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concert review

with poll : Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin bring it all home at the Power Center

What did you think of the concert? Leave a comment and / or vote in the poll at the end of this post:

Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter perform at the Power Center on Tuesday.

Chris Asadian | for AnnArbor.com

In a way, though, the audience was ahead of them: From the moment the pair walked on stage hand-in-hand, a particularly enthusiastic welcome made it clear they were already among old friends.

The two accomplished and beloved singer-songwriter-guitarists turned in a two-hour-plus show that maintained a loose, relaxed and fun vibe, while still keeping the musicianship tight throughout. It was just the two women's voices and their guitars, but that was more than enough.

concert preview

Beloved singer-songwriters Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin teaming up for Power Center concert

Mary Chapin Carpenter

So, she did what most songwriters do—she processed the pain of those experiences by writing about them—or, in some cases, writing about the emotions conjured by those travails. The result, "Ashes and Roses," released last fall, is an album about grief and loss, but it also has an arc, and chronicles the journey we go through in order to come out whole on the other side—hopefully in a more positive state, or further along on the road to healing.

Given all of those real-life traumas that inspired the songs, "Ashes and Roses" is the most emotionally intense, and most personal, album of Carpenter's career.

She will be singing many of those songs when she comes to the Power Center on Tuesday for a duo performance with her old friend and musical cohort Shawn Colvin.

Ira Glass / dance troupe collaboration added to Ann Arbor Summer Festival lineup

Public radio host Ira Glass and members of the dance troupe Monica Bill Barnes & Company will be part of this year's Ann Arbor Summer Festival.

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

play review

SITI Company's 'Trojan Women' a powerful rendering of powerless women

Photo provided by SITI Company

In SITI Company’s “Trojan Women (After Euripides),” now being presented by the University Musical Society, a Greek envoy (Leon Ingulsrud) expresses contempt for a Trojan priest (Barney O’Hanlon) who’s castrated himself in the name of his goddess, noting that this would seem to prove what he’d heard: that Trojans are “weak like women.”

dance review

Ragamala Dance casts an artful spell in Power Center performance

Ragamala Dance publicity photo

photo by Hub Wilson

The dancers of Ragamala, directed by 2 of the 6, mother and daughter Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy, who also choreographed “Sacred Earth,” dance with every fiber of their bodies, from the top down and to the tips of their fingers. Eyes dart, teeth flash, bells jangle at their ankles, feet and hands are tinted red to read all the more vividly.

They are pictures of grace and balance, centered and upright, but also supple in their movement. And they dance in harmony with, well “Sacred Earth,” revealed here through Tamil poetry, tribal Indian art and live music.

play preview

with video: SITI troupe bringing its updated anti-war 'Trojan Women (after Euripedes)' to Ann Arbor

The New York-based theater company SITI will present "Trojan Women (after Euripides)," courtesy of UMS.

Photo provided by SITI Company

dance preview

Ragamala Dance's 'Sacred Earth' combines Indian dance, art and music

Ragamala Dance

photo by Hub Wilson

If each of the three tours as a soloist, the trio also work together in the Minneapolis-based dance company Ragamala, founded by Ranee and now co-directed with Aparna. The highly praised company, which also includes three other dancers, makes its University Musical Society debut Wednesday evening at Power Center with a 65-minute dance called “Sacred Earth” that, through choreography, Indian visual-art traditions, poetry and music—explores interconnections between humans the landscapes that shape them.

If dance goers familiar with ballet and modern dance view bharatanatyam as an art form only Indians can appreciate, Ragamala effectively dispels that notion.

The company got its start when Ranee Ramaswamy, born in Madras but living in Minneapolis, engaged in a cross-cultural collaboration with American poet Robert Bly for a dance in which Bly read the poetry of 16th century Indian poet Mirabai, in English. In addition to the three Ramaswamys, the company includes three non-Indian dancers, one of whom has been with the company for almost its entire 20 years. The company also has a school - and Ann Arbor will have a chance to learn a bit of bharatanatyam in a free class at the Ann Arbor Y on Monday evening.

event preview

Generation Asian Pacific Association Cultural Show to bring tradition to the Power Center stage

Generation APA, the U-M student-run group that celebrates the culture and talents of their Asian Pacific American roots, will once again bring one of the largest cultural celebrations in the Midwest to the Power Center stage.

with video: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin teaming up for Power Center concert

Shawn Colvin, left, and Mary Chapin Carpenter

The two much-loved singer-songwriter-musicians will play the Power Center on May 21 as part of a tour that's already under way.

play review

with poll: Propeller troupe offers an expert 'Taming of the Shrew'

Propeller's "The Taming of the Shrew"

Photo by Manuel Harlan

Watching Propeller perform offers a rare window into the genius of Shakespeare as it initially must have burst into the world.

This arises from a combination of things: the troupe's all-male makeup, as was the custom (way) back in the day; its full embrace of Shakespeare's language, rightly confident that the audience will be able to keep up; and, in the production of "The Taming of the Shrew" currently at the Power Center, its use of just enough modern touches to be inventive but not intrusive.

The University Musical Society has brought Propeller back to Ann Arbor this year for "Twelfth Night" as well as "Taming." And while the group's production of "Twelfth Night" may have some dark overtones, the darkness sits right in the center of the sometimes difficult and troubling "Taming."

play review

with poll: Propeller's 'Twelfth Night' is likely to both haunt and amuse you

John Dougall in Propeller's "Twelfth Night"

photo by Manuel Harlan

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All-male Propeller troupe bringing 2 Shakespeare classics to Ann Arbor

Arthur Wilson (Bianca) and Finn Hanlon (Lucentio) in Propeller's production of "The Taming of the Shrew."

