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1 Thing You Took Away from This Course

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Metro Pictures Gallery. "After Walker Evans," January 1, 1981-May 1, 1981.

Castle Gallery, College of New Rochelle. "Bogus: Counterfeit Images and Contemporary Art," September 4, 2001-October 21, 2001.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photography on Photography, from the 1960s to the Present," April 8-October 19, 2008.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984," April 21-August 2, 2009.

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "The Double: Identity and Difference in Art Since 1900," July 10, 2022-October 31, 2022.

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Sherrie Levine | After Walker Evans: 4 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Metro Pictures Gallery. "After Walker Evans," January 1, 1981-May 1, 1981. Castle Gallery, College of New Rochelle. "Bogus: Counterfeit Images and Contemporary Art," September 4, 2001-October 21, 2001. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photography on Photography, from the 1960s to the Present," April 8-October 19, 2008. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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As well as rocks and different landscapes!

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Horticulture always enhances any space. It’s one of my favorite hobbies.

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I like the layout of the succulents

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Does the water flow?

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-Rachel Perkins

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"Museum of Broken Relationships is a physical and virtual public space created with the sole purpose of treasuring and sharing your heartbreak stories and symbolic possessions. It is a museum about you, about us, about the ways we love and lose."
Jamie Nielson

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Inspired by the vitality and growth of the city of Denver - Katie Potts

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Designed by Zaha Hadid, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture is located in Rome, Italy. The MAXXI was built as not only to showcase the art that would be held inside, but to also show off the beauty and interaction between art, space, and spectator. Hadid designed such a building in hopes that the design would be as captivating as the art on display.

The target audience of this specific museum would be anyone interested in architecture and art.

- David Gonzales

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I think this museum is very light hearted, while it is taken seriously it also serves to bring people joy and shows them art doesn't have to be so serious. I think it is directed to the average person.
K.C.

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The Perot Museum of Nature and Science - Dallas

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The Perot Museum of Nature and Science - Dallas

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Nature and Science - Dylan Tucker

It reflects how Dallas architects are trying to bring the city alive and make its art district unique.

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Contemporary and Modern Art Museum - Kaci Jones

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The Mindy Project (Anti Feminist Television)
K.C.

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Dylan Tucker

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Sarah Mire

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Henri Matisse post stroke cutout image (healing art) 

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Henri Matisse post stroke cutout image (healing art) 

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Kaci Jones

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Kaci Jones

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Survivors, family gather for Oklahoma City bombing memorial

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Survivors and family members of those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing will gather for a remembrance service Wednesday, the 22nd anniversary of the attack.

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madison dale

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Dancing in Jaffa - offizieller deutscher Trailer (2013)

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Sandy Hook Students Record "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Benefit Song

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A month after 20 children and 6 adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, students from Newtown gathered at the home studio of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, to record their version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" featuring Ingrid Michaelson.

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Lady Gaga 2016 Till It Happens To You Oscar Performance

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Uploaded by TheGlacialAther on 2016-10-20.

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Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal

"Sigler's entire career has been a testament to the communicative graces of art,

and in the Breast Cancer Journal she reminds us

that art can accomplish this in a way that nothing else can,

and that sometimes, preciously and rarely, it will do very much more.

Sometimes art can be a matter of life and death." - James Yood

Hollis Sigler, a leading feminist artist, was diagnosed in 1985 with breast cancer, a disease that had also stricken her mother and great-grandmother. After it recurred, she began a pictorial journal, now encompassing more than one hundred works. Art in America magazine called Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal "one of contemporary art's richest and most poignant treatments of sickness and health... Taking on a kind of religious conviction, her jewel-colored symbols imbue a death-haunted situation with miraculous, celebratory life." These works- and the commentaries that the artist inscribed on many of them- combine personal experience with family history, medical statistics, and political consciousness raising.

This inspiring volume brings together the si x ty finest works from the Breast Cancer Journal in full-color reproductions- paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors, and cut-paper pieces- each accompanied by the artist's commentaries. Dr. Susan M. Love, a leading authority on breast cancer, discusses the importance of Sigler's art as a document on the disease's personal impact. "Hollis Sigler gives a voice to the woman struggling with the reality of breast cancer- not the ever-happy face the public wants to see, but the real face of a woman living with a chronic and potentially life-threatening disease. It is this reality that makes her art so difficult for many women to face, and it is this reality that also makes it so powerful."

James Yood recounts the aesthetic trajectory of Sigler's career, and of the Breast Cancer Journal in particular, drawing parallels with Frida Kahlo, another artist whose life and work were significantly affected by a medical condition. He is also "reminded of late works by Rembrandt or Pablo Picasso or Ivan Albright, when these artists looked squarely in the face of their death." He writes of Sigler: "In work after work she explores what it means to love, to enjoy small pleasures, to consider both the wonder and the ambiguities of human relationships, and to inventory the thousand tender wounds of intimacy... Sigler's images, with their titles often scrawled across them, constitute a corpus of work revealing the possibilities for a genre painting of the human spirit at the end of the twentieth century."

Sigler herself, in an essay titled "To Kiss the Spirits," writes of her life as a woman, as a lesbian, as an artist, as a person with breast cancer, and as a breast cancer activist, also relating the history of various art projects and exhibitions that culminated in her Breast Cancer Journal, a project undertaken with the hope that "the work would thus gain the power to destroy the silence surrounding the disease." She also discusses many metaphoric images that appear and reappear in the work, such as the vanity and its mirror, a dead and broken tree, her mother's dress, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The titles of the paintings alone provide a poignant glimpse into the mind and spirit of this remarkable artist:

The Illusion Was to Think She Had Any Control over Her Life

Trying to Maintain an Air of Normalcy

The Future Moves in Much Closer

What Does the Lady Do with Her Rage?

Following the Ghosts of Our Grandmothers into the Future

In Spite of All, She Rises in the Morning with Joy in Her Heart

Wishing She Could Take a Vacation from Her Disease

It Starts with One Errant Cell

A Wish to Touch the Sky

In the Unfolding of Life, Every Minute Is Precious

She Had No More Room for Sorrow

We Have Sold Our Souls to the Devil

Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal is a beautiful art book and a unique testament to the human spirit, a fundamental affirmation of the possibilities of life discovered in the midst of agony and loss. To be published during National Breast Cancer Month, October 1999, it is the artist's gift to all whose lives have been touched by this disease.

Dr. Susan M. Love is the bestselling author of Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book (Addison Wesley, 1990/1995) and Dr. Susan Love's Hormone Book (Random House, 1997). A breast cancer surgeon, researcher, scholar, teacher, and activist, she studies and taught at Harvard Medical School before moving to the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine. She is also Medical Director of the Santa Barbara Breast Cancer Institute and one of the founders of the National Breast Cancer Coalition. She has been appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board.

James Yood, born in Elizabeth, N.J., studied at the Universities of Wisconsin (B.A.) and Chicago (M.A., Ph.D. candidate). He teaches at Northwestern University in Chicago and is the author of many books on Chicago art and artists.

Published by Hudson Hills Press

Hardcover: Retail price $45; ISBN 1-55595-175-9

Paperback: Retail price $25; ISBN 1-55595-176-7

Library of Congress Number 99-32014; CIP

96 pages; 9 x 12 inches, 60 color plates, 1 black-and-white portrait of the artist

Like all Hudson Hills Press books, this fine volume is printed on permanent alkaline paper.

"In the face of terminal illness, those afflicted have been known to do extraordinary things. While compelled to cope with the physical effects of disease, many artists, writers, and performers have created works directly related to or informed by illness. Confronted with a new identity and status as 'sick person,' they have questioned the meaning of life, fate, and destiny or addressed social and political issues surrounding their illness. An energy and freedom seem to follow the diagnosis of a disease that will remain with a person for the rest of her life.

Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal is a public acknowledgement of her longtime battle with breast cancer. First diagnosed in 1985, Sigler was told seven years later that the cancer had metastasized to her bones. Responding to the disease's permanence, it seemed natural, unavoidable, to incorporate breast cancer into her art. Since the mid-1970's, Sigler's continuing pictorial diary of confessional paintings and drawings has revealed her desires and fantasies, as well as her fears and sorrows. Rendered with a vibrant palette and a childlike simplicity, her fictional spaces scattered with personal effects symbolize complexand intense emotional states. Though Sigler continues to employ her vigorous yet delicate style, the content of her works shifted dramatically when she found the cancer had spread. Accepting her social responsibility as an artist, she decided to incorporate the 'cause' into her work. "

- Stacy Boris

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Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal "Sigler's entire career has been a testament to the communicative graces of art, and in the Breast Cancer Journal she reminds us that art can accomplish this in a way that nothing else can, and that sometimes, preciously and rarely, it will do very much more.

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PMRC Hearings - The Origin of the Parental Advisory Sticker 

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PMRC Hearings - The Origin of the Parental Advisory Sticker 

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Lana Harris/AP

Thirty years ago, the music industry changed forever in the midst of the Parents Music Resource Center's fight to identify and label explicit lyrics.

The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) formed in 1984 around the collective outrage of four women known for their ties to Washington political life. Founding members Susan Baker (wife of then-Treasury Secretary James Baker), Tipper Gore (wife of senator and future Vice President Al Gore), Pam Howar (wife of Realtor Raymond Howar) and Sally Nevius (wife of Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius) had become disturbed by Prince, Madonna and other music their kids were listening to. And on September 19, 1985, the culture wars came to a head in a "porn rock" Senate hearing featuring testimony from John Denver, Dee Snider and Frank Zappa.

From this political fervor emerged the "Parental Advisory" sticker that probably dots your CD collection today. In this oral history, Susan Baker, Dee Snider, Gail Zappa, Sis Levin and others tell the inside story of how it happened-and reflect on the 30 years that have gone by.

Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now

All of the material contained in this oral history was provided in the form of separate phone interviews with Newsweek, with three exceptions. Tipper Gore declined to be interviewed but did supply a statement through a representative. Cronos, of the metal band Venom, responded to interview questions via email. And the quotes attributed to the late Frank Zappa are from the artist's autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book. (The book was written in the late 1980s, hence the use of the present tense when referring to the then-active PMRC.)

Susan Baker, co-founder of the PMRC: It started because one day my 7-year-old came in and started quoting some of Madonna's lyrics to me, wanting to know what they meant. And I was shocked. I knew that you had to be concerned about movies and TV, but I didn't have a clue that my 7-year-old would be exposed to inappropriate songs.

Pam Howar, co-founder of the PMRC: I had a daughter. And anything delivered through music can be pretty powerful.

Susan Baker: It was "Like a Virgin." She [my daughter] said, "Mama, what's a virgin?" And I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, Madonna sings this song: 'Like a virgin / Touched for the very first time.' What's a virgin?" I was speechless. Here she was still playing with dolls at 7.

Frank Zappa, musician and composer (in The Real Frank Zappa Book): There are several "historical accounts" from which to choose. Let's arbitrarily choose this one: One day in 1985, Tipper Gore, wife of the Democratic senator from Tennessee, bought her 8-year-old daughter a copy of the soundtrack album to Prince's Purple Rain -an R-rated film which had already generated considerable controversy for its sexual content. For some reason, however, she was shocked when their daughter pointed out a reference to masturbation in a song called "Darling Nikki." Tipper rounded up a bunch of her Washington housewife friends, most of whom happened to be married to influential members of the U.S. Senate, and founded the PMRC.

Sis Levin, executive director of the PMRC: I did a doctorate in conflict resolution in nonviolence. Which I teach at the university level all over the place. The fit is that the music is a form of violence in our children.... I took a desk and we had meetings and we talked about having opportunities to speak to the public. We would say, "Just listen to what they're listening to! And get a handle on it!" Because it does have an effect.

Susan Baker: We decided we would get together and get everybody on our address list and have a meeting and show them what we were upset about. Most of them didn't have a clue what was going on. That's how it started. We had no idea we were going to start an organization. We were just mad mamas who wanted our friends and, particularly, educators to know what kind of trash our children were buying. We felt we needed some information [in the form of] product labeling.

