THE PLAIN SUNDAY, JULY 31, 1994 Local dancer dean in Hong Kong school By Nancy Depke It was a standard touring meeting of the kind you'd find at any performing arts organization around the world. The production manager was asking for specs the depth and width of the stage, the number of pipes on which to hang the scenery, and so on. But this meeting was different. It required a translator who spoke English, Cantonese and Mandarin. The meeting, with representatives from a Chinese concert hall, took place in the dean of dance's office at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts.
The Chinese (who speak Mandarin) were looking to bring students from the academy (where Cantonese is spoken) to appear at their new performing arts center in Shenzhen. The dean, who speaks English, is a2 Clevelander by the of Maggie Carlson. If that name sounds familiar to Cleveland ballet fans, it should. a Carlson, 43, is a former dancer with Cleveland Ballet. She was with the organization starting in 1974, when the company was still doing lecture demonstrations at Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Play House.
She was. also around for the rousing performance at the Old Arcade to benefit the Garden a performance that propelled' Cleveland Ballet into the ranks of professional companies. Carlson stayed with the company through 1983 while it performed at both the Hanna Theater the Music Hall. Some of the roles she created included the lead can-can dancer in "Gaite Parisienne," the partisan in "The Green Table," Janis Joplin in "Ozone Hour" and as one of the three women in "Laura's Women." She later made guest appearances with the company in productions at Playhouse Square. She earned her master's degree in education at Cleveland State Maggie Carlson during her days University and for the last nine years had been director of the School of Dance at Akron University.
It was a little over a year ago that Carlson answered an ad in Dance Magazine, a national trade journal. "They said they were looking for a dean of dance at the Hong Kong Conservatory of the Arts and I said to myself, why not?" she said. "I never thought I had a chance. Applications came in from all over the world, especially from England and Australia." Before she knew it she'd been interviewed and hired. Two weeks before she left for Hong Kong, Carlson married Clevelander Carlton Jones, a sometime landscaper and athletic trainer at the Jewish Community Center.
The academy trains dancers in ballet, modern dance and Chinese dance as well as choreography, Carlson will take her dancers on the road to Beijing this month, then to Vancouver for the British Commonwealth games and then to the United States in October to dance in New York City and Chicago. In addition, the students tour to various Hong Kong venues. The Shenzhen, China, date is next season. Carlson is responsible for the "THE BEST ROMANTIC COMEDY OF THE YEAR!" Bob Heal. NEWS NETWORK "THIS SUMMER'S 'SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE:" Jeff Craig.
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MIKE SCOTT. PAUL GUAY, STEPHEN MAZUR PAUL GUAY, STEPHEN MAZUR: PENELOPE SPHEERIS dis MICHAEL KING BILL OAKES SPHEERIS A UNIVERSAL PICTURE in A TARTS FRIDA GENERAL CINEMA GENERAL CINEMA CHAGRIN CINEMAS ERIE COMMONS PARMATOWN 8200.E Washing 8057 Plaza BIvd-974-8383 Ridge RIdgewood- 884-6406 REGAL CINEMAS REGAL CINEMAS HOYTS CINEMAS GENERAL CINEMA SEVERANCE SOLON COMMONS TOWER CITY 11 WESTGATE MALL CINEMA Taylor Aunt Enterprise Pay -248-7373 Tower City Cir. Ridge 355-1035 NO PASSES OR DISCOUNT COUPONS ACCEPTED- as a dancer with the Cleveland School of Dance's day-to-day operation, the budget through 1999, developing curriculum, hiring and firing and recruitment of students. She also oversees all productions that go on stage and just brought Donald McKayle, a guest choreographer with Cleveland Ballet, to Hong Kong to teach "Games" to her graduating students. The philosophy of the academy, she explained, is to teach students to perform.
The Performing Arts Center has seven performing spaces, including the Lyric Theater, home to all student productions and visiting performers. The center was dedicated by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1989. Enrolled at the academy are 600 students, most of them from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam. They study dance, drama, music, TV and technical arts. There are 250 dance department students, 150 in the professional division.
Professional students stay around five years and their training is intensive, according to Carlson. They do not begin serious study of dance until around age 15, which is late in the United States. But they land jobs all over the Students rehearse at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, where Maggie Carlson, a former dancer with Cleveland Ballet, is dean of dance. The academy, Carlson explained, was built with $42 million donated by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which operates the colony's race' tracks. Almost of the Hong Kong Jockey Club profits from the tracks goes to nonprofit organizations, she said.