Photo by Manuel Harlan

That can only mean one thing: Britain’s innovative, acclaimed, all-male theater company Propeller has returned to Ann Arbor. The company presents “Twelfth Night” and “The Taming of the Shrew” in repertory, courtesy of the University Musical Society, Feb. 20-24.

concert preview

with video: UMS favorite Kodo drum troupe returning to Hill Auditorium with new leader

Note: This article has been changed to correct the venue.

Kodo returns to the Power Center on Friday.

photo by Takashi Okamoto

Then some decidedly undangerous artists settled there: The founders of Kodo, the extraordinary Japanese drumming troupe that was recently named a Living National Treasure, took up residence there in the 1960s and established a community dedicated to learning the island’s folkways and preserving the traditional art of taiko playing.

Kodo members like company manager Jun Akimoto are fond of saying that the sound of the drum defines a community’s boundaries; and on tours around the world, it has united the Sados of the world with towns like Ann Arbor and cities like Paris.

dance review

with poll: Martha Graham Dance Co. offers powerful performance at the Power Center

What did you think of the concert? Leave a comment and / or vote in the poll at the end of this post:

Martha Graham Dance Co. publicity photo

So it’s fitting that her eponymous company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, still performing more than 20 years after Graham’s death and visiting Ann Arbor again this weekend under University Musical Society auspices, should devote one evening to dances of the “Inner Landscape.”

Americana takes the Power Center stage tonight, with Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” and a meditation on it by Robert Wilson. But Friday evening, in dances by Graham and others, the focus was on the psychological made physical, on inner turmoil made plastic.

dance preview

Martha Graham Dance Co. bringing landmark works to Power Center

"Every Soul" is among the works the Martha Graham Dance Co. will bring to the Power Center this weekend.

Martha Graham, iconic modern dance pioneer, was featured, imperious and arresting, in those ads. But these days, some two decades after her death, the question most on the minds of those who would preserve her legend and legacy is how to maintain and move forward a company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, that bears her name.

Like other modern dance companies founded to show the works of one creator, the Graham company has had to decide if it is a museum preserving Graham’s work or a creative laboratory, as it was in Graham’s day?

Ann Arbor gets to see some of the company’s answers in two different programs Friday and Saturday at Power Center. The shows, presented by the University Musical Society, feature not only some of Graham’s most profound and visceral works but new pieces by other choreographers that amplify the Graham heritage.

play preview

U-M to offer a distinct, physical take on 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

Puck (Derek Joseph Tran) casts his spell on Lysander (Jacqueline Rose Toboni) in the University of Michigan production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

photo by Peter Smith Photography

Whether you have or not, theater professor Malcolm Tulip will offer the opportunity to experience it when the University of Michigan Department of Theatre and Drama presents “Midsummer.”

play review

with poll: Theatre de la Ville-Paris' 'Rhinoceros' is a visual stunner

Theatre de la Ville-Paris' "Rhinoceros"

Photo by Jean-Louis Fernandez

What did you think of the show? Leave a comment and / or vote in the poll at the end of this post:

A primary source of humor in Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” - now being staged by Theatre de la Ville-Paris, presented by the University Musical Society - concerns the way we constantly fail to keep our eye on the ball, even in the most dire circumstances.

dance review

Riveting dancers of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet offer an intriguing mixed bag at Power Center

publicity photo

“Dancing,” said the great ballet choreographer George Balanchine, “is music made visible.”

Not all choreographers see it—or hear it—that way. But like it or not, it’s always a pas de deux when music and dance meet and exchange greetings on stage.

I was reminded how much that is true Sunday afternoon when I caught the second of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s two performances at Power Center.

The show—three ballets in a contemporary idiom, typical of the company’s repertoire—marked the Ann Arbor debut of this well-regarded 11-dancer company directed by Tom Mossbrucker.

The company’s dancers are gorgeous things, fabulous performers: elegant of line, flexible of limb, riveting to watch. No matter what you thought of the choreography, they were a joy to watch.

The choreography, for sure, took advantage of what the dancers had to offer. And why not? Two of the pieces, “Square None” (2012) by Norbert De La Cruz II and “Over Glow” (2011) by Jorma Elo, were made for them. The third piece, Jiri Kylian’s “Stamping Ground” made in 1983 for Nederlands Dans Theater, suited them equally well. (Aspen Santa Fe has many Kylian works in its rep.) But the quirky, hyper-kinetic similarities among the pieces made them something of a blur by the show’s end.

play preview

Theatre de la Ville, presented by UMS, unleashes Ionesco's 'The Rhinoceros'

"Rhinoceros"

photo by Jean-Louis Fernandez

Considered an absurdist classic, the play begins with Berenger, a shy, kind-hearted drunkard, meeting his friend, Jean, in a coffee house. During their conversation, two rhinos barrel through the town square, and the stunned populace decide they must be stopped.

dance preview

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet bringing new works to Power Center for Ann Arbor debut

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet performs at the Power Center this weekend.

Take the not-random example of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, the 11-member contemporary ballet company that makes its Ann Arbor debut Saturday and Sunday at Power Center, courtesy of the University Musical Society. The company’s performances also include a 1-hour Saturday afternoon family performance.

Tom Mossbrucker, the company’s artistic director since its 1996 founding, is an alumnus of the Joffrey Ballet; minus the reconstructions of early 20th-century works, the Aspen Santa Fe group’s eclectic repertoire brings to mind the Joffrey’s in its New York days.

Robert Joffrey, said Mossbrucker in a recent phone conversation, “loved new works. We were among the first to have Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, and that did Mark Morris. That did have an impact on me.”