Word: rite
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sameness of the future do the Pudding participants have that, more interested in the project than the theater, they can put on this elaborate celebration of the way things are, were and will be. There is no groping, little creating and no confusion--simply the acting out of a rite of tradition that never wants change or growth. Maybe this is all right in matters of religion or faith, but in a convention of frivolity there seems to be something the matter with it. Unless it is a matter of something that runs deeper, it doesn't seem to have...
Lubovitch works with a similar sort of gesture in Stravinsky's "Les Noces"--highly specific, mimetic gesture, yet abstract, interesting as pure form. Ignoring the abbreviated libretto Stravinsky wrote with Bronislava Nijinska for the 1923 Diaghilev premiere, the choreographer presents instead his own vision of a Russian peasant rite, an innocent bride and shy groom, their anxious yet wise parents, and high-spirited friends. In a recent interview Lubovitch explained...
...custom of kissing has spread from showfolk to the general population, it has raised innumerable, if minute, questions of rite and protocol. Who initiates the kiss? In a kiss between a man and woman, quite often it is the woman who makes the first move - offering her hand, inclining her cheek. But if the man is, say, the woman's boss or her husband's boss, she may wait until he leans forward into that critical distance with in which the kiss occurs...
...many critics, Roots was an Uncle Tom's Cabin for television. The short series included a number of unusually graphic scenes: the tribal rite of circumcision, the torturous voyage from Africa aboard a slaver, whippings, rapes and even the hatcheting of Kunta Kinte's foot. For many black viewers, Roots succeeded in putting flesh on the bones of their Afro-American heritage. "We all knew what slavery was, by hearsay and by family tradition," noted Boston Journalist Robert Jordan. "But this put all those feelings in living color where you've got to believe them." Said Little...
Though few could argue with Roots' impact, some scholars did find fault with its accuracy. "The manhood rite of the Mandinkan tribe took three or four years, not a couple of days," noted Dr. Andrew Billingsley, president of Morgan State University. "The series overdoes the black participation in the slave business, while it ignores the main slave traders-Europeans who came into African communities and rounded up people at gunpoint. The passage took longer, with 'seasoning' camps at the beginning, usually on an island off the African coast, and breeding camps...