THURSDAY 11/17
HistoryLink.org
Twenty-one 21-year-olds celebrate the Century 21 Exhibition . . . get it?
Marty Sohl
LINES dancer Meredith Webster.
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Stage: Law & Disorder
The conventional assumption is that live theater is an immediate, in-your-face experience, while film and television are mediated and distant. The performance work of New York's visiting Temporary Distortion troupe turns those ideas around. In their world, film and video peer into all the corners of our emotional landscape. Live actors often stand isolated in Plexiglas closets, interacting with films, just one element in an elaborate multiscreen construction. Stationary and surrounded by moving images, these performers speak their lines as if in a phone booth, while their onscreen counterparts live in a larger world. Their work often draws from classic film genres, and Americana Kamikaze, a riff on Japanese horror films, is available through OntheBoards.tv. Making its U.S. premiere, Newyorkland is inspired by tough cop movies from the '70s (think of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection) and TV police procedurals. No surprise that director Kenneth Collins is the son of a policeman and scenographer William Cusick has worked on Law & Order. (Through Sun.) On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 217-9888, ontheboards.org. $25. 8 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ
Dance: Points of Access
Alonzo King's San Francisco–based LINES Ballet has a name that shortchanges its work. King's choreography displays mind-blowing feats of flexibility and technique, yet he crafts far more than just impressive body lines. He fuses multicultural dance with classical ballet, and his hybrid vision includes the musicality and movement quality of non-technical dance. The results are nuanced shapes, risky partner work, and heavily contrasted movement themes. As part of the UW World Series, the LINES company will perform Dust and Light and Scheherazade, both relatively recent works from 2009. The former features impeccable flow and creature-like floor work, set to an equally exquisite baroque soundtrack. Scheherazade showcases innovative point work that could make even a prima ballerina tilt her head in fascination. King's choreography is daring while still accessible, making this a great show to attend for dancers and non-dancers alike. (Through Sat.) Meany Hall (UW campus), 543-4880, uwworldseries.org. $20–$41. 8 p.m. AARON GORDON
FRIDAY 11/18
Film: Acts of Devotion
Tormented by suspicious parishioners and his own spiritual anguish, the young cleric (Claude Laydu) in Robert Bresson's 1951 Diary of a Country Priest lives on stale bread soaked in wine, burning the candle of his devotion at both ends as he becomes unduly involved with the domestic drama unfolding at the local château. Bresson's movie is almost as demanding in its purity as the priest. The film is experiential: The priest's suffering is not to be explained but lived, and the action is explicated by his voice-over narration, punctuated by shots of his journal entries as they're being written. Its every sound and image unobtrusively precise, Diary is a movie of emphatic understatement: contemplative yet abrupt, eloquent and blunt, oblique but lucid. The priest is a contradictory personality—self-effacing, willful, and honest to a fault in his attempt to save the château's mistress (the movie's only professional actress) from a despair he recognizes all too well in himself. Few artists since the Renaissance have so convincingly wed the aesthetic to the spiritual. Diary's final shot makes its allegory absolutely apparent even as the priest's last words—"All is grace"—suggest cinema itself is the holy sacrament. (Through Sun.) Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $6–$9. 7 & 9:15 p.m. J. HOBERMAN
SATURDAY 11/19
Books: Space-Age Can-Do
The Space Needle, Elvis, the Monorail, the Bubbleator at the Food Circus . . . there was even a nightclub with feathered and occasionally topless showgirls (!) on the Seattle Center campus, which was specially cleared and created for our city's grandest postwar celebration. Part of the charm of flipping through historians Paula Becker and Alan Stein's The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World's Fair and Its Legacy(HistoryLink.org, $39.95) is the nostalgia, but there's also a bit of a rebuke in its futuristic, optimistic pages. 1962 was a time when we built things, when we got things done. Boeing jetliners, the new I-5 freeway, a second bridge across the lake—we didn't suffer from political gridlock or debates about stimulus spending and deficits. The looming 50th anniversary coincides, too, with the current Mad Men chic, a longing for JFK-era glamour and political certainty. And such ambition! The Century 21 Exhibition, as it was called, had a space-age theme, since the Russians had already beaten us into orbit and Boeing was becoming a major player in the aerospace industry. And the visitors—Igor Stravinsky and Van Cliburn, Nixon and RFK, Dennis the Menace and Nat King Cole! Seattle craved, and got, the recognition that its boosters and government officials believed would bring more tourists and trade. But in truth, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon would've probably happened without it, and the money-losing Seattle Center itself has proven a white elephant despite a half-dozen redevelopment schemes. Today, can you imagine anyone proposing another World's Fair in Seattle? Where we'd have to condemn properties and issue bonds? And the traffic? Not a chance. Today, Becker and Stein will discuss and show images from their book; the library is also opening a special exhibit, Space Ages: A History of the Century 21 Exposition Grounds, which runs through next September. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. 1 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
