6 — Friday, November 22, 2019
Arts
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©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/22/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
11/22/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, Novemver 22, 2019
ACROSS
1 New England’s
only National
Park
7 Eponymous
explorer of
Australia
13 Pressure sensors
attached to
buoys are parts
of their warning
systems
15 Recorded, in a
way
16 Colbert et al.?
18 Useful thing
19 Additionally
20 Coastal raptor
21 Something to file
22 Frond source
23 With 53-Down,
maxim
25 Ob-__
26 Jacket fabric
27 First name in
a 2010s first
family
29 Part of a
candlemaker’s
design process?
31 Subarctic forest
33 Hawke of
“Boyhood”
34 Outdoor
wedding guests
on a steamy
day?
38 “Over the
Rainbow”
composer
39 Bowling venue
40 PD alert
43 Understand
44 Oil equipment
45 “Because
Freedom Can’t
Protect Itself”
org.
46 Meditation goal
49 Keurig Dr Pepper
brand
50 1954 Honorary
Award for
35-Down
51 What a hiker
might do after a
nap on the trail?
54 December decor
55 Gift with tracks
56 Absinthe herb
57 Chocolates, e.g.
DOWN
1 “You’ve heard
this from me
before ... ”
2 Replaces a
dancer
3 Adams with
negatives
4 Bonkers
5 “Here’s a
thought,” briefly
6 Reef diver’s
need
7 Sock part
8 Prince Harry’s
aunt
9 Ado
10 Early Mississippi
flag symbol
11 Farthest-from-
the-sun orbital
point
12 Monarch catcher
13 Country music
sound
14 Unexcitable
17 Marseille man
22 Pie-topping nut
24 Newscaster
Rather
26 Invitation to eat
27 Daydreaming
Walter
28 Wan
29 Bic’s __-Out
30 First known
asteroid
31 Car manual topic
32 Like the seats
in an SRO
performance
34 Funny one
35 She never went
to 50-Across
ceremonies
36 Flexible
37 North African
capital
40 Confront boldly
41 China pieces
42 Pop
45 Together
47 Corned beef order
48 Tiny insect
50 “Hamilton” award
51 Scrabble-like
app, briefly
52 Puckish org.?
53 See 23-Across
HELP WANTED
Last Tuesday I found myself laying in bed
when I should have been making myself a
proper dinner. My thumb had settled into the
routine up-down motion that all Instagram
users know too well. Images of dancers and
clips of dances floated by as reflections in
my glasses as I glazed over in a bored stupor.
Each post seemed more cliché or downright
stupid than the last, and I found myself
teetering on the familiar consideration of
quitting Instagram for good when my thumb
hit one final video: a clip of a dance set to “All
These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers.
The post came from dancer/choreographer
Nicholas Palmquist and was captioned with
a plug for his upcoming class at Steps on
Broadway, a famous New York City dance
studio. Though well filmed, the clip is more
of a rehearsal than a performance — the
dancers wear leggings and T-shirts and
stand inside a studio lined with bags and
water bottles. The purple light coming in
from the windows tells me that it was filmed
in the evening, most likely at the end of
another average day for the lives of everyone
involved.
The dance, however, feels very much above
average. Palmquist’s choreography uses the
section of The Killers’s song that layers a fast
drum beat underneath the slow repetition of
the words “I got soul but I’m not a soldier.”
For a choreographer, this poses a question:
Which rhythm should I follow? Palmquist
somehow melds both. Dancers bounce their
shoulders quickly and then whip their upper
bodies in slow motion. They move through
intricate jumps only to stop and luxuriate
through the air in relaxed power poses. It’s
a brilliant mix of tension.
Most of all, I’m captivated by one dancer,
specifically the woman in the front. Though
Palmquist tagged everyone in the clip, I
don’t feel comfortable making assumptions
about which handle is hers. Perhaps the
mystery becomes part of my intrigue. From
beginning to end, she dances with a joy that
builds in both ferocity and subtlety. She
starts by whipping her head to the front to
make eye contact with the camera and then
breaks into a sly smile as she dips her head
backward. Her entire chest and neck open
as her upper body releases. It’s a vulnerable
position, but her command over the space
makes it powerful at the same time.
As the music and choreography build, so
does this woman’s fierce combination of
strength and grace. The steps increase in size
and sinuosity, but her musicality does not
waver. The entire time, she stares down the
front of the room with a beautiful intensity
that only makes me want to keep watching.
By the end, all the dancers break into
their own informal jumping as if all those
structured steps have finally bubbled over
into pure, intense bliss. The front dancer
lifts her palms to the sky and tips her head
back as if she’s a girl in a made-for-television
romcom and she’s dancing in the rain.
