opera singer
8 Peruvian of old
9 Comes to
realize
10 Summer CT
clock setting
11 Moral principle
12 Big wheel in
delis
13 27-Down’s
victorious words
18 Hebrides unit
22 So far
24 Pokes (around)
25 Knitter’s need
26 Opera about an
African princess
27 Gangster movie
hero, perhaps
28 Sailor
32 Follower’s suffix
33 Displeased look

35 Sad song
subject
36 Cogito __ sum
37 Car sticker amt.
39 Perfume with
myrrh, say
40 Actor Guinness
41 Lamb’s dam
46 Roaming, like a
knight
48 Palindromic
Parisian
pronoun

49 Performs
adequately
50 Longs
51 Treatment
52 Jazz style
53 Vital vessel
54 Barbecue brand
58 Some NCOs
59 Wacko
60 First chimp in
orbit
62 Base figs.
63 Small colonist

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a LATTE

“Pockets of Silence at the Glorified Disco.” Fourteen
School of Music, Theatre & Dance students stare at this
strange amalgamation of words, amazed (and perhaps a
little intimidated) by the fact that they have named a show
they haven’t even created yet.
“They did a photo shoot almost immediately after, where
they made a poster for the show,” Assistant Professor of
Dance Charli Brissey added in an interview with The Daily.
“There was suddenly this strange camaraderie for a show
that no one had made yet.”
This is what the first day of class looked like for
DANCECHAMBERDANCE, a five week mini course
that is expanding and testing the definitions of dance,
chamber music and collaboration. In SMTD there
has been an increasing interest in these collaborative,
interdepartmental classes. Among an emerging gaggle of
such classes, DANCECHAMBERDANCE has come forth
as an “infrastructure” for cross-department collaboration.
Brissey, who teaches the class, describes their role as
“facilitator.”
“I don’t choreograph for the show, I don’t tell the students
what their collaboration needs to look like,” Brissey said.
“I’m just there to teach them a little bit about production.”
The show is entirely left to the students to run and
organize. So how does a group of fourteen students —
ranging from ages 19 to 35 with varied experiences in
production and their respective fields — create a show from
nothing but a title?
The students at DANCECHAMBERDANCE break
the rules a bit and test the limits of their project and each
other’s artistry. In an interview with The Daily, students
in the class Jacob Taitel and Aislinn Bailie described the
process of creating this show as “exploratory” and “wildly
improvisational.” They said that the first few rehearsals
were mainly used to figure out what everybody could
bring to the table. From there, it was clear the line between
“dancer” and “musician” was going to become blurred: One
dancer professed that they could DJ, another could play the
drums, a tuba player was trained in ballet for a year and a
bassoon player could beatbox. It is a piece where everyone
does everything. It’s less about setting a dance piece to
chamber music and more about artists creating a fusion
piece with movement and sound as their primary tools. So

the class tumbled forward, tossing out concepts, interesting
words and scraps of music or choreography, and instead
created a space to improvise with other artists and create
something risky in a low-stakes environment.
“It’s so nice to just let out energy and put something
out there knowing that someone else will pick it up. Like,
everyone’s just trying stuff,” said Taitel, a second year
Masters student in Tuba Performance and Chamber Music
and student in this class.
In addition to this class being a space for artists to
experiment without the pressure of perfectionism, it has
also become a space to learn about one’s own craft through
a different kind of artist’s eyes.
“I get some of my most effective criticism from
other people within the arts,” Taitel said on the idea of
collaborating with dancers, “because they don’t deal with
the things that I have to deal with as a musician — they just
hear the music.” Musicians who have never played improv
before were met with the challenge of thinking and creating
beyond the music stand (of which there are none of in this
show). Same goes for the dancers; this class has become an
opportunity for artists to expand their vocabulary and skill
sets across artistic mediums.
And the results seem pretty exciting. And weird. “There
are a lot of pockets, some disco, and, I don’t know, we break
into a line dance at one point? And that’s pretty cool?” said
Bailie, a Masters student in Bassoon.
Other notable cameos in this piece include a metronomic
solo dance piece, a set of pieces on the seven deadly sins and
a good many dancers playing music and musicians dancing.
“Sometimes we don’t even know what’s going to happen!”
Bailie laughingly explained, “Not in a bad way … in an
exciting way. You have to be present for it.”
In live performance, there is often a pressure to make
capital-A Art, art that is supposed to feel deep and complex
and cryptic, but oftentimes just renders the audience
confused and feeling a bit left out. This group of artists have
relieved themselves of that pressure and seem to just be
creating for creation’s sake, reacting honestly from moment
to moment, in what will be a unique, strange and genuine
experience.
“I think that what an audience member takes away
from a piece is pretty up to them and their experiences and
however they feel,” Taitel said, “but I guess if I had to choose
something I want them to take away from this, it would be
that weird things can create emotion too, and things that
you wouldn’t expect can be extremely effective.”

