Want to Start a Dance Cooperative in Burlington?

Since 2010, Vermont dancers have sweated through rehearsals, cranked out choreography and performed new works in the Burlington Dances & Natural Bodies Pilates studio in the Chace Mill. 

The place has hosted artists-in-residence, collaborated with dancers with special needs through VSA Vermont, and rented space for visiting choreographers and other movers and shakers.

But this June, owner Lucille Dyer is hitting the road to guest teach Bartenieff and Pilates in various places, so the studio is on the market — with or without its contents, which include yoga mats and bolsters, hand weights, a water cooler and fridge, bookshelves and a desk.

Here's the thing: Dyer doesn't want the place to become just another office; she wants it to remain a vital venue for area performing artists. So she's put out a call to creative people in hopes they might come forward to take over the lease.

Seven Questions for... the Schadenfreude Circus

Of all the not-quite-translatable words in the German langauge, schadenfreude is one of the best known to English speakers. It's also one of the most delectable. 

It refers to the joy one takes in someone else's misfortune.

So it's a fitting moniker for a Barre-based sideshow act full of beds of nails, power drills up the nose and crotch-bound sledgehammers.

There are only two performers in the Schadenfreude Circus: Lady Riggy and Lazlo, both 31. They took the stage at Burlington's Club Metronome last week as part of Paco Fish's Burlesque Vangaurd Tour. 

Between Fish's uncanny Michael Jackson impersonations (plus stripping) and more stripping by Green Mountain Cabaret founder Alexa Luthor, Lazlo hammered nails into his nose and rolled a frying pan into a tube with his bare hands. Lady Riggy sliced a cucumber on her staircase of knives before climbing the stairs in her bare feet. She jumped up and down on broken glass, and then, to the horror of many in the audience, did the same on a pile of LEGOs.

Seven Days caught up with the duo after the show. 

Seven Days: Do you have day jobs?

The Schadenfreude Circus: Lazlo works for a Vermont insurance company. If you've got an insurance problem, yo, he solves it. Lady Riggy is a hausfrau with occasional breaks for hula hooping.

SD: When did you start performing as the Schadenfreude Circus?

SC: Last year. Before that, Lady Riggy was with other shows, cabaret groups, and street performing. But she was lonely and bored. Much to her surprise, hundreds of miles away, Lazlo wished upon a star (which was later proved to be Mars) that he might someday soon find someone like him ... a sideshow June to his Johnny. They soon learned that fate had been planning the birth of the Schadenfreude Circus for centuries. Nostradamus said something about it ... it is believed to be between the predictions about the French Revolution and Y2K.

SD: How did you discover sideshow?

SC: Many people joke about running away with the circus or the carnival. Lady Riggy actually did. Much like his role-model Gonzo the Great, Lazlo has been entertaining people with his wonderfully horrible stunts for most of his life. To quote Hunter S. Thompson, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!

In case you hadn't noticed, it's still National Poetry Month. Look for a double review of local verse — including a National Book Award nominee who teaches at Dartmouth College — in this week's paper.

Good news for another local poet: the University of Vermont's Major Jackson has won a Guggenheim Fellowship. Jackson (pictured) edits the Harvard Review and has published his work widely in journals, including the New Yorker, as well as in three collections. Here's my review of his most recent collection, Holding Company, which compares it to a "big, ambitious concept album."

And here's a profile of Jackson we ran way back in '04. You can hear him read this Wednesday, April 17, 7 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room, Kreitzberg Library, Norwich University in Northfield. (Read more about the new Norwich Writers Series here.)

Or catch Jackson in Middlebury at "A Spring Evening With Four Vermont Writers," sponsored by the New England Review, on Thursday, April 18, at 7 p.m. at Carol's Hungry Mind Café. Also reading will be two Midd undergrads, Eliza Gilmore and Thomas Kivney; and Henriette Lazaridis Power, whose new novel The Clover House bears some impressive blurbs.

Are there more readings this week? Glad you asked.

LCCMF Executive Director Martha Ming Whitfield Steps Down

An announcement came today from the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival folks that executive director Martha Ming Whitfield is moving on. After less than four years at the helm, Whitfield is ready "to pursue new opportunities."

Those years have been productive ones for the classical-music organization whose artistic director is Soovin Kim (pictured). The announcement cited "numerous recent successes," including a fundraising campaign to commission a major work from composer-in-residence David Ludwig, the concert from renowned Jasper String Quartet last week, and the launch of ONE Strings — a violin-instruction program at Burlington's Integrated Arts Academy that Amy Lilly writes about for Seven Days this week. (Look for it in the paper and online on Wednesday.)

As these things go, LCCMF's announcement put a positive spin on the news:

This transition presents the Festival with a wonderful opportunity to take stock of where we are now and where we are going. We are examining how we can best enhance our Festival and build our community, while continuing to present the finest quality programming.

