Word: joel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...greatest hits. We Will Rock You, a sell-out hit in London that boasts Robert De Niro among its backers, sets more than 30 songs of the '70s rock band Queen to a jokey sci-fi fable about a future world where live music has been banned. Billy Joel's oeuvre has been matched to Twyla Tharp's choreography in Movin' Out, which is prepping in Chicago for a Broadway opening this fall. There's a Beach Boys musical in the works and another one on the Doors, and even a Bruce Springsteen show, Drive All Night, with its sights...
Even the debased act of recycling old rock songs can be the occasion for artistic alchemy. Two years ago, Tharp called Joel, whom she had never met, asked him over to the house and told him she wanted to do a musical based on his songs. He said yes, then stepped aside and let Tharp go to town on Movin' Out, a two-act dance musical built around a couple dozen of his songs (not just Uptown Girl and Captain Jack, but some of his classical compositions as well), linking them loosely with a story that spans two decades...
Tharp has done this sort of thing before, but usually in the confines of highbrow dance troupes (like Deuce Coupe, based on Beach Boys music, for the Joffrey Ballet). Here she manages to enhance Joel's music (sung by a Billy stand-in, Michael Cavanaugh, who sits at a piano, accompanied by a 10-piece band, on a platform above the stage) while buoying the spirits with sexy, high-voltage dancing that promises to give Broadway a rush of excitement. Best of all, she does it the old-fashioned, pre-Mamma Mia! way: no dancing in the aisles...
...with a smile, "You're supposed to pray, even if it's to get the hell out of here." Photographer Jose Azel spent 25 nights in motel rooms and drove 4,500 miles to bring you a photo gallery of the people you might meet along the trail. Writer Joel Stein was the bravest of all, sampling the same fat-laden cuisine the explorers ate as he crouched by a Montana campfire...
...Joel Stein's commentary on why Americans don't care about the World Cup exemplifies the U.S.'s disdain for other cultures [ESSAY, June 17]. Stein should feel sorry for the millions of Americans who have no notion of geography and cannot come to terms with cultures other than their own, which they always deem superior. That lack of interest breeds anger elsewhere around the globe. Sadly, it seems that the only way some in the U.S. can get acquainted with other countries is through war. NICOLAS BAYCHELIER Chungli, Taiwan...