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Performing Arts

Ten years ago, when a starry-eyed go-getter named Jen Nyman (now Julia) arrived in town to build a young people’s theatre program at the historic Sheridan Opera House, Telluride pulled its Missouri stunt: “Show me, “ we said. Jen did. Big time.

Her response to the skeptics – “Really, we have Mudd Butts, who needs more kid’s theatre” – was to make like the lead of her first ever production, “Peter Pan”: pointing to the second star to the right, Jen led the way into the future.

04 December, 2008 /

Kicker: 2009 season features “The Sound of Music” and “Taming of the Shrew”

When the New York Shakespeare Festival staged its adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” the director had Petruchio and Kate go toe-to-toe against the backdrop of the Wild West. Coincidently, the misogynistic romp opened on Broadway in July 1990 at almost exactly the same time a new theatre company was born in a small Western town that had long ago shed its chaps and buckskin – save for a few crusty old goats and cowboy wannnabes.

Nineteen years later, in June, 2009, the Telluride Repertory Theatre plans to mount its version of the sassy battles of the sexes, reinserting a linchpin in the town’s summer entertainment calendar: Free Shakespeare in the Park.

22 November, 2008 /

Once upon a long time ago, her former husband, Bunzy Bunworth,
tried to convince his brand new bride to leave the East coast and head West to a ski town in the mountains. Reading up on her prospective new home, Suzan Beraza was pleased to discover that Telluride had a theatre. Being an ambitious and hardworking young actress, she decided to jumpstart her new life by sending along an 8x10 head shot and a resume.

15 November, 2008 /

African_children_5 The news we get out of Africa is generally one-sided and not good. In America, “Africa” spells “t-r-o-u-b-l-e”: AIDS, malaria, genocide, impasse in Zimbabwe, fighting in the Congo, slavery in West Africa. Although the continent is comprised of 54 distinct countries, we tend to think of it as a monolith conjoined to the word “darkest,” suggesting a backward, dangerous, remote corner of the world where hope disappears in dense jungles. But hope is not dead – far from it. Signs of hope are headed our way in the form of The African Children’s Choir.

04 November, 2008 /

To Fall Deeper in Love with the World     Sit with lichen longer than comfort allows.   The urge to move must rise and pass, rise and pass,...

29 October, 2008 /

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Spring:
Come Closer


Eager to play, spring bumbles in
like a dizzy bee
dazed by yellow exuberance
wondering which tree, which stem,
which blade of new grass to next visit.
Whirrrrr-whoosh hustles in the first hummingbird,
whip-stridently flirting with petal-some red,
sweet hussy of fling,
flippant rush of a thing,
yes! then tides of wings gather
to jostle for nectar,
warm air wears their buzz like a hymn.
And what could be better than today to remember
that we, too, are found in the rush,
this daily detour toward sweetness and thrill,
this unpredictable swerve of a path on which
evening enters on gray glimmer of wing so bright
                        that even the shadows are listening.

28 October, 2008 /

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Valerie Madonia

The notion of dance in Telluride was not new before Valerie Madonia arrived on the scene.

In the 1970s, Jeri McAndrews, a New York transplant and modern dancer, settled in town and taught modern, jazz, and ballet in what is now the Elementary School cafeteria.

In 1978, McAndrews also founded the first (and only) Telluride Dance Festival.

In the 1980s, Shirley Fortenberry and Leslie Crane taught ballet to young and older. It was “Miss Shirley” who put “The Nutcracker” back in our town’s Christmas.

27 October, 2008 /

A little canoodling between two local nonprofits is not a bad thing – especially when considering the alternatives, such as more nail-biting over the kerfuffle on Wall Street.

The Telluride Choral Society and the Telluride Dance Academy offer a gentler, more melodic alternative to the drum roll leading up to Tuesday’s presidential election: their upcoming MasterWorks concert, “A Celebration of the Seasons,” should be a refreshing pause from the headlines in general.

27 October, 2008 /