Kandie Stroud, journalist and PMRC spokeswoman who debated Frank Zappa on TV: We were a family completely saturated in music. I remember one time, one of my kids said, "Listen to this song, but don't listen to the lyrics, mom, you won't like them." Sure enough, it was some explicit song. I think it was something by Prince. I kind of looked into the topic and interviewed a bunch of different people in the music world. I thought, "Wow, it's really changed since the days of the Beatles and Elvis."
The PMRC set to work compiling contacts from their respective Christmas card lists and issuing press releases. The group sent a letter to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and more than 50 record labels. According to A History of Evil in Popular Culture, "The letter proposed that record companies either cease the production of music with violent and sexually charged lyrics or develop a motion picture-style ratings system for albums.... Violent lyrics would be marked with a 'V,' Satanic or anti-Christian occult content with an 'O,' and lyrics referencing drugs or alcohol with a 'D/A.'"
In 1985, the PMRC issued a list of 15 songs- nicknamed the "Filthy Fifteen"-​which it deemed particularly objectionable and deserving of being banned from radio airplay. The Filthy Fifteen included songs by household-name pop stars like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and-of course-Prince's "Darling Nikki." It also took aim at heavy metal, targeting lesser-known groups W.A.S.P., Venom and Mercyful Fate. The list included Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," which had become a hit single and video on MTV in 1984.

Susan Baker: Our goal in the beginning was just to alert people.... We just said, "Well, we'll start this group and see if we can get some labeling or some ratings. Kind of like movies." Within the first five or six months, we talked to Stan Gortikov, head of the RIAA. So we were working with him, and within a year they agreed that they would do something. One year afterward, they really weren't doing much of anything. When they were putting labels on things, they were real small and you couldn't read them. We had a big-time meeting with him. And by that time, we had a lot of publicity-in Newsweek and on the TV with Oprah and different things, Good Morning America. People were really getting riled up about it. Some legislators were even introducing bills to have in their state so they would have to have certain things on the labels.

Cerphe Colwell, longtime Washington, D.C., radio personality who testified at the PMRC hearing: Ironically, most of the heavy metal songs that they listed at the time were virtually unknown to the public. Heavy metal as a music format hadn't really blossomed. I truly believe to this day that one of the reasons that metal took off so much in the 1980s as a successful format is that the PMRC brought attention to what they thought was unacceptable, and of course that made it very much in the spotlight.

Cronos, singer for the Filthy Fifteen-targeted Venom: I was told about the PMRC during a recording session in the '80s, and I thought someone had hidden cameras, like pulling a prank on me to see my reaction, so I dismissed it as bollocks. Then, when I found out they were real, I couldn't understand how supposedly intelligent people could be so ignorant. Of course rock and roll has all of the subject matter they accused it of having. It's rock and roll! It's supposed to be hard-core and edgy. Most of us rockers have families, and we are responsible parents. We don't need the PMRC doing our jobs of protecting our kids from the harmful shit in this world. I would have been more upset if one of my songs or albums had not taken pride of place on their list.

Dee Snider, frontman for the Filthy Fifteen-targeted Twisted Sister: You talk about the music that was on the Filthy Fifteen, it's easy listening by today's standards. It's more than ironic that in the movie Rock of Ages, the Parents Music Resource Center-esque group headed by Catherine Zeta-Jones sang "We're Not Gonna Take It" at the rock star! That's irony in its purest form.

Susan Baker: We went all over the country talking to PTA groups and parent groups. And we'd say, "Look. This kind of inappropriate stuff is going to be out there in the culture. So you have to teach your kids to think critically about it."

Blackie Lawless, singer for the Filthy Fifteen-targeted W.A.S.P.: It's true, they made us a household word. But they made us a household word of people's grandmothers in the Midwest. Because the kids already knew who we were. The kids already had the records. Yeah, they make you a household word to somebody's grandma, but grandmas don't buy records. I think a lot of artists thought, OK, this exposure's gonna help us sell more records. But I don't think in reality it did. I know it didn't for us.

Joanne McDuffie, singer for the Filthy Fifteen-targeted Mary Jane Girls: I thought it was weird. It was like, "Really?"... When they picked that song ["In My House"], I remember being really, really irritated, because there was nothing in the song that would suggest anything inappropriate. Was the song about sex? Of course it was. But lyrically, it was very tastefully done. It wasn't something that would make your kids go, "Oooh, I'm gonna go figure out what she's talking about."
On September 19, 1985, the PMRC's efforts culminated in a much-publicized Senate hearing to consider the group's proposal. There, Tipper Gore advocated for "a warning label on music products inappropriate for younger children due to explicit sexual or violent lyrics." All three argued voraciously against what they characterized as censorship. In perhaps the most enduring testimony from the hearing, Zappa described the PMRC's proposal as "an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children and promises to keep the courts busy for years." Alongside members of the PMRC, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation heard testimony from three popular musicians: Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver.
Blackie Lawless: I'm coming from a whole different perspective because I don't know if you're aware or not, but I'm a born-again Christian. I've not played that song ["Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)"] for almost 10 years. That song would not be something I would want to be represented as.

Joanne McDuffie: I think it was a blacklist. Or a modern-day witch hunt. Or an attempt at censorship for certain artists and certain songs. When I look at what happened, it didn't stop the airplay.... What it did stop was our consideration for the awards that I think any other artist of our stature or our popularity would have gotten.

Dee Snider: I just remember getting a call from my management office asking, "Would you testify at these hearings?" And I was like, "Hell, yeah." I assumed this would be, like, young people would rise up! And I was being asked to carry the flag. Didn't give it a second thought. "Yes, I will carry the flag into battle. Follow me!" As I stood out there by myself on the field of honor, I realized that nobody was following.

Susan Baker: Tipper and I were the ones that testified. It gave us more exposure, which we were hoping for. It was kind of a circus.... We were called awful things. They called us bored housewives and a bunch of crazy alcoholics. It was not a pleasant thing. But we said, "Well, so what? We think this is right." We just soldiered on. Like I said, the four founders really felt like we'd made progress and accomplished something.

Cerphe Colwell: I got a call from Frank Zappa and he said that he was testifying. Evidently somebody in his circle said that the PMRC, which was part of a Senate select subcommittee, was looking for some music experts. I was sort of a go-to guy. At that point I'd been on radio in D.C. for maybe 16, 17, 18 years. I played Frank's music and Frank had been a guest on my show many times. I jumped at the chance.

Larry Stein, attorney for Frank Zappa: [Zappa] was asked to, and he definitely wanted to because he felt very strongly about the issue. So we accepted the invitation for him to testify, prepared for it and went back there and testified. And my 15 minutes of fame is that when that MTV clip plays, he walks into the Senate and says, "Hi, my name is Frank Zappa and this is my lawyer, Larry Stein." The only picture of a client that I actually have in my office is the picture of Frank and me at the U.S. Senate.

Gail Zappa, Frank Zappa's widow: They were saying that they were going to have a hearing. And that pissed Frank off because it was a waste of resources and expenses to get involved in censorship of people's artwork, apart from everything else. He was pissed.

Dee Snider: The majority of fans just didn't get the significance of what was going on. "Now we know what records to buy!" That was the battle cry of the teens. "We know what records the cool records are!" Bullshit.

Larry Stein: It was fun getting Frank ready for his testimony. We believed that he would be taken much more seriously if he looked a little more businesslike. It was kind of fun if you see this picture of me and Frank together. This particular picture, his hair looks short, he's wearing a white shirt and a red tie and a dark suit. When people come into my office, I look like Don Johnson during the Miami Vice period. My tie is a little bit down, and I'm wearing a silver tie and people often come in and go, "Which one was the lawyer in that picture?" Frank knew what he had to do.

Dee Snider: I never met John [Denver].... I remember Frank and I standing back.... We were both not sure where John would be in this. We knew where he should be, as an artist-he should be on our side. But, again, he had crossed over, and he was literally that day coming back from NASA, where they were talking about him being the first musician in space.... So when he came out and spoke-and he spoke honestly about the way "Rocky Mountain High" had been protested and the movie Oh, God! had been protested and he stood against censorship of any kind-we were cheering in the back.

Frank Zappa (in The Real Frank Zappa Book): My only regret about that episode is that, under the rules of the hearing, I was not afforded an opportunity to respond when I was denounced by a semiapoplectic Slade Gorton (former Republican senator from Washington state) for my "constitutional ignorance." I would have liked to remind him that although I flunked just about everything else in high school, I did get an 'A' in Civics.

Slade Gorton (former senator from Washington): I didn't so much argue with [Zappa]. I told him what I thought of him and his language. You would have to look at the record of the hearings to get all of it. I just remember I attended the hearings. Senator Gore was a member of the committee. Frank Zappa was absolutely insulting and, I think, profane in his reference not only to their ideas but to them as individuals. The woman's husband didn't defend them. And I got very angry and did so.

Susan Baker: Some of [Zappa's testimony] was ludicrous. But John Denver was there, too. We understand how people feel. It's free speech! But we say, yes, speech is free. But when you buy a product in the store, it has a label on it that tells you what the ingredients are.

Slade Gorton: I have held Al Gore in utmost contempt ever since that day. He was on the committee and refused to defend his own wife.

Dee Snider: Gotta give John Denver [credit]. His testimony was one of the most scathing, because they fully expected-he was such a mom-American-pie-John-Denver-Christmas-special-fresh-scrubbed guy. Everyone expected that he would be on the side of right-right being censorship. When he brought up, "I liken this to the Nazi book burnings"-that's what he said in his testimony-you should've seen them start running for the hills! His testimony was the most powerful in many ways.

Dweezil Zappa: The whole experience of that was that we watched our dad go up against these people and just speak in a way that was great, because he went straight to the root of the problem. That's why it was great to hear him make remarks like that. He had one quote that was hilarious, where he said to the senators something to the effect of, "You are treating this problem like treating dandruff by decapitation."

The Senate hearings attracted a wealth of national media attention. In the aftermath, Frank Zappa appeared on TV several times, debating PMRC supporters. (Memorably, during a Crossfire appearance, he responded to a barb from Washington Times columnist John Lofton with: "How about you kiss my ass?") Zappa seemed to relish the opportunity to state his case while Snider resented that the politics overshadowed the music. Meanwhile, the PMRC succeeded in establishing the black-and-white Parental Advisory label, which began appearing on album covers at the discretion of individual labels. The PMRC gradually faded by the time Al Gore ran for president during the 1988 election.

Frank Zappa (in The Real Frank Zappa Book): A CNN show called Crossfire covered the PMRC topic twice with me as a guest, the first time in 1986 (when I told that guy from The Washington Times to kiss my ass), and then again in 1987, when George Michael's sex song was "controversial." Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, the premise of that second debate on Crossfire was (don't laugh) "Does Rock Music Cause AIDS?"

Kandie Stroud: I was asked by Charlie Rose to come on the show. If you want to call it a debate, call it a debate. He [Zappa] was not an ennobling human being. He made statements as far as I can remember like "This is about the First Amendment." It wasn't about the First Amendment. I'm a journalist, don't you think I support the First Amendment? It was about parental guidance [and] the music industry being responsible for what they poured into children's minds.

Dee Snider: It's a horrendous effect. Everything I feared and more. When I went to Washington, my concern was it wasn't about informing parents. It was that the sticker would be misused. The concern was that it would be used to segregate records. To keep creative artists' work from the general public. And true to form, stores wouldn't rack certain records.

Cerphe Colwell: Just as Frank had predicted, many stores, including Walmart, stopped carrying the dreaded, demonized records-carrying labels.

Gail Zappa: He did say that when these hearings were over, a lot of artists were going to get their contracts canceled. And, ironically, Frank was the first one that that happened to. Immediately after the hearing. They wanted his work to conform, and Frank provided a sticker that guaranteed that you wouldn't end up in hell if you listened to the lyrics. And they did not consider that sufficient. It was MCA that canceled his contract. They were offended by the language.... In 1987, Frank won a Grammy. In order for the committee to consider it-in order to be considered for a Grammy-record companies or artists submit copies of the record to various committees that would make determinations or vote on that particular record's eligibility. And so in the case of Jazz From Hell, they said, "Well, how come this doesn't have a sticker on it?" I said, "Why should it have a sticker?" "Well, shouldn't Frank's music be censored?" Well, really? Want to run that by me again? It turned out that nobody had listened to it. It's all instrumental.

