Cabaret and Cooperation Pink Martini Bandleader Thomas Lauderdale Is at His Best Bringing People Together

MONTAGE Jehlen as a starling in the “valley of viewers. Contemporary dance, she says, often bewilderment,” one of seven the birds focuses more on self-expression or explor- must pass through on their search for Simorgh in The Conference of the Birds ing movement itself, and less on content. “My work is very much about content....We pen,” she insists. “I think it was probably my want viewers to understand it in the way we aunt,” she offers. “I really don’t know.” She’s intend.” Next year, she hopes to tour with reluctant to provide an explanation for her Sholeh Wolpé, the Iranian-American poet pursuits, perhaps partly because she doesn’t and playwright who translated the most re- view her work as marked by any particular in- cent English version of The Conference of the Birds. terest in a specific tradition—bharatanatyam or Wolpé would read a condensed version of the Sufi mysticism or the Japanese dance-theater story before the performance, to give viewers form butoh—but instead by the larger, mys- a frame for understanding the dance. GARY ALPERT terious, interconnected human experience. “I think our work as artists is to train peo- of our stories.” (The production premiered ANIKAYA has also produced works inspired ple to be empathetic,” Jehlen adds. Though in Boston last year, and a weekend of per- by the Hebrew Bible; the concept of gender; she doesn’t often address it directly, she formances in Washington, D.C., is planned and the idea, common to world religions and also thinks about the connection between for November. Jehlen is seeking funding to modern physics, of a time before creation. “To her work and current culture and politics. tour it around the country and the world. me, physics is as awesome and fascinating as “People get so much more attached to their Grant-writing, she acknowledges, is a pun- anything else,” she says. “I live for awe, and identity when they perceive themselves as ishing endeavor of its own: sometimes “as that’s very strong in the parts of Islam that I’m under attack. It can be a dangerous situa- time-intensive as creating art.”) interested in. I live for cognitive dissonance tion culturally because it makes you want to Some artists can think back to the moment and things that force you to wrap your head freeze your culture and label everything and they knew that music or dance or poetry was around other things.” separate everything.” But as Jehlen knows, what they were meant to do. Jehlen resists For Jehlen, it’s important that performanc- the intersections of culture can be every bit origin stories. “I have no idea why things hap- es convey a specific emotional experience to as magical, and generative, as their core. Cabaret and Cooperation Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale is at his best bringing people together. by jacob sweet cabaret singer, known simply derdale—the creator and band as “Meow Meow,” struts onto the leader of Pink Martini, an eclec- stage—her golden dress shim- tic “little orchestra” with about a A mering, her Disney-Villainess dozen members—plays the silent black wig bouncing—and lifts her arms straight man. There is no need for triumphantly. Nothing happens. excess flair on his part. Some per- “Usually someone throws flowers at formers are described as “dyna- this point,” she stammers, in faux-shock. mite.” Meow Meow is more like She lifts her arms a second time. Again, no a fusion bomb. flowers. She walks off stage in a huff, fetches This subdued display by Lau- As a performer, Lauderdale is often the her own bouquet, returns to the stage, and derdale is surprising. He grew up center of attention. With Meow Meow, he embraces a supportive role. hands it to a woman in the audience. Then in rural Indiana, one of several ad- she walks off again. Moments later, Thomas opted siblings from across the world, later Adams, and hosted the party that allegedly Lauderdale ’92, seated at the piano, re-intro- moving to Portland, Oregon, with his family. led to the closing of the Adams pool. “It feels duces Meow Meow, “international singing At Harvard in the early 1990s, he was the un- like most of my weekends were in cocktail sensation.” She takes the stage as if for the official social leader of Adams House, which dresses,” he recalled. first time. But now, there are flowers. he described over the phone as the “artsy, gay, After graduating with a degree in history For much of the Sunday evening show at international freak House.” He founded Café and literature, he moved back to Portland Boston’s Berklee Performance Center, Lau- Mardi, a Tuesday-night coffeehouse within and planned to run for political office, -at Photograph by Autumn de Wilde Harvard Magazine 61 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE In a moment, Lauderdale’s