New SMTD minicourse
breaks discipline barriers

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

STEPHANIE GURALNICK
For The Daily

In PBS’s “Press,” a cheerful yet outdated melodrama
set in contemporary London, two British newspapers —
The Post and The Herald — find themselves engaged in
a war where the journalists that cheat and lie the most
appear to be the victors. While the offices may be close
in proximity, their journalistic practices and financial
conditions differ significantly.
The lowlife Post is led by uber-confident editor-in-
chief, Duncan Allen (Ben Chaplin, “Kiss Me First”),
who was once an impressive and ethical journalist. His
profession and unnecessarily high opinion of himself,
though, have eroded these attributes in favor of seeking
sensationalist stories.
Holly Evans (Charlotte Riley, “Dark Heart”) brings us
inside the left-leaning, award winning, serious reporting
Herald that prides itself on exposing corruption and
hypocrisy. She is a humorless investigative journalist
who marches on with the hunch that a new injustice is
always around the corner. She represents what Duncan
used to be — she abides by the highest journalistic
practices, but lacks the cut-throat attitude of Duncan.
Duncan, however, is not the one calling the shots
for The Post. George Emmerson (David Suchet, “His
Dark Materials”) is the CEO of World Wide News,
the company that owns The Post. Emmerson is not
motivated by financial gain, but is instead determined to
wield his influence around the world.

The central focus of this six part mini-series is the
differing practices of journalistic integrity of these
respective papers. The result is continuous action that is
impossible not to become entrenched in, even when the
practice is as simple as reminding us that it’s wrong to
steal. Holly represents the heroine: She fearlessly fights
her way through the cruel and dark tabloid world, full
of reporters who blackmail parents of kids who have
committed suicide with threats of humiliating publicity
if the grieving parents fail to meet interview demands.
While it’s an entertaining show, “Press” comes up
short in being mostly about print media, as if the Internet
is not central to contemporary London journalism. The
setting might be off by about two decades, but it doesn’t
hinder the pacing or quality of the show. On the flip side,
“Press” brings in real-world issues such as declining
sales, press regulation, difference between public
interest and interest to the public and whether or not
something that is in the public domain is fair game.
Beyond its lame attempt at being relevant, “Press”
also fails to humanize its characters, as most of them
lack personal lives. Even Duncan, whose screensaver is a
picture of his wife and kid, prefers to spend every second
creating stories that will ruin other people’s lives and,
consequently, his own in the process. Maybe because
“Press” is a mini-series with a tight narrative, there is
no time to explore the lives of the characters outside
of work. The only reason it’s problematic is because
the characters have been framed to make it seem like
journalism is the only thing in their lives and they all
have absolutely no interest in anything else.

‘Press’ is 20 years too late

TV REVIEW

JUSTIN POLLACK
For The Daily

PBS

Jesse
Pinkman
(Aaron
Paul,
“BoJack
Horseman”) is, in many ways, the unsung
hero of “Breaking Bad.” Even as Walter White
(Bryan Cranston, “Malcolm in the Middle”)
became just a tad too deplorable to sympathize
with by the end of the series, Jesse maintained
as a character viewers could see the humanity
in, despite his crimes. After all, he was just
a kid when he partnered up with Walter, his
chemistry teacher, to join the meth trade. And
though his youth is no excuse for what he ends
up doing, it does make us more forgiving of his
actions, more inclined to cling to him.
Yet, “Breaking Bad” was never really Jesse’s
story. It was Walter White’s. It was the story
of just how far a normal man will go to find
wealth and power, confidence and meaning,
even when it costs him the safety of his family
and, eventually, his own life. The series
finale wrapped up this story perfectly with
Walter, or rather Heisenberg, making peace
with himself, or at least as close to peace as
he could manage. But for me there was still
a looming question in the back of my mind:
What about Jesse? How does his story end?
This is where “El Camino”, Netflix’s latest
extension of the “Breaking Bad” universe,
comes in, arriving more than six years after
the show’s final episode. “El Camino” tells
viewers everything they could want to know
about Jesse’s fate, picking up exactly where
“Breaking Bad” left off, with Jesse fleeing the
neo-Nazis who kept him hostage in Todd’s
(Jesse Plemons, “Fargo”) 1978 El Camino.

Shootings and heists ensue, but Jesse isn’t in
it for the reasons he once was. He’s desperate
for money, not to fuel his own greed but to
pay Ed (Robert Forster, “Mulholland Drive”)
for a new identity and a new life. All in
all, it appears that Jesse has learned from
Walter’s mistakes. Meth dealing, despite its
profitability and its thrills, just isn’t worth it
for him, at least not anymore.
Jesse wants to escape his past, but can he?
The short answer is no. Mike (Jonathan Banks,
“Better Call Saul”) even tells him so in the
film’s first scene, saying, “Sorry, kid, that’s
the one thing you can never do.” No matter
how far away from New Mexico he manages
to run, he can’t run away from himself, from
the people he’s killed and from the people
he’s lost. You can see his torment, his grief
written all over his face, covered in dirt and
scars from his time in captivity. You can see it
in his eyes, too, even after he succeeds in his
mission. There’s no way for him to rid himself
of it. There are only two options: die, or learn
to live with himself. He chooses life, and I’m
happy for it.
“El Camino” doesn’t need to exist, but
I’m glad it does. It’s given Jesse’s journey a
closure I never knew I needed. It doesn’t tie
up every loose string, but it’s all the better
for it. Had “El Camino” given Jesse a happier
ending and a less ambiguous future, the movie
would be devoid of the realism and complexity
that made “Breaking Bad” so challenging
and so exciting to watch. Because this film
exists, “Breaking Bad” fans can take comfort
in knowing that, even if Jesse isn’t okay now,
maybe he might learn to be, and that’s more
than enough for me.

‘El Camino’ lets fans say
goodbye to Jesse Pinkman

FILM REVIEW

ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

Pockets of Silence at the Glorified
Disco

Oct. 18-19 @ 8 p.m.

Arthur Miller Theatre

Free

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Netflix

Press

Season Premiere

PBS

Sundays @ 10 p.m.