Though the Parental Advisory labels are largely obsolete 30 years later, the question of the PMRC's lasting legacy remains. PMRC members interviewed for this article say they're proud of the work they accomplished. They feel they succeeded in promoting parental awareness of explicit lyrics; Susan Baker says it still gives her a smile when she sees a Parental Advisory sticker and knows she helped make that happen. But some of the artists targeted by the organization describe career downturns, label woes and-in some instances-death threats in the aftermath of the hearings. Prince and Madonna, meanwhile, are still playing "Darling Nikki" and "Like a Virgin" three decades later. Madonna performed "Virgin" Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden. Her latest album, Rebel Heart, comes sealed with a "Parental Advisory" sticker.

Tipper Gore, co-founder of the PMRC: In this era of social media and online access, it seems quaint to think that parents can have control over what their children see and hear. But I think this conversation between parents and kids is as relevant today as it was back in the '80s. Music is a universal language that crosses generations, race, religion, sex and more. Never has there been more need for communication and understanding on these issues as there is today. All of the artists and record companies who still use the advisory label should be applauded for helping parents and kids have these conversations about lyrics around their own values.

Susan Baker: [PMRC] stopped being operational about the mid-'90s. I moved and came back to Texas. We did what we felt we could do. We feel like we made a contribution.

Sis Levin: All I can say is, it was a group of courageous women who were willing to step out there and say, "This is bad, this is hurting our children, this is having an effect on not only the homes and the schools but the whole community. We need to take a serious look at this." That was pretty gutsy of them.

Joanne McDuffie: It kind of blacklisted me from certain areas of the business.... We didn't get the Grammys. We didn't get the American Music Awards, because of [the PMRC]. It cut me off at a certain point. I think that kind of stopped us before we got started. It stopped everything so that now there are only certain audiences who know about [our music]. Because it might have not played in certain areas or on certain radio stations. I think it hurt me.

Frank Zappa (in The Real Frank Zappa Book): If the scare tactics of groups like the PMRC and Back in Control have not made an impact on musicians, they have certainly made one on the executives of the record companies who can tell artists what the labels will or will not accept as suitable material under the artist's contract.

Blackie Lawless: I used to tell people that I felt like a brick wall, that nobody could knock me down. But it's very subtle the way it happens. A death threat here, somebody tampering with one of your vehicles there. It's not like someone tries to knock down your wall overnight. They take away one brick every day. And then pretty soon, you turn around and you look behind you [and] there's no more bricks in your wall. It ended up making me more of a recluse than anything.

Joanne McDuffie: Our song had the potential and was on its way to being No. 1. When they put that sticker on it, I think it maybe stopped at five. It definitely stopped us from going to No. 1.... I remember having an endorsement at the time from Ford Motors. But after this labeling thing, it disappeared.

Dweezil Zappa: Oddly enough, during the Clinton administration, we did have several occasions to spend some time with the Gores and actually became friends with them. It was never a battle of, "Oh, these people are terrible people."

Dee Snider: I feel a certain responsibility to carry the torch. It was certainly something that the Gores tried very hard to sweep under the carpet when he was running with Bill Clinton for the vice presidency.

Susan Baker: Tipper did not back away from the work that we'd done in the PMRC when Al was running for president, even though she got a lot of flack. Some of the people in his campaign seemed to walk back a little bit.

Joanne McDuffie: Let's go back to why they created this whole agency. It was for parents to control what your children were listening to. I was a parent at the time! That was my job. I was a single parent. I had a daughter and a son at the time. I'm gonna be mindful of what I'm singing because these kids are gonna grow up. I didn't want them to be ashamed of anything I was doing, nor did I want to be.

Dee Snider: Long-term, it was the first time people started to see me as having more to say than just a couple of catchy tunes. That I had a brain. A day doesn't go by that somebody doesn't walk up to me and say, "Thank you! For doing what you did."

Susan Baker: When we're traveling, sometimes somebody will come up to me when they find out who I am and they say, "We really thank you for doing that. Thank you for making us more aware."

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An Oral History of the PMRC's War on Explicit Lyrics

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Lana Harris/AP Thirty years ago, the music industry changed forever in the midst of the Parents Music Resource Center's fight to identify and label explicit lyrics. The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) formed in 1984 around the collective outrage of four women known for their ties to Washington political life.

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Kaci Jones

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Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick appeared to refute a report Sunday that he would stand during the National Anthem if he played in the NFL again.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on," Kaepernick tweeted with an attribution to Winston Churchill.

Kaepernick, who kneeled during the National Anthem while quarterback for the 49ers last year to protest racial injustice and police brutality, spoke with CBS NFL Insider Jason La Canfora on Saturday about his future as he remains unsigned by a team. In his retelling of the conversation on CBS Sports on Sunday, La Canfora said Kaepernick would not kneel during the National Anthem if given the opportunity to return to the NFL. But the two never discussed the issue, La Canfora later clarified on Twitter.

Kaepernick also retweeted several people - including his girlfriend Nessa Diab and prominent Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson - denying the claim following La Canfora's comments.

La Canfora said on Twitter he was relaying other reports about the athlete's plans for demonstrations, not referring to their conversation specifically.

"My primary takeaway was that his sole focus right now is on being a quarterback," La Canfora said Sunday. Later on Twitter, La Canfora doubled down on his reports that Kaepernick is working hard to return to the NFL.

Kaepernick was not signed with a team before the new NFL season. Insiders and supporters of Kaepernick have said his protests are why NFL teams are steering clear of the veteran quarterback who started for the 49ers and led the team to their Super Bowl appearance in 2013.

Despite not playing in the NFL this season, Kaepernick's protests have influenced a number of players and teams as the movement amplified after President Donald Trump blasted those in the league who took a knee. At a rally last month, Trump appeared to refer to Kaepernick as a "son of a b--ch" and said NFL teams should fire players who chose to protests.

That weekend, more than 200 NFL players took a knee and others linked arms with their teammates before and during the national anthem to show solidarity. The movement has expanded outside of the NFL, too, with players kneeling at college stadiums and high school football fields.

Kaepernick has remained fairly quiet as demonstrations during the National Anthem occurred, though he has retweeted several people on social media encouraging NFL players to kneel. Off the field, the quarterback runs the Colin Kaepernick Foundation, where he has vowed to donate $1 million and all of his 2016 jersey sales to communities in need around the country.

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Colin Kaepernick Denies Report That He'd Stand for the National Anthem

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Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick appeared to refute a report Sunday that he would stand during the National Anthem if he played in the NFL again. "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on," Kaepernick tweeted with an attribution to Winston Churchill.

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Fifty -one years ago this month, George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, addressed a crowd of three thousand sympathizers in Marquette Park, in Chicago. The rally came in the midst of Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s fraught Northern campaign, in which he sought to point out the ways in which segregation and discrimination were not exclusively the habits of white Southerners. The Nazis seized the opportunity to present themselves as defenders of white communities, preventing the onslaught of violence against whites that integration would surely bring. Writing about the A.N.P.'s activities ahead of the rally, the Times observed, "What confused many who still remember the swastika as the symbol of the concentration camp was the reception they got." Local whites endorsed Rockwell's anti-black, anti-Semitic rhetoric in striking numbers. The scene recalled a moment nearly three decades earlier, when Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the Nazi-sympathizing German American Bund, drew twenty thousand people to Madison Square Garden, to hear him present his brief in defense of Adolf Hitler. Kuhn's 1939 rally proved to be the pinnacle of a fleeting movement, as did Rockwell's Marquette Park gathering. The point here is that this weekend in Charlottesville was not the first time this country has witnessed the mass mobilization of Nazis. But it is the first time we've seen such a feeble response to those gatherings in the upper echelons of American power.

The current occupant of the White House has never distinguished himself for his moral instincts, but those deficits have seldom been more apparent than in the nadir reached in Charlottesville on Saturday. Having failed to address the terrorist attack upon a Minnesota mosque last week, Trump offered blandishments regarding the rising tide of racial contempt that inspired the violence in Charlottesville. When he did speak about the crisis, he denounced bigotry and violence "on many sides," in a statement that was bizarrely punctuated by references to efforts to reform trade relationships and better conditions for veterans. We have seen a great number of false equivalencies in the past two years, and the most recent Presidential election was defined by them. Yet it remains striking to hear Trump imply that Nazis and the interracial group of demonstrators who gathered to oppose them were, in essence, equally wrong.

It would have been naïve to expect the President to unambiguously condemn neo-Confederates ("Heritage, not hate," etc.), but Nazis? For reasons that are not hard to discern, the swastika, at least in the United States, has always been more clearly legible as a symbol of racial bigotry than the Confederate flag. This country has countenanced more gatherings of white supremacists than it is possible to count, yet Nazism, precisely because Americans do not feel implicated in its worst predations, has typically been easily recognizable as intolerable. In the wake of Rockwell's gathering, Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, denounced the group as "thugs and hoodlums." Following the Bund rally in New York's Madison Square Garden, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia ordered an investigation into their tax compliance-a move that uncovered embezzlement that proved fatal to the organization. In that context, Trump's decision in February to remove white supremacists from a federal program to counter violent extremists (while maintaining focus on Muslim terrorists) is telling. This had the effect of emboldening the reactionary legions. It was predictable that Richard Spencer's coalition of the contemptuous would come together. Rockwell was never more than a fringe character, but Spencer increasingly looks like the vector of a formidable anger-one that needs to be confronted at direct angles, not oblique ones. When questioned about the rationale for Trump's evenhandedness, the White House clarified that both the protesters and the counter-protesters had resorted to violence. This is notable in that the United States was once a country that did not see Nazis and those willing to fight them as morally equivalent. Aside from that, however, there were no images of anti-fascist protesters mowing down reactionaries with their cars.

Trump obsesses over Barack Obama; the raison d'être of his Presidency has been the elimination of Obama's legacy. Yet he once again provided evidence of why comparison with his predecessor does not favor him. Obama was serially called upon to speak to the nation in moments of crisis: after Aurora, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Dallas. He conveyed genuine empathy and a willingness to grapple with the moral implications of the flawed decisions we have made as a society. In his latest comments, Trump spoke in platitudes; he was a man looking for gray areas where there were none. Nuance is anathema to his thinking, which is why he can maintain such fidelity to his ideas in a-hundred-and-forty-character bursts. Thus, the needless nuance and imprecision of his comments about Charlottesville smelled of avoidance.

There have been at least thirty attacks carried out by white terrorists since 9/11; the victims of those attacks constitute the majority of people killed on American soil in acts of terrorism. Two years ago, when Dylann Roof murdered nine people, in the sanctuary of Emanuel A.M.E. Church, in Charleston, he described himself as a kind of rageful prophet, one whose actions would awaken white people to the perils they faced from people of color in the United States. Those forces took Trump as a like-minded figure, and saw in his reluctance to denounce David Duke during the campaign, and his willingness to retweet white-supremacist accounts and parrot their mythical statistics about black crime, a sign that their moment had arrived.

The sickening images that emerged from Charlottesville herald that some moment has arrived. It is a moment of indeterminate morality, one in which the centrifugal forces of contempt, resentment, and racial superiority are pitted against the ideal of common humanity and the possibility of a civic society. We have entered a new phase of the Trump era. The breach that Trump has courted since he first emerged in public life has become apparent; it is more deadly and its architects more emboldened. What happened in Virginia was not the culminating battle of this conflict. It's likely a tragic preface to more of the same.

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Fifty -one years ago this month, George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, addressed a crowd of three thousand sympathizers in Marquette Park, in Chicago. The rally came in the midst of Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s fraught Northern campaign, in which he sought to point out the ways in which segregation and discrimination were not exclusively the habits of white Southerners.

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In 2015, the National Youth Theatre asked writer Omar El-Khairy and director Nadia Latif to create a show with its members about the radicalisation of young Muslims. Rehearsals for Homegrown began that summer with a sprawling cast. Around 70% of the script was already written, with the rest to be created through contributions from the cast. But halfway through the rehearsals period the production was abruptly cancelled; the NYT's artistic director Paul Roseby cited a lack of quality and the need to protect the young people involved in the project.

There was no sign of a lack of quality at Conway Hall in London on Monday evening when an extract of the play was performed as part of An Inconvenient Muslim, an event organised by Index on Censorship to mark the publication of Homegrown that included a panel debate around the issues of censorship and representation of Muslims in society and the arts. There was no sign either of young people in need of protection from either challenging ideas or provocative theatre. Many of the original cast have stayed with the project over the last 20 months, and their commitment to it was demonstrated by electrifying performances of some scenes.