The first time that I found it, I watched
the whole clip four times back-to-back.
I saved it to my Instagram archive and
watched it again the next day. The day after
that I linked it in my story because I couldn’t
get enough of it. This weekend, I watched it
some more. Today, I started to think about
the serendipitous events that allowed me to
come across the video at all.
I don’t remember any of the other content
that floated by my eyes in the time I spent
scrolling last Tuesday. I only remember a
sense of gray frustration over how mundane
everything online was, and the specificities
of that time are gone forever.
Despite this, I am left with the innate sense
that time must not be equal, as this one-
minute dance easily makes up for an hour
lost somewhere else. Palmquist’s dancers’
fiercely joyful attack to musicality is enough
to keep me on Instagram, wondering where
my scrolling will take me next.
Musicality on the internet
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
ZOE PHILLIPS
Daily Arts Writer
There is an inherent ebb and flow of life.
When you are not being pushed or pulled,
you are stagnant. Apathetically waiting
as the world yawns by. It is within art that
we can fulfill our craving for the thrill of
life’s ebbs and flows. Whether they are
joyful or sorrowful, there is no doubt that
experiencing them is far more exciting than
standing still.
Irish company Teac Damsa’s “Swan Lake/
Loch na hEala” exemplifies an extreme push
and pull in performance. Choreographer
Michael
Keegan-Dolan’s
masterfully
reimagines
Tchaikovsky’s
ballet
—
directly
contrasting
childlike
elation
with
terrified
isolation,
his
iteration
of
“Swan
Lake”
is a uniquely
aesthetic dance
and
theatrical
performance
rich with Irish
history
and
folklore.
The
only
similarity
between
Keegan-Dolan’s and Tchaikovsky’s “Swan
Lake” is the presence of the titular animal.
In Keegan-Dolan’s iteration, a chronically
depressed man walks to a lake with a shotgun
that his mother bought him for his birthday.
The man appears ready to commit suicide
when he encounters and falls madly in love
with a wild swan that is equally as broken as
he is.
The piece opens with the narrator of
the story, naked except for a pair of white
underwear, tied to a cement block. As the
actor begins to bleat in an animalistic nature,
it becomes clear that the man is not a man
but a goat. The goat begrudgingly circles the
cement block and, as the lights go down, is
surrounded by three dancing men. He bleats
in fear until, under the pressure of the men,
he takes human form and begins to tell the
saddening tale. The actor who plays the
narrator also plays a corrupt politician, a
priest and, at one point, a radio.
The theme of humans embodying animals
does not end in the overture. It is soon
revealed that a priest has turned four dancing
women into swans as a form of punishment,
since they were vocal about his raping of one
of them. When this was revealed, the overture
made more sense to me. Perhaps this man
turned himself into a goat as punishment for
raping the swan woman. Perhaps all of these
dancers are viciously fighting to be free from
a hellish world they either brought upon
themselves or had thrust upon them.
Throughout the performance, I discovered
that witnessing humans embody animals on
stage is oddly satisfying. At their core humans
are animalistic, yet we must suppress these
instincts in order to be functioning members
of society. It is through physical movement
that these instincts are best released, and
Keegan-Dolan seemed to have a firm grasp
of that concept.
Because of the saddening nature of the
piece, the performance could have remained
one-note. However, Keegan-Dolan found
childlike joy just as well as he encapsulated
the evil in this story. In a moment of brilliant
choreography
at the end of
the show, the
dancers
begin
to
toss
light
feathers around
like snow.
Their
feet
moving among
the
mass
of
feathers
on
the
ground
served for an
aesthetically
pleasing
end.
Each
dancer
simultaneously
kicked
up
a
puff of feathers
with
one
swift
motion,
seeming to wake from the hellscape that
they had lived in during the show. In the
last fifteen minutes, they were granted the
freedom to live in pure ecstasy.
Skillfully using the white feathers as a way
to shed light onto the darkness, the audience
themselves were brought into the enjoyment
of the moment. The feathers were tossed onto
the front row and audience and performers
alike relaxed into a state of what can simply
be described as joy. The joyful metaphor
continued on even into the bows. As the
audience applauded the performers for their
work, the dancers took their time soaking it
all in, coming out for not just a second round
of bows but a third.
I was completely elated in this last 15
minutes, although I struggled to justify
its connection to the rest of the piece.
Eventually, I decided it was about finding
joy in the terrible, yet this is widely open
for
interpretation.