A job search for Whitfield's successor is already posted on LCCMF's website. Stay tuned.

 

Trumpeter Thomas Marriott Comes East, to Vermont's West Coast

Here's a cool concert that might fly under the radar of all but avid local jazz fans. On Wednesday, April 17, at the UVM Recital Hall, the renowned, Seattle-based trumpet sensation Thomas Marriott (right) performs works from his album East-West Trumpet Summit. That 2009 release was a No. 1 hit on jazz charts. Three more of the eight he's recorded since 2004 were in the top 10.

Marriott worked in New York City for about five years, first turning heads with his playing in Maynard Ferguson's Big Bop Nouveau Band. He then went on the road with artists as diverse as Rosemary Clooney, Michael Feinstein, Les Brown and Charlie Hunter. Marriott returned to his hometown in 2004 and performs with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra.

Monday's Child: Observations From the Deck

I do enjoy the view of Lake Champlain, and the sunset, from my house, even if it's just a sliver. What would improve the view? Cutting down the trees in my neighbors' back yards, sure, but that's not the answer I'm thinking of.

Hint: And some say wind turbines are ugly.

Does anyone disagree that the bane of urban life, aesthetically speaking, is power lines? Seriously offensive, IMHO.

Hey, Mayor Weinberger, how about a campaign to bury the lines in this "most livable city"? Now, that would be a lasting legacy, and way more popular than the Packard Lofts.

In 1968 some visionary Vermonters got rid of billboards, and that turned out pretty nicely. Just sayin.'

 

"Monday's Child" contemplates events, people, places or things experienced over the weekend past.

Friday Link Dump: Huey Lewis Edition

Every Friday we'll be scouring the internets for tidbits of randomness, local and otherwise, to help you tick minutes off the clock until quittin' time. Here's this week's installment.

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On the home front …

Working Models, Greg Davis & Ben Vida

Ad Hoc's Michael Sugarman has a favorable review of the new collaboration between Burlington's Greg Davis and Ben Vida, Working Models.

Former Seven Days music freelancer Will Ryan has caught on as a critic at Beats Per Minute. He's a fan of the dark new record from the Haxan Cloak, Evacuation.

The website for this year's Waking Windows festival is live.

Betcha didn't know the most depressing (and hilarious) job interview ever happened recently in Burlington. 

Ever lament, er, wonder how many Kickstarter campaigns there have been in Vermont? (And which ones were or weren't successful?) Wonder no more. 

And in nonlocal happenings…

Would you be more or less likely to see Fast 6 if it were filmed using remote-controlled cars?

Hey hey, my my. Rock and roll will never die … at least if Maroon 5's Adam Levine and his alleged harem of groupies and drugs have anything to say about it. 

Or David Lee Roth, for that matter.

Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

And finally, this:

 

Movies You Missed 82: John Dies at the End

This Week in Movies You Missed: What would happen if you crossed the Harold and Kumar movies with David Cronenberg? Or Men in Black with a stoner's shaggy-dog story?

What You Missed

David Wong (Chase Williamson, pictured) relates his unlikely adventures to a journalist (Paul Giamatti). It all started (or did it?) when his friend, John (Rob Mayes), got dosed with a drug called "soy sauce" at a show. Suddenly John found himself moving through time and space, accessing other dimensions and knowledge he wasn't supposed to have — and then he died. Or did he?

The sauced experiences of John and David (a pseudonym, he hastens to point out) will lead to their becoming "spiritualist exorcists" who routinely encounter interdimensional portals in shopping malls, giant spiders, ghosts, aliens, sentient viruses and slugs that try to burrow inside you.

When you're connected to the heartbeat of the universe (or something like that), nothing ever is what it seems.

Davis Studio to Open New Glass-Fusing Workshop

"Are you lubricated?" Alyssa Oxley asked a student in her fused-glass class at Burlington's Davis Studio on Wednesday night.

She suspected he wasn't. Instead of making a satisfying "zip" sound, his glass cutter was screeching across the surface of his mud-colored material. He pressed the cutter into a small sponge doused in paint thinner and got back to work.

Ziiiiiip!

Vermont Arts Council's New Video Explains Funding Needs, Artfully

The Vermont Arts Council has been getting about the same state appropriation for years. Twenty-three, to be exact. Twenty-three years without so much as a cost-of-running-a-state-arts-organization raise.

This year, the VAC is asking the Vermont Legislature to step up its game. 

What? When budget cuts are looming in every department? When the feds and all 50 state governments are chewing their collective fingernails over the sequester?!

Yup. And it's a fine time for the council to amp up its demands, IMHO. But this being a Vermont council, the request to double its funding — in order to match federal funding and not let Vermont's rightful money stay in Washington — is a polite one.

And highly creative. Just watch this three-minute video, courtesy of ORCA Media, and see if you aren't persuaded.

 

’nuf said, right? But if you want more info, the VAC will be happy to supply it here.