Tag: Ballet Memphis

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Ballet Memphis’ Dracula Returns to the Stage

Ballet Memphis’ Dracula (Photo: Ziggy Mack)

Ready your garlic, sharpen your stakes, and replenish your Holy Water stock because Ballet Memphis is kicking off its 38th season with Dracula this weekend.

Inspired by Bram Stoker’s novel, Ballet Memphis’ performance features original choreography by artistic director Steven McMahon, with original music, set design by Beowulf Borritt and Nate Bertone, and costumes by Hogan McLaughlin. This will be the second time Dracula hits the stage with Ballet Memphis, having premiered back in 2022 to great fanfare.

“The community response to it last time was just fantastic,” says Ballet Memphis president and CEO Gretchen Wollert McLennon. “We thought we’d be bringing it back in three or four years, but we had such a great community response to it that we brought it back only two years later.”

Dracula, it turns out, translates perfectly to ballet. “You take a story like Dracula, which already has so much emotion behind it,” Wollert McLennon says, “and you just can imagine that a story that has that much depth to it, the opportunity then to explore it physically as artists and dancers really just takes that story to another level, right? So we’re feeling it. We’re seeing it in ways that allow Bram Stoker’s classic story to really come alive.

“Our sets and costumes are intentionally very simple so that the performance really immerses you in the thrill of the story of Dracula, and the dread and expectation that the story builds is really resonant in our work.”

The production is less than two hours, and attendees are encouraged to vamp it up by wearing a Halloween costume. The performance is not recommended for guests 12 and under.

Up next on Ballet Memphis’ schedule, though, is The Nutcracker, a 40-year, family-friendly tradition for the company. “Everyone loves The Nutcracker,” says Wollert McLennon, “and we love bringing it to the community because it brings families together. Sometimes the only time people experience dance in their lives is that moment when their parents took them, their grandmother took them, their neighbor took them. And so we know how important it is to everyone at this time of year; it’s really a centerpiece of everyone’s holiday tradition.”

Last year, Ballet Memphis introduced new costumes and set designs, plus a few new Memphis elements to the story, and the company will continue with these changes this December.   

In February, Ballet Memphis will perform its Winter Mix, which will be a mixed repertory of contemporary and balletic dance, and in April comes the company’s Angels in the Architecture, a double bill of works by master choreographers and composers. For more information on the upcoming season and to purchase tickets, visit balletmemphis.org.  

Dracula, Orpheum Theatre, 203 S. Main, Friday-Saturday, October 25-26, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, October 28, 2 p.m., $16-$91.

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Bodies in Motion

NutRemix(Photo: Ziggy Mack)

The longer nights of autumn settling in signify more than just the coming of winter. It’s also the season when the performing arts ignite, stages lighting up across the city to dazzle us, beguile us, and draw us into the show as if to a primordial bonfire. This is especially true of dance companies, where the elemental combination of ritual and individual expression is taken to a high art. And the holiday season is the bread and butter of many such ensembles due to one ballet in particular: The Nutcracker. 

As research by Crain’s New York Business determined in 2013, “a production of The Nutcracker can bring in anywhere from 40 percent to 45 percent of a ballet company’s revenue.” This makes it especially important in Memphis, where the audience for dance can be especially fickle. Yet dance continues to thrive here as never before, and the winter dance season — including New Ballet Ensemble’s NutRemix, Ballet Memphis’ The Nutcracker, and Collage Dance’s RISE — is one reason why, not least because all three companies are also dance schools. Not only do these three productions put their respective schools’ youngest students onstage with world-class dance virtuosos from Memphis and beyond, they highlight the creativity and inventiveness with which all three companies approach the art of dance. The ways they’re reimagining that art are one key to why dance is thriving in Memphis as never before. 

A Dance Renaissance in the Home of the Blues

If Memphis is the “Home of Blues, Soul & Rock ‘n’ Roll,” as the city’s official slogan boasts, it’s worth pointing out the unifying subtext behind all those musical forms: dance. Social bodily movement was baked into the blues, soul, and rock-and-roll from their very origins. Of course, popular dance has not always been celebrated in the conservatories of the world, focused as they are on the Western balletic tradition, but that began to change through the second half of the last century as visionaries like Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey incorporated American folk forms into their choreography. Today, due to this city’s role as a crucible of popular music and dance, that merging of “high” and “low” terpsichorean art is accelerating — and putting Memphis on the cutting edge of innovation in the dance world.

That was underscored this August when a study by the Dance Data Project named Ballet Memphis and Collage Dance among the 50 largest dance companies in the country, with the former ranked at No. 32 and the latter at No. 46. Only one other Tennessee company, Nashville Ballet, made the list. In future years, Collage Dance will likely rank even higher, thanks to the $2 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant the school received this summer. Dance is becoming a financial dynamo of sorts in Tennessee.

“We’re providing full-time jobs for artists,” Nashville Ballet artistic director Nick Mullikin told The Daily Memphian, and the point applies to Memphis as well. “We’re making an economic impact in these cities and we are giving cities in Tennessee a place to attract other businesses, which increases the tax revenues and benefits to a city overall, which then goes back — ideally, if the government is doing its job — to the people.”

Meanwhile, a third dance organization here, New Ballet Ensemble and School (NBE), has also been garnering praise for years, winning the prestigious National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award in 2014, with the school’s students dancing at the Kennedy Center in a performance The Washington Post called “dazzling.” Today, some of its former students are finding fame on an international scale. 

There’s clearly something big happening in the world of Memphis dance. And although the Dance Data Project study was based on companies’ annual expenses in 2021, it indicates an even deeper truth: The success of the dance scene in Memphis owes as much to companies’ aesthetic innovations as to their finances. All three of the companies and their affiliated schools have, to varying degrees, embraced local vernacular dance forms, combining a commitment to the high technical standards of the balletic tradition with vigorous outreach programs that include Memphis’ most underserved communities. The end result not only bends in the direction of social justice, it breaks new artistic ground and puts Memphis performances on the cutting edge of dance innovation. That’s especially evident in each company’s winter showcase performances.

NutRemix

The first opportunity to celebrate the flowering of local dance will be this week, when NBE’s NutRemix, presented by Nike, returns to the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts November 17th through 19th. To say this show, now in its 21st year, is imbued with the spirit of Memphis is an understatement. Indeed, NutRemix is a testament to both the original ballet’s malleability and this city’s openness to reimagining classic forms.  

