THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409130562
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: INTERVIEWS BY TERESA ANNAS
LENGTH: Long : 192 lines
Melody Ruffin Ward
A dancer-choreographer, Ward, 33, has been teaching dance at Old Dominion University since 1991. She has created dances for ODU students each year. This fall, she is setting a new work on herself. She performs Oct. 6-8 at University Theater.
One of the things about my work: It really pulls from a deep emotional place. I can't always clarify what that emotional place is. It's really important for me that my work really touch the heart of something.
The work is not always visually attractive. It doesn't always tell an obvious story.
But I think it calls on the audience member to bring a lot of himself or herself to the piece. That's what makes modern dance modern dance. It asks the audience to bring something to it. So, to some degree, you are participating in the dance.
For the last four years, I have been making so much group work, which I love. That's where my heart is.
But I knew I had to explore and play with Melody. I felt I need to go back to the basics. That's probably the most difficult thing for an artist to do. I thought it would help me to create a solo on myself.
The inspiration came out of two places, actually. This semester I am teaching a new course, on African-Americans in the world of dance. I did the research over the last year.
I realized there was this world of information about my people in the arts that went beyond dance. I looked at visual arts and listened to the blues traditions.
Over the summer, I fell in love with two wonderful women. One was (author) Zora Neale Hurston. I found myself getting close to some of the things she is about. I also fell in love with Nina Simone. She's a black blues and jazz singer who is back on the scene.
Most of the inspiration for my dance comes from what it feels like to be a black female in this world today. And all the feelings that come with that.
For me, at last, as a choreographer and a dancer, this is a reawakening. It's a way of reevaluating my priorities.
I'm actually setting it to Brahms. Isn't that the last thing you would expect? I don't know how it looks yet. I'm still working on it. I think it's soft, yet affirming. But there's a little bit of power behind it.
The last time I danced a solo piece was four years ago. Fear comes to mind. All you have up there is you. There is no storyline, per se, in the dance that people will read immediately. So I'm working very hard, as hard as I can, to make the images very clear.
Peter Paul Connolly
Connolly's first major solo show opens in November at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News. Entirely self-taught, the 30-year-old Yorktown artist has been making his living from art sales since 1991. His choice of media is unusual: he paints on glass.
The show is called ``Cabin Fever.'' I'm not sure why I'm doing this show. I guess I just feel compelled.
I moved in a cabin in Kent County in 1990. And I found this stack of photographs.
When I found them, I didn't think much of it. Looking at them later, I felt they conveyed this love. It became apparent that there was some kind of affair between her and this guy. They're older. I think she was like 60 and he looks about the same age. The photos appear to be from the late '60s and early '70s.
There's a lot of pictures inside the cabin and out around the cabin. Also, there are a lot of pictures of different hotels. They might be inside a hotel room, having a good old time getting ready to go out for the evening.
A lot of hotel room shots. On the back of the picture, it'll say Roanoke or Waynesboro or Staunton. There's some photographs of them out and about, just touring around.
The more intense part of it: There's a bunch of photos where she'll set up, in the cabin, a photo of him. And she'll put a photo of herself by it, and then set up an arrangement of flowers. And take a photo of that.
I call them her shrines. She made little shrines to them.
What I'm speculating is that they loved each other. But it seems like they can't really be together. There's some things written on the back: So many days without you.
Sometimes she'll write, Remember when? and write the date. That's why I kind of guess it was an affair. Sometimes it's happy. Sometimes it seems melancholy.
It's a little slice of life.
What I am doing is pretty much painting the photographs. There are about 50 photographs and I'm going to do at least 20. Right now, I'm starting the eighth painting. Until November, I'm full time on this show.
Mainly I paint on glass. And mainly windows, as opposed to storebought glass. I like windows because they have built-in character. What I like and what I hate about painting on glass is that it's out of control, which forces me to have the finished product looking kind of loose.
I'm trying to give the paintings the muted, faded color of these old photographs. It's not going to be complete photorealism. It'll still have that fluidity, that looseness I like.
It's kind of wierd making these once very private photos public. I want it to come across with sensitivity - and respect.