I've read the full play, and it is unwieldy and very different from many traditional play scripts. This is largely because the original production was designed to be an immersive promenade experience, but also because its form reflects the way we communicate in an age of social media, particularly if you are under 20. It is also gloriously authentic, snapping and crackling with the sense of young people thinking out loud about who they are, freely voicing their experiences and perceptions of the world. Nobody, whatever their background, will agree with everything that's said, but that's the point. Homegrown opens up a proper grownup debate about attitudes and opinions that often go unspoken and remain hidden.

So why cancel the project? The reasons still remain unclear, although an email obtained under the Freedom of Information Act points to the fact that the NYT contacted the police about the project and that Roseby wrote to Arts Council England saying that the creators "failed to meet repeated requests for a complete chronological script to justify their extremist agenda". It was suggested during the debate that the NYT only commissioned the piece as a tick-box exercise, and then ran scared of what was actually produced. Tom Slater of Spiked observed that the cultural stereotype of Muslims casts them as either "volatile or vulnerable," treated as potential terrorists or a group of people who at all costs others must avoid offending. Academic Vron Ware suggested that the production fell foul of police anti-radicalisation programmes including Prevent and Channel.

Whatever the reasons, it's difficult not to see it as an act of censorship, silencing a piece of theatre and the young people who helped make it. If there are two groups of people that theatre often fails to really give a voice to, it's Muslims and young people. The Bush theatre's artistic director Madani Younis was on a panel at the event and observed that, for all its talk about being radical, liberal and leftwing, British theatre is, in fact, predominantly a conservative, middle-class monoculture. He pointed to an honesty about the play in the way it articulates the experience of being a young Muslim in modern Britain, saying that there can never be real freedom of speech in a society in which there is no real equality.

The fact that Homegrown is now being published means that many more people will be able to read it. Perhaps some brave theatre organisation will support a staging. I hope so, because in sensitive and difficult times we need complex and challenging plays such as Homegrown. If our theatre culture runs scared and bows to censorship, it is failing artists and audiences and in danger of making itself a complete irrelevance.

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Shut down but not silenced: Isis play Homegrown demands to be staged

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In 2015, the National Youth Theatre asked writer Omar El-Khairy and director Nadia Latif to create a show with its members about the radicalisation of young Muslims. Rehearsals for Homegrown began that summer with a sprawling cast. Around 70% of the script was already written, with the rest to be created through contributions from the cast.

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Should an artist be blacklisted and blocked from showing their work at museums around the nation because one of their recent paintings tackled the painful topic of the history of racial violence?

A small group of Boston activists demand as much in their passionate opposition to the current Dana Schutz exhibition at ICA Boston. They are asking the Institute to cancel the show in order to penalize Schutz, the artist behind Open Casket, a work drawing on the well-known photograph of Emmett Till lying disfigured in his casket.

When Open Casket was part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, it became the subject of heated debate, primarily over who should have the right to represent a history that has caused an oppressed minority pain. Some argued that Schutz, as a white artist, belonging by virtue of her skin color to a historically dominant group, should never be allowed to base her work on a historical moment of trauma for black Americans.

The current political context - which has brought increased visibility to the race bias in institutions like the police force, as well as to the virulent racism that continues to plague this nation as a whole - was both what Dana Schutz was reacting to with the piece and also what sensitized the protesters objecting to it. It focused and amplified a simmering conflict that had been haunting a mostly white dominated art world for a while. As ICA's Director Jill Medvedow, said in a statement "Art often exposes the fault lines in our culture, and Open Casket raised difficult questions about cultural appropriation, race, and representation."

The Whitney hosted an open public debate in response to the controversy and created a platform where different positions where expressed and heard. The ICA plans to do the same (though Open Casket is not in the exhibition). However, the protesters do not want debate and conversation, they want their position to dominate and the exhibit to be taken down. No matter how important their goal of overcoming the American legacy of racial inequity (a goal shared by the majority of those who would visit the show, as well as by the artist herself), their tactics are bad:

Blacklisting an artist who has engaged in the conversation about racial violence with the best of intentions (though with controversial results), is not going to move us one inch towards social justice, it will only create fissures among allies at a time when alliances are exactly what we need if we are to hope for a more progressive America.

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Demands to Cancel Dana Schutz's ICA Exhibit Don't Help the Cause for Social Justice

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Should an artist be blacklisted and blocked from showing their work at museums around the nation because one of their recent paintings tackled the painful topic of the history of racial violence? A small group of Boston activists demand as much in their passionate opposition to the current Dana Schutz exhibition at ICA Boston.

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Paintings, sculptures, prints, installations, drawings, and photography are all considered protected speech under the First Amendment. Even so, conflict arises based on objections to the religious, sexual/nudity, or political content of the artwork.

One of the most prominent debates surrounding free expression in the arts in recent years has focused on public funding for work considered controversial. While the government may decide to not fund art at all, if it does decide that government support of the arts is essential, it cannot fund only art that expresses a viewpoint government officials like. In brief, the government may not fund art in a way that discriminates based on viewpoint. (Public funding for the arts has often enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress; art has been proven to provide jobs, invite tourism and otherwise contribute positively to the economic development of a community, as well as improve its cultural image and quality of life.)

Another set of issues that come up around the freedom to show one's work relate to the venue where the work is shown. Art in public spaces is a highly visible part of our daily environment and requires negotiation and regulation that maintains a balance between an individual's constitutional right to free speech and public harmony and welfare. Art in public buildings presents issues of public forum classification and curatorial discretion.

What happens when an art work, which a city has commissioned an artist to create, is destroyed? Artists have some statutory protection over their "moral rights" in their work from the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA). It provides for rights of attribution and to prevent or provide remedy for any modification or destruction of the work.

More...

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Paintings, sculptures, prints, installations, drawings, and photography are all considered protected speech under the First Amendment. Even so, conflict arises based on objections to the religious, sexual/nudity, or political content of the artwork. One of the most prominent debates surround

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Opinion | Ai Weiwei: How Censorship Works (Published 2017)

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Those who remain silent to please the authorities make China’s brutal system possible.

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Just before the start of Monday night's Oakland Athletics' game, nearly all of the 140-member Oakland Unified School District Honor Band took a knee while performing the national anthem in protest of "racism, police brutality, and the president."

OUSD Honor Band Plays the National Anthem at the Oakland A's G...
Before tonight's Oakland A's game, the OUSD Honor Band played the National Anthem. Because of the ongoing national discussion about racial justice, which over the weekend gained steam when President Trump said, with vulgarity, that NFL players should be fired for taking a knee, most members of the band took a knee for the whole song. A's catcher Bruce Maxwell also took a knee. The students said they were protesting racism, police brutality and the President. #iamOUSD #Oakland-Athletics

Posted by Oakland Unified School District on Monday, September 25, 2017

The band's performance was a salute to the ongoing kneeling protests by professional athletes, which started with San Francisco 49ers' quarterback Colin Kaepernick last year. On Friday, President Donald Trump responded to the trend during a rally in Alabama: "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he's fired'?"

Members of the Oakland school honors band, which is comprised of high school and middle school students, talked to local TV station KTVU about their reasons for taking the knee on Monday night. Ronald Hamlet, a 14-year-old tuba player, meant no disrespect to his home country. "We're standing up, or in this case kneeling down for, like, racism, xenophobia," Hamlet told KTVU. And he rejected the hypocritical nature of some of protest's biggest critics, which to date include Trump; "They'll like bash NFL players, but not call out neo-Nazis for their violence," he said.

Violinist Daisy Amador, 14, said the protest was about expressing that "we're all a community and we support everybody."

It isn't the first time the band has woven a protest into a pre-game performance. Last September, about two-thirds of the band knelt during the Athletics' national anthem in support of Kaepernick, according to Phil Rydeen, director of visual and performing arts for OUSD.

The school district posted the following statement on Facebook after the game, along with a video of the anthem performance:

"Before tonight's Oakland A's game, the OUSD Honor Band played the National Anthem. Because of the ongoing national discussion about racial justice, which over the weekend gained steam when President Trump said, with vulgarity, that NFL players should be fired for taking a knee, most members of the band took a knee for the whole song. A's catcher Bruce Maxwell also took a knee. The students said they were protesting racism, police brutality and the President. # Oakland-Athletics "

The post was met with a mix of support and outrage on Facebook, with some commenters calling for the band staff to be fired. Others said they were proud of the students and the band directors. Here are some Facebook comments on the post:

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This student band that kneeled to play the anthem understands racial injustice better than Trump

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Just before the start of Monday night's Oakland Athletics' game, nearly all of the 140-member Oakland Unified School District Honor Band took a knee while performing the national anthem in protest of "racism, police brutality, and the president." OUSD Honor Band Plays the National Anthem at the Oakland A's G...

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A number of musicians took a knee onstage over the weekend in solidarity with NFL players who staged similar protests during the National Anthem.

Pharrell Williams, Eddie Vedder, Roger Waters, and Dave Matthews kneeled during their respective concerts following attacks condemning the NFL from President Donald Trump. In an Alabama rally last week, Trump said, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, 'Get that son of a b- off the field right now'?"
Related Content National Anthem Singer Rico Lavelle Kneels, Raises Fist During NFL Performance (Watch)
Vedder took a knee while headlining a solo concert at Tennessee's Pilgrimage Fest on Sunday. Earlier that day, Pearl Jam's Twitter account posted a message in solidarity with the movement. "We support [Michael Bennett], [Colin Kaepernick], and everyone's constitutional right to stand up, sit down or #takeaknee for equality," the post read.

John Legend also kneeled during his concert Sunday night, while Prophets of Rage donned Kaepernick jerseys to show support. During his concert in Hartford, Connecticut, Waters and his band took a knee for a minute.

Matthews and Williams also took a knee in their individual sets during "A Concert for Charlottesville: An Evening of Music and Unity" benefit concert. On Saturday, Stevie Wonder joined in on protests at the 2017 Global Citizen Festival in New York's Central Park.

During Sunday night's football, NFL players took a knee, locked arms, or stayed in the locker room while "The Star-Spangled Banner" was performed. These events have been inspired by Colin Kaepernick's demonstrations during the 2016-17 football season. The San Francisco 49ers player responded to police brutality and racial inequality before the 2016 election by taking a knee during the National Anthem as a sign of protest.

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Pharrell, Eddie Vedder, Others Take Knee Onstage as Musicians Join Anthem Protests

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A number of musicians took a knee onstage over the weekend in solidarity with NFL players who staged similar protests during the National Anthem. Pharrell Williams, Eddie Vedder, Roger Waters, and Dave Matthews kneeled during their respective concerts following attacks condemning the NFL from President Donald Trump.

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Bank of America followed hours later, saying it would withdraw financial support from the production of "Julius Caesar" but would not end its financial relationship with the theater, which a bank spokeswoman, Susan Atran, said had lasted for 11 years.

"The Public Theater chose to present 'Julius Caesar' in a way that was intended to provoke and offend," Ms. Atran said. "Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. We are withdrawing our funding for this production." The statement came hours after the airline revealed its decision in replies to complaints on Twitter.

While Delta is a longtime sponsor of the highly-respected Public Theater, we do not condone this interpretation of... 1/2
- Delta (@Delta) June 11, 2017

The play, which has been in previews since May 23, is scheduled to open Monday at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park as part of the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park festival.

"Its depiction of a petulant, blondish Caesar in a blue suit, complete with gold bathtub and a pouty Slavic wife, takes onstage Trump-trolling to a startling new level," Jesse Green of The New York Times wrote in his review.

The "vividly staged" production hews to the traditional interpretation of Shakespeare's work, he wrote. "Even a cursory reading of the play, the kind that many American teenagers give it in high school, is enough to show that it does not advocate assassination. Shakespeare portrays the killing of Caesar by seven of his fellow senators as an unmitigated disaster for Rome, no matter how patriotic the intentions."

But in conservative media outlets, criticism of the theater and its financial supporters erupted last week. The website Breitbart compared the play to the controversial online photo that showed the comedian Kathy Griffin holding a severed head resembling the president. (Ms. Griffin was fired as co-host of CNN's New Year's Eve program over the incident.)

Criticism of the play reached a fever pitch on Sunday when Fox News reported that it "appears to depict President Trump being brutally stabbed to death by women and minorities." Donald Trump Jr., a son of President Trump, joined in shortly after that report, seeming to question the theater's funding sources.

