Word: avant
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Blue Man Group today represents a virtual supernova of the group's beginnings. Long-time friends Matt Goldman, Chris Wink and Phil Stanton began Blue Man Group in reaction to the avant-garde art scene of the late '80s. "We were critics," says Wink. "We were like Siskel and Ebert--and Zeppo". They wrote "Tubes" in 1991 and were amazed by the critical and popular success it has become. After four years, European and U.S. tours and Obie and Drama Desk awards, "Tubes" is still selling out two shows a night in New York and Boston. "To be able...
...meld fractals and shaving cream-to use optical illusion to comment on generational identity crisis-typifies the balance of fun and metaphor that makes the show work. The effort, explains Wink, is not to let any one dimension of the show eclipse the other. "We start out being avant-gardists and then we say, 'oh look, we're being assholes,' and then we start to play for awhile and our message becomes emotive. Going to a place of spirit and newness or celebration is always where we want to end up, and pass through that other stuff...
...then Mondrian's presence was a talisman to the small New York avant-garde. It was the gift of Hitler. Like many of the Surrealists--whose work he cordially detested--Mondrian had fled to refuge in New York in 1940 as the Nazi threat to "degenerate artists" such as himself became inescapably plain. The mere arrival of this diffident and somewhat reclusive man symbolized the passing of modernist leadership from Paris to Manhattan. Yet unlike the Surrealists, he had few American followers, and none who became painters of the first rank. Part of the paradox of Mondrian was that although...
...George Mason study also underscores the value of bilingual education's most avant-garde experiments. The highest achievers were children at "two-way" schools, where English-language children and non-English speakers are mixed together, with half the curriculum taught in a foreign language and half taught in English. In Chicago five years ago, there were three such schools teaching in Spanish and English; today there are 20. In the District of Columbia, the Oyster Bilingual Elementary School is a pioneer in two-way education. Its student body is 58% Hispanic, 26% white, 12% black and 4% Asian, and after...
...highly textured "sheets of sound," a rapid-fire, rhythmic attack that conjured up aural images of runaway trains, meteor showers and volcanic eruptions. Still others point to Coltrane's importance in bringing African and Eastern influences to jazz and helping bridge the worlds of jazz and experimental avant-garde music...