While The Nutcracker has been reinvented before, most audaciously in the Mark Morris Dance Group’s The Hard Nut (a dark retelling of the classic tale set in postwar American suburbia), there’s nothing quite like the freedom of thought, music, and movement expressed by NBE’s version. Rather than have the extended family of Russian nobility gather in a mansion in the ballet’s first act, it’s the fictive family of a petit bourgeois shop owner, his workers, and associated hangers-on around Beale Street. Transforming that locale, long known as a kind of sin city of the South, into a kind of multicultural utopia is a moving conceit that still allows considerable drama into the tale, as hard-edged urban grit enters in the form of hip-hop dance battles. Indeed, hip-hop dance, especially Memphis jookin’, is proudly celebrated along with ballet, R&B, African, and flamenco dance forms, with the globe-hopping fantasia of The Nutcracker’s second act transformed into a celebration of diversity. 

This reinvention leapt from the mind of NBE’s founder, Katie Smythe, but it didn’t come from nowhere. She’d tested the notion before she’d moved back to her native Memphis. “I was running the outreach education program through the Los Angeles Music Center. We were doing dance performances in schools, and I loved that, but how many Cinderellas can a group of Black children watch, where Cinderella is white and the prince is white, before they’re thinking, ‘Where am I in this?’ It was really stupid and I was very headstrong! So I created a condensed Sleeping Beauty. I hired black dancers, and I danced in it, too. And we made it only 30 minutes. I changed the narrative, made it fun, and put all different kinds of music in it. And the kids loved it! So that’s where I learned how to do NutRemix.”

It was also a perfect opportunity to introduce younger dance students to a more professional production, and the show’s been the centerpiece of the school’s pedagogical approach. It soon became a vehicle for older students to explore their talents. “The only way to bring those different genres into our performance,” says Smythe, “was to have the leaders of those diverse sections really lead them, choreograph them, and claim them as creators. I’ve never taken credit for NutRemix as choreographer because the truth is, the kids choreographed about 50 percent of it. John Washington choreographed the African section, Robin Sanders choreographed the hip-hop battle, Lil Buck choreographed the angel — in fact, he created that role. I also learned from a Chinese woman working for FedEx here, who wanted a place to have Chinese dance classes. I studied with her and then we made the Chinese scene more culturally authentic, using Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road music. We were undoing the stereotypes inherent in NutRemix.”

Eventually, the production gained the support of Nike, and now boasts a full-on production featuring the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Big Band and African drummers. And as professionals from elsewhere, including NBE alums who’ve gone on to successful careers, join the cast, they help Memphis tap into an international network of excellence. This year will feature two renowned NBE alums: Maxx Reed, who’s returned to serve as the show’s creative director, and acclaimed dancer Memphis jookin’ ambassador Lil Buck, who will reprise his role as the Memphis Angel. Internationally celebrated dancers Myrna Kamara and Filipe Portugal will also share the stage with NBE’s students. With so many talents involved, NutRemix is a Memphis phenomenon that shows no signs of losing its spark of innovation.

The Nutcracker (Photo: Stefanie Rawlinson)

The Nutcracker

NutRemix isn’t the only reimagining of The Nutcracker in the city. The Buckman Dance Conservatory will offer a fresh interpretation of the classic, Nutcracker: Land of Enchanted Sweets, this December 1st through 3rd at the Buckman Performing Arts Center. But the classic staging of The Nutcracker has a special place in the hearts of dance fans, and Ballet Memphis has had that covered for nearly 40 years. 

This year’s production will carry all the finery of a traditional ballet company production, with some unexpected touches that will only be revealed in the performances, scheduled for December 9th to 10th and 15th to 17th at the Orpheum Theatre, featuring live music by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. With choreography by Steven McMahon, this season will represent an evolution of the set and costume design that will bring “renewed vibrancy to the classic story,” according to a Ballet Memphis press release. “Transport yourself to a sweetly nostalgic riverside and a confectionary dreamland through the eyes of a young girl destined for adventure. Ballet Memphis’ new production of this beloved American holiday tradition promises to delight in both familiar and unexpected ways.”

Like NBE, Ballet Memphis treats the holiday performance as a chance to mix young students of dance — and not just those enrolled in Ballet Memphis — with the seasoned veterans of the company. “The students can audition for The Nutcracker, which is the professional company’s production,” says Eileen Frazer, community programs manager and teaching artist at Ballet Memphis. “So that includes between 60 and 100 of our students getting that performance opportunity. Also, The Nutcracker auditions are open to students from other studios as well. So we get to have a little community and integration with everyone in the city, and even from Arkansas and Mississippi.”

Such student involvement is critical to Ballet Memphis’ mission, and they’ve been delighted by what appears to be growing interest in ballet among young people. “In Memphis, the ballet community is thriving. The city has several schools and companies, and I think the love for classical ballet is only growing at this stage,” says Frazer. “We saw a bit of a dip during the pandemic, as all organizations did, and we’re still growing our student body back from that, but we have students coming to us from other studios, where the focus hasn’t been classical ballet, because they want that focus on classical technique.”

Even with that as a starting point, Frazer points out, such technique forms the basis for a wide variety of dance. “We do a class in modern dance as well, but classical ballet doesn’t just mean dancing to classical music. You need that classical ballet foundation to do all types of dance, even all types of sports. We have kids coming through saying, ‘My football coach told me I had to take ballet.’”

Frazer emphasizes that, because of the company’s eclectic performance schedule, their students are not learning in a vacuum. “Being attached to our professional company, the students are seeing these incredible professional dancers, dancing to all kinds of music — classical music, or Patsy Cline, or Roy Orbison, or soul music. We aren’t just doing full length classical ballets. We’re bringing in a lot of up-and-coming choreographers, doing a lot of new work. That lends itself to doing more contemporary movement.”

RISE (Photo: Tre’Bor Jones)

RISE

All three schools are committed to balletic technique as the foundation of their teaching, even as they’re open to more modern forms. Perhaps that’s been the key to the thriving dance culture Memphis is enjoying. And the rapid rise of the most recent addition to the Memphis scene, Collage Dance, is indicative of just how primed the city is for dance education and performance, all wrapped into one.

Founded as a performance company in 2006 by executive director Marcellus Harper and artistic director Kevin Thomas to remediate the ballet industry’s lack of racial diversity, it was originally based in New York, not Memphis. Their mission grew directly out of Thomas’ 10 years of experience as the principal dancer at the Dance Theatre of Harlem. They relocated here the next year and added the conservatory to the organization, sensing that dance was not only gaining momentum but had potential for growth in Memphis.