Edward Morgan
Scripts by this 35-year-old Virginia Beach playwright will be presented in many corners of Hampton Roads this season. On Friday, Morgan's new musical ``The Last Ride of the Bold Calhouns'' opens at the Generic Theater. In November, ``Burning Azaleas'' - a provocative drama set in Norfolk - premieres at Old Dominion University. He's also written a play for Young Audiences about caring for the environment that area schoolchildren will see.
I have primarily been making my living as a director. But I'm writing more and more. And acting is something I continue to do.
I have resisted specialization. This fall is a good example.
The two plays I'm having done in Norfolk could hardly be more different. The primary purpose of ``Bold Calhouns'' is to entertain. I see it as the culmination of my using traditional folk music with theater. Also mixed in is my love for 19th century theater and for westerns.
It's the coming-of-age story of a well-to-do woman from Kansas City who wants to be an actress. I'm also in it, and I'm directing it. I play the banjo-ukelele and some bones, and I sing.
I've been working on ``Burning Azaleas'' since the spring. I was commissioned (by ODU) to write a play, and given complete freedom, regardless of commercial concerns. So I felt I could really take on a challenge.
This play is an attempt to address some of the issues relevant to Hampton Roads and right now. Changes going on in the economy and in the military, and all kinds of questions of responsibility.
It is set in the spring of 1992, just after the Gulf War. It centers on a young woman whose father is a Vietnam veteran, somewhat dysfunctional. Her uncle is a captain at Norfolk Naval Air Station.
She ends up going to live with her uncle in Norfolk. However, she's been pretty radicalized by her father. In the midst of an Azalea Festival air show, she throws blood on an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet, as a protest. It compromises her uncle considerably. And the conflict escalates from there.
I imagine the play may alarm or offend some people. I'm certainly not trying to sell any particular political dogma, but to raise questions and provoke debate about the relationship of the military and our economy. And about peace activism and the media and parental responsibility and mental health.
I've finished the second draft. But it's still way too early for me to know if it's any good. I have no objectivity at all.
It's got to be a powerful experience. If it's not, it'll just be a bunch of ideas flying around. If it touches nerves, then it's theater.
Thea Musgrave
Musgrave, 66, is a renowned composer of operas and orchestral and chamber works. She lives in Norfolk with her husband Peter Mark, artistic and general director of Virginia Opera, which premieres Musgrave's latest opera in January. Commissioned by the Los Angeles Music Center Opera and Scottish Opera, ``Simon Bolivar'' is based on the life of the great 19th century South American revolutionary leader.
The researching and writing of the libretto and the composing was done a year and a half ago. But the process is not complete until the performance.
The process of putting a new composition into an opera house or concert hall is one that excites me greatly. I love working with performers, with singers. And, in the case of opera, with the design team. Very exciting.
It demands different skills, really. They're doing their normal thing. What's different is they are creating a work. So there's no standard.
If you go in to do a ``Traviata,'' you have a bunch of recordings and a lot of people who know the work. And there's a lot of tradition in a work that is one hundred years old.
With a brand new work there is no tradition.
You know, when you write an opera, I feel you have to find a subject that is almost larger than life. Whether it's fact or fiction, it has to be good theater. And to make good theater, you do need good confrontation. A good, strong viewpoint. Not simplistic, but with differing viewpoints that are dramatized in such a way that people are drawn into these arguments.
The added difficulty for a historical subject is you can't invent the basic facts. You're sort of restricted. With (her 1985 opera on) ``Harriet Tubman,'' it would have been theatrically easier if she'd been killed off.
But she didn't die. Not that that makes her any less valiant. But I had to find another solution to make the end of ``Harriet'' not a letdown, and not too easy.
Well, Bolivar did die. But I didn't want the end to be a complete downer. So, something else happens. I'm not telling what.
The idea is that somebody with that grand of a vision can reach someone way after their lifetime. And the tale of Bolivar continues in our time.
Ultimately, he was not only the liberator of the northwestern part of South America. He also wanted to unify.
If you unify, you have to give up some of your own individual turf for the good of the group - whatever the group is. And that didn't work out.
And that's something we have to consider today, whether it's between two people or two countries. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MOTOYA NAKAMURA
CHRIS MARTINEZ
JIM WALKER/Staff
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEWS ARTS by CNB