I wonder how much of this "art" is funded by taxpayers? Serious question, when does "art" become political speech & does that change things? https://t.co/JfOmLLBJCn
- Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 11, 2017

The play nods frequently to Mr. Trump and 21st-century America. The set design includes a blowup of the preamble to the United States Constitution. Some of the costumes are accented by Anonymous masks and the pussy hats favored by some Trump protesters.

Candi Adams, a spokeswoman for the Public, declined to comment on Sunday night on the uproar or the loss of sponsorships.

In a note published online, Oskar Eustis, who is the director of the play and the artistic director of the Public, makes clear that the play does not endorse the assassination of Julius Caesar or any other political leader in a democracy.

"Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means," Mr. Eustis wrote. "To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him."

Other corporate sponsors of the Public Theater, including The Times, have also faced calls on social media to denounce the play or end their relationship with the Public.

A spokeswoman for The Times said the company, which has sponsored Shakespeare in the Park for 20 years, would not change course. In a statement, the company said: "As an institution that believes in free speech for the arts as well as the media, we support the right of the Public Theater to stage the production as they chose."

Last month, Gregg Henry, who stars in the play as the Trump-like Julius Caesar, told the website Backstage that he believed the comparison was apt because the Roman ruler "became drunk with ego, drunk with power, drunk with ambition and the belief that he and he alone must rule the world."

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Et Tu, Delta? Shakespeare in the Park Sponsors Withdraw From Trump-Like 'Julius Caesar'

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Bank of America followed hours later, saying it would withdraw financial support from the production of "Julius Caesar" but would not end its financial relationship with the theater, which a bank spokeswoman, Susan Atran, said had lasted for 11 years.

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In the new Wonder Woman movie, the heroine is mystified by the ways of humankind - and she doesn't even read the Internet.

The fevered commentary about the new hit film raises the question, "Can't an Amazonian superhero wield her Lasso of Truth and bullet-deflecting bracelets while wearing an up-armored version of a figure-skating outfit without inciting more battles in the culture war?" This being contemporary America, the answer is, "Of course not."

Wonder Woman had a huge opening weekend, a deserved triumph for its lovely lead actress, Gal Gadot, and its director, Patty Jenkins. The movie is winsome, charmingly ridiculous summer fare with a smidgeon more depth than most superhero movies.

The critics have swooned, and some of them have literally cried over the movie. This is a bit much. The advancement of women in this country, or even just in Hollywood, didn't depend on the production of a better female superhero vehicle than, say, Elektra (Rotten Tomato rating: 10 percent). Nor is it unusual anymore to see women beat up villains on screen. This hasn't stopped people from losing their minds - a new American core competency - over Wonder Woman.

Why doesn't she have armpit hair? Summarizing this controversy that erupted when the trailer was released, the New York Times wrote that "the lack of body hair on the female warrior makes us wonder if feminism was swept aside in favor of achieving the ideal female aesthetic." (The Wonder Woman character has existed for about 75 years - and has never once sported armpit hair.)

Did you know that Gal Gadot is Israeli and served in the Israel Defense Forces? Lebanon certainly noticed. It banned the film. Actress Gina Rodriguez tweeted her disapproval of the ban, then deleted her tweet under internet pressure.

Then there are the clashing interpretations of the movie. It's " a masterpiece of subversive feminism," according to the Guardian. No, it's not, according to a writer in Slate, who complains of "its prevailing occupation with the titular heroine's sex appeal."

This isn't the first time that Wonder Woman's looks and attire have gotten her in trouble. When the U.N. named her the honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls, U.N. staff members objected over the character's iteration as "a large breasted, white woman of impossible proportions." Guilty as charged, of course - the U.N. quickly dumped her.

Wonder Woman, aka Diana Prince, is the spawn of the gods, and such creatures tend to have better-than-average looks, especially when they are depicted in major motion pictures. As for her outfit, most superheroes are distinguished by their inappropriate, physique-baring costumes, and why would a self-confident Amazonian be different?

The movie is certainly a feminist allegory. Diana is doing just fine on the all-female island of Themyscira when a dude shows up, a wayward American pilot who crash-lands. Then everything goes wrong. She ends up leaving with him into the human world, where she confronts and spoofs mystifying practices (woman squeezing into corsets, councils of war excluding women, etc.) and where World War I rages.

This is catnip for feminists, but surely what accounts for the film's runaway success is its traditional elements. A thread throughout is the lighthearted cross-cultural romance between the fearsomely powerful, if nonetheless feminine, Diana (she delights at babies, ice cream, and snowflakes) and her human love interest.

Diana is an admirably idealistic instrument of outraged innocence. Her Amazonian ethic means she rejects dishonesty and cynical maneuvering. She doesn't exactly fight against the Germans - as the original comic-book character did in World War II - so much against warfare in general. But she is righteous and brave.

By the end, Diana comes to realize that humankind is worth saving, despite our flaws. Perhaps the least of them, although an annoying one, is our inability to simply enjoy a deft, entertaining summer blockbuster.

READ MORE:
Wonder Woman Review: A Great Comic-Book Movie
Star-Lords of the Idiocracy
Wonder Woman's Armpit Hair: A Guide for the Confused

- Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review . He can be reached via e-mail: [email protected] . © 2017 King Features Syndicate

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Can't Wonder Woman Just Be Wonder Woman?

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In the new Wonder Woman movie, the heroine is mystified by the ways of humankind - and she doesn't even read the Internet. The fevered commentary about the new hit film raises the question, "Can't an Amazonian superhero wield her Lasso of Truth and bullet-deflecting bracelets while wearing an up-armored version of a figure-skating outfit without inciting more battles in the culture war?"

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Jennifer Cooper

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This Rick and Morty review contains spoilers.

Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 10

Maybe it was the long wait before it returned, or maybe it's the fact that it feels like we only got nine episodes because one had already aired months previously, or maybe it's just that I was having such a gosh darn good time and time flies when etc., etc. Whatever the reason, season three came and went too soon.

Season one was chock full of character development and worldbuilding. Season two was generally more content to goof off. Season three struck a decent balance between both: there was quite a lot of goofing around but paired with a good amount of interesting character exploration, plus the extraordinarily impressive broadening of the Citadel of Ricks.

Oddly, however, even though I found this mostly a very strong season for character and storytelling, looking back, it seems more like a series of silly, self-contained romps, which is fine! Not every episode of Rick and Morty needs to end on a dramatic gut punch and it would grow trite if it did. And, overall, season three must've done a pretty good job if I found it silly, yet still regard it as full of top-quality story and character stuff (something I would not say for season two, which somewhat dropped the ball drama-wise).

Unfortunately, one area where season three floundered was with Jerry and Beth's divorce. Ostensibly the main, continuous, dramatic plotline of season three, the writers ended up not quite knowing where to go with it. While I didn't expect my sci-fi comedy to have more episodes in it about the wacky world of working through divorce, for such a drastic change to the family dynamic, it didn't figure into the show as deeply as one might have thought. It was a springboard for multiple episodes, but a clear narrative path regarding how this divorce was progressing for any of the family members never really solidified.

The weakest link was Beth, who simply didn't get enough screen time for us to understand her state of mind during all this. And when she did get episodes, they were sloppy (the previous one abruptly turned her character into a serial killer or something). "The Rickchurian Mortydate" surprised me by revisiting the concept the preceding episode introduced that Beth might be a clone now. This works for her character: she's Rick's daughter and she's obviously very smart, so the question of whether she's an original Beth or a clone is logically something that would eat her up inside. However, that this leads so quickly into her reuniting with Jerry seems forced.

The writers basically get away with it. It's not so implausible because Beth and Jerry always stupidly fall back together. But, again, we know almost nothing about how Beth has been feeling this whole time and, frankly, we've seen no indication she's been thinking about or missing Jerry at all. Ultimately, it feels like the writers wanting to return to series status quo.

Admittedly, it's not quite status quo. Rick has been unexpectedly demoted to the bottom rung of the family power dynamic. It's an interesting place to leave the series, though we're left wondering, why, indeed, Rick chose to stay if he's being treated like crap by everyone. Or, rather, we've been led to believe he stayed, but, technically speaking, we still don't know if he pulled some complex switcheroo along the way, just like we still can't be totally sure that Beth isn't a clone. (I'm fine with the clone thing staying ambiguous, but it would also be a great plotline if real Beth came back and found out clone Beth got back together with Jerry and was pissed off about it.)

The bottom line is the family drama this season was mishandled and this finale wrapped it up awkwardly. But I mentioned goofing off earlier, which is really what "The Rickchurian Mortydate" is all about. Season two ended all dramatically, but Dan Harmon has revealed that's mostly because they couldn't think of how to end it so they went out on a cliffhanger. I believe Justin Roiland prefers Rick and Morty seasons to go out silly, a la season one's "Ricksy Business," which was just a house party episode. This one is largely about Rick having a petty fight with the President of the United States. I know! That guy just gets in petty fights with everyone, doesn't he?

Just kidding, this is the Rick and Morty multiverse President, played once again by the lovely Keith David. I don't have loads to say about this plot. It was entertaining, though felt like it was deliberately avoiding being deep in any fashion. Mostly it was just a lot of insults and sight gags, including an impressive, extended fight scene between Rick and the President. I do enjoy that the President's character was expanded upon, revealing him to be stubborn and self-important.

Also, though the family dynamic wasn't handled well this season, a solid theme that did emerge is the true ramifications of Rick's all-powerfulness - for him, for the people around him, and for the rest of the multiverse. This episode hammers that home with Rick using his magical sci-fi powers to fight the supposed leader of the free world and ending the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in his spare time. It's absurd, but it works. It holds up a lot better than last week's "The ABCs of Beth," at any rate.

This finale didn't make for a terribly funny episode. I laughed out loud in several spots but there was so much stuff going on that jokes often felt sidelined as "The Rickchurian Mortydate" got a bit preoccupied in expositing itself. This was mostly a very, very solid season, but this finale was a mad scramble to tidy up Beth and Jerry's divorce while Rick horsed around with the President.

Gosh, I can't believe this season is already over. I hope it's not quite so long until the next one. See you then! I'm gonna go fuck around and waste my life!

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Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 10 Review: The Rickchurian Mortydate

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This Rick and Morty review contains spoilers. Maybe it was the long wait before it returned, or maybe it's the fact that it feels like we only got nine episodes because one had already aired months previously, or maybe it's just that I was having such a gosh darn good time and time flies when etc., etc.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/movies/it-review-stephen-king.html
Caitlin Cook

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Claire Haugneland
http://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-review-1201939299/

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https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23113-the-search-for-everything/ Katie Potts

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Violet Jimenez

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The first stand-alone feature for the ageless princess of the Amazons places her in the midst of WWI, with Gal Gadot in the title role and Chris Pine as American spy Steve Trevor.

As the world's most well-adjusted superhero, Wonder Woman breaks the genre mold. She's openhearted, not angsty - an anomaly within the DC Universe, "extended" or otherwise. So, too, is her long-awaited foray into the live-action big-screen spotlight: that openheartedness makes the movie something of an outlier. Its relative lightness would set it apart even if it didn't arrive on the heels of the Sturm und Drang of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the 2016 feature that introduced Gal Gadot as the demigoddess who believes it's her sacred duty to rid the world of war.

Yet as with all comics-based extravaganzas, brevity is anathema to the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman, and it doesn't quite transcend the traits of franchise product as it checks off the list of action-fantasy requisites. But this origin story, with its direct and relatively uncluttered trajectory, offers a welcome change of pace from a superhero realm that's often overloaded with interconnections and cross-references. (A nod to Wayne Enterprises in the story's framing device serves as a fuss-free tie-in to the upcoming Justice League.)

Had it really broken the mold and come in below the two-hour mark, Wonder Woman could have been a thoroughly transporting film. As it stands, it's intermittently spot-on, particularly in the pops of humor and romance between the exotically kick-ass yet approachable Gadot and the supremely charismatic Chris Pine as an American working for British intelligence, the first man the Amazon princess has ever met. With eager fans unlikely to bemoan the film's length or its lapses in narrative energy, Wonder Woman will conquer their hearts as it makes its way around the globe.