They were onto something. That same year, in 2007, a video emerged of Lil Buck mixing ballet and jookin’ in a solo to Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan” for an NBE event in West Memphis. It went viral, helping to launch the dancer’s career and raising the profile of Memphis dance as a whole. Meanwhile, Collage worked to find its footing locally, teaching in various host locations from 2009 on, attracting more students every year. And their professional company, officially known as Collage Dance Collective, was building its reputation and touring internationally. 

Karen Nicely, Collage’s community engagement programmer and faculty teacher, has worked with the organization from the start and is not surprised by Collage’s rapid evolution into one of the South’s leading companies and conservatories. “I have been with Collage every year and it’s been amazing to see. It’s grown because of the mission that the guys have: to expand access and quality training to even more communities and especially underserved communities.” The culmination of that came in 2020 when, despite months of quarantine, Collage raised $11 million to build a dedicated dance center of its own. Soon that beautiful modernist building in the heart of Binghampton will spring to life when Collage Dance hosts the International Conference of Blacks and Dance from January 24th to January 28th — the ultimate feather in the cap of the organization that will feature performances by the Collage Dance Collective as well as other internationally celebrated companies. 

Collage’s sense of mission may explain why their most gala event of the year is not The Nutcracker (although the professional Collage Dance Collective does perform the ballet elsewhere during its touring season), but a dance created by Thomas, RISE. While it also includes a mix of the company’s professionals with students, it is inherently more politically and culturally engaged with the modern era than any 19th century ballet could be. It typically takes place during Black History Month, and the 2024 production, scheduled for February 3rd and 4th, will be no different. 

“In RISE, you see the stars of today, which are my professional company, and the stars of tomorrow, which are my students,” says Thomas. “Students are dancing alongside the professionals. So it really feels like a community. I was inspired to do this piece when I went to the National Civil Rights Museum when I first came to Memphis. It just reminded me that we have a history that needs to not be forgotten.”

The specific history evoked is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I use his last speech, his ‘Mountaintop’ speech, to tell our story through movement and music, as you hear his words,” says Thomas. Though the sound design is pre-recorded, it is made all the more powerful through the music of local composers Jonathan Kirkscey and Kirk Kienzle Smith. As Thomas puts it, “We’ve used the music of these two Memphians to create a ballet honoring Martin Luther King’s philosophy, using his powerful speech which talks about the future. And the future is our kids, our students. It’s their future.” 

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We Saw You: The Rameys’ Last Dance, As It Were

Brandon and Virginia Ramey in "Cinderella." And Cinderella's father played by Michael Donahue (just kidding) (Credit: Alice Kerley)

I finally got to see Brandon and Virginia Ramey dance. They performed at the Ballet Memphis production of Cinderella April 15th at the Orpheum and they were spectacular.

The Rameys, longtime members of Ballet Memphis who married in 2014, are now co-directors of the Ballet Memphis School and Youth Ballet Memphis, having retired from dancing after this production.

Virginia performed as Cinderella and Brandon was Prince Charming in the ballet classic that featured music by Sergei Prokofiev.

This was the same Cinderella production the Rameys were supposed to dance to a few years ago, but the 2020 Covid lockdown put an end to that along with public performances of just about everything.

As difficult as the lockdown was for performers, there was no shortage of creativity. I got to know the Rameys after doing stories on their inventive pandemic series of time capsule-worthy videos about life when the world as we knew it basically stopped.

One of their filmed-at-home video shorts was about how people had trouble finding toilet paper because of the shortage. Instead of Prince Charming, Brandon was more of a “Prince Charmin.”

In the video, titled  “Commode to Joy,” Brandon is excited to find the rare commodity at a market and is seen running down the street with his toilet paper roll.

“It’s unravelling a little bit over my head as I’m bringing it back to the house,” he says. “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony starts and I do a jump with the toilet paper and just start dancing for joy about how I found toilet paper. And Ginny joins me and she starts dancing. It’s fun outside and a lot of room to move. Very energetic and exciting.

“The next thing you know, we get carried away with all this toilet paper. We’re happily rubbing it on our faces, juggling, letting it roll over us.”

They get even more carried away in the video. “We end up rolling the house. It gets stuck everywhere. It’s a mess.” They did recycle some of that toilet paper, so it wouldn’t go to waste, Brandon says. It was the pandemic, after all.

As far as dancing, Virginia said when they announced their retirement from stage work, “We may make guest appearances here and there, but to do what we’ve been doing at this level will not be possible because we have two kids at home and 300 kids at work. We want to be able to really focus on the school and growing the program.”

The April 16th matinee was the couple’s final performance. I asked the Rameys how it felt being on stage this past weekend, knowing this was their last dance, as it were.

“I think I approached my final performance just as I would any other show because it was too difficult to comprehend how big of a deal this one particular day would be in the grand scheme of my life,” Virginia says. “I wanted our last performance to go really well, so I just stayed focused on the choreography and telling the story.

“I definitely got emotional a couple of times throughout the ballet, mostly while dancing with Brandon,” she says, “but I always had to pull it back together for whatever came next. It hasn’t fully set in that it was my last time on stage because I think I will always feel like a dancer even if I’m not performing. I’m just so excited to focus on the school now and that is keeping me from being very sad. It’s also been a wonderful time to look back over my 20-year career and appreciate all the opportunities I was given to play so many different roles. I’m feeling very grateful right now.”

Brandon says, “It was surreal. There were moments that I would feel myself tearing up on stage, but the choreography is just too challenging to dwell on that kind of feeling. The beauty of the ballet — the music and the choreography working together — kept bringing me back in the moment. It was an unforgettable experience.”

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Brandon and Virginia Ramey Retire from Dancing

Brandon and Virginia Ramey in "The Nutcracker." (Credit: Ziggy Mack)

Ballet Memphis dancers Brandon and Virginia Ramey are hanging up their ballet shoes.

“You can’t dance forever,” Brandon says.

“We both are retiring with our final performance as Cinderella in April,” Virginia says.

The production will be held April 14th through 16th at the Orpheum. Virginia and Brandon will dance in the Saturday evening performance and the Sunday matinee.

 “The April 16th Sunday matinee will be our last performance on stage,” Virginia says. “Then we start June 1st as co-directors of the Ballet Memphis School and Youth Ballet Memphis.”

