C10
R
K Eids
including track and field, swimming, basketball, tennis and golf. These games, however, are a bit dif- ferent from the Olympics or other championships. All of the athletes in the Wisconsin games have received lifesaving organ transplants. That means they have been given a kidney, bone marrow, pancreas, liver or even a heart from a donor. These are the National Kidney
A
Foundation’s U.S. Transplant Games. The games have been held every two years since 1990 to celebrate the achievements of transplant patients and to make people more aware of the need for organ donation. According to the National Kidney Foundation, more than 100,000 people are waiting for an organ to be donated, and 18 people die every day waiting for an or- gan transplant.
Although most of the athletes are adults, kids also compete. More than 150 athletes age 17 and younger, in- cluding eight athletes from the Wash- ington area, will be at the Wisconsin games. It will be the second Transplant Games for Morgann Tucker of Hern- don, who received a kidney from her father in March 2005 when she was 7 years old. Morgann, who won two gold medals in 2008, will swim and run track. But Morgann says the best part of the games is “meeting new kids who have had transplants.” During the rest of the year, Mor- gann and many of the kids who com- pete in the Transplant Games also play on school and recreational teams
DANCE REVIEW Paul Taylor’s ‘Phantasmagoria’: A dream worthy of top billing
Absurdist new work offers wit and deeper meaning
by Sarah Kaufman
It wasn’t quite as billed, but those who braved the heat and the forecast for rain were re- warded Tuesday at Wolf Trap, where the Paul Taylor Dance Company performed for a single night. What started inauspi- ciously turned out well enough: “Also Playing,” Taylor’s tribute to vaudeville, which would have been a D.C. premiere, was scratched without explanation at the last minute and replaced with “Brandenburgs,” his solid 1988 work, accompanied by ex-
cerpts from two of the Bach con- certos. “Brandenburgs” is so deliber-
ately pleasant, so calibrated to soothe, that it smothered any no- tion of disappointment. It is a study in order, and it’s not so far- fetched to imagine that its clean lines and seamless musical logic helped bring the weather to heel, staving off a downpour and even prompting a breeze to cool the Filene Center. The main event was the pre- miere of “Phantasmagoria,” Tay- lor’s newest work. Its assortment of seemingly random characters seems, at first, like an absurdist parade. What do a Byzantine nun, an Irish step dancer and the self-important disciples of dance pioneer Isadora Duncan have in common? Lewis Carroll’s quote “Life, what is it but a dream” tops
off the program notes, and true to its billing a mixed-up, jumbly dream quality governs Taylor’s design principle (richly support- ed by Santo Loquasto’s Breughel- inspired costumes and Jennifer Tipton’s lighting). From its painterly Renaissance beginnings (and accompanied throughout by music from that era, by “anonymous Renaissance composers”), “Phantasmagoria” unfolds as a series of witty vi- gnettes in which, for instance, a bejeweled East Indian couple discovers the fun to be had with a long phallic snake, and a trio of Isadorables, as a select group of Duncan’s devotees were known, simpers about in all manner of artsy pretentiousness until a drunk Bowery bum stumbles on to spoil their soiree musicale. Taylor is unsparing. The nun
(Laura Halzack) may tower in her gigantic wimple, but with her judgmental finger-jabbing chas- ing off the charming couple with the snake (Sean Mahoney and Ai- leen Roehl), she’s as low as any- one. Maybe lower. Michelle Fleet’s perky Irish dancer, arms stiffly at her sides, seems to rep- resent the dance outcome of reli- gious control — no sensuality, please, we’re devout. Taylor’s comic-strip humor can be seen as exposing the perils of devotion, whether artistic or spiritual. Looking deeper, “Phantasmago- ria” comes across as a commen- tary on what still binds the hu- man spirit, and a call for another Renaissance-style unshackling of the intellect.
BRICKFAIR
Dulles Expo
Center Chantilly. VA.
www.BrickFair.com
Home delivery is convenient.
1-800-753-POST SF
“Beloved Renegade” returned us to the realm of the poetic. This 2008 piece, which Taylor’s com- pany performed at the Kennedy Center last year, is one of his most elegant and poignant. With Francis Poulenc’s “Gloria,” sec- tions named for Walt Whitman verses and a central Whitman- esque figure who takes stock of his life in the presence of an an- gel, it could have been heavy- handed drudgery. Instead it is light and alive, even if its subject is death, at least in part. Another subject is love; often, one dancer will cradle another in his arms, and at one point the stage is lined with dancers nestled on the floor against one another, like nap- ping children. Taylor’s ideal is so beautifully simple.
kaufmans@washpost.com
thletes from all over the Unit- ed States will gather next week in Wisconsin to compete for medals in a dozen sports,
and compete against kids who have not received transplanted organs. That’s no surprise. Some athletes
have done amazing things after re- ceiving an organ transplant. Sean El- liott of the San Antonio Spurs and Alonzo Mourning of Georgetown Uni- versity and the Miami Heat competed in the NBA after receiving kidney transplants. Mourning received his kidney in 2003 and was a member of the 2006 Miami Heat championship team.
KLMNO FRAZZ
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010 JEF MALLETT
TODAY: Sunny and hot
HIGH LOW 94 74
ILLUSTRATION BY KATE SHARMAN, AGE 9, BURKE
sTHE SCORE by Fred Bowen Some dogs have gotten kidney transplants. I wonder if there’s a Transplant Olympics for animals.
These athletes are already winners
NATIONAL KIDNEY FOUNDATION Morgann Tucker of Herndon won two gold medals during her first Transplant Games, in 2008. She had a kidney transplant.
Most recently, a professional golfer, Erik Compton, competed in this year’s U.S. Open after his second heart transplant. Compton, who is 30 years old, received his first transplant when he was 12 and his second in 2008. Sometimes in sports, everyone
makes a big deal out of the most fa- mous and talented athletes. Look at how much fanfare surrounded bas- ketball star LeBron James’s recent signing with a new team. The National Kidney Foundation’s
U.S. Transplant Games are a good re- minder that the bravest and most ad- mirable athletes often are regular peo- ple who have overcome hard times just to stand at the starting blocks or cross the finish line. They are the ath- letes who remind us that competing is sometimes the greatest victory of all.
Fred Bowen writes KidsPost’s sports opinion column and is the author of 15 books, including his latest baseball book, “Throwing Heat.”
TODAY’S NEWS
TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
It’s hot enough to make you miss school: Julia Anderson, 10, cools off after soccer camp.
A summer’s worth of 90-degree days already
In a typical year, the tempera- ture at Reagan National Airport hits the 90-degree mark 37 times. But yesterday was the 38th day this year that we’ve reached 90 degrees, according to National Weather Service spokeswoman Heather Sheffield, and it’s only July. The record is 67 days of 90 degrees or above, set in 1980. “There’s no way to know [if we’ll break that record], but we’re on track, definitely,” Sheffield said. There’s no end in sight. “We’re looking to break some high-tem- perature records on Saturday.” So what’s causing the heat? Cooler temperatures in the east- ern Pacific Ocean (a long way away) are pushing the jet stream — the strong current of air high in the atmosphere — farther north than usual. That’s keeping cool northern air from moving this far south. At the same time, a stable mass of air is settled over the East, pulling warm, humid air up from the South.
SCOTT SUCHMAN/WOLF TRAP
DARK AND LIGHT: In addition to “Phantasmagoria,” top, a new piece with a Byzantine nun and a drunken bum, the Taylor company performed “Beloved Renegade,” a meditation on love and death.
August 7th & 8th•11am - 4pm DC LEGO Fan Festival
at
BRICKFAIR
2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74