Word: kemper
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...thesis is summarized in the first piece, "Confrontation, or Getting Acquainted." The music, a sweet-flowing jazz, begins by swinging the dancers to its beat. Suddenly, the dancers have taken command over the instruments--dancer Scott Kemper slumps and the sax follows with a long nasal whine, much like the clown and his circus band...
...lighting has been a blanketing red or blue. Now, two spot lights flash onto the floor just ahead of the dancers (Scott Kemper, Lindsay Ann Crouse). The dancers beckon the light-dots backwards, and as the spots climb on to the backdrop, they become beach-balls, rolling along the shadows of dancers' extended arms or bouncing between the two. The spots free themselves, scurry around the room as the dancers desperately attempt to pounce back into the light now two dimensional again. This section ends, the dancers on their backs, legs pointing upwards, with the dots poised just above--inverted...
...dancing shows best in "Jazz-Ballet, or a Tale of Two Styles." For this piece, quite literally a "Dance of the Elements," Miss Crouse portrays water to a very simple piano melody. Her movements, drawn mainly from classical ballet are exceedingly simple, she repeats them over and over. Mr. Kemper, as fire, uses the jazz idiom and, again, the choreography is almost childishly simple. Mr. Kemper and Miss Crouse have wisely avoided the temptation to demonstrate their ability with technically difficult movements. The success of the evening depends so entirely on the performers' ability to harmonize the three elements...
...piece, "Epilogue, or having read the book," the program notes claim to show that "the final definition of dance is the ultimate freedom of the imagination." While this offering is the most amusing, and the most gimmicky (featuring a neon-lit strip-tease in which Miss Crouse and Mr. Kemper remove their white gloves, socks, and hairbands) it is also the most controlled. Lighting, movement and music are in close harmony, while forcing a consciousness of each medium individually as light is made to dance, dancers to glow, and the music plays to the dictates of either...
...What Kansas City needs culturally," declared Mrs. Cynthia ("Cindy") Kemper, the energetic president of the city's Performing Arts Foundation, "is a kick in the pants." Trouble was, Cindy, 36, kicked too hard. To bankroll the foundation's initial production of Handel's Julius Caesar last year, Kemper & Co. put the muscle on some 50 well-heeled friends to raise $140,000. The opera was a widely acclaimed success, but local cultural groups resented Cindy's steamrolling fund-raising tactics, and especially the insinuation that no other cultural enterprise in the city measured...