“The opportunity was presented to us a couple of years ago,” says Brandon, who, along with his wife, have been assistant Ballet Memphis directors for the past two years.

They weren’t sure what they were going to do next when Gretchen McLennon, CEO and president of Ballet Memphis, asked about their future plans. “At that time, we were going to dance until an opportunity came,” Virginia says. “And it came right on time.”

Janet Parke, former director of Ballet Memphis School, became the new senior artistic associate. “It opened up a space for Brandon and me to step into the school and continue what has been going so well. And make a few changes here and there,” says Virginia. “We have been doing some ongoing training in New York with the American Ballet Theatre national training curriculum. That will be a “little bit of a new curriculum for the school.”

As for dancing, Virginia says, “It takes so much time and energy to dance professionally. And we will now be  putting all that time and energy into the school. We may make guest appearances here and there, but to do what we’ve been doing at this level will not be possible because we have two kids at home and 300 kids at work. We want to be able to really focus on the school and growing the program.”

Asked who was at Ballet Memphis first, Brandon says, “Ginny. By a country mile.”

“I grew up here, so I grew up in the Ballet Memphis School since I was five years old,” Virginia says. “I joined the professional company right out of high school and danced with the company over 20 years now.”

Ballet Memphis founding artistic director Dorothy Gunther Pugh brought Brandon to Ballet Memphis in 2009. “They found me going to San Francisco Ballet School,”  he says. “I’ve fallen in love with my wife and the city and now the school.”

Asked how he and Virginia met, Brandon says, “We got paired for Nutcracker because we’re both very tall. The degree of chemistry we had surprised everybody.”

They fell for each other “pretty immediately,” Brandon says. “I liked her sense of humor and her feisty attitude.”

As for working together, he says, “Sparks can fly, but she never backs down. She’s got a true north compass sense of how movement and music interact. So, it’s like being in the room with Beethoven and Mozart. ‘Oh, wow. She just knows innately how things are put together.’”

“We immediately got along as friends,” Virginia says. “Rehearsals were really fun that first year. He was very sweet. We were doing some very difficult lifts and we realized that one of the lifts was causing bruises on my leg. So, he brought me a jar of multi-vitamins. Little things like that are the things that stole my heart. … We can argue about how a step is being done without it affecting our ability to work together.”

Asked how many times they’ve danced together in productions, Virginia says, “If I had the time I could count exactly, but the big ballets were Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Giselle, and we’ve done Cinderella. And we’ve gotten to do (George) Balanchine works together. Dracula.”

The upcoming Cinderella will be their second time performing it together. “We actually prepared in 2020,” Virginia says. “We were in the middle of rehearsals that would have happened in April of 2020 when the world shut down and we had to put all the work up. It’s been really interesting watching the rehearsal videos from that time.”

They’re looking forward to the new phase in their lives. “For the past two years we’ve felt a little bit like we’ve been doing two jobs each,” Virginia says. “Now we’ll be able to really really focus on the one job of co-directing the school.”

“It’s such an exciting opportunity” to think about all all of the knowledge and experience that we’re going to pass on to the younger dancers,” Brandon says. “But it’s also bittersweet. We’re closing a chapter in order to begin the next chapter of our life.”

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New Year, New Memphis

Photo: Joshua J. Cotten | Unsplash

There’s a whole new Memphis out there. It waits for you just outside your everyday routine, somewhere just a few streets away from those four or five places that comprise a personal rut you might not know even exists.

Routines are fine; humans thrive on them. But their comfort can shield you from having a bigger, fuller Memphis experience. For example, if you’ve ever talked with your bartender about the new-colored urinal cakes at your favorite watering hole’s de-watering hole, it might be time to try that new place you heard about at work.

Memphis is a big place with something for just about anyone. This year (in lieu of piling on with New Year’s health tips and habit breakers), we want to help you — encourage you — to go out and rediscover this amazing city we call home.

Our writers did just that. They opened their eyes a bit wider, went hunting Memphis (and sometimes beyond) for that niche thing they love, tuned into that vibration here, discovered that whole new Memphis, and will carry it with them into 2023. — Toby Sells

Photo: Priscilla DuPreez | Unsplash

Disc Golfin’

College was the last time I laid hands on a disc golf disc. I only bought some discs back then because my buddy was crazy about the sport, he wanted me to go with him, and I wanted to drink beers outside.

I thought it was silly. Grown men throwing Frisbees into a basket. Frrrp. Please. And I was scolded for calling it a “Frisbee” (some copyright dispute, I was told) and for “not taking it seriously.” Well, I played a few times that one summer, drank some beers, quit when I lost two discs ($20!) in a pond, and relegated my other discs to a box in the attic.

Many, many years later, I found myself at a park with a disc golf course last fall in Roanoke, Virginia. I saw folks throwing and it looked more fun than scrolling Reddit while my kids hit the playground. I approached a player, curious to know if I could buy discs somewhere close. The guy opened his bag, pulled out two discs, handed them to me, and said, “It’s a fun game. You should play.”

Of course I told him I couldn’t take them, but he insisted and walked away before I could protest any further. I was and remain gobsmacked. My family and I played, and the afternoon sparkled with this brand-new way to spend time together. Thank you, kind stranger. Sincerely.

Back in Memphis, I immediately dug my old discs out of the attic and started digging on the internet. I was so happy to find that the city is rich with great courses, all of them just waiting for me to explore.

The sport has taken me off my beaten path (work, home, Boscos, Memphis Made) to Kennedy Park in Raleigh, Sea Isle, down in the hollers at the Shelby Forest, Shelby Farms, and to the All Veterans Golfplex tucked away off Airways surrounded by warehouses and factories. It has shown me around a town I’ve lived in for nearly 15 years.

Disc golf has become my cardio, my mental health medicine, my vitamin D source, my cure for doom-scrolling, and my outlet to beat the winter blues. It’s given me a reason to connect more with my buddy from college and to even shop at Outdoors Inc.

Disc golf hasn’t changed my life, but it has made changes to my life. They’re good changes, too, including the way I see and enjoy my city. — TS

M-Town Market (Photo: M-Town Market)

Shopping at M-Town Market

I listen to a lot of old music. We can blame it on my Glee obsession, but you’ll likely hear me listening to Elton John’s take on “Pinball Wizard” on repeat in my car while wearing a shirt featuring the Rocket Man himself (bought brand-new from Urban Outfitters).