Carlson has encouraged Dennis Nahat, artistic director of Cleveland Ballet, to hire two of her outstanding students, Le Mai Linh (whom everyone calls Elton) and Dang Hoang (Mac). "Dennis really liked the videos I sent him," she said, "and it looks like they're coming to Cleveland. I hope so because Linh is so talented and if he doesn't get a job he will have to go back to Hanoi, Vietnam, which doesn't even have a ballet. company." Nahat said the two boys are extremely talented and will be hired as trainees if immigration problems can be worked out. Carlson, who is taking classes in Cantonese, is also on the board of trustees of Hong Kong Ballet, which canceled two new ballets last season because its surplus was down to $2 million.
"If only Cleveland Ballet had such problems," she said, laughing. Life is expensive in Hong Kong, according to Carlson, whose salary tops $100,000. The center also pays her apartment rent at Repulse Bay, which runs around $5,000 a month and is one of the nicest areas in which to live in Hong Kong. Carlson gets 45 days vacation and a free trip back to Cleveland (business class) once a year. She walks with a cane because of a pelvic injury and visits the Cleveland Clinic sporadically for treatment.
One of her greatest delights is her 1977 mint condition Jaguar, which she bought in Hong Kong for $3,000 U.S. dollars. "There's only 20,000 miles on it," she points out, "because there's nowhere to drive." She also has a live-in Amah (maid) from the Philippines. What does Carlson like about Hong Kong? "Fung shui," which is the concept that all things need to be in harmony, she said. "A fung shui expert is hired when someone is building a new building," she ex- plained, "so that harmony will prevail.
Repulse Bay, where live, was' designed with a hole in the middle' for the dragon to come out." She' also enjoys the blend of Asian cultures and feels there is very little prejudice. "This is a really exciting time in history to be here," she said. "Nobody knows what will happen when the Chinese take over Hong Kong in 1997. Everybody's contracts come to an in August Many residents are emigrating to Vancouver and Australia, but they get there, get their passports and return. They're hedging their, bets.
"The United States can learn from Kong Kong. We have un-, employment and a very small drug problem compared to home, and the streets are safe. I never have to' worry about walking around at night or that I might get raped. It: just doesn't happen." What does 'she miss about Cleveland? "Salads," she said, "I haven't had a good one since I got here last August. My mouth waters for the feta cheese and tenderloin tips salad at Noggin's." Depke is a Cleveland writer.
Offbeat, off-Broadway plays help off-season ing off-Broadway. They enliven a weak summer season in New York dominated by "Grease," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Beauty and the We're a long way from Disney with these two small shows. But their preoccupation with camp, costumes and large amounts of hairspray put them a lot much closer to "Beauty and the Beast" than one might think. If Busch made a. name for himself with "Vampire Lesbians," "Blood Orgy" could do the same for Clinton Leupp, whose stage Miss Coco.
Leupp, looking like Jill St. John's evil twin, is a real comic find. Wearing a red wig and even redder lipstick, the actor possesses a deadpan humor with a perfect sense of timing. He delivers major laughs. In "Blood Orgy," now on view at the Hamlet of Bank Street Theater, the entertainer plays Kitty Valise, student nurse.
Kitty i is a nononsense gal, tough as nails, but did she really kill another nurse during a laboratory experiment run amok? Well, Kitty thinks she did, and now she's on the lam, working in a sleazy carnival sideshow "Legends in Formaldehyde" where the big attraction is what appears to be the severed head of blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield. "Blood Orgy," written by Robin Carrigan and Jim Fall, also pays homage to other 1960s icons, such as soft-core p*rn mogul Russ Meyer and those television celebrations of vinyl go-go boots, "Hullabaloo" and "Shindig." Carrigan also appears in the production. She plays a goofy dupe of the devious Kitty. And she created the show's ditsy, goofy choreography, too. No wonder it showcases dancers so well.
Fall doubles as director, and he obviously has seen plenty ies, both good and bad. 'He has a genuine affection for them all. Yet, affection doesn't mean worship. "Blood Orgy" succeeds because of its deliciously demented approach to this trashiest element of pop ture. If the title "Boys Don't Wear Lipstick" conjures mental images of a similar style show, don't be This exotic, autobiographical oneman show, at the Charles Ludlum Theater, is author-star Brian Belovitch's attempt to deal with his own gender confusion and transvestitism.
He certainly has 1 had an unusual life starting with his attraction to the cosmetic counter at a fiveand-dime store back in Fall River, at age 5. Along the way to adulthood and to the brink of a sex-change operation Belovitch tries drugs, as well as lipstick. He also marries a soldier who takes him to Germany as his wife, becomes the girl; friend of a gangster, turns into a disco diva and then a prostitute, and, finally, finds his way back to contentment as a man. Both productions are now play- name is the much more exotic her and a troupe of male go-go. By Michael Kuchwara Associated Press NEW YORK Not since Charles Busch's "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom" has there been a better contender for the catchy title crown than "Blood Orgy of the Carnival Queens!" "Boys Don't Wear Lipstick" probably has sold a few tickets on the strength of its marquee, too.
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