Tag: Tap

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Politics

Biden to faucet Nicholas Burns ambassador to China, Rahm Emanuel to Japan

Biden to tap Nicholas Burns ambassador to China, Rahm Emanuel to Japan

Nicholas Burns

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden announced on Friday his intention to appoint a career diplomat and former US ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, as his ambassador to China.

The president also announced that Rahm Emanuel, the former two-term mayor of Chicago, will be nominated as his ambassador to Japan.

Both announcements have been eagerly awaited, and once officially nominated, both Burns and Emanuel are expected to be ratified by the Senate.

Burns is one of America’s most skilled and respected diplomats, serving both Republicans and Democrats for more than 25 years. He was ambassador to Greece in the Clinton administration, ambassador to NATO in the George W. Bush administration and from 2005 to 2008 undersecretary of state for political affairs.

With the Biden administration making economic and geopolitical competition with China the cornerstone of its broader foreign policy, Burns would be the spearhead as ambassador.

He would likely undertake the double duty of implementing policies deeply unpopular with his Chinese hosts while maintaining a warm working relationship.

The White House has signaled that it will seek a relationship with Beijing that, in some ways, reflects Washington’s strategy towards the Kremlin.

While Russia and the United States are adversaries on almost all fronts, senior diplomats in both countries maintain specific areas of cooperation on issues where cooperation is in their mutual interest, such as nuclear arms control.

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Such a model could be applied to US-China relations, with collaboration on issues such as North Korea and climate change.

In contrast to Burns, Emanuel is neither a professional diplomat nor a Japan expert.

As former White House Chief of Staff to then President Barack Obama and previously an Illinois Congressman, Emanuel has close ties with several of the top figures in the Biden White House, including current White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.

However, within the broader Democratic Party, Emanuel is a polarizing figure.

As a centrist on issues such as immigration and health care, Emanuel has drawn the wrath of progressives in Congress since the early days of the Obama administration.

But it was his time as Mayor of Chicago that nearly ruined any chance Emanuel had to join the Biden administration.

As mayor, Emanuel has been heavily criticized for refusing to post police dashcam footage for more than a year after the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who was shot 16 times by a police officer who alleged , McDonald pounced on him.

The footage of that shooting showed that McDonald was actually turned away by the policeman when the policeman shot him. McDonald collapsed on the first shot, but the officer didn’t stop; he fired another 15 shots at McDonald while the teenager was on the ground.

Emanuel claimed he never saw the video, which clearly showed the Chicago police’s version of the events was a lie.

Emails later revealed that Emanuel’s closest mayor’s aide knew early on that the police story did not match the footage.

Emanuel’s nomination as Biden’s ambassador to Japan is a blow to the progressives who fought against him.

But as with any ambassador, it is Emanuel’s personal friendship with Biden and other senior White House officials that is most important to the Japanese government.

In this regard, Tokyo is no different from any other foreign capital: a US ambassador is only as good as the time it takes to get the president on the phone.

Categories
Entertainment

Assessment: Invoice Robinson’s Rags-to-Riches Faucet Story

Review: Bill Robinson’s Rags-to-Riches Tap Tale

Every year, National Tap Dance Day is celebrated on or around May 25 — the birthday of Bill Robinson, the most prominent Black tap dancer of the first half of the 20th century. Seldom, though, do Tap Day events honor Robinson himself.

Since 2018, three of the contemporary scene’s most prominent tap dancers — Derick K. Grant, Jason Samuels Smith and Dormeshia — have been celebrating Tap Day in Harlem with a festival they call Tap Family Reunion, a few days of classes and a show they collectively choreograph and direct. This year, it’s all virtual, and the show, presented for the first time by the Joyce Theater, is streaming on demand on the theater’s website through June 3.

This one is about Robinson. It’s called “The Mayor of Harlem,” after the honorary title that Robinson earned as an informal philanthropist in his neighborhood: appearing at countless benefit performances, covering back rent and bail. It tells his rags-to-riches story.

Or, really, it tells a rags-to-riches story that could almost be anyone’s. Maurice Chestnut, as Robinson, adds some routine narration to danced scenes of the train ride to the city, the big break, the Hollywood years. The familiar structure is essentially scaffolding for a series of period-style dance numbers.

Fortunately, Chestnut is an excellent dancer. Unlike Robinson, though, he’s not much of an entertainer, and his letter-but-not-the-spirit version of Robinson’s signature staircase dance, performed on a squashed version of the staircase, has itself a squashed quality. In place of Robinson’s starched erectness and ease, Chestnut is coiled like a boxer. Later, when he drops the imitation and lowers his heels into his own more free-flowing style, it’s a release and a relief — a high point of the show.

But Chestnut doesn’t have to carry “Mayor of Harlem” alone. Along with an able jazz quartet led by the trumpeter Ryan Stanbury, the show features a six-member ensemble that actually handles most of the dancing — a tap chorus significantly more skilled and sophisticated, technically and rhythmically, than usually found on Broadway stages, when Broadway was open.

With its skilled hoofers and rote dramaturgy, “Mayor of Harlem” is nice but not so interesting, except in two respects. The first is its attitude toward Robinson. In the 1996 Broadway musical “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk” — the seminal production in the youth of the directors of “Tap Family Reunion,” a show in which they performed and which taught them tap history — Robinson was portrayed as a race traitor and sellout, a figure named Uncle Huck-a-Buck.

The program for “The Mayor of Harlem” calls him “a man who made the best of circumstances.” His Hollywood years with Shirley Temple are presented blankly, without comment, but then, out of nowhere, the ensemble dances angrily in front of a stock slide show of Black protest and they and Chestnut raise Black Power fists as a voice-over tells us that Robinson was “one of the greatest champions of justice and equality this country has ever seen.”