Graphic tees have long been a staple in my wardrobe, and while I can usually find what I am looking for online, these are often pieces manufactured this year, which lack the authenticity and nostalgia that make the item worth loving. I had long been a fan of thrift store finds such as Gilmore Girls box sets and old books, but I never had luck finding any cool and curated pieces. However, it turns out that I was just looking in the wrong places. Instead of focusing on big-name thrift stores, I learned that I could shift my focus to local vintage accounts on Instagram.

I found Grind City Vintage on Instagram, late in 2022. The store specializes in vintage clothing and shoes, and uses Instagram and Instagram stories as a way to conduct business. While Grind City Vintage is a business of its own, the owner, Jay Williams, also operates the M-Town Market with Studio 901. The market is hosted at least four times a year by 20-50 vendors, and shoppers can find vintage shoes and clothing.

“Our focus is vintage sneakers, and fashion as well,” said Williams. “Streetwear, stuff like that where it’s a lot of dope brands and local vendors that have done really well at our events but also have their own following.”

Williams also said that he and his team pride themselves on giving local vendors and brands an opportunity to put their brand out there, which he said makes them stand out from other markets. — Kailynn Johnson

Put on Your Pointe Shoes

I took my first ballet class this September — well, not my first ballet class ever. I dabbled in the art form when I was a wee one, before I could tie my own shoelaces or knew how to carry the one when adding big numbers. I also retired from the art form when I was a wee one. (At that point, I could tie my shoelaces and add big numbers.) I couldn’t tell you why I stopped going to class; I just did. I also couldn’t tell you what made me sign up for a beginners’ class this September at Ballet Memphis; I just did. Was it a need to relive my former glory days? A need to move my ever-sedentary body? A need simply to leave the house? All of the above?

Regardless, I went, seemingly just because, sans leotard or tights or ballet shoes, and danced in my socks. And I went back, week after week, in socks. I learned pique and rond de jambe (which I thought was spelled Ron de Jon until now) and tendu (which I’ve been mispronouncing “fondue” in my mind), and surprisingly, I’m nowhere near being en pointe. I kid, I kid; there’s not a chance in this lifetime that I’ll ever be en pointe, but for someone who’s a teensy bit of a perfectionist, being bad or, even worse, mediocre at something is a bit outside of my comfort zone. And boy, oh boy, is it freeing just to have that permission not to be good, to try and to fail, to feel a bit silly. It’s fun and challenging, physically and mentally, and every now and then, I get to feel like a graceful ballerina, and who doesn’t want to feel like a graceful ballerina, just because? — Abigail Morici

Never Too Late to Take a Swing at It

Decades ago — just how many I’m almost ashamed to say — I invested a not inconsiderable portion of a payday in the purchase of a brand-new set of golf clubs: all the irons and woods that one should have, plus a nice leather bag to carry them in. At the time, I had played just enough golf to think that if I ever learned to hit a ball off the ground cleanly, with either iron or wood, I might be halfway good. (I could drive off a tee fairly well.) Beginning at the age of 13, I had played only sporadically over the years, and I assumed that, armed with my new tools, I’d be out on the links fairly often.

For shame! I have never used those clubs, never played another round. The bag, burgeoning with all those shiny, still gleaming implements, has sat in various closets and garages ever since. The bag and clubs have functioned as an ornament of sorts, an aide to wishful thinking about what I still resolved to get out there some day and do.

Twice recently I have called up my friend and former Arkansas Gazette colleague Ernest Dumas over in Little Rock and been informed by his wife Elaine that he was out playing golf. I’ve been around a while, but Dumas is even older. He’s pushing 90, in fact, and when I finally got him on the phone, he informed me that his goal, which he’s managed to achieve once or twice, has been to shoot his age.

Basically, he took up the game upon retirement, and it now fills a fair share of his days. As a sport, golf is famously short on kinetics but long on fresh air and, even if one uses a cart, walking.

As it happens, I was in the hospital for a spell of late, and fresh air and walking would both serve as admirable therapeutics as I seek to regain at least a facsimile of my erstwhile energy and stamina. New year? New me? In a word: Fore! — Jackson Baker

Before his travels, Chris McCoy visits Tommy Kha’s banned self-portrait as Elvis at the Memphis International Airport. (Photo: Laura Jean Hocking)

Get Out!

Remember back in the dark days of 2020, when you were stuck inside your place while diseases ravaged the land? You vowed that, when all this is over, you would visit all the places that you wanted to go, but couldn’t. Well guess what? Now is the time to make good on that vow. Covid is still around, but you’re all vaxxed up and, when necessary, masked up. Gas prices have fallen from their Ukraine War peak. Amtrak just got a big funding boost. And the Memphis International Airport has that new terminal smell. (Don’t forget to take a selfie with Tommy Kha’s banned self-portrait as Elvis.) It’s time to get out of town, if only for a little while.

One of the great things about Memphis is its location in the middle of the continent. A day’s drive can get you to the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, Dollywood, or Dallas. Go on a hike at Dismals Canyon in Alabama. Swim and ski on Lake Ouachita in Arkansas. Shop Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Visit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Go to a New Orleans Saints game in the Superdome. Follow Taylor Swift’s concert tour. Go where you want to go. Stay as long as you can. Have fun. Expand your consciousness. You’ll find things you love about your destination, and things you miss about Memphis. As the old saying goes, it is only through travel that you come to know your home for the first time. — Chris McCoy

MonoNeon, master of many sounds (Photo: Fender)

Contain Multitudes, Music Lovers!

If any sector in Memphis is prone to trap people in self-imposed silos, it’s the music community. Perhaps it’s because we internalize music so deeply that our very identity becomes bound up in it. “And now you find you fit this identikit completely,” sang Elvis Costello many decades ago, and that concept rings true today, as we embrace our respective identikits in dance clubs or concert halls. And that’s fine, as far as it goes; we all need to find our tribe, our people. But don’t sleep on the city’s musical diversity while you’re doing so. Stepping outside of your comfort zone might just be the wake-up call you needed.

Meanwhile, plenty of music creators have been breaking down the boundaries for some time now. Blueshift Ensemble, classical players from the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, have collaborated with artists as diverse as Don Lifted and Mark Edgar Stuart. Recent supergroup Salo Pallini specializes in what they call “Progressive Latin Space Country” on their upcoming album. Al Kapone is forging a new path that combines rap with heavy, heavy blues. The Unapologetic collective, who take pride in their offbeat hip-hop, are just as proud of this year’s Nobody Really Makes Love Anymore by Aaron James, a straight-up emo tour de force. And then there’s MonoNeon, master of funk, jazz, gospel, indie rock … and the kitchen-sink sounds of George Clinton.