Sticking to the basic setup of the early-'40s DC comics written by William Moulton Marston (who, notably, was inspired by first-wave feminists), Jenkins and screenwriter Allan Heinberg have moved the story's action from World War II to the First World War. It's a change that taps straight into the idea of a female warrior for peace confronting the world of men at its most destructive. During the so-called War to End All Wars, the technology of killing is at a new, terrible level of sophistication. Chemicals are the weapon of choice for the movie's baddies, a German general (Danny Huston) and a humanity-hating chemist, played by Elena Anaya (of Almodovar's The Skin I Live In), wearing a prosthetic device over half her face - evil genius comes with a price.

These villains, along with friendlier supporting characters, are drawn with a broad brush, but at the center of the film there's none of the cartoony kitsch of the Lynda Carter TV series. Gadot doesn't spin like a top to transform from Diana to Wonder Woman - and her skimpy getup is a more modest and dignified affair than Carter's cleavage-baring leotard and impractical high heels. One of the best sequences in the film involves Wonder Woman's selection of street clothes after she's left her island home and adopted the alias of Diana Prince. Shopping in London with the help of Steve's secretary, Etta (a wonderful Lucy Davis), she can't believe how constricting and impractical the froufrou frocks du jour are.

Throughout, Lindy Hemming's superb costume designs are in sync with production designer Aline Bonetto's vivid locales, contrasting the poetic, not-quite-real timelessness of Themyscira, the all-female isle where Diana was raised, with the prosaic reality of early-20th-century Europe, from cosmopolitan London to the provinces to the devastating chaos of the trenches. Matthew Jensen's cinematography heightens every shift, while the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams alternates between obvious emotional chords and enriching counterpoint.

By the time Steve Trevor (Pine) and his plane crash into the paradise of Themyscira, Diana has been trained to her utmost strength by her aunt, the great warrior Antiope (Robin Wright). Although those training sequences suffer from too much slicing and dicing, Jenkins captures Diana's progress from precocious 8-year-old (Lilly Aspell) to teen (Emily Carey) to young woman with admirable concision.

With their Greco-Esperanto accents, the women of the secret island might be refugees from a sword-and-sandal pic, except that they're led by Connie Nielsen's Queen Hippolyta and Wright as her sister: fierceness personified. The vision of them on horseback is perfectly right, and their clash of viewpoints over the need to prepare for the return of the war god Ares goes compellingly to the heart of the matter. The Germans who storm the beach soon after Steve's arrival push that argument out of the theoretical zone with their guns and bullets. The women's bow-and-arrow skills are formidable, but though they may be favored by Zeus, they're not invincible.

Though there are terrific sequences once Diana and Steve hit England and then the Continent, things get choppy and bogged down in plot machinations as they embark on their mission to destroy the weapons facility of the chemist Isabel Maru, aka Doctor Poison (Anaya). Steve, having stolen a crucial item from another lab, believes he can stop the war; Diana, armed with her shield, sword and Lasso of Truth, believes she can stop war, period. They get funds and support from a high-powered British politician (David Thewlis, playing the opposite end of the spectrum from his uber-villain in the current season of Fargo) and enlist a ragtag trio of mercenaries, strangely reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz: a besotted marksman (Ewen Bremner), Moroccan undercover operative (Said Taghmaoui) and Native American black marketeer (Eugene Brave Rock).

In just a few words of dialogue for the latter two characters, screenwriter Heinberg, a TV vet making his feature debut, works eye-opening social commentary on race into the female-empowerment mix. None of it is preachy or heavy-handed, and the sexual politics throughout the film are as playful as they are well-observed, with nicely underplayed chemistry between the two leads.

Having demonstrated her action chops in the Fast & Furious franchise, Gadot brings a graceful athleticism to the role of a superhuman determined to take down Ares himself. At the same time, she lends a sweetly comic innocence to Diana's amazed encounters with the civilized world. As a man dazzled by a fearless goddess, Pine delivers a less wide-eyed amazement. His performance is effortlessly roguish and wry, but he also ups the emotional ante, grounding the fight against evil as well as the fledgling romance with heart and soul.

Jenkins, who delved into very dark territory with 2003's Monster and the series The Killing, brings the doomy DC vibe down to earth from some of its more operatic reaches. But she indulges in a saga-capping, one-on-one showdown that turns into an endless conflagration and grows less coherent as it proceeds. Such obligatory "big" scenes don't completely undermine the winning mixture of drama, fantasy and comedy, but they aren't what you remember after Wonder Woman is over.

If Diana of Themyscira is a much-needed hero for our times, it's not because of her special-effects-laden fight moves. It's because of such offhand moments as the way she infiltrates a bad guy's soiree. Done up in one of those constricting frocks she doesn't understand, she nonetheless strides into the room with the focus of a warrior and the gait of a free woman. She's dressed for the part, but she's no fool for fashion.

Production companies: RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Tencent Pictures, Wanda Pictures, Atlas Entertainment, Cruel and Unusual
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, David Thewlis, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, Ewen Bremner, Lucy Davis, Saïd Taghmaoui, Eugene Brave Rock, Lilly Aspell, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Ann J. Wolfe, Ann Ogbomo, Emily Carey
Director: Patty Jenkins
Screenwriter: Allan Heinberg; story by Zack Snyder, Allan Heinberg, Jason Fuchs based on characters from DC
Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Zack Snyder, Richard Suckle
Executive producers: Stephen Jones, Geoff Johns, Jon Berg, Wesley Coller, Rebecca Steel Roven, Steven Mnuchin
Director of photography: Matthew Jensen
Production designer: Aline Bonetto
Costume designer: Lindy Hemming
Editor: Martin Walsh
Composer: Rupert Gregson-Williams
Visual effects supervisor: Bill Westenhofer
Casting: Lora Kennedy, Kristy Carlson, Lucinda Syson

Rated PG-13, 141 minutes

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As the world's most well-adjusted superhero, Wonder Woman breaks the genre mold. She's openhearted, not angsty - an anomaly within the DC Universe, "extended" or otherwise. So, too, is her long-awaited foray into the live-action big-screen spotlight: that openheartedness makes the movie something of an outlier.

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Kristen Grace Shuman

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THEATER REVIEW; There’s Trouble In Emerald City (Published 2003)

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Ben Brantley reviews musical Wicked, with music by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holtzman, directed by Joe Mantello; Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel star; photos (M)

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Frances Venditte

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- Matt and Trey: Where have you been all my life?

I know, I know: You've been indulging for years in a little scatological side business called "South Park." But now, you've discovered your true calling - as the wit-spewing class clowns of Broadway.

Along with Robert Lopez, one of the uproarious brains behind "Avenue Q," Matt Stone and Trey Parker have devised "The Book of Mormon," the pricelessly entertaining act of musical-comedy subversion that opened Thursday night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

The mighty O'Neill himself would have to have given it up for this extraordinarily well-crafted musical assault on all things holy. The marvel of "The Book of Mormon" is that even as it profanes some serious articles of faith, its spirit is anything but mean. The ardently devout and comedically challenged are sure to disagree. Anyone else should excitedly approach the altar of Parker, Stone and Lopez and expect to drink from a cup of some of the sweetest poison ever poured.

Among the evening's delights are four performances that intensify the delirium and are surely minting the actors as embryonic stars. The suavely self-parodying Andrew Rannells, a sort of crooning version of Ryan Reynolds, plays the central role of Mormon missionary Elder Price; Josh Gad, a turbo-powered comic engine, portrays his outwardly offensive partner in flock-expansion, Elder Cunningham.

Nikki M. James brings a becoming charm to the role of a yearning Ugandan villager, Nabulungi, and Rory O'Malley offers a delicious turn as Elder McKinley, a Mormon outreach worker with a hilarious recipe for dealing with his hangups.

The terrific first-act tap number O'Malley leads, "Turn it Off," is a paean to the glories of self-suppression - one of the givens about religious life and an aspect that is sent up again and again.

This song and many others, expertly choreographed by co-director Casey Nicholaw, bring to mind the screwball ministrations of Mel Brooks, whose consummate irreverence is clearly being summoned. That sense of anarchy is reflected most buoyantly in the person of the irresistible Gad, who, with his appealingly flailing mix of geek and hip, seems a close cousin to Jack Black.

"The Book of Mormon," though, is a more refined piece of musical theater than anything to come from Brooks's nutty pen, and oddly enough, it's more conventional, too. Yes, it has its truly coarse moments, as demonstrated by the participants (including Adolf Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer) of the second-act "Spooky Mormon Hell Dream."

Yet no matter how brazenly the writers question the precepts of Mormonism - and boy, do they ever make mincemeat of the religion's genesis - their respect for the traditions of the American musical borders on devotional.

That may be a function of the collaboration Parker and Stone forge with Lopez; the polish of "Avenue Q," a lampoon of the serenely plastic messages of children's television, is apparent in the sure-handed plotting and character development of "The Book of Mormon."

Unlike the self-conscious raucousness of the recent "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson," another musical aimed at 20- and 30-somethings, "Mormon" affectionately embraces Broadway's past. The piece is ultimately more effective as pop entertainment because it refreshes the old templates rather than viewing them as worn out.

The musical is a true fusion, too, of the cleverness laced with cruelty of "South Park" and "Avenue Q." "The Book of Mormon" is the buddy story of the mismatched elders, Price and Cunningham: The former is a golden boy of the church whose dream is to be assigned for his two years of compulsory missionary work to Orlando; the latter, an overbearing nerd who most vitally wants to know where you stand on the crucial issue of "Star Wars" versus "Star Trek."

A sharp prologue begins a thread of outrageous re-enactments of Mormonism's roots - and then follows a gleeful opening number, "Hello," that depicts the regimen of door-to- door proselytizing: "Hello, my name is Elder Price/And I would like to share with you the most amazing book!" Rannells chirps, as a chorus in white shirts, black slacks and laminated name tags chimes in with doorstep come-ons.

Rannells and Gad are chosen to be partners and assigned to a posting as far from Orlando as might be imaginable. Their shifting fortunes in a blighted, disease-racked corner of Uganda, where the denizens sing a deceptively sunny parody of "Hakuna Matata" from "The Lion King," become a running joke. It's the unlikelier of the pair who finds his calling in Africa.

It's easier, of course, not to feel stung by comedy when your background is not the one being gored. But even with the wallop of derision that Mormonism comes in for on this evening, the wider subject for ribbing is that almost unbearable brand of optimism Americans tend to want to impose on the rest of the world. "A Mormon just believes," Rannells's Price sings at one point, a lyric that also seems to hold true for a national mind-set, one that clings to a faith that American hearts always remain in the right place.

"The Book of Mormon" expresses a giddy contempt for that innocence, in one of the most joyously acidic bundles Broadway has unwrapped in years. (Applause, too, for set designer Scott Pask's gloomy rendering of an African village.) The sin it takes such fond aim at - blind faith - is one that this musical suggests observes no religious bounds.

The Book of Mormon

Book, music and lyrics by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone. Directed by Parker and Casey Nicholaw. Sets, Scott Pask; costumes, Ann Roth; lighting, Brian MacDevitt; sound, Brian Ronan; orchestrations, Larry Hochman; music director, Stephen Oremus; choreography, Nicholaw. With Michael Potts, Lewis Cleale. About 2½ hours. At Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St., New York. Visit www.telecharge.com or call 800-432-7250.

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Review of Broadway's 'The Book of Mormon'

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The marvel of "The Book of Mormon" is that even as it profanes some serious articles of faith, its spirit is anything but mean. The ardently devout and comedically challenged are sure to disagree. Anyone else should excitedly approach the altar of Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez and expect to drink from a cup of some of the sweetest poison ever poured.

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Robin Elliott

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With "Avatar" James Cameron has turned one man's dream of the movies into a trippy joy ride about the end of life - our moviegoing life included - as we know it. Several decades in the dreaming and more than four years in the actual making, the movie is a song to the natural world that was largely produced with software, an Emersonian exploration of the invisible world of the spirit filled with Cameronian rock 'em, sock 'em pulpy action. Created to conquer hearts, minds, history books and box-office records, the movie - one of the most expensive in history, the jungle drums thump - is glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.

The story behind the story, including a production budget estimated to top $230 million, and Mr. Cameron's future-shock ambitions for the medium have already begun to settle into myth (a process partly driven by the publicity, certainly). Every filmmaker is something of a visionary, just by virtue of the medium. But Mr. Cameron, who directed the megamelodrama "Titanic" and, more notably, several of the most influential science-fiction films of the past few decades ( "The Terminator," "Aliens" and "The Abyss"), is a filmmaker whose ambitions transcend a single movie or mere stories to embrace cinema as an art, as a social experience and a shamanistic ritual, one still capable of producing the big WOW.

