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 Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com LOOKING FOR SOMEONE to drive my daughter from AA to Wix‑ om 2‑4 af ternoons/wk. Days and rate negotiable. 734‑355‑9313| Starting ASAP HELP ELDERLY WITH HOUSEHOLD TASKS Walk to UM, 734.276.6797 $10/hr HELP WANTED HELP WANTED The Michigan Daily loves its readers 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.