As Cory Branan recently told Glide Magazine, “Why limit myself to a certain genre? Whatever a song wants to wear is fine with me.” Maybe fans just need to catch up with the performers. “If I had to stand there and play acoustic singer-songwriter music all the time,” says Branan, “I’d be bored out of my mind.” — Alex Greene

Get hustled at Nerd Alert’s arcade. (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Game Somewhere Else!

Rather than slide into the mind-numbing antics of reality TV or the thinking-person’s prestige series, my preferred method of unwinding after work is to toss down my coat and briefcase and fire up the ol’ Switch, PS5, or PC, and enjoy my evening as anonymous online 13-year-olds scream obscenities into voice chat and teabag my digital avatar’s lifeless, pixelated corpse.

It’s all in good fun, but despite advanced technology that allows players to connect with others from all over the world, gaming — whether it be board, card, or video — is always more fun playing in person. After all, if you can’t look into your friend’s eyes as you crush them piece by piece, and watch as their joy and enthusiasm slowly tilt toward shock, exasperation, and, most sweetly, utter dejection, then what’s the point? Luckily, if you know where to look, there are ready-made communities of gaming aficionados that will help you break out of the hobby’s somewhat solitary shell.

My favorite “discovery” has been Board to Beers, an elusive setup that convinces me to travel beyond the East Parkway line for a social call. Memphis’ first board game bar is a delight, home to owner Taylor Herndon’s collection of 400+ eclectic board games, some of which will leave players both entertained and scratching their heads. We tried out one fan-operated game that involved plucking sushi ingredients out of the air with chopsticks. Another, called Icecool, involved flicking penguins around a little board. That fact that you can curve and jump the penguins led to many out-of-board shenanigans, and some throbbing fingernails.

On the digital side of things, I flock to Nerd Alert in Cooper-Young, where I can almost guarantee some hustler is sitting on the Street Fighter II machine, waiting to grind me into dust before I can even get a hit in, and delivering a beatdown so bad that it feels like I’m actually getting kicked in the face by Chun-Li. But on a friendlier note, there’s always some rando available to help you tag-team the original Mario Bros. and rack up a high score. I may never get their name, but for one night, anyone can make a new friend.

And, of course, a shout-out to Black Lodge, which has its own board game rental plan and plenty of other competitive programming like the armored fight club. (That’s out of the question for me, but it sure is fun to watch.) Gaming doesn’t always have to be a solitary endeavor; in fact, there are plenty of places around town that will welcome new players with open arms. — Samuel X. Cicci

Say Thank You. To Everyone

Not a day shall pass this year without my offering up a heartfelt thank you. I say thanks to scads of people all the time, but it’s often perfunctory, sometimes begrudged, occasionally sarcastic. I’m perfectly happy to maintain my current level of loving snideness, but I find myself now — running heedlessly into 2023 — to be in great need of snark-free gestures.

Just as one utters grace before meals (for those who still perform that quaint ritual), I’m thinking how fulfilling it would be to take a few moments during the day to shine a light when Providence smiles.

Of course, it requires some real thought. It’s never worked for me to make a list a couple of days before Thanksgiving of the nice people and good fortune I’ve encountered. I’m too busy with preparations for holiday stuff and stuffing to add in a few dollops of gratitude for a year’s worth of good deeds.

How much better, then, to make it part of the quotidian routine along with eating, cleaning, meditating, exercising … well, I guess I can target those last two items for future resolutions.

Anyway, my intention will be to think well and truly of the people and institutions and energy going on all about and give them recognition. My list, which was too much ignored over Turkey Day, includes, for example, kudos to the artists who have made Concourse B at MEM a splendid gallery, and to the UrbanArt Commission that wrangled the project. In fact, just in the area of fine arts alone, we can have gratitude for what’s being done at Crosstown Concourse, the Metal Museum, the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the Brooks (present and future), and in Orange Mound.

We live in a place that deserves all manner of thanks and respect. Great water, thrilling sports, sublime music, perfect water, natural wonders, caring people … well, you get the idea. And amen. — Jon W. Sparks

Categories
Art Art Feature

CAPTCHA Captures the Imagination

CAPTCHA was created and choreographed by Brandon Ramey of Ballet Memphis. (Credit: Ballet Memphis)

I’m proud to say I was part of the inspiration for Brandon Ramey’s  CAPTCHA, one of three ballets featured in Ballet Memphis’s “Winter Mix” program.

And, I might add, helping to inspire a ballet is a first for me.

“Well, if you’re a fan of gonzo journalism, it starts with you,” says Ramey, 32, a dancer in the Ballet Memphis company and assistant director of the school. “I saw a picture you had posted on your Facebook timeline. It looked like a painting of you eating a doughnut. And someone had commented, ‘Beautiful painting, Michael. Who’s the artist?’ And you told him it’s actually a photograph that someone used in the book, The Donut Shop That Never Sleeps. And that it was turned into a painting by an iPhone app.”

Michael Donahue in The Donut Shop That Never Sleeps. (Credit: Britton DeWeese)

That was the photo the book’s author, Britton DeWeese, took of me at Gibson’s Donuts, where he is manager/owner.

“That gave me the idea,” Ramey says. “I’m not a painter, but I consider myself an artist. So, I was shocked to see how easily I was fooled. I also thought it was an artist’s painting of you eating a doughnut.

“It kind of got the wheels turning. I started thinking, ‘What else can these computer algorithms achieve?’ They can control who we see and what we see on social media, but they also make paintings. And I also discovered there are computer algorithms that can generate music.”

Ramey bought the book. “I actually went and got a copy of the book after seeing your Facebook post on it,” he says. “My daughter loves it. She loves doughnuts.”

Brandon Ramey (Credit: Ballet Memphis)

Beyond local doughnut literature, Ramey began reading about David Cope. “He’s a former professor of music at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He developed a computer program that he named ‘Emily Howell.’ At first when I saw it, I was totally freaked out but intrigued. It sounds like something straight out of a science-fiction movie.

 “Emily Howell has a huge library of classical compositions in which she analyzed sound patterns and styles. So, she can compose new music in the style of, say, Bach or Beethoven or the style of Rachmaninoff based on patterns or styles she has analyzed through sheet music.”

Inspired by that process, Ramey constructed a ballet based on a statement made by Alan Turing, “the founding father of the computer process. He always said the benchmark for determining whether computers had human intelligence was whether or not they could fool you into thinking they were a real person in a text-based conversation.”

