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by Nina Beckwith FEATURED UCSF ARTIST | NINA'S ARTS NOTES 1st appeared 1 June 1998 Karen Attix: Art and Gardening Karen Attix seems to have been destined to cultivate the arts at UCSF.
Climbing Parnassus to the campus 12 years ago was certainly no physical feat for Attix. She came from a successful career as a professional dancer and she has kept in shape as a skier, hiker and mountaineer -- an athlete who has recently become an accomplished practitioner of Martial Arts. What delighted her and still does was finding among UCSF scientists and staffers the same kind of intensely dedicated intellects and talents she had known in the arts world, and helping to enlarge the UCSF arts landscape. As manager of UCSF's Arts and Performances (formerly the Committee on Arts and Lectures), Attix has fostered such enterprises as the prestigious UCSF Orchestra, founded in l990 by Jonathan Davis, its first conductor; the Piano Group; the Annual UCSF Art Show, in which over 40 artists took part this year; singing groups such as the Gospel Choir and Vocal Chords; the Shakespeare Group; Poets on Parnassus; and the Parnassus Players ("I hope they will re-emerge," she says, "they did some really good plays.") Arts & Performances also runs the Cole Hall movie series as well as staging major events like the UCSF Night at the Legion of Honor. Last year, they merged with EMPACT to form a staff of seven people who also put out the campus activities newsletter and a raft of information and services to benefit the campus community. If there were more venues on campus, the group would be able to organize more events, so they look to Mission Bay for new opportunities. While growing up in the Berkeley and the Oakland hills, Karen Attix was torn between wanting to dance, which she began to do at age three, and wanting to study, especially anthropology. Her classical ballet training continued at the University of Utah, where the Christensen brothers who founded San Francisco Ballet had come from, and where Attix discovered modern dance. "I found that I didn't have the real strength for a lot of dancing on the tip of the foot," she says, "my toes were bleeding constantly -- and then I saw modern dance, saw great dancers like JosŽ Limon and my idol, Merce Cunningham: no toes, no shoes. I found new freedom in barefoot dancing, very much like Isadora. But ballet is the indispensable foundation." Then came the Vietnam War. Attix had married her high school sweetheart and both went into the Peace Corps, living and working for two years with the Maracucho people of coastal Venezuela. Back in the US, after taking her degree in anthropology at Cal Berkeley, Attix and husband Don headed for New York, the dancer's mecca. He joined United Airlines and she went on with daily classes, building her strength until she was accepted into Merce Cunningham's company. For two years she performed and toured "and then I faced another turning point," she recalls. "I wanted to go on with Merce but my husband wanted to go back to California and something buried within me said I belonged here, too." Back home, Attix was admitted to the Affiliate Artists program, which sponsored many young performers, and created her own solo touring dance show. In San Francisco she was part of the emerging dance scene which included Margaret Jenkins and Brenda Way and K T Nelson of ODC, and she was a founding member of Circuit arts management organization. "It all came to fruition here at UCSF, "she says. "The artistic talent is here and it springs up, just like bulbs pushing up in a garden. And that's my job: not to smother, not to bureaucrat it to death, just to garden the wealth that's here, fertilize, nurture, transplant. It's very challenging, and sometimes heartbreaking." Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! SF Symphony's Mahler Celebration starts June 12. Some concerts sold out. Mahler's music is such a tremendous experience it may change your life. Phone charge: 864-6000; Fax: 554-0108. * * * * * Dancing Downtown '98 ODC/San Francisco, our own innovative, exciting dance company, returns from a highly successful tour of Switzerland to celebrate its 27th anniversary with a Spring Season June 4 through 14 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Both of Dancing Downtown's two programs feature a world premiere by ODC founder and artistic director Brenda Way, the witty and elegant Garden Tour: a history of the world in draft, danced by the full company. Program A also includes Way's Weird Weather; Whistle and Spit (also a world premiere) by Way in collaboration