In
fact,
the
entire
performance could have been a different
story for each viewer. What was a goat to
me may have been just a man on a rope to
another. I had trouble labeling this piece
as either dance or theatre because, to me, it
was both. The endless possibilities this work
provides the audience make it special. It does
not give its audience answers. Instead, it
poses questions.
The push and pull of ‘Loch
na hEala,’ or ‘Swan Lake’
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW
ALIX CURNOW
Daily Arts Writer
Halloween has come and gone, and Thanksgiving
is on the horizon. And with Thanksgiving comes
the holiday movie season, specifically the Hallmark
Christmas movie season. The thing about Hallmark
movies is that they lean into the fact that they’re
Hallmark movies
—
actors
who
kind-of-sort-of
look like that one
big A-list star and a
plot that’s far from
Oscar-worthy but
still
comforting.
These aren’t bad
things, they’re just
what to expect
from a Hallmark
Christmas movie.
In
the
end,
it
doesn’t really matter if they’re good because more
often than not they’re only playing in the background
of a fun holiday cookie baking party. And “Last
Christmas,” Universal’s newest Christmas movie, is
exactly that, but with none of the Hallmark Christmas
charm.
Starring
Emilia Clarke
(“Me
Before
You”) as Kate
and
Henry
Golding
(“Crazy
Rich
Asians”)
as
Tom,
“Last
Christmas”
follows
the
pair as Kate
falls in love
with the aloof
and seemingly
perfect
Tom.
A classic series
of meet-cutes
populates
the
first
20
minutes
of
the
film,
highlighting
Kate’s whiny self-centered nature, while Golding
continues to play the typical debonair, two-
dimensional
hunk.
Emma
Thompson
(“Love
Actually”) stars as Kate’s mother and Michelle Yeoh
(“Crazy Rich Asians”) as her boss. Tragically, though,
the two mother figures in Kate’s life never interact
until the final scene of the movie, where they’re simply
in the same room.
The movie had the potential to be similar to “Love
Actually” with its large cast of stars and intertwining
storylines. But instead, “Last Christmas” focuses on
the budding relationship between Clarke and Golding.
And though the two are cute, there is none of that
tension that comes with falling in love during a two-
week period because of pressure from the constant
attention of friends and family. The relationships that
actually show potential for a movie are cast off to the
side, like Kate’s parents. From the beginning, it seems
as if they’re on the rocks and somehow, through some
Christmas magic, they reconnect to sing a Yugoslavian
folk song. The film treats Kate’s sister in a similar
manner: It becomes clear that she has been hiding
her sexuality from her parents for years, and, despite
being an obvious way to connect with an audience, the
relationship is pushed to the side to focus on the flimsy
relationship between Tom and Kate. Even the random
policewomen have a more interesting connection than
the title couple.
Some
might
argue that the two
aren’t meant to
have
chemistry,
that it’s all part of
the story’s grand
plan to help Kate
find herself. But
that doesn’t mean
the two characters
need to seem like
complete strangers
throughout
the
whole movie. Though they eventually pour their
hearts out to each other, the emotional connection
seems seemingly out of left field. There was little to no
context for the friendship, let alone the relationship.
At least with Hallmark movies, even if the actual
situation seems
unrealistic,
the characters
spend
significant
periods
of
time together
fighting
over
the future of
a
small-town
bookstore.
A
holiday
film
isn’t
complete
without
a
cynical
title
character
finally
realizing that
whatever
material gain
they’re chasing
isn’t worth it
if they miss
the joys of life. They’re imbued with the magic of the
Christmas spirit and “Last Christmas” is no different.
In the span of two hours, Kate transforms from a
lackluster Christmas cynic into the giving, generous
spirit we all have inside. She realizes that the trauma
from her heart condition the year previous, a plot point
that is hardly explored, isn’t worth torturing her boss
or her family over. She becomes a picture-perfect
daughter, friend and employee.
Obviously, the holidays are a stressful time for
everyone — family is visiting, hams are in the oven
and I’m still in the process of convincing my parents
to let me sit at the kids’ table to avoid small talk about
my future. The only real constants during these
supposedly cheery winter months are the endearing
qualities of romantic Christmas movies, and if you
don’t make the time to see “Last Christmas,” there’s
always next year.
‘Last Christmas’ isn’t good
FILM REVIEW
EMMA CHANG
Senior Arts Editor
UNIVERSAL PICTURES / YOUTUBE
Because of the saddening
nature of the piece, the
performance could have
remained one-note. However,
Keegan-Dolan found
childlike joy just as well as he
encapsulated the evil in this
story.
Last Christmas
Universal Pictures
Ann Arbor 20 + IMAX