Ramey decided to do the same thing, but with classical music. “The structure of this piece is a Turing test for the audience in which I play music by Bach or Franz Liszt,” he says, “and I play this computer-generated music. The audience has to decide which is which.”

He paired Cope’s Emily Howell computer-programmed musical pieces with “real-life compositions” by classical composers.

CAPTCHA features four pieces of music in one 16-minute dance. Each section includes one computer-generated piece and one authentic piece. “I introduce the premise and the rules of the piece through the character of Emily,” he explains. “Inviting them to take part in the test and challenging them to see if they can tell the computer forgeries from the real thing — the authentic human compositions.”

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart,” making it the perfect title for Ramey’s musical Turing Test.

Audience members don’t have to fill out forms during the production. This isn’t a written test, Ramey says. “We don’t check people’s work.”

But he meets audience members in the lobby after the ballet to see how they did. “Some people are completely right and some are a bit fooled. They’re not sure which is which,” he says.

And, Ramey says, “If  you want to know, you can look in the program. There is a cheat sheet in there.”

However, he really wants audience members to “figure it out themselves. As an artist, I’m really rooting for the audience to tell which compositions are human. If we can’t tell, how long before we switch out the human composer for computers? Or how long before we can replace the choreographers or even the dancers?”

The Boston Dynamics robotic company has a “hilarious algorithm of a really creepy rendering of ‘Do You Love Me.’ These robots are surprisingly good dancers.”

CAPTCHA features eight dancers. “The costumes are a form-fitting purple unitard. I wanted to accentuate the shape of a human being. At one point in the choreography I try to create the picture of the Vitruvian Man from the da Vinci drawing. The naked guy with his arms out to his side in the inside of a circle.

“The men have on sort of a see-through mesh mock turtle neck. The costumes were designed by Christine Darch. The women are in a purple unitard, which has heart-shaped cutouts at various points of the body. Just to evoke how the hearts, the shape of a heart, have been appropriated for social media.”

Hearts are used as a symbol for, “Oh, I like that,” on Facebook and Instagram, Ramey says. He wants to “put hearts back where they belong as being more human symbols as opposed to a computer social media symbol.”

Ramey isn’t in CAPTCHA, but he dances in George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, another piece in “Winter Mix,” with his wife, veteran dancer and assistant director at the school, Virginia Pilgrim Ramey.

Virginia Pilgrim Ramey and Brandon Ramey in “Concerto Barocco.” (Credit: Ballet Memphis)

His wife isn’t in CAPTCHA. “I wish she was in it. She’s in Trey McIntyre’s piece, Patsy Cline Gets Her Heart Broken.”

Ramey, who has been with Ballet Memphis since 2009, says CAPTCHA is his first main stage choreography with the company. “I’ve choreographed a number of works with the school and a dance film, Overview Effect, which debuted in 2021,” he says. “My attempt to take the audience to space and let everyone see how small and fragile our pale blue dot of an Earth is. And how we should take better care of each other since we’re all sharing this tiny grain of sand in this enormous cosmos.”

As for CAPTCHA, Ramey says, “Audience reaction has been great. I won’t tell you how it ends, but Anwen Brown, one of the last dancers on stage, said her favorite part is listening to the audience gasp right as it ends.”

Winter Mix is at 7:30 p.m., March 4th and 5th, and 2 p.m. March 6th at Playhouse on the Square, 66 Cooper Street. For tickets go to balletmemphis.org

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Ballet Memphis Live and in Person (At Last)

Ballet Memphis rehearsal. Photo by Ziggy Mack.

Ballet Memphis’ first in-person program in a little over a year is “Paquita in the Park,” a program of three diverse works that will be done on the stage of the Levitt Shell this weekend.

“The dancers are so excited to perform in front of a live audience,” said Steven McMahon, artistic director of Ballet Memphis. “‘Paquita in the Park’ is outdoors, and the audience will be socially distanced, so it is not quite a return to ‘normal,’ but it feels like we are working our way towards it.”

The program will include:

Water of the Flowery Mill, choreographed by Matthew Neenan. The ballet was inspired by the Arshile Gorky painting of the same name, and is set to music by Tchaikovsky.

Being Here With Other People, choreographed by McMahon, is set to music by Beethoven.

Paquita, the ballet classic, is being staged by Julie Marie Niekrasz and McMahon after the choreography of Marius Petipa.

“We are optimistic about the future and hope that we will be able to present a regular season later this year,” McMahon said. “Until then, we are thrilled to be able to share our work in this capacity.”

The performance is an hour and a half and will include two short intermissions.

Attendees can bring lawn chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets, or get food from food trucks that will sell only prepackaged food.

There is a reduced capacity of 400 tickets per show per Health Department guidelines, and masks are required.

Performances are 7 p.m. on Friday, April 9th and Saturday, April 10th. Gates open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $15 on the Ballet Memphis website.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Ballet Memphis Shines in “A Ballet Season” on WKNO

When Ballet Memphis ended its 2019 season with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, everyone involved knew it was a moment of change. It was the last show for dancer Crystal Brothers, a 23-year veteran of the stage, and for Dorothy Gunther Pugh, the CEO and artistic director who founded the company 30 years ago. But little did they know how much things were about to change. The coronavirus pandemic shuttered Ballet Memphis and other performing arts organizations all over the country, and consigned them to an uncertain future.

That’s why it was lucky that Steve J. Ross and David Goodman decided to film their documentary, A Ballet Season, when they did. The University of Memphis faculty members have created an invaluable portrait of artistic camaraderie and struggle, and a reminder of what we have lost in the past year.

Ballet Memphis performs The Nutcracker in A Ballet Season. (Photo courtesy Steve J. Ross)

“When we pitched it to Ballet Memphis, neither one of us really knew Dorothy Gunther Pugh very well,” Ross says. “It was her company, but she had a strong group of people surrounding her. The idea was, look, we admire you. We’re not doing some sort of horrific tell-all about the royal family or anything. But at the same time, this would be our film. We want to make a film about a year in the life of a company, and what it means to be a ballet company in all aspects of the word. That they agreed to it was a great act of trust on their part and her part.”

If you go into A Ballet Season looking for diva behavior or backstage drama, you won’t find it. These artists compose a group of disciplined professionals working to make the best shows they can under the constraints of time and budget. Before the company takes to the stage to perform Gisele for a half-full house, Pugh tells the dancers that though there may not be as many people in the audience as they would like, “The ones that bought their tickets, by God, we’re going to give them the best our hearts can do.”

