Word: avante
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Critics have often labeled Sondheim's work special or even avant-garde. In fact, Sondheim is simply carrying forward an innovative tradition in which he was steeped from youth. Born into a prosperous New York City dress- manufacturing family, Sondheim had as friend and mentor Oscar Hammerstein II. Although Hammerstein became a pillar of the mainstream musical, some of his revered standards, notably Oklahoma! and South Pacific, were seen the way Sondheim's work often is now, as daringly unromantic and political. Where Sondheim genuinely differs from the past is in his effort to avoid writing pop ditties so catchy...
...decades, however, an avant-garde of populist architectural historians has been looking at the strip and its larger-than-life iconography without conventional middlebrow contempt. The movement's manifesto is Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Robert Venturi's examination of crowd-pleasing architectural symbolism and buildings designed primarily for drivers. The irony is so American, so pop: cultural highbrows celebrating unself-conscious lowbrow vulgarity...
...reckless ebullience of decade-old Miyake, and they use the sort of unconventional material (like fishing line) that has been associated with the cutting edge in Tokyo. You can buy them in New York and Chicago, Hong Kong and Kuwait, but, Hishinuma says with some bemusement, they are "avant-garde and not very commercial," so they are not for sale in Japan. "People are afraid of certain outfits," he observes, talking in his one-room studio below a Tokyo back street. "They think, 'This is too loud for me.' " Indeed, the designer is swacked on the vibrant, sun-drenched colors...
...this season in Providence and two more in Dallas, one of which opened last week. His bawdy, confrontational work at Trinity got him fired, temporarily, in the mid-'70s but won a special Tony Award in 1981 and just keeps rolling along. At Dallas, where in three seasons his avant- garde impact on a stodgy company has cost more than a third of the subscribers, his work is just beginning...
...despite Passion's avant-garde aura, which also relies heavily on the prominence of psychological doubles of the play's two central characters, there's really not a whole lot that's new in Peter Nichols' script. By the time you leave Leverett's Old Library, you'll realize that gimmicks aside, you've seen most of Passion in other places--on TV, in movies, and in other plays...