The scale of his new movie, which brings you into a meticulous and brilliantly colored alien world for a fast 2 hours 46 minutes, factors into that wow. Its scope is evident in an early scene on a spaceship (the year is 2154), where the passengers, including a paraplegic ex-Marine, Jake (Sam Worthington, a gruffly sensitive heartthrob), are being roused from a yearslong sleep before landing on a distant inhabited moon, Pandora. Jake is woken by an attendant floating in zero gravity, one of many such aides. As Jake himself glides through the bright cavernous space, you know you're not in Kansas anymore, as someone soon quips (a nod to "The Wizard of Oz," Mr. Cameron's favorite film). You also know you're not in the gloom of "The Matrix."

Though it's easy to pigeonhole Mr. Cameron as a gear head who's more interested in cool tools (which here include 3-D), he is, with "Avatar," also making a credible attempt to create a paradigm shift in science-fiction cinema. Since it was first released in 1999, "The Matrix," which owes a large debt to Mr. Cameron's own science-fiction films as well as the literary subgenre of cyberpunk, has hung heavily over both SF and action filmmaking. Most films that crib from "The Matrix" tend to borrow only its slo-mo death waltzes and leather fetishism, keeping its nihilism while ditching the intellectual inquiries. Although "Avatar" delivers a late kick to the gut that might be seen as nihilistic (and how!), it is strangely utopian.

It doesn't take Jake long to feel the good vibes. Like Neo, the savior-hero of the "Matrix" series played by Keanu Reeves, Jake is himself an avatar because he's both a special being and an embodiment of an idea, namely that of the hero's journey. What initially makes Jake unusual is that he has been tapped to inhabit a part-alien, part-human body that he controls, like a puppeteer, from its head to its prehensile tail. Like the rest of the human visitors who've made camp on Pandora, he has signed on with a corporation that's intent on extracting a valuable if mysterious substance from the moon called unobtainium, a great whatsit that is an emblem of humanity's greed and folly. With his avatar, Jake will look just like one of the natives, the Na'vi, a new identity that gives the movie its plot turns and politics.

The first part of Jake's voyage - for this is, above all, a boy's rocking adventure, if one populated by the usual tough Cameron chicks - takes him from a wheelchair into a 10-foot, blue-skinned Na'vi body. At once familiar and pleasingly exotic, the humanoid Na'vi come with supermodel dimensions (slender hips, a miniature-apple rear); long articulated digits, the better to grip with; and the slanted eyes and twitchy ears of a cat. (The gently curved stripes that line their blue skin, the color of twilight, bring to mind the markings on mackerel tabby cats.) For Jake his avatar, which he hooks into through sensors while lying in a remote pod in a semiconscious state, is at first a giddy novelty and then a means to liberation.

Plugging into the avatar gives Jake an instant high, allowing him to run, leap and sift dirt through his toes, and freeing him from the constraints of his body. Although physically emancipated, he remains bound, contractually and existentially, to the base camp, where he works for the corporation's top scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine ( Sigourney Weaver, amused and amusing), even while taking orders from its head of security, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a military man turned warrior for hire. A cartoon of masculinity, Quaritch strides around barking orders like some intransigent representation of American military might (or a bossy movie director). It's a favorite Cameron type, and Mr. Lang, who until this year had long been grievously underemployed, tears into the role like a starved man gorging on steak.

Mr. Cameron lays out the fundamentals of the narrative efficiently, grabbing you at once with one eye-popping detail after another and on occasion almost losing you with some of the comically broad dialogue. He's a masterly storyteller if a rather less nimble prose writer. (He has sole script credit: this is personal filmmaking on an industrial scale.) Some of the clunkier lines ("Yeah, who's bad," Jake taunts a rhinolike creature he encounters) seem to have been written to placate those members of the Michael Bay demographic who might find themselves squirming at the story's touchier, feelier elements, its ardent environmentalism and sincere love story, all of which kick in once Jake meets Neytiri, a female Na'vi (Zoë Saldana, seen only in slinky Na'vi form).

Mr. Cameron has said that he started thinking about the alien universe that became Pandora and its galactic environs in "Avatar" back in the 1970s. He wrote a treatment in 1996, but the technologies he needed to turn his ideas into images didn't exist until recently. New digital technologies gave him the necessary tools, including performance capture, which translates an actor's physical movements into a computer-generated image (CGI). Until now, by far the most plausible character created in this manner has been slithery Gollum from Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" cycle. The exotic creatures in "Avatar," which include an astonishment of undulating, flying, twitching and galloping organisms, don't just crawl through the underbrush; they thunder and shriek, yip and hiss, pointy teeth gleaming.

The most important of these are the Na'vi, and while their movements can bring to mind old-fashioned stop-motion animation, their faces are a triumph of tech innovation, with tremors and twitches that make them immediately appealing and empathetic. By the time Neytiri ushers Jake into her world of wonders - a lush dreamscape filled with kaleidoscopic and bioluminescent flora and fauna, with pink jellyfishlike creatures that hang in the air and pleated orange flowers that snap shut like parasols - you are deep in the Na'vi-land. It's a world that looks as if it had been created by someone who's watched a lot of Jacques Cousteau television or, like Mr. Cameron, done a lot of diving. It's also familiar because, like John Smith in "The New World," Terrence Malick's retelling of the Pocahontas story, Jake has discovered Eden.

An Eden in three dimensions, that is. In keeping with his maximalist tendencies, Mr. Cameron has shot "Avatar" in 3-D (because many theaters are not equipped to show 3-D, the movie will also be shown in the usual 2), an experiment that serves his material beautifully. This isn't the 3-D of the 1950s or even contemporary films, those flicks that try to give you a virtual poke in the eye with flying spears. Rather Mr. Cameron uses 3-D to amplify the immersive experience of spectacle cinema. Instead of bringing you into the movie with the customary tricks, with a widescreen or even Imax image filled with sweeping landscapes and big action, he uses 3-D seemingly to close the space between the audience and the screen. He brings the movie to you.

After a few minutes the novelty of people and objects hovering above the row in front of you wears off, and you tend not to notice the 3-D, which speaks to the subtlety of its use and potential future applications. Mr. Cameron might like to play with high-tech gadgets, but he's an old-fashioned filmmaker at heart, and he wants us to get as lost in his fictional paradise as Jake eventually does. On the face of it there might seem something absurd about a movie that asks you to thrill to a natural world made almost entirely out of zeroes and ones (and that feeds you an anticorporate line in a corporately financed entertainment). But one of the pleasures of the movies is that they transport us, as Neytiri does with Jake, into imaginary realms, into Eden and over the rainbow to Oz.

If the story of a paradise found and potentially lost feels resonant, it's because "Avatar" is as much about our Earth as the universe that Mr. Cameron has invented. But the movie's truer meaning is in the audacity of its filmmaking.

Few films return us to the lost world of our first cinematic experiences, to that magical moment when movies really were bigger than life (instead of iPhone size), if only because we were children. Movies rarely carry us away, few even try. They entertain and instruct and sometimes enlighten. Some attempt to overwhelm us, but their efforts are usually a matter of volume. What's often missing is awe, something Mr. Cameron has, after an absence from Hollywood, returned to the screen with a vengeance. He hasn't changed cinema, but with blue people and pink blooms he has confirmed its wonder.

"Avatar" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Gun and explosive violence, death and despair.

AVATAR

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Written and directed by James Cameron; director of photography, Mauro Fiore; edited by Mr. Cameron, John Refoua and Stephen Rivkin; music by James Horner; visual effects supervisor, Joe Letteri; production designers, Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; produced by Mr. Cameron and Jon Landau; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 2 hours 46 minutes.

WITH: Sam Worthington (Jake Sully), Zoë Saldana (Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Grace Augustine), Stephen Lang (Col. Miles Quaritch), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacon), Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge), Joel David Moore (Norm), C C H Pounder (Mo'at), Wes Studi (Eytukan) and Laz Alonso (Tsu'Tey).

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James Cameron Creates a New World, Both Cosmic and Cinematic

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With "Avatar" James Cameron has turned one man's dream of the movies into a trippy joy ride about the end of life - our moviegoing life included - as we know it.

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Dylan Tucker

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Singer-songwriter Cody Johnson has been fighting to carve out a place for himself in country music for over a decade now, but with last week's release of his Gotta Be Me album, the rough-and-tumble traditionalist has staked his claim once and for all - and delivered another blow to the sagging major-label model of music delivery in the process.

For a little background, Johnson is a 29-year-old independent artist with six self-released albums under his belt. In the last two years, he has posted some seriously impressive numbers: His 2014 album Cowboy Like Me landed at Number Seven on the Billboard Country Albums chart, and since then his songs have been streamed over 80 million times. He's sold half a million concert tickets and moved 400,000 singles, all without widespread radio play or major label support.

That brings us to last Friday, when Gotta Be Me debuted at Number Two on the Billboard album chart, Number One on the iTunes Country Albums chart (where it stood like a boulder for seven straight days) and Number Two on iTunes' all-genre album list, selling more than 23,000 copies in a badly slumping market - again with no major-label backing.

Putting that into context, the week's top spot is occupied by megastar Blake Shelton, who discounted his If I'm Honest album to the basically-free price of 99 cents for the week and enjoys a massive pop-culture presence. Meanwhile, Johnson's full-price sales eclipse the first-week numbers posted this year by established talents such as Charles Kelley, Randy Houser and Martina McBride, among others.

At this point, mainstream country fans might be asking, "Who is this guy?", but Nashville's big labels are well aware of Cody Johnson. They expected Gotta Be Me to be huge, and more than one offered him a deal to help sell it, but Johnson turned them all down.

"I think it just felt right," he says about the decision to remain independent, calling Rolling Stone Country from his tour bus while cruising through Utah. "I went with my gut, and that's something I've done ever since my rodeo days. . . I wanted to show a different avenue of how to do this. I don't know that we're seeing that big change that some people might like, but I do see a changing of the tide of how things go. And I think enough people have been told 'no' that there's a group of us that are kind of putting our hats down and going ,'Well, fine. I'm just gonna chase this thing myself.'"

Johnson's grassroots following has been built through hard touring and authenticity (he really is a former rodeo rider who once held a job as a horseback prison guard), and he never set out to follow in the footsteps of recent DIY hit makers like Aaron Watson, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson. Like almost all artists, getting a major label deal was originally the goal. "Never in a million years did I think, 'Man, we're gonna get to that point, and we're gonna make the decision not to sign,'" he explains.

But by the time Johnson started attracting major label attention, he felt like there wasn't much a major could offer him. He already had an established his brand, his nationwide network of fans and a strong social media presence, and since most music is now sold digitally, more pathways to success are open.

With the support of his band and team (and after convincing his parents), Johnson decided to take a shot. But that shot wasn't aimed at the big league labels.

"This title, Gotta Be Me, and this whole independent artist thing is not a shot at, 'We can do this without you.' That's not what this is about," he cautions. "I respectfully declined those deals because I just felt like if I worked a little harder, and I reached out to the right people, that maybe I could help promote it myself. Maybe I could hire the right people to do some of the same things as a record label.

"I felt like if I hadn't tried to do this independently, I would have laid in bed every night for the rest of my life going, 'What if I had done it by myself?'" he says. "And I didn't want to live with that every day."

With the decision to stay independent made, the nail biting began. Johnson believed in himself, but he still worried that he had just led his team "off a ledge." He describes his thought process as "big bug/little bug" and says he wasn't necessarily trying to be the David to Music Row's Goliath, but that's exactly what happened.

Outperforming every single release (minus one discounted album) to become the week's second best-selling title, Gotta Be Me provides another round of evidence that major labels no longer hold the sway they once did over the music business. But does that mean they've become obsolete? Is dreaming of a major label deal overrated?

Johnson's not so sure.

"I don't want to say overrated," he explains. "I think for a guy like me in my position, they're an option, but what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander. I've got several friends that are on major label deals that love it. They're very happy, they have great lives, they're seeing the success that they want to have and they're treated very well. I'm not saying that any part of this industry is the devil. For me and the fan base that I brought in, and the amount of support we had and the people we had on our team, I just didn't feel like it was the right move to make."