David Goodman says this generosity of spirit is the essence of the company. In the board meeting that opens the film, it is pointed out that Ballet Memphis is the most diverse company in the country. “Something that also drew us to Ballet Memphis was they have a real connection to this city. They put that on the stage, and they’re very intentional in how they do that. They don’t want to feel like, in their own words, a palace dropped into the middle of the city that’s inaccessible.”

Goodman was behind the camera for more than 80 hours as a fly on the wall in the rehearsal hall and meeting rooms, even accompanying the dancers to their annual physicals. “David is a really great observational documentary cinematographer,” Ross says. “Some of the dancers were a little hesitant about this whole process, but after a couple of months, they didn’t even notice.”

“Repeat visits are really the key,” Goodman says. “It was particularly important to be there at the beginning.”

A Ballet Season (Still image from the film by cinematographer David Goodman)

The earned trust pays off with intimate scenes of the dancers and choreographers working on their moves. Revealing the repetition and pain of their process was a big leap for the dancers. “That’s the key to ballet, right? It has to look effortless,” says Ross. “A big part of this film was trying to be with the company for a whole year. Can we grasp this creative process? And I think that’s one of the things about dance is if you’re filming the same thing several times over, you can see that process.”

This is particularly striking late in the film, when Ross and Goodman intercut between rehearsals and performance footage. You can hear Brothers groan in pain as she does a particularly bendy move, then see her repeat the same move onstage with a broad smile on her face. Injury constantly stalks the dancers. By February, everyone is fighting through some kind of pain.

But the show, as always, must go on. The performance sequences are beautiful and compelling. They highlight just how much we have missed in the last year as live performances have been curtailed by the coronavirus. A Ballet Season reminds us of what we had and took for granted — and what can be again.

A Ballet Season airs on WKNO-TV on Friday, March 26th, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 28th, at 4 p.m.

Categories
Cover Feature News

2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Lights! Camera! Nutcracker!

Pivot is a common term in dance, but at Ballet Memphis, it’s taken on a crucial new meaning. In these days of pandemic, it means taking a reliable annual favorite (Nutcracker) and reimagining how it can be presented with all the grace, charm, music, and wonder people are accustomed to, while keeping things safe for the performers and audience.

“When nothing is certain, anything is possible,” says Gretchen McLennon, CEO and president of Ballet Memphis. “For some people, Nutcracker is it for them, a holiday show that is their entrée into ballet and Ballet Memphis. It might be the only time we see them all year, but they’re committed to it.”

So she gathered the staff and asked how to get it out into the community. At first, there was the idea of doing a video of the stage performance, but McLennon wanted something different. “Ours is a more immersive, cinematic version,” she says. 

Rather than on the Orpheum stage, this production was filmed at the Mallory-Neely House and at Ballet Memphis. And its first showing will be Friday, December 11th, on WKNO-TV, free for all to see.

For Ballet Memphis artistic director Steven McMahon, the task was to significantly adapt the choreography for a shorter and slimmed down version of the classic. The usual huge cast has dozens of children, but because of safety considerations, the scenes with the little ones are absent. There were other parameters as well, a key one being that the dancers weren’t partnering with each other, so it is solos all around. Further, the party scene of Act One was restaged to fit the contours of the Mallory-Neely House.

Mei Kotani as Clara in Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

“There were obviously limitations in space and how we use the space and where you could dance and how you could dance,” McMahon says. “And even the camera can become the dancer at a certain point.”

It was an additional challenge to bring in the filmmakers who literally provide different perspectives and methods to the process. “I would stage something that I thought looked okay,” McMahon says, “but then you would see the camera angle and it’d be beautiful and so warm and inviting and not what I’m imagining, but so much better with the choice of lighting or camera movement.”

For the performers, it was a different mind-set entirely. Dancers are accustomed to one-and-done. “When they do something, then it’s done, whether it was good or bad,” McMahon says. “But here they would film it from one angle and then the whole thing from another angle. It was challenging to keep their energy up and to keep their consistency. But they rallied behind it. Nutcracker performances are special to people and the dancers want more than anything to dance.”

That’s why the performers were willing to do things differently during the production as well as to go through the process of testing, of wearing masks until the moment the camera started rolling, to slip it back on when the director said, “Cut!”

There are other benefits to having Nutcracker on a different-than-usual medium. “We have seven or eight international dancers [who] could not get home this year,” McLennon says. But now that the film version will be online, far-away friends and relatives will be able to see the dancers perform in a year that has largely taken that privilege away.

Cecily Khuner as the Dew Drop Fairy in Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

McLennon had been tapped some time ago to succeed Ballet Memphis founder Dorothy Gunther Pugh in the summer. She has long been involved with the organization and the idea was she knew it well enough to keep it vital. But the status quo fell victim to a global health crisis and clearly the immediate mission McLennon faced was to weather the situation and maybe even make the most of it.

Looking ahead, she says, “I think everyone recognizes we’re in a pandemic and arts organizations just want to be present and be part of their community and still top of mind. There’s grace and mercy around how people are monetizing this year for us to build friends and keep engagement going.”

Brandon Ramey as Herr Stahlbaum and Eileen Frazer as Frau Stahlbaum in Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

In February, Ballet Memphis will release additional virtual installments that are part of the “Say It” series of six short dance films by company members. Usually in April there’s a major presentation at the Orpheum, but that won’t happen in this atypical year. But there will be an alternative. “We all have to be flexible and be ready and be nimble for changing circumstances,” McLennon says. “Maybe in April we could do a ticketed event at an outdoor venue, like the Botanic Garden, like the Grove at GPAC, and offer a night or perhaps even a weekend of dance. Our dancers are so hungry to perform live again.”

Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

Friday, December 11th, at 8 p.m. on WKNO-TV. Subsequent TV showings are listed here. 

Then beginning at 8 a.m. on Saturday, December 12th, and throughout the holiday season it’s available for streaming on the Ballet Memphis website.

New Ballet Ensemble’s Nut Remix

The production starring Charles “Lil Buck” Riley will screen at the Malco Summer Avenue Drive-In December 10th and 17th. Set on Beale Street, Nut Remix is a modern reinvention of Tchaikovsky’s classic Nutcracker. The fundraiser is a pay-what-you-can event to support scholarships at New Ballet. Gates open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 6:30 p.m. Tickets must be purchased online in advance here.