![]() ![]() Pollak Theater, 400 Cedar Ave, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, Aug. "The Lost Princess of Oz," presented by the Axelrod Contemporary Ballet Theater in partnership with the Axelrod Performing Arts Center. "And what's more American than bluegrass? This is my homage to America." "Baum is the teller of the American fairy tale," Chajnik said. "Cluck Old Hen," "I'll See You In My Dreams," and "All of Your Heart," are some of the tunes sung by Richards and Brown, who in another life perform as the Asbury-based country duo Williams Honor.Īll these elements combine to turn "The Lost Princess of Oz" into, not just an unorthodox ballet exercise or a Baum redux, but into a full-blown piece of Americana. This production, which contains multi-media elements, 35-plus dancers including kids from local dance schools, six musicians, and an original 70-minute score by Chris Becker, also has songs − mostly bluegrass tunes, from the 1920s, that give the show a classic cracker-barrel flavor. That piece was multicultural, as well as multi-media: Chajnik patched together a score featuring Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky (played by a string quartet) with Indian tabla players.īut that's just the beginning. In his follow-up "The Jungle Book," 2019, based on Kipling's stories, there was an actual, onstage Jungle Book: 26 feet by 14 feet, on which scrolled the words of the text to accompany the ballet action. "I added an actor playing the role of a young Shakespeare, writing the play on-site as the dance number happened, Chajnik said. In his 2018 "Midsummer Night's Dream," he combined Mendelssohn's incidental music (plus several other Mendelssohn works) from a 20-piece orchestra conducted by Jason Tramm with narration from an actor representing Shakespeare himself. People get tense when they don't understand something." "They start coughing or sleeping or unwrapping candy. "With ballet, you'll notice some people check out," he said. Spoken narration, song, projections and multi-media effects are - to be sure - not the stuff of "pure" ballet.īut then neither is undivided audience attention, as Chajnik points out. I identify with it."įor the past four years, working with the Axelrod Contemporary Ballet Theater, Chajnik has been on just such a perilous mission. Diving into the unknown, trying to find something we care about. "I think we have all done that in our life. "The message behind the ballet is that you are willing to undergo any danger to find somebody or something that, to us, is really important," Chajnik said. Most important, there is Princess Ozma, whose disappearance leads to a frantic search through all four corners of the Land of Oz (almost a perfect square, in the maps Baum drew) in this mashup by librettist Shannon Hill of two Baum sequels, "Ozma of Oz" (book 3) and "The Lost Princess of Oz" (book 11). "He's made out of copper, and he's wound up." Then the rest of the movie turns really bad. Margaret Hamilton gives voice to Auntie Em, and the credits promise Mickey Rooney as the scarecrow and Ethel Merman as the evil witch. "Frank wrote the first robot in his story," Chajnik said. She sings a pretty song and then gets to go back Liza Minnelli does a really good job impersonating her mother, especially when she sings. It’s a sad song - being mostly about disillusionment - but it has a great party vibe too.Some may be brand new to you, though they were very familiar to Baum's legions of readers: The Patchwork Girl, The Frogman, Jellia Jamb ("Jelly or Jam?"), Ugu the Shoemaker, Ojo the Unlucky, and Tik-Tok - a clockwork man, not a social media platform. The song has a fun guitar groove, so we gave it some bass and drums, and Angelo even recorded his first electric guitar solo. 1 The comic number is sung by the Cowardly Lion played by Bert Lahr during the scene at the Emerald City, 2 when the Lion, Dorothy (with Toto ), Tin Woodsman and Scarecrow are waiting to learn whether the Wizard will grant them an audience. So for "Back To Oz" we decided to go for something flashier. Stevens adds, "Angelo is mostly known for his intimate home recordings his music is quiet and confessional. Only we can save ourselves, but we first have to remember who we truly are." Only she can find the ruby slippers and return peace to Oz. In the film, Dorothy returns to the world of Oz to find its landscape in ruins and its citizens frozen in stone. A loss of innocence is the impetus for a journey to find inner truth. The words reference an erosion of a central character’s internal reality. We finished its lyrics after watching Return to Oz. They announced the album with "Reach Out" and "Olympus", and today (10 August) they've released another two songs, "Back To Oz" and "Fictional California", inspired by Back To Oz and Bring It On Again.ĭe Augustine says of "Back To Oz", "This was a song that I had written mostly at home in California. Last month Stevens and De Augustine announced A Beginner's Mind, their upcoming collaborative album inspired by films they watched together during a month-long songwriting break. ![]()
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