With new opportunities popping up by the hour, it's now pretty clear that Johnson made the right move. What he does next will take some more planning and reflection, so for now the scrappy Texan is content to savor his victory - a big win for the "little bug" and another step into the future for country music.

"To see yourself on that chart with that many artists that you respect, I really can't put into words," he says graciously. "I all I can say is I give the glory to the good Lord upstairs. And I don't really know what to say about those numbers from the first week of album sales other than my favorite Thomas Edison quote, which is, 'There is no substitute for hard work.' That's what me, my band and my brand are about."

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Cody Johnson on Beating Music Row at Its Own Game

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Singer-songwriter Cody Johnson has been fighting to carve out a place for himself in country music for over a decade now, but with last week's release of his Gotta Be Me album, the rough-and-tumble traditionalist has staked his claim once and for all - and delivered another blow to the sagging major-label model of music delivery in the process.

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Few artists make the business of being in a hugely successful rock band seem as breezy and straightforward as Foo Fighters. In their world, there never seems to be much in the way of angst or agonising or artistic differences - three things frontman Dave Grohl presumably had enough of to last a lifetime while he was in Nirvana - just an endless succession of platinum albums, magazines featuring Grohl's face inevitably gurning good-naturedly from the cover and mammoth gigs, where their evident delight in playing live manifests itself in an inability to stop once they've started. There were moments during their headlining slot at this year's Glastonbury when it seemed as if the only way Michael Eavis was going to get them offstage was with the aid of a bulldozer.

And yet, their recent albums seem to have spoken, at least under their breath, of a certain kind of rock star ennui: the struggle to keep yourself interested when there's nothing else to struggle for, when your career has plateaued, albeit at an impressively high altitude. Back-to-basics recording sessions in a garage ( Wasting Light); touring America's most famous music cities and recording a song in each, with support from a celebrated local musician (2014's Sonic Highways): these are the kind of wheezes you might come up with were you plagued by the spectre of declining inspiration and diminishing returns, the creeping fear you may already have said all you have to say. They're obviously more ingenious ideas than the one bands in their position usually come up with, which involves gritting your teeth and insisting against all odds that your new album is the best you've ever made. But it all raises the question: what next?

Concrete and Gold originally came with another grand concept attached: the idea was to build a complete studio onstage at the Hollywood Bowl and record an album in one night in front of a 20,000-strong audience, a plan scuppered by PJ Harvey's decision to record last year's Hope Demolition Project in a glass box at Somerset House. Instead, the band have opted to work with pop producer Greg Kurstin, an unlikely choice: Grohl has recounted having to play Kurstin's most famous co-write, Adele's Hello, to nonplussed guitarist Pat Smear, who'd apparently never heard it before, a not-unimpressive feat in itself. The album's supporting cast, meanwhile, offers impressively eclectic testament to Grohl's famed ability as a networker - it includes Justin Timberlake, the Kills' Alison Mosshart and Shawn Stockman of 90s R&B sensations Boyz II Men.

Grohl has likened the end result to both "Motörhead's version of Sgt Pepper" and "Slayer making Pet Sounds". If that often seems even more hyperbolic than it's intended to be - as on Arrows or The Line, when Concrete and Gold sounds exactly like the Foo Fighters usual anthemic pop-rock, except with a few psychedelic effects thrown in - you occasionally take his point, or at least something like it. Run repeatedly flips between a lysergic expansiveness and raw-throated metal. The ghost not of Sgt Pepper but the White Album haunts both The Sky is a Neighbourhood and Happy Ever After (Zero Hour) - the former a kind of steroidal take on the taut, twilit sound of Happiness is a Warm Gun, the latter based around an acoustic guitar figure that recalls Mother Nature's Son - while there's a pleasure to be had listening to Sunday Rain, which features Paul McCartney drumming behind a song absolutely stuffed with knowingly McCartney-esque melodic twists and turns. The closing title track, meanwhile, attempts to weld the tumbling, harmony-laden euphoria of Pink Floyd's Eclipse to the Soviet state-funeral tempo of early Black Sabbath. It's a weird recipe that doesn't quite work - leaden euphoria is a tough thing to pull off - but it's indicative of an admirable urge to think a little outside of the box.

But the album's most improbable set of musical references turn up in the lyrics. The first time you hear the words "White House" in La Dee Dah, the obvious assumption is that it's a reference to the Trump presidency, which hangs, obliquely, over much of an album big on expressions of defiance and despair ("I just want sing a love song and pretend there's nothing wrong," offers opener T-Shirt). But no, it turns out Grohl means Whitehouse, the controversial power-electronics band of My Cock's On Fire and Shitfun fame. La Dee Dah is a curious pen portrait of the alienated teenage Grohl, lost in post-industrial music and its attendant antiheroes: it also namechecks Psychic TV, the Reverend Jim Jones and the profoundly rum, Nazi-obsessed Death in June.

This is clearly a deeply unlikely thing for a stadium rock album virtually guaranteed platinum sales to do, but for the most part, Concrete and Gold sees the Foo Fighters gently and enjoyably nudge at the boundaries of what they do, rather than crashing through them to new territory. It's an album that won't frighten the horses, but provides enough fresh interest to keep the band ticking over: for the Foo Fighters, you suspect, that means mission accomplished.

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Foo Fighters: Concrete and Gold review - Beatles versus Slayer in fight against mid-career blandness

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Few artists make the business of being in a hugely successful rock band seem as breezy and straightforward as Foo Fighters.

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Kapella Campbell (KC)

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Kanye West called The Life of Pablo a gospel album. But the new mixtape-LP from fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper (who had a major appearance on TLOP's "Ultralight Beam") truly lives up to that promise. Coloring Book is the richest hip hop album of 2016 so far. Gospel choirs are the backbone of the LP, rocketing skyward in the background the same way soul samples did on Kanye records, James Brown breaks did on Public Enemy records or disco interpolations did in the Sugar Hill catalog. Reaching back to the very beginning of black music in America, Chance recontextualizes one of the most enduring African-American art forms for 2016's most urgent one.

Coloring Book comes at a time when the biggest rap and R&B stars are looking deep into their musical and cultural heritage, a trend that's perhaps unsurprising in a country where policemen regularly get away with murder, a presidential candidate refuses to disown the KKK and the water in many American cities is poison. Most everything on Coloring Book seems to take on a spiritual hue: Even though "No Problem" is full of industry-bucking threats ("If one more label try to stop me/It's gon' be some dreadhead niggas in your lobby"), Chance is too busy milly-rocking over his blessings. He can paint a vivid picture of growing up in his beleaguered Chicago ("Bunch of tank-top, nappy-headed, bike-stealing Chatham boys/None of my niggas ain't had no dad/None of my niggas ain't have no choice"), but when New York alt-soul songwriter Francis and the Lights testifies through a vocoder and a prayer is given during the bridge, a bluesy dirge takes on an aura of warmth and hopefulness. D.R.A.M., the man behind the giddy viral hit "Cha Cha," comes by for a beautiful interlude somewhere between Sly Stone and Animal Collective with the chorus "Everyone is special."

While gospel icon Kirk Franklin plays hypeman, a choir sings one of the most important lines on the album: "Take me to your mountain/So someday Chicago will be free." Chance reports live from Chicago, a city with nearly 500 homicides last year and the real and terrifying possibility that local government tried to cover up the police shooting of black teenager Laquan MacDonald. As Chance says in the opening track, "This for the kids of the king of all kings."

And, as a rapper, Chance is everything we love about hip-hop in 2016. The convoluted and conscious-minded bars of Kendrick Lamar, the melodic gymnastics of Young Thug, the Oculus Rift ambitions of Kanye West. Mixing American music at its most vintage, today's most cutting-edge rhyming and the emotional vocoder music that symbolizes our future, this lush, powerful album attempts to move hip-hop past Planet Rock and into the Heavens.

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Chance the Rapper 'Coloring Book' Album Review

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Kanye West called The Life of Pablo a gospel album. But the new mixtape-LP from fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper (who had a major appearance on TLOP's "Ultralight Beam") truly lives up to that promise. Coloring Book is the richest hip hop album of 2016 so far.

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Kurt Elling: The Beautiful Day (album) Review

Karisma Mendoza

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Kurt Elling: The Beautiful Day jazz review by Dan Bilawsky, published on December 6, 2016. Find thousands reviews at All About Jazz!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/theater/dear-evan-hansen-review.html Kaci Jones

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/01/the-civil-wars-civil-wars-review -Rachel Perkins

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Dance Moms - Chloe Lukasiak National Solo "Soaring"

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5th Overall Contemporary Solo Season 4 Episode 31

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Cry Performed By: Madison Ziegler I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING ALL RIGHTS GO TO DANCE MOMS AND LIFETIME.

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Hip-Hop En Pointe: The Rhythm and Beat of Hiplet

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The dancers of the Chicago Multicultural Dance Center plié, pirouette and jeté to their own rhythm in a new form called Hiplet. The dance draws on both the movements of hip-hop and classical ballet technique and is performed on pointe shoes.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ2e-xT81JA

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Dance from Cinderella 2015 -Claire Haugneland 

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Dance from Cinderella 2015 -Claire Haugneland 

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https://youtu.be/2QGGbT5HGxY

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Barynya, Kamarinskaya, and many more represented.

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Государственный академический ансамбль народного танца имени Игоря Моисеева

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ГААНТ имени Игоря Моисеева. Фрагменты репетиций 15.04.17

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Государственный академический ансамбль народного танца имени Игоря Моисеева. Фрагменты репетиций: "Трио", "Чабаны", "Жок", "Яблочко", "Оберек", "Хоропо", "Гопак".

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X Ambassadors - UNSTEADY | Official Dance Video #LoveisLove

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Contemporary Dance

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Elliot Moss - "Without The Lights" (Official Video)

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Tony's 2011 Opening

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Neil Patrick Harris' 2011 Tony Awards Opening Number

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A Lovely Night - La La Land

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LA LA LAND - Official Film Clip [Lovely Night Dance] HD

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Neon Dancers

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World of Dance 2017 - Fik-Shun: The Cut (Full Performance)

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The Upper Division's Fik-Shun performs to Lukas Graham's "7 Years" in The Cut round of competition.

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World of Dance 2017 - Eva Igo: World Finals (Full Performance)

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Eva Igo chooses Sia's "Alive" for her second performance in World of Dance's World Final.

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Hip Hop done by Jade Chynoweth

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Tsar B - Escalate - Choreography by Alexander Chung - ft Jade Chynoweth - Filmed by @TimMilgram

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Tsar B - Escalate - Choreography by Alexander Chung Filmed by Tim Milgram Dancers: Jade Chynoweth, Haley Fitzgerald, Ashleigh Frost, Yumeri Chikada, Natalie "Nat Bat" Bebko, Bailey Sok, Alexander Chung, Noah Tratree, Jake Kodish Follow us: http://instagram.com/alexandernxg http://instagram.com/timmilgram BONUS GROUPS: https://instagram.com/p/BSCk4dTFenW https://instagram.com/p/BSCl4-MliN1 Subscribe to this channel ► http://bit.ly/2fbFda4 ►► For music and brand partnership inquiries: info@tmilly.com Visit us at: http://www.tmilly.com ~ a T.Milly Production ~

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https://youtu.be/gj0Rz-uP4Mk

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Tap-Morning Person-Shrek the Musical (skip to 1:50)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67rNUZ3gpJU
Morgan Dellow

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLhmHJ0LM0Y

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Feel It Still - Portugal. The Man

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Post an example of a piece of music- we analyze these in class as time allows.

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Island in the sun // Weezer

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Provided to YouTube by Sony Music Entertainment No Fun Alone · Mali Music No Fun Alone ℗ 2013 RCA Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment Released on: 2014-06-03 Composer, Lyricist: Kortney Pollard Composer, Lyricist, Producer: Jerry Duplessis Guitar: Paul Pesco Composer, Lyricist, Co- Producer: Arden Altino Drums: Obed Calvaire Composer, Lyricist, Co- Producer: Akene Dunkley Composer, Lyricist, Co- Producer: Olivier Castelli Recording Engineer: Koby Hass Mixing Engineer, Recording Engineer: Serge Tsai Assistant Engineer: Tyler Bunting Assistant Engineer: Sara Parks Assistant Engineer: Alex Pino Assistant Engineer: Travis Lovis Auto-generated by YouTube.