playing style were randomly populated, Lauderdale can shift completely. orchestrated a one-time party between Adams and Eliot, the “preppy” House. the birth of Pink Martini, a Portland-based After college, he said, Pink Martini be- group that would go on to perform mostly came like “Adams House on the road,” classical, jazz, and old-fashioned pop mu- and he branched out in his social leader- sic in more than a dozen languages. They ship role. In 1997, “Sympathique,” a single soon found themselves performing at fund- he co-wrote with bandmate China Forbes COURTESY OF THOMAS LAUDERDALE raisers for every possible progressive politi- ’92, became a hit in France, allowing Pink tending “every political fundraiser under cal cause: civil rights, affordable housing, Martini to tour overseas. This spring and the sun.” Finding them boring, he found library funding, education. summer, they will perform in Turkey, himself on stage in 1994, again in a cock- Though Lauderdale’s loudest feature South Korea, France, Belgium, and Hun- tail dress, opening for a concert in opposi- may be his flamboyant exuberance, his gary, switching between popular songs tion to a proposed anti-gay rights amend- greatest skill is bringing people togeth- from across the world and those written ment to the Oregon constitution. That was er. Before the undergraduate Houses by Lauderdale and friends in myriad lan- rar, Straus and Giroux, $25). A useful through which Americans came to know collection of the late Nobel laure- Picasso and other foundational modern Off the Shelf ate’s work, from first to last, select- artists. ed by his family members—the first Recent books with Harvard connections in several projected volumes by the Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven publisher, including a biography. Un- but Nobody Wants to Die, by Amy Matters military. Having really negotiated til the latter appears, Adam Kirsch’s Gutmann ’71, Ph.D. ’76, and Jonathan D. with North Korea (see “The Korean Nu- “Seamus Heaney: Digging with the Pen” Moreno (Liveright, $27.95). U Penn’s pres- clear Crisis,” September-October 2003, (November-December 2006, page 52) pro- ident, a political philosopher, and her fac- page 38), and later served as secretary of vides a superb point of entry into the life ulty colleague, a medical ethicist, draw on defense, Ash Carter (now director of the and poetry. the old song title to point out that although Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Sci- Americans “view the afterlife [as] an ideal ence and International Affairs) offers in- Young Castro: The Making of a Revo- place where no one has to pay the price of sights into running the Pentagon, U.S. stra- lutionary, by Jonathan M. Hansen (Simon achieving eternal perfection,” it ain’t that tegic challenges, and more, in Inside the & Schuster, $35). A fresh life, based on Cu- way. Given merited concern about, say, the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Life- ban archival sources and interviews, of the misuse of CRISPR technology to “perfect” time of Leadership in origins of the larger-than- embryos, their accessible exploration of the Pentagon (Dutton, life figure whose national- American health care and bioethics is im- $29). Useful background ist uprising in his island portant and timely. heading into 2020—or for country ultimately steered whenever the public and into its present, commu- Evolution or Revolution? Rethinking its leaders next take mili- nist gridlock. The author is Macroeconomic Policy after the tary and defense issues a senior lecturer on social Great Recession, edited by Oliver seriously. From a soldier’s studies. Blanchard and Eliot University Professor perspective—far from the Lawrence H. Summers (MIT, $39.95). Hav- secretary in the hierarchy, Alfred Stieglitz: Taking ing attained “normalcy” after the protract- but proximate to the Pen- Pictures, Making Paint- ed recovery from the financial crisis and tagon—U.S. senator Tom ers, by Phyllis Rose ’64, Great Recession—and therefore a period Cotton ’99, J.D. ’02 (R- Ph.D. ’70 (Yale, $26). The suitable for both reflection and worry Arkansas), a veteran (and veteran essayist and biog- about the next, inevitable downturn—a prospective presidential rapher (Virginia Woolf, pair of leading macroeconomists present candidate after 2020), Josephine Baker, et al.) colleagues’ best thinking about monetary writes about Sacred briskly portrays the pio- and fiscal policy, and about the need for Duty: A Soldier’s Tour neering photographer who height ened focus on inequality and political at Arlington National made an even greater im- economy. Academic, but not impossible. Cemetery (Morrow, pact with his gallery, 291, $28.99). Coffee Lids, by Louise Harpman ’86 and The master photographer: “Spring Showers,” Scott Specht (Princeton Architectural 100 Poems, by Seamus by Alfred Stieglitz, c.

Load more