There are missed opportunities here, since Robinson’s biography contains relevant evidence — like the time he was stopping a mugging and was shot by a white policeman. A more serious treatment of Robinson would consider his complexity and the conflicted views of him — how, for example, many of those benefit performances were for police charities.

This isn’t that kind of show, but it is important in another way. Tap chorus dancing is a neglected tradition, and “The Mayor of Harlem” is really about the ensemble, as all Tap Family Reunion productions have been. The focus on the chorus can have the somewhat deadening effect of treating background as foreground. This show is most exciting when a member of the chorus breaks out, as when Amanda Castro impressively incarnates Jeni LeGon in the Robinson-LeGon number from the 1936 film “Hooray for Love.” It could be the birth of a star.

But an art form isn’t only its stars. As much as I might miss the appearance of Grant, Smith and Dormeshia in front of the curtain — canceling out a production’s weaknesses with their brilliance, as Robinson did — they caught the importance of their behind-the-scenes work in the title of their first Tap Family Reunion show, “Raising the Bar.”

The Mayor of Harlem

Through June 3, joyce.org.

Categories
Entertainment

Assessment: Reveling within the Faucet Magic of Ayodele Casel

Review: Reveling in the Tap Magic of Ayodele Casel

Generosity is an overlooked virtue of a dancer, but shouldn’t it be as valuable as raw talent? It enlivens a stage where a performer is dancing, not only for the audience but also for those who share it. I’ve always known that Ayodele Casel, a tap dancer and choreographer of exceptional depth, was that type of artist, but it took a pandemic to drive her home. Who can bring the stage to life like Casel? And who can bring a virtual work to life as if you were there in person? She is amazing.

“Ayodele Casel: Chasing Magic” is a solemn portrayal of artistic encounters: how after a lost year they stay exactly where you left them.

Polished in look and spontaneous to the touch, this virtual production, presented by the Joyce Theater, focuses on Casel who surrounds herself with a variety of staff including modern day choreographer Ronald K. Brown, jazz musician Arturo O’Farrill and the drummer Senfu Stoney. It is a journey – of music and dance – on which Casel brings musicality and nimble feet to every stop along the way.

Directed by Torya Beard, who keeps the show moving wonderfully while recognizing the right spots to slow down and pause, “Chasing Magic” was shot in Kurt by Kurt Csolak, a tap dancer and filmmaker. There is no sad sentimentality that has shaped other virtual presentations here and elsewhere. The theater has never looked so fresh and promising.

The program unfolds in chapters, starting with “gratitude”. Here Casel reveals a premiere with Annastasia Victory on the piano, “Ain’t Nothin ‘Like It”. At first we see Casel’s upper body and only hear soft knocking and brushing on the wooden board; but soon the camera pans to show her whole body – small but strong, sharp and yet fluid.

Casel is more than a container of sounds, as articulated as her emphatic feet; As the music gains momentum and momentum, it uses its entire self – a self full of vibrations – to soften and deepen the pitch and tone.

As we step into the landscapes of “Friendship” and “Joy” there are older works including two collaborations with tap dancer Anthony Morigerato that include recordings of “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Cheek to Cheek”. If you watch the dancers together, you will see two highly sensitive instruments in play. Morigerato jumps lightly across the floor with stocky grace in footwork that braids and opens his feet; In “Fly Me” it culminates in a solo with a devilish twist. While Casel fixed on his feet with joy. She can’t stop smiling, but then again, she never stops smiling. That’s the way it is. And it’s contagious.

Two other dancers, Naomi Funaki and John Manzari, play with Casel and Morigerato in a bubbly quartet playing O’Farrill’s arrangement of “Caravan”: it’s like watching the most incredible band – tight enough to play loosely. But the connection between O’Farrill’s music and Casel’s dance, as seen on her 2019 Joyce debut, is the next level. In “Chasing Magic” they meet again, first for a short conversation in which they talk about what it is like when they perform together.

“When I think of magical moments,” says Casel, “it’s like this complete belief and trust that everything that will be will be.”

In “The Sandbox”, in which O’Farrill plays the piano and Casel dances in front of him, the balance between groove and lightness becomes almost feverish as the tempo of both becomes faster and Casel’s dance takes on a blistering intensity. Meanwhile, the camera moves around them, showing different angles and perspectives of the theater itself – revealing it and also worships it as a container of magic.

As the program progresses, Casel opens the stage to more guests, including Brown, a choreographer known for his poetic amalgamation of contemporary dance moves rooted in African traditions, including West African and Afro-Cuban dance. In “Meeting Place: Draft 1” Brown in head-to-toe white including his sneakers and Casel – later together with Funaki and Manzari – seem to absorb and energize parts of each other while they dance, his body sways and sways like waves made of silk. It is lineage and rhythm, the past and the present that come together in what one hopes will be the beginning of a greater collaboration.

In “The Magic,” singer-songwriter Crystal Monee Hall plays the theme song while the camera flashes at all of the cast and finally the dancers, including Amanda Castro, are spread across the stage for a rousing, joyful finale that spices up the floor with brisk knocks in unison.

When it’s all over, you don’t know exactly what happened: Casel’s theater brand feels real even from a distance. She leaves a farewell note as an homage to all artists who danced in basements, corners of a room, garages, on roofs, 2 x 4 and 4 x 4 pieces of wood. We are superheroes. Pa’lante! Typing is magic. “

And Casel too. Did you know your picture will be on a stamp this summer? Get to know you. She doesn’t have to chase magic. It chases them.

Ayodele Casel: Chasing Magic

Until April 21st on JoyceStream; joyce.org.