with ODC's popular K T Nelson (in her last dancing season,) as well as K T's own On the Loose. (June 4, 5, 13, 14) On Program B are K T Nelson's Below the Rim and Brenda Way's Garden Tour, John Somebody, and The Laundry Cycle: The Long and the Short. (June 6, 7, 11, 12) ODC makes its home in the heart of the Mission District, very near UCSF's Mission Center. The company has toured five continents and has been acclaimed everywhere for its virtuoso technique and its high-spirited originality. Yerba Buena Center is at 700 Howard Street, near Moscone Center and just across Third Street from the Museum of Modern Art, convenient to BART and several MUNI lines. Yerba Buena Theater is very comfortable and ideal for dance, with good sightlines from every seat. Tickets $9-$28; Charge by phone 978-2787. * * * * * Shakespeare anyone? The downfall of a grasping, self-deluded king is told in penetrating insights and haunting verse in Shakespeare's Richard II, the next play to be explored by UCSF's Shakespeare Reading/Discussion Group. Meeting is on Tuesday, June 2 at 7 p.m. in Millberry Union Room 244. Richard II sets forth some of the Bard's
deepest thoughts about the uses and abuses of power, and the heavy responsibilities of
rulers, along with many gems of Shakespearean wisdom -- "For gnarling sorrow hath
less power to bite Organizer Elisabeth Zurlinden (476-5111) says the Shakespeare Group wants everyone to jump in with opinions, questions, "anything you like," and she adds, "arguments are encouraged." Anyone interested who has read the play is welcome to come. Bring food or drink to share. * * * * * The Femmes are Coming Upcoming big music weeks start with the first of SF Opera's Femmes Fatales Festival productions, Alban Berg's Lulu, opening June 6, with four more performances June 9, 19, 23, 28. Lulu hasn't been seen at the War Memorial since l989 and this is the same sensational production, staged by Lotfi Mansouri, SF Opera's general director. Hollywood designer Bob Mackie has updated his headline-grabbing costumes and there is a new dangerous, mysterious Lulu, soprano Eilana Lappalainen, with the great mezzo Frederica von Stade as the devoted Countess Geschwitz. Baritone Tom Fox sings the dual roles of Lulu's husband, Dr Schšn and Jack the Ripper (get an idea of this opera from that?). SF Conservatory of Music lecturer Paul Thomason gives informative talks on the opera for ticket holders an hour before the performances of June 9, 19 and 23. The next Festival production is one of the earliest operas in history and still one of the very loveliest, L'Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) by Claudio Monteverdi, who lived from 1567 to 1643 -- a prolific composer who is considered opera's first genius. The work has not been performed here since l981. Performances are June 13, 16, 18, 21 and 26. Mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose is Poppea, who will stop at nothing to gain power and marry her lover, the Emperor Nero. He already has a wife bent on vengeance, Octavia, to be sung by Lorraine Hunt, a widely praised soprano specialist in music of this period, who is making her local debut as is the Nero, counter tenor David Daniels. All the operas have English supertitles. Next week we'll tell you about the third one, Carmen. Opera Box Office: 864-3330. If seats available, Student/Senior Rush tickets are $30, on sale in person two hours before the performance; Standing Room also goes on sale two hours before and in person only. * * * * * "Billy Budd" on TV Just before the SF Opera FemmesFest begins, opera fans will be treated to a superb performance of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd by New York's Metropolitan Opera. Telecast is scheduled for Wednesday, June 3 at 8 p.m. on PBS. (Check local paper for date, time and channel.) Despite having no femmes in the cast, this is such a powerful, heartrending work and so easy to understand and appreciate that it could make everyone who watches into an opera fan. In English and based on a novel by Herman Melville (who also wrote Moby Dick), Billy Budd takes place in l797 at sea aboard His Majesty's Ship Indomitable. The dramatic story hinges on the interaction between the decent and honorable Captain Vere, the hard and vengeful officer Claggart, and the young, ill-fated sailor Billy. Met telecasts are usually very good both as performances and superior television. Billy Budd conductor is Steuart Bedford. Cast is headed by tenor Philip Langridge as Captain Vere, bass James Morris as Claggart, and baritone Dwayne Croft as Billy. |
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