ATLRetro

Jerylann Warner goes back to CIRCA 50. Photo credit: Bubba Carr.

The Gathering Wild Dance Company is transporting audiences back to CIRCA 50 this weekend Jan 24 and 25 at the 14th Street Playhouse, but their interpretation of the era of HAPPY DAYS isn’t just sock-hops, poodle skirts and perfectly trimmed lawns. Under the cheoreographic guidance of Art Director Jerylann Warner, the 14-member ensemble will “shine a light on oppressed emotions seething below the surface,” including race, censorship, the role of women in a patriarchal world and living the American Dream consumed by consumerism.

If those themes sounds heavy, Jerylann promises they are tackled with plenty of empathy, as well as a joyous soundtrack which includes classics from the decade that gave birth to rock n roll. ATLRetro decided to make Jerylann Kool Kat of the Week to find out more about one of Atlanta’s most innovative dance companies and their unique take on the 1950s.

ATLRetro: What inspired you to explore the 1950s through dance? Is there a personal connection, a personal fascination?

Jerylann Warner: I was inspired to create something that came from a memory. I was born in the ‘50s, all be it later in the decade, but I recall with reverence how people gathered in the streets at sunset in the summer, how radios and fireflies and Catholic widows exchanged laughter and food. But that is not in and of itself compelling enough, it has been a burning question for me: who would I have been in the midst of civil rights? Would I have stood up for what was in my heart? What would have been in my heart? What if I lived in the south, or if I was a young mother or if I was like so many women, dependent on a spouse??? I want to know if what I feel with such stinging clarity now would have surfaced for me then? I am intrigued by the sacrifices that protest entails, and I am so deeply in love with being human.

This isn’t just about 50s pop culture and the birth of rock n roll, though. You’re going underneath the outer veneer of the ‘50s as an idyllic American time. Can you talk about that why you decided an American housewife should be the narrator?

The housewife wears a beautiful red dress, and her role has been created by actress Amber Bradshaw, who joined me as a creator several months into the process. My first thought was “Ah she is the circulatory system.” Amber later helped clarify the housewife as a narrator, serving as a lens for the audience to see into the aspects of the decade that we have embraced. I can relate to her archetype. She was a natural for me to adapt into the dynamics of conformity and sexism.

The ‘50s was a key time in the history of jazz, an American art form enjoyed by whites but for which many of the most innovative composers and performers were black. Can you tell us a little bit about the segment, “Peace Piece,” which is inspired by music with the same name by jazz legend Bill Evans and his trio.

I was entirely blessed to have studied vernacular jazz dance and rhythm tap with Brenda Bufalino. This makes me no stranger to the force of jazz, the complexity and brilliance of improvisation. I choose “Pierce Piece,” a seminal improvised piano solo because it is beautiful and because I adore it and because jazz is a diffusing racial alchemy.It is a universal collective of voices and responses.

Amber Bradshaw narrates Circa 50 by Gathering Wild dance company. Photo credit: Bubba Carr.

What are some of the 50s classic songs you decided to include and why?

It is fair to give you this synopsis. Chuck Berry was urged to do better and invented the alter ego Johnny B. Goode; he lived on Goode Street. Johnny Cash was a poet for the striving. Pasty Cline aroused everyone, and that was okay. Elvis was a very complex man and truly an original. I will refer to him often. Anytime I sense reluctance of expression in my students. Do not edit yourself, not yet. That’s what I say.

Circa 50 features some original musical pieces, too. I’m particularly intrigued by the innovative kitchen soundtrack in the Print Ads scene.

The original score is played live by the amazing Colin Agnew. He will play domestic appliances and kitchen utensils. I am sure I do not have to tell you why.

How about the segment around Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight?” 

Thanks to my dad Joe, Frank Sinatra is my wheel house. I made this duet for two women. We have so much more work to do in our ongoing civil rights movement. Frank’s romantic overtures belong to every couple.

Gathering Wild dancers in CIRCA 50. Photo credit: Bubba Carr.

Do you use any ’50s movie imagery or icons, i.e. Marilyn Monroe or James Dean? If no, why not? 

I have not floated imagery in of James Dean or of Marilyn. Instead I have gravitated toward the iconic musicians in my interpretation of their impact, the way the music makes me feel, and in research I conducted.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell ATLRetro readers about CIRCA 50 or Gathering Wild dance company?

Gathering Wild is known for its way of motioning audiences to look at things, like a gentle tap tap, hey, look at this, look at this marvelous, beautiful aspect of life [or] look at this bravado, this influence, this delightful presence that is real and powerful and of our creation. And particular to Circa 50, look at this suffering and triumph.

What’s next for you and Gathering Wild?

Next for Gathering Wild is a theme-free show. They are so very compelling, but I am ready to work with my beautiful, talented dancers in a very “other” kind of way. Just us, just us in the studio sourcing movement and building an arch, a passage, a tunnel to the deeper feelings of why we love to dance.

Tickets on sale through the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office.

Melba Moore, 1985. Photo credit: James Mitchell.

Legendary R&B vocalist Melba Moore stars as the bombastic director of a Southern church choir in Lolita Snipes‘ gospel musical GOOD GOD A’MIGHTY, playing Feb. 14-24 at 14th Street Playhouse. A hilarious behind-the-scenes look inside a southern African-American church faced with a vibrant new pastor from New York, the play marks a bit of irony in that Melba is a born-and-bred New Yorker herself.

Because Melba is best known for a string of ’70s and ’80s Billboard hits starting with “I Got Love,” it’s easy to forget that her first big break came on Broadway when she replaced Diane Keaton in HAIR. She went on to win a Tony Award for playing Lultiebelle in PURLIE and appeared with Eartha Kitt in TIMBUKTU. Then her recording career took off, she started touring, and would not return to the theater until after a painful break-up with her husband. She used her remarkable life story as the backdrop for a one-woman play, I’M STILL STANDING, and soon was back on Broadway as Fantine in LES MISERABLES. Since then she has continued her comeback, including appearing with Beyonce and Cuba Gooding Jr. in the movie THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS (2003) and recording a new CD entitled FOREVER MOORE on her own label, A’Moore Music.

ATLRetro recently had the pleasure of interviewing Melba, and we couldn’t resist not just asking about her role but also her own Retro experiences growing up in a musical family in New York in one of the most exciting jazz music eras, the summer of love, working with Eartha Kitt, and much more. The conversation turned into a who’s who history lesson of some of the top names in recording which we couldn’t be happier to share.

How did you first get involved with GOOD GOD A’MIGHTY?

Lolita Snipes, the producer and writer of GOOD GOD A’MIGHTY, and her partner and husband, Jerome [Snipes],  got in touch with my manager and myself. We met in New York, and she said she had been watching me for quite a long time and knew I would be prefect for the role. I was a little surprised because though I do have a Tony Award for a comedy performance, I haven’t done a lot of comedy. She said the main reason she wanted me for the role was the music. She wanted the Melba Moore sound. She also wanted to make sure born-again Christians were involved in the play, and she wanted me because I had a reputation of being amenable, in harmony with the person in charge. She wanted to make sure that it was a real Christian play with the real Christian spirit, which is love.

You aren’t from the south but you certainly have a lot of experience with New York City having grown up there. Is there anything particular which resonates to you about this story personally?

It’s great in terms of a family culture because pretty much all of us originated from the south because we came here as slaves. We were farmers and eventually moved to the north, and we still have cultural clashes between north and south. Northerners are often considered educated and uppity by Southerners. These cultural clashes are nice food for comedy.

My mother was a professional singer and away all the time so I was raised in New York by a nanny who never learned to read or write, but came from a family of tobacco growers and sharecroppers. She was trying to get off the farm and get a job that was not so hard even if it was as a domestic or nanny. The thing that set many African-American families free was our music and the music industry, so my family was typical of that combination.

Tell us about your part and did you do anything in particular to prepare for it.

THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS. Look at the role that LaTanya Richardson – she’s the wife of Samuel L Jackson – played in that. She was feisty, bossy; she runs everybody. She doesn’t care who you are, she’s the boss. She will bring you down to size all the time. She’s a very selfish, mean-spirited ogre. That’s my part.

But it’s not dark or brutal. This is a Christian musical, so we don’t want to tell the bad news. She is not mean or evil. That’s one of the things that sets apart gospel plays or musicals. You’re not telling a negative story nor sympathizing with the bad guy.

This musical just sounds like a lot of fun. Is there a favorite part that you’d like to share?

It’s going to be so much fun. First of all, gospel comedies are the funniest type of comedy, and maybe one of the reasons they are is they don’t pander to the lowest elements of people. They don’t resort to cursing or really poking fun at people. They don’t have to be deep, but really have to be funny. They have to be joyful, really lift your spirits. That’s the point of it.

You grew up in a musical family. Your mother was a singer, your father a saxophonist and your stepfather a jazz pianist. Can you talk a little bit about growing up with jazz in the golden age of the 1940s and 1950s, maybe share a favorite memory?

My stepfather [Clement Moorman] is 97 years old. He still plays the piano and keeps his art. He plays better than ever before. My mother, though, has passed away. I grew up in an environment with a passionate love for music, and in an age when African-American artists had to be 10 times better because of racism. I grew up meeting Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. I thought I was going to be a piano player. I thought I’d be the next Horace Silver. I knew I was not going to be the next Oscar Peterson. My brother and I learned how to play these piano solos because we were so passionately enmeshed in this music. We were equally impassioned by classical music so also Leontyne Price or Marian Anderson. As I look back, it’s not just nostalgia, it just was truly a golden age. I majored in music in high school. I didn’t know if I had enough talent but I knew it was going to be my life’s work. I didn’t know if I would be a musician or singer, but I grew up listening also to Miles Davis and Nancy Wilson. I was totally enmeshed and absorbed in their recording.

Who was your favorite jazz performer in those early days and why? Outside of your family, of course.

They kept changing. Bill Evans and Horace Silver were two of our favorites. We’d sing all the solos. The Adderley Brothers, Nat Adderley, and the sax player Art Farmer. I can’t remember them all. There was just a plethora. I also loved Melba Liston because she had my name. And Ella Fitzgerald. I can sing her solos now, but I couldn’t then.

What was it like spending the summer of love in New York City and ending up cast in HAIR?

It was very unexpected. I was teaching music from kindergarten thru age 12 of high school in northern New Jersey, and I quit because I felt like if I stayed in teaching, I never was going to find out if I had enough talent to be a singing artist. My father took me to New York, where I met Valerie Simpson, who got me involved in overdub singing, At one of the recording sessions, Galt MacDermott, who wrote the music for HAIR, asked us all if we could come and sing for the director, choreographer and producer because they were still looking for strong voices. I was the only one who said yes. It was like I can’t even describe it – moving to another planet.

What was it like working with Eartha Kitt in TIMBUKTU?

She definitely was an icon and an artiste and her own self-person. She was intimidating in a sense. She was so strong and so confident and so good, and my personality was totally opposite. I was just starting to get some confidence now, but I have a gentle body language. We’re both petite women but total opposites. She was a cat and I was a kitty.

You started acting in musical theater in your twenties in HAIR and then winning the Tony for PURLIE, but then concentrated on your music career. How did you end up coming back to Broadway in 1995 to play Fantine in LES MISERABLES?

After TIMBUKTU, I went on tour and had my first hit record. I did 10 to 15 years of recording and touring. Then my marriage to my husband, who had been responsible for my success, disintegrated. During that time, I was trying to stay alive, much less stay in the industry. I did a one-woman play [SWEET SONGS OF THE SOUL, later renamed I’M STILL STANDING], and I began to climb back up the mountain. Richard Jay-Alexander, the casting director for LES MISERABLES on Broadway, saw me in Florida in my own play. He said he came in to see the play., but what he saw different sides of Melba Moore that he had never known. He had only seen me in PURLIE. He didn’t know I had a classical voice, or the other aspects of personality. It was thanks to I’M STILL STANDING that Lolita and Jerome found me, too. It was a wonderful audition piece for me.

You were the first African-American to play Fantine, the role that Anne Hathaway is favored for an Oscar this year. Can you talk a little about that experience?

I was just trying to survive, and then someone takes me and puts me into that role. When I got into it and realized what it was about, I thought, God put me here. How do you go from nothing to a lead role in LES MIZ? It showed me this is my destiny, where my good luck will happen. It was so much more than just playing a role and was a natural one to me.

It seems like certain songs play special roles at different times in one’s life. You have a long repertoire. Is there one song from it that means more now than it ever before, and if yes, why?

There are two songs. One is “I Got Love” from PURLIE, and the other is “Lean on Me,” written by Van McCoy. The longer I sing it, the more that I see that the song is my life. It’s always relevant, and the longer I sing it, because it is about your life going the right way, the more powerful it is again. It doesn’t depend on any age, any gender gap. It’s about people coming together, and the place that unites us is that magic of music which unites us. Some things pass away. With GOOD GOD A’MIGHTY, this play, I am beginning again at a fresh point. All those things that are retro and nostalgic have a fresh life again. That’s what music can be. In pop culture, we try to make things old and passing away, but that’s not what art is. Art lives.

Purchase tickets for GOOD GOD A